25th February,2035, Nyoma Advanced Landing Ground, near LAC, 10:30 A.M.
Four Tejas Mk2s of the No. 223 “Tridents” Squadron , callsigns Devil 1 to Devil 4, took off from the runway at Nyoma ALG, Nyoma, Ladakh, the collective pushed all the way up and the purple-blue flames of the fully engaged afterburners tailing the aircraft from behind. Ascending to altitude and tucking in their landing gear, the leader of the flight, the pilot of Devil 1 gazes outside.
As they speed over the barren, brown hills sometimes dotted with patches of white, shining brightly under the bright, cloudless and clear sky, he thinks back to what happened in the last 24 hours.
The previous day, he was alerted by his fellow officers to quickly report to HQ and prepare to sortie as there was something happening, something which he had no idea about, nor had he expected anything to happen in the first place, for life had always been going on without anything really remarkable happening. Tensions across the border were high, sure, but nothing really pointed towards anything funny happening anytime soon.
As he walked outside however, he saw a sight he would never forget for his entire life. Towards the North and North-east of the base was an imposing, blinding screen of light, its bluish-white lighting the entire base, completely tearing off the calmness and darkness of the Himalayan night sky. The bright “wall of light”, as he later heard it being referred to, stretched all the way up, its upper edge invisible from the ground. From its position he knew it was certainly near the LAC, probably at the LAC itself, as such it was still far away from the base, yet the intensity of the light it produced reached all the way to the base.
No one knew what it was, or what it could be. No one had ever heard of such a thing. Some speculated it was a weapon, some countered it wasn’t. Shortly, orders were received to scramble every aircraft on the base. Rumours said it was a new Chinese weapon. This invited a lot of reactions. Shock, concern, amusement, interest, fear, unease. He even heard some comment on how about it felt like the script of a new Hollywood movie or even a Bollywood movie, for after all even those monkeys in Mumbai had started making military movies once again.
Since the last night everyone had been wide awake, constantly going up in the air and patrolling the area, never getting too close to the LAC. From the air, he could see just how big and imposing the entire thing was, and appreciate the effort that went in creating whatever it was.
Everyone was alert, they had been told from High Command that contact with the outside had been cut off and as such, they were to assume the worst-case scenario and prepare for a Chinese Invasion. That had just turned up every man’s blood pressure to the max. Every pilot had their eyes on their radar, their ears hooked to the RWR, eyes, ears and minds glued to their screens.
The screen of light stayed for 2 whole hours, then vanished altogether, returning the dark of the night sky again. Everyone tensed up, thinking that this was the moment. Any moment now, someone’s RWR would go up and missiles would start screaming in from the Chinese side……
But nothing happened. They waited, waited and waited. The dark blue of the night sky changed colour, changing to red-yellow, then bright blue, signalling the start of a new day. But nothing came from the Chinese side.
He, like everyone else, was confused. Wasn’t this supposed to be their last night, dying as martyrs in a surprise invasion by the Chinese? However, orders came from the high command again. This time, however, they were far more outrageous: the high command ordered them to enter Chinese airspace as far as they could, and not just one aircraft, but an entire flight.
It seemed stupid, no matter how he looked at it, until he was told more. Apparently something wasn’t right on the Chinese side of the LAC. In fact, something was very wrong , something so wrong that high command themselves couldn’t believe it. They wanted IAF aircraft to physically verify what they had seen. It seemed the insanity of the situation rendered even the use of drones and satellites insufficient, they would not believe it unless they had literally seen it with their own eyes.
He directed his thoughts to his current situation. Right now, he and his fellow pilots were nearing the border. He switched on the radio and spoke through the secure channel.
“This Devil 1, alright boys listen up. I know how stupid it sounds no matter how many times I say it, but we’re gonna cross the LAC and find out what’s up with the ‘chinkis’ on the other side. Apparently some shit has gone down on the other side and the babus in New Delhi are too lazy to do something about it and want us to figure it out, as you know already. So I want everyone on weapons tight, clear? If everything’s alright then we can probably get away with ‘accidental incursion’ if they intercept us.”
“Devil 2, you’re worrying too much again boss. Remember that the briefing said that we wouldn’t encounter any resistance on the other side?” a rather young voice replied to Devil 1’s pilot on the radio.
Devil1’s pilot frowned at the reminder of the briefing, his frown invisible to his fellow pilots. No matter how one looked at it, the intel given during the briefing smelled suspicious, to say the least. The report mentioned that after the previous day’s incident, when connection with satellites was re-established, they were unable to locate any Chinese infrastructure on the other side of the LAC. To put it simply, everything Chinese beyond the LAC had simply vanished.
Immediately they suspected the satellite network to be hacked and performed emergency tests to verify the threat and see if they could repair it. However, the tests returned nothing, showing that at the very least, the satellite network was not hacked.
