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Ch. 2
An F-14 Tomcat races toward a target. It’s night and a raging winter storm is happening down below. The air-war is months old and very little is left standing in Iraq. Yet Scud missiles fall still and the goal is to stop that.
“Mission commander, Streaker, over.
“Streaker, go ahead.”
Cloud popper spotted, looking to go hot.”
“Streaker, this is Enterprise Command, permission granted, fire at will.”
And with a smile, because this is why the pilot wakes in the morning. Streaker presses the little red button and watches his missile drop into the cloud bank below.
Along with the target on his radar, he spots a troop transport going the hard way back toward Baghdad. Streaker drops a second missile for it. One missile is a little green dot on his HUD, and the other is red. The red dot disappears immediately from the display. They do that sometimes. Often actually. Streaker doesn’t worry, but he is out of missiles so the transport will need to be blown up another way.
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He radios in an artillery strike and watches the other missile do what is expected, and under the pissing clouds an orange ball of fire means there is one less scud launcher deployed. Streaker pulls the nose of the plane up and flips over to make a visual inspection and drops down through the clouds. He takes a picture, for history, of the smoking remains. He doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt over it either. The Iraqis would do the same to him, if they could.
“Streaker to Command.”
“Command here, Streaker go ahead.”
“Target destroyed, heading back to ship.”
“Heard Streaker, Good job, got