SPEED OF HATE

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October 16, 2016
Marstrand Station

The scramble alert goes off seventeen seconds after midnight.

Dennis "Menace" O'Halloran jolts upright. He fumbles blindly for the plastic dosing cup that he knows is waiting on his nightstand. He tosses the medications into his mouth without looking and dry swallows the cocktail of modafinil, zofran, propranolol, and something only referred to as Substance K12.

He grabs his flight suit and slides it on in the dark, fingers tugging at flaps and zippers with perfectly practiced motions. He loses precious seconds finding his boots, which are half a foot to the left of where they should be — he moved them while cleaning, and forgot to put them back. A human mistake. Unacceptable.

He grabs his helmet off the wall and sprints for the hangar, following the blood-red trail of guidance lights. He doesn't need them. Every night he takes the same route, programmed into his dreams by hypnotic induction.

He arrives three seconds behind Lot and two seconds ahead of Vice. The fourth member of their flight crew is waiting for them, exactly as it does in their dreams.

Nimble Jack does not dream. It does not have a soul. It has 227 souls, all bound tightly within a Tartarean subspace inside the plane's Plutonic reactor. The compressed mass of ghosts and demons produces as much heat as a failed star, more than enough to run the XTX-7 ramjet engines for thirty lifetimes of men without ever touching a drop of fuel.

Technicians and engineers swarm the bomber like a pack of starving rats. Ordnance is loaded, diagnostics taken, umbilicals disconnected, bolts fastened, wards reinforced — all the final touches needed to ready Nimble Jack for combat.

The other members of Strike Team 4321 gather around their own airframes. There are four of them in the hangar — Nimble Jack, Quicksilver Crusader, Personal Space Invader, and Nights With Alice Cooper — each with a crew of three. Each armed with enough ordnance to put a visible scar on the face of the Moon.

The Charon Hypersonic Precision Strike Aircraft is raw velocity given perfect and deadly form, a man-made angel of death forged from one-hundred tons of metal and ceramic. The men and women who fly them are a special breed of lunatic, molded and trained into a symbiotic relationship with their aircraft. The base they sortie from is carved into the interior of the twentieth-tallest of the Rocky Mountains.

This hangar, hidden inside the peak of Crestone Needle, represents approximately five billion dollars worth of investment from the United Nations' ultra black budget.

The pilots don their helmets and board the aircraft in hurried silence, guided by an inescapable sense of déjà vu. A semiotic mission briefing flashes through the peripheral vision of their heads-up displays while they run through final flight checks, symbols and images conveying meaning without words.

The technicians guide Nimble Jack to the launch rail. Magnetic clamps lock the nose of the bomber in place, pointed directly at the six-inch-thick steel doors of the hangar. The other three bombers in the squadron trundle into position next to Nimble Jack and lock-in.

Dennis watches the seconds tick by on his helmet chronometer. They are fifty-seven seconds behind their best time-to-scramble, although only a mere thirteen seconds ahead of their target time. Fairly good, all things considered, but still too slow. For a Charon pilot, speed is the only thing that matters.

Speed is life. Speed is power.

Speed is victory.

Another five seconds pass as the last technicians clear the area around the airframes.

"Black Swan, Marstrand Control here." The voice of the flight controller is interrupted by a stifled yawn. "Apologies. Late night. Can you confirm your flight plan, please?"

The information he wants has already been uploaded to his heads-up display. Dennis wets his lips. His mouth is dry from stimulants. "Control, Nimble Jack Actual. Flight plan is to orient twenty-four degrees northeast and perform a ballistic hop of approximately fifty-eight-hundred klicks. Target zone is the Watkins Range of Eastern Greenland."

"Confirmed. Black Swan, you are cleared for take-off. You will receive additional briefing in-flight." The hangar bay door begins to slide open, revealing the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. "Fly fast and give 'em hell."

"We always do, Control." Dennis switches over to the Charon tactical channel to address the other bomber pilots. "Greenlight. Launch in sequence. Crusader, you're my wing. Invader, Cooper, form-up on our rear. Volare velox, people."

"Volare velox!" The squadron's motto is a command, an oath, and a prayer. Their Latin is atrocious, of course, but it gets the message across. Fly fast.

"Launch!" Dennis slams his fist down on the large red button at the center of his control panel.

Thump-whoosh. One. Thump-whoosh. Two. Thump-whoosh. Three. Thump-whoosh. Four electromagnetic catapults fling the bombers clear of the hangar and into the sky.

For a moment, there is silence. The bombers of Black Swan Hypothesis hang suspended in a diamond formation, silhouetted against the full moon.

Krakoom.