If it was just this, it wouldn’t be a real issue, since it might have been a bug, or maybe the Chinese had really inserted a virus that couldn’t be detected and that it could make it appear as if the Chinese had simply disappeared, since Indian units appeared completely fine on the network.
What compelled them to believe it was more, however, were the other reports from various sources usually posted close to the Chinese border, or doing work related to China. AWACS and radar sites near the LAC reported that they could no longer detect Chinese aircraft that regularly conducted combat air patrol (CAP) near the border. They initially thought it was due to jamming, but they later realized that there wasn’t any jamming at all. In fact, there were no signals of any sort coming from the other side. BSFs patrols reported roads completely ending beyond the border, which at first sounded stupid until similar reports started coming from many sources. RAW had lost all contact with its sources inside China, making the cloud of confusion denser and intel even more scarce than it already was.
Truthfully, Devil-1’s pilot didn’t like it. On the surface, he believed it to be trap set up by the Chinese. Why wouldn’t they? After all, no matter what anyone says regarding them or about how their soldiers are “weak, effeminate crybabies” or whatever bullshit people say in the news, they were the ones who wrote the “Art Of War”. Surely, they’d have enough brains to pull off something nasty.
Deep down however, his mind said otherwise. He could the depths of his mind call out to him, telling him that no, it was neither a prank by the Chinese, nor was it some stupid mistake committed by the people in New Delhi. It was something far more sinister, deeper and disturbing than he could have imagined. Something about all this just didn’t add up. Deep within, he felt like the depths also told him what it was, but he could never reach out to grab it. That explanation, that sinister reality that awaited him beyond the border, he knew he already had it inside his mind, yet he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was always within his grasp, yet always out of reach……
Devil-1’s pilot exhaled deeply. This was not the time to think about things that otherwise would seem delusional from other’s perspective after all. He was on a mission, a very important one. This mission would be instrumental in India’s future and his mistakes today would not just haunt him today or till his death, they would haunt all of his countrymen and their children, including his own. If he was ever able to return alive to have kids, that is.
“Alright boys, we are entering Chinese airspace. Remember, if you get fucked and live long enough to visit Beijing, tell them that you got lost. Also, you’re getting an ass-wooping for getting screwed by the chinkis once you return. Clear?”
“Yessir!”
“Haha, I guess gotta teach the Chinese how to make golgappe in case I go down!”
“Don’t worry sir, we aren’t going down just yet!”
All three pilots in the Tejas Mk2s replied immediately, their silly jokes somewhat calming down Devil-1.
Devil-1 just smiled. No matter what, his team never lets him down.
With those thoughts going on in his head, all four aircraft crossed the border. They were now into Chinese airspace. Outside the cockpit however, the scenery hadn’t changed much: the same bland, barren, yellowish-brown hills dominated the landscape as they did on the Indian side. Devil-1 however, immediately noticed one oddity.
No matter where he turned his head, he couldn’t find any roads at all, or a sign that there had been any infrastructure there at all. Weird. Previously, he would often see narrow dirt roads coiling around the hillsides, extending into the distance, when on CAPs. Now however, there was nothing at all.
Something was amiss. His anxiety was growing. This was not good. He spoke on the comms.
“This is Devil-1. Everyone, keep your eyes and ears wide open, we’re in enemy territory and anytime we could be ambushed by hidden SAMs or jets. Report immediately if you see anything, and especially if your RWR starts screaming.”
“Roger.”
“Copy that boss.”
“Devil-4 hears you loud and clear, sir!”
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“Oye, you don’t have to shout on the radio, you know? I know you’re excited that you get to hammer some chinkis, but keep that volume down, will you?”
“I’m not that loud okay? You’re the one with sensitive and feminine ears, retard.”
Muffled and slightly distorted laughter burst out on the radio as Devil-3 and Devil-4’s pilots engaged in friendly banter.
“Cut the chatter, you two. We’re in hostile airspace. Anytime now we might have people coming in to greet us guests.”
Devil-1 then turned his eyes ahead, gazing out towards the vast, open, clear sky. Ever since the incident the previous night, the sky had always seemed weird too him, especially after the blinding curtain of light vanished. At first he couldn’t really tell what it was and thought that maybe the lack of sleep and the fatigue were giving him funny thoughts. But he found out soon that it wasn’t the case: several other pilots also reported the same thing, that the sky looked weird. That somehow, the curvature of the earth that they usually saw when they were flying, was not there. Instead, the horizon was flat, regardless of how high they flew.
It was unnerving. Nothing, no weapon or man-made tech could do something like this. His anxiety only grew thinking about it.
Trying to distract himself from it, he turned on the radio and inquired.
“Overlord, this is Devil-1, request bogey dope, over.”