▶️🔊

Blue-rimmed ultraviolet flames erupt from the rear of the aircraft and propel them skywards. Each one carries a single center-mounted TRJ-3 rocket engine to assist with take-off. With continuous thrust of almost five gees, it takes only fifteen seconds for Nimble Jack and its cohorts to accelerate to Mach 2 — the minimum operating speed of the XTX-7 ramjets.

"RATO cut-out!" Vice calls out. "Switching to air-breathing."

The thunderous roar of the hydrolox rocket gives way to the banshee shriek of the ramjets. The bombers continue their ascent, gaining speed as they climb for heaven.

One-hundred-seven seconds pass.

The noise of the engines gradually fades to a high-pitched whine, then ceases entirely as they cross the Kármán line. There is no more air left to fill the intakes. They are in space.

"Closing intakes," Vice says. "Reentry in twenty-one minutes and fourteen seconds."

The Charons coast upwards as the planet curves away beneath them. They are now on a ballistic arc that will take them fourteen-hundred kilometers above the edge of space before coming back down somewhere over Nunavut.

"Black Swan, Marstrand Control again." The flight controller sounds less tired now, probably thanks to his own cocktail of stimulants. "I have your verbal briefing when you're ready."

"Go ahead, Control," Dennis says.

"Your primary target is an undesignated Honda-Cetus threat entity, formerly in Foundation custody. Approximately one hour ago, it escaped Foundation confinement and began laying waste to their holding facility, located on the eastern coast of Greenland. Your priority objective is to liquidate the threat entity."

"Clean up the hoarders' mess, got it." Dennis is only half listening. His attention is focused on the plane's instruments. His subconscious will pick-out the important information and slot it into the framework provided by the semiotic briefing.

"There's more," the flight controller says, sounding for all the world like he's about to launch into an infomercial pitch. "The Foundation previously dealt with another loss-of-control incident at the same facility involving the same species of creature, in 1986. That incident was caused by the creature unexpectedly releasing offspring. It is possible, but unconfirmed, that the same event has repeated itself. Therefore, once you liquidate the threat entity, you are directed to use your remaining ordnance to destroy the facility, to ensure that no potential threat entities survive."

That gets Dennis' attention. "Control, please confirm that last order."

"You are directed to liquidate the Foundation facility."

He exhales. "Understood, Control. Liquidate the kaiju, liquidate the site. Any other orders?"

"Come home in one piece."

Dennis smiles grimly. "Appreciate the concern, Control." He flips over to the tactical channel. "Alright speed freaks, Nimble Jack is accepting all bets."

Southpaw is the first to bet. "Put me down for twenty-five on a squid monster."

"I'll take that action," says Skittles. "Fifty says it's a crustacean."

"I want a three-way parlay on red crustacean with more than ten legs," chimes in Lot.

"No fair!" Skittles protests. "She's using precog!"

"No precog," Lot says. "Honest. I just feel lucky."

"I believe her," Dennis says. "She's missed the last four parlays, Skittles. Lot, how much are you putting down?"

"A clean one-hundred, please."

A chorus of scoffing goes up across the tactical channel. "Alright, that's how we're playing?" Skittles asks. "Two-hundred on a three-way parlay, black crustacean with twelve legs."

"Living dangerously, I see." Dennis scribbles the bet on a memo pad. "Anybody else?"

"Forty says there aren't any Foundation survivors." This grim prediction comes from Vice.

The tactical channel goes silent.

"No bet," Dennis says. "We don't gamble on human lives." Especially not when we might have to end them, he thinks.

"Alright, then forty says the Foundation asked us to bomb their own site," Vice says.

"I'll allow it, but I reserve the right to void it if we can't get confirmation."

"Fair enough."

"Alright, anyone else?" There was silence in response. "What about the over/under on ordnance? I'm thinking five warheads for the primary."

Cheat starts to speak. "I think —"

"NO!" His crewmates shout him down before he can finish.

"I think it will be exactly five warheads," he says, undissuaded.

Groans sound off across the channel.

"You're gonna jinx it, Cheat!" Skittles complains.

"Wanna bet?"

"Against you? Fuck no."

"Enough of that," Dennis cuts them off. "Does anyone else have a bet on the over/under?"

"Thirty on the over," says Bucket. "And I want twenty on two of them missing."

The channel erupts into complaints from the weapons officers.

"Consider it motivation," he says.

"Two misses exactly, Bucket," Dennis warns him. "And if I think you're trying to throw it to get a miss you're buying drinks for the squadron."

The pilots continue on in this manner for several more minutes, placing bets on everything from who would score the kill shot, to maximum sustained g-forces, to what color the kaiju's blood would be. Command knows about the betting pool, and while they would never endorse it, their lack of action speaks volumes. It's another form of team-building, a way to instill camaraderie and a little bit of competitiveness in the squadron. And it works — operational efficiency improves by approximately seven percent on missions where they run a betting pool.

"Alright, I'm closing the books," Dennis says, one minute out from reentry. "Time to focus on the mission."

They pass through the upper atmosphere like shooting stars or falling angels, wings of super-heated plasma trailing behind them. The Arctic Ocean blurs past beneath them, giving way to the glaciers of Greenland.

"Thirty seconds to target," Dennis reports. "Any idea what we're looking at yet?"

"Receiving satellite visual feed," Vice says. "Patching it to your display now."

The kaiju is big and black, completely encased by a chitinous shell. It has too many legs to count, and long whiplike tendrils that dangle from its mouth. A hundred milky white eyes are dotted across its face. Beneath it, fires burn in the remains of Site-460, illuminating the underbelly of the creature.

Skittles whistles. "Damn, that's a big lobster."

"Looks more like a crab to me," Fatman chimes in.

"Definitely a crustacean though. Do we have a count of the legs?" Vice asks.

"Not now," Dennis chides. "Lot, arm two Sledgehammers. One kiloton yield. Crusader, drag behind and give me a damage report. Invader, Cooper, peel off and setup for your own run."

"Copy that, Menace."

The diamond formation falls apart as the other bombers slow and split-off, leaving Nimble Jack alone. The bomber screams onward at just under Mach 3.

"Sledgehammers armed," Lot reports.

"Weapons tight!" Dennis orders. "Fire once you have a lock."

Lot closes her eyes, ignoring her instruments to scan the immediate future for the most favorable outcome. She hums a tuneless ditty as she does so. Her precognition is only good out to a few seconds, but a few seconds is an eternity for a Charon.

Her humming stops.

Her finger twitches on the trigger.

Two silver missiles drop from Nimble Jack's bomb bay and lance towards the creature.

As soon as the missiles are away, Nimble Jack banks hard to the left and accelerates, starting a long turn to the north to setup for another bombing run.

"Two hits!" Stick calls out.

"Target status?" Dennis asks.

"Still standing. Looks like you barely cracked the exoskeleton."

Southpaw's voice comes on the radio. "Menace, should we abort our run?"

He thinks about it for a second. "Negative, Southpaw. Switch to Jackhammers, let's see if we can't open her up with a bunker buster."

"Copy that, Menace."

Two blips appear on Dennis' radar display — Personal Space Invader and Nights With Alice Cooper, closing fast on the target.

"Vice, give me visual from Cooper," Dennis orders. "I want to see this."

"Putting it on your display… now."

On his view screen, Personal Space Invader hangs in the air while the ice blurs past in the darkness. Inside the aircraft, Dennis knows, Texas is using his neural prosthetics to calculate the optimal moment to fire.

That moment arrives quickly. The bomb bay swings open to disgorge another silver missile. Personal Space Invader rolls to the right and out of view. The camera — from its vantage point on the nose of Nights With Alice Cooper — follows the missile in.

A direct hit. The missile erupts into glowing plasma an instant before impact. It slams into and through the exoskeleton of the creature.

The crab-thing screams in pain and hate as the missile tunnels through its shell, gouging out a two-meter-wide hole that exposes its innards.

Dennis checks the locations of the rest of the squadron. Nimble Jack is north of the creature, Personal Space Invader is south, and Quicksilver Crusader and Nights With Alice Cooper have flown east out over the sea.

He issues a new order. "Crusader, Cooper, pair up for a bombing run. I want you to put a Sledgehammer in the hole Invader just opened. Maximum yield."

"Who takes point?" Southpaw asks.

"Cooper," Dennis says. "I want Cheat to take the shot. Nudge, feel free to assist with targeting."

"Copy that, Menace," Cheat says. "We'll Skywalker the fuck out of this shit."

Like all the weapons officers, Cheat has a paranormal power, albeit not one that anyone understands, least of all himself. PTOLEMY calls it a "favored destiny", but really some people are just born lucky. Everything he attempts, from darts to cards to targeting missiles, tends to go more smoothly for him than mere skill and random chance would allow.

Nudge's power, on the other hand, is fully explicable. She is a very weak telekinetic with exceptional range — not powerful enough to lift an object with her mind, but enough to make slight adjustments to the trajectory of a flying object, and to do so from twenty kilometers away.

The shot that Dennis is asking them to make is nearly impossible, but for the two of them together, it is nearly inevitable.

Nearly.