“Devil-1, Overlord, you’re clean, no radar contacts detected. Over.”
Overlord, which was the Il-76 with the Phalcon AWACS operating in the air quite some distance away, responded to Devil-1’s inquiry, slightly calming his mind. Ever since the incident with China, the IAF had increased its presence along the border. This included posting AWACS aircraft near the LAC, although they operated from bases much deeper in friendly lines. Since the previous day’s event, there had always been atleast one AWACS in the air all the time in order to monitor the airspace.
As the flight of aircraft continued on their course, Devil-1’s pilot exhaled deeply once again. The threat was real now. Anytime now their RWRs would start screaming, and probably, one of them wouldn’t make it home. The mere thought of it made his anxiety skyrocket, but he controlled it somehow. He wasn’t going to let any of his men get shot down over enemy airspace, for something that clearly seemed to be a trap.
He stabilized his breathing, his thoughts racing. Patiently waiting, on the edge, waiting for his RWR to squeak. Anytime now, any second. Any minute.
Time slowly ticks by. His men had been unusually quiet today, so there was no radio chatter unlike they had daily. They were trying to be playful when talking, but deep down they too were tired and from being on edge constantly. As such, there was only the sound of his own aircraft reaching his ears, along with the eery silence from below.
Seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into almost an hour as he listens to his plane’s noise. He was still in the air along with all his men. They were now very deep within Chinese territory, yet they had not encountered any resistance at all. Not once did they get a radar spike, nor did their radars pick up anything.
“Devil-2 here, sir I’m not liking this, we haven’t got anything till now. We’ve been up in the air for well over an hour now, sir.” Devil-2 spoke, finally releasing some of the tension that had built up.
“Well, I guess maybe the chinkis are really craving some vadapav, or maybe some golgappe? I don’t know why else they would allow us to come this far at all.”
“Those guys weren’t lying in the debriefing huh, I didn’t think these Chinese would disappear literally…..”
“Oye oye Devil-4, you alright? Your voice kinda feels dead you know?”
Devil-4’s tone that sounded much more serious and grimmer than usual raised concerns in the minds of everyone, but truthfully, his state of mind wasn’t confined to himself alone. Everyone was the same, tired, exhausted, on the edge, yet holding on.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Just feeling a little sleepy, once I beat some chinki ass I’ll be back in shape!” Devil-4 replied in a comparatively livelier voice than before.
Devil-1 gazed outside again. This wasn’t good. Everything said in the briefing was now revolving around his head. He could no longer deny anything said in the mission briefing as gibberish. So far in this flight he had not once, seen anything resembling human infrastructure. No roads, no buildings, nothing that indicated that this land was once home to a superpower, one that had the capability and capacity to shake the world. All that they saw here however, was nothing. Barren, brown hills of the Himalayas, that often changed colour from brown to shades of grey, sometimes followed by bright, white patches of snow near and on their peaks. But that was all.
They had been told that previously, that the area they were heading to was supposed to contain a very wide net of roads, bridges, forward operating bases, as well as radars and SAM sites, spread throughout the area. There was even supposed to be an airbase there. In fact, they had already passed through the area where the airbase was supposed to be, based on the satellite images from before yesterday’s event and the coordinates given beforehand. Yet there was nothing. There were no roads, no bridges, no SAM sites, no airbases. They had somehow vanished in thin air.
Devil-1 exhaled deeply again as he ran his thoughts over everything he knew. This was no longer the work of man, that he knew very well. Such a thing could not be achieved in one night and to this degree. There were factors at play here that he felt he didn’t want to know about, for it might not be pleasant. He turned on the radio and spoke on the comms.
“Devil-1, to all, we’re bugging out. I’m almost bingo fuel, and we have completed… our objectives. RTB immediately. Out.”
“Devil-2, acknowledged.”
“Devil-3, roger.”
“….Yessir!”
All the other pilots of the flight responded immediately as the planes turned home, silently contemplating the events that happened over the last 24 hours and what they could truly mean.
25th February, 2035, Camp Thunder Cove, Naval Support Facility Deigo Garcia, Diego Garcia, 12:01 P.M.
Sunlight beat down relentlessly on the concrete outside as General Troy Wright paced inside the noisy control room of the airbase on Diego Garcia. The control room had been buzzing with activity for the past 20 hours, with operators manning the stations at all times, trying to make sense of whatever was happening.
“Anything?”, the General asked a female operator manning a station. She had bags under her eyes and her blonde hair were somewhat dishevelled, indicative of her sleep deprived state.
“No sir., nothing yet. Still no contact.”, she replied, gulping down her cup of coffee that had gone stale.
“I see, good work. Keep trying until we get something.”
The General replied as he walked away, leaving the female operator to her work. Looking outside at the window, he contemplated about the incidents that had happened in the last 20 hours.