The two bombers approach low and slow, riding the Mach 2 redline for an easier firing solution. The crab-thing is waiting for them this time. It shrieks as soon as it spots them approaching, almost twenty kilometers away.

"Bombs away!" Cheat says.

As soon as the missile's rocket engine ignites, the creature roars again, this time spraying a fine mist of acid into the air. In seconds, half the sky is filled with a cloud of corrosive fog. The missile plunges heedlessly onwards, dissolving before it reaches the crab.

Nights With Alice Cooper is not far behind.

"Break! Break! Break!" Bucket shouts. The aircraft curves sharply to the right, almost but not entirely avoiding the cloud. Acid coats the underside of the plane and begins eating through the hull. "I'm hit!"

Nights With Alice Cooper rolls to the left, then to the right, ailerons fluttering madly as Bucket tries to shake the acid off. A piercing shriek fills the tactical channel, abruptly terminating in a wet gurgle.

"Cooper, damage report!" Dennis shouts.

"Flaps and controls still responsive. Engines are good. Starboard rudder is losing hydraulic pressure, but I'm compensating for it. We can still fly," Bucket says. "But we've lost weapons and targeting. And we had a cabin breach somewhere. Looks to be sealed now."

"Cheat's dead!" Fatman exclaims. "A drop of acid bored right through his skull."

"Fuck!" Dennis slams his fist against the console.

"Menace, do we abort?" Stick asks.

"Negative, we need to kill that thing now. Imagine what it could do to a populated area." He bites his lip, hard enough to draw blood. "Here's what we're going to do. Cooper, stay at a safe range and try to keep the thing's attention. I don't want anyone else taking an acid bath. Invader, you're going to take point on the next run. Jack and Crusader will be your wings. Lot, call out the optimal time for Texas to launch. Nudge, do whatever you can to improve our odds."

"Understood, Menace."

The three undamaged bombers assemble into a triangle formation and begin another run at the creature, this time at maximum speed, ramjets screaming for vengeance.

"Texas, launch on my mark." Lot closes her eyes again, feeling for the future. There is exactly one acceptable outcome, and only a handful of paths that lead to it. Lot grabs hold of the desired moment and pulls, following the thread of causation backwards into the present.

"Ten seconds to target," Vice calls out.

In Lot's mind, the threads of future and past converge in a single knotted instant. She sees Texas pull the trigger.

"MARK!" Lot screams.

Cybernetic reflexes react instantly. The missile drops from Personal Space Invader's bomb bay and disappears behind the bombers, its top speed eclipsed by the Charons at full throttle.

The crab monster is distracted by Nights With Alice Cooper flying circles around it. It doesn't see the missile coming until it's too late.

The missile plunges through the hole in its shell, dead-center, and buries itself deep inside the creature.

There is a flash of light, impossibly bright amidst the sunless fields of ice, and then the shell of the crab-thing swells and bursts. Green globs of ichor and black bits of chitin spray the ice, leaving it scarred and steaming in a thousand places. The scent of burnt shellfish fills the air.

"Scratch one kaiju!" Stick calls out. Whoops and hollers go up across the tactical channel.

"That one's for Cheat!" Texas says. "Five warheads exactly."

"He really did jinx it, didn't he?" Muses Cleveland. "What a terrible way to get lucky."

"Does anyone know if he was married?" Dennis asks.

Silence fills the channel.

"I think he has a girlfriend," Fatman volunteers. "Had, I mean."

"Then she's getting the payout from the bet." Dennis says. "All the bets, in fact. I'm voiding the rest of the pool."

No one objects.

"We're not done yet," Dennis says. "Weapons free, everyone. Drop your remaining ordnance on Site-460. Maximum yield."

The Foundation builds their sites to withstand several kinds of apocalypse. Some of them can even survive a direct nuclear strike.

Site-460 cannot.

The Charons unload two-hundred kilotons of ordnance on the facility, until all that remains is a crater, a dissipating mushroom cloud, and the smoking corpses of infant crab monsters.

"Control, Nimble Jack Actual," Dennis says. "Confirming liquidation of primary and secondary targets. One plane damaged, HPSA-PKGLW suffered acid damage to weapons and targeting. One casualty, WSO Arthur Harper confirmed KIA. And you might want to let Command know that they should get a disposal team out here to deal with the remains of the kaiju."

"Good work, Black Swan," the flight controller responds. "I'm sorry to hear about Cheat. He was a good man. I'll let Command know to dispatch a team of Gormogons to dispose of the creature's remains. You can come home now."

"Copy that, Control. See you in a bit." Dennis switches back to the tactical channel. "Squadron, form up on me. We're heading home."

The four bombers arrange themselves in a diamond formation again, ramjets howling as they ascend into the heavens.