The previous day, there was an abrupt communications blackout. All contact with the outside world was broken. It all happened at once, there was no warning, no prior notice of any kind. No one could contact mainland United States no matter how much they tried, regardless of the means they used.
The first explanation that came to everyone’s minds was that this was some scheme by the Chinese, since they were probably the only ones capable of doing something like this. But it didn’t take long enough to realize that it was anything but the Chinese. There were no signs of a cyber-attack or any kind of sabotage, no signs of jammers of any kind being deployed. It looked as if everything outside the island had simply vanished.
The other thing was the weather. General looked outside at the clear sky. The sky was completely clear, save for some small clouds here and there. No one would have been able to believe that mere hours ago, there was an extremely large thunderstorm here. The sky had abruptly turned grey, with winds picking excessively high speeds, enough to prompt the base to send out an alert warning all people to stay inside.
One may think that a storm such as that might have caused excessive damage. Yet there was none. Panels and sheets that otherwise should have been blown off due to the heavy winds were perfectly intact. There was no damage whatsoever to any aircraft or any equipment at all.
Accompanying the storm was an earthquake, that although of low magnitude, caused great panic on account of how long it lasted. Starting at around midnight the previous night, the ground shook continuously all the way till eight in the morning when it abruptly stopped. Once again, oddly enough, there was zero damage to anything at all, despite how long the earthquake lasted.
It was assumed that the communications blackout was because of the storm, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t. Even after the storm subsided, contact with outside could not be reestablished. Neither mainland America, nor the neighbouring island regions of Maldives, nor anyone else.
Immediately after the storm subsided, the island’s own coast guard elements were dispatched to the nearby areas to find out what exactly happened. However, their discoveries were even more mind-boggling than anything else. They reported back, saying they were unable to locate any of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, as if it simply never existed. They initially thought their navigation systems were malfunctioning, but they realized they weren’t after running diagnostics. It seemed the entire island chain along with the neighbouring island country of Maldives had vanished.
General Troy couldn’t wrap his head around the events that had transpired. Never before in his life had he seen or experienced something like this. There was no precedent for such kinds of things, something to take reference from. No matter how one looked at it, this didn’t even look like something that could be achieved by mere humans alone. It seemed stupid to him, but it felt like it was some sort of ‘act of God’. He couldn’t really help it, after all there was no plausible explanation for what was happening right now.
He gazed in silence, trying to come up with the next course of action. Right now, this was the worst timing for such an incident. The island had been bustling with activity for several years now as the influence of the Chinese grew. Now, there weren’t just military personnel posted here, there were also hundreds of civilians in the form of family members of the military personnel, including his own family members. In addition to the USAF assets usually operating on the island, there was a USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group here as well. It had been sent to the island in order to pressure the Chinese in this region and to check their activity. There were also talks in the upper echelons of something involving a naval blockade of some sort, though they were nothing more than rumours.
The carrier strike group wasn’t the only thing significant here. There was also the XQ-1 “Mothership”, one of the most important and sensational toys the USAF had ever had their hands on. A concept straight out of science fiction, a stealth aircraft carrier carrying AI-controlled combat drones. The drone carrier had been the subject of great deal of controversy; some talked about how it was a waste of resources, some worshipped it religiously. Its reveal had started a new debate on the internet, where unemployed nerds argued long and hard about whether such a system was needed or not, or how conventional bombers were better than this.
General Troy watched as the XQ-1 slowly taxied towards the runway, its imposing, dark silhouette making everything else, including the B1s and the B21s parked nearby, look like mere toys. A loud, low hum resonated in the area as the Mothership’s nuclear-powered engines roared to life and the aircraft began running down the airstrip, as it departed on its mission to find out what had happened. Above in the sky, several aircraft, comprising mostly of F35s, conducted combat air patrols, guarding the airspace from whatever unpleasant thing was about to come after the unusual events.
“Sir! We got something!”
General Troy turned around. It was from one of the operators manning the station. He too, seemed to have stayed up the night ever since the events began. Troy quickly walked over to his station.
“Seems to be a patrol boat, sir.”
“…Patrol boat?”
General Troy was confused. The only country that was close enough to them was the Maldives, or at least once were. They were the ones capable of sending a patrol boat here in the middle of nowhere. However, they had now disappeared completely from the face of the earth, it seemed. So where did this patrol boat come from? The only explanation he had was that it had been somehow caught up and lost in the storm too.
General Troy looked at computer screen as the systems tried to make sense of the approaching surface contact in the absence of any and all communications or GPS. Finally, after a couple of seemingly endless moments, the computer managed to identify the unknown contact.
It was an Indian Coast Guard Vessel, investigating the Andaman and Nicobar Island chain after reports of earthquakes and inconsistent and suspicious data from the Indian NavIC systems, completely unaware that a new island had appeared in the island chain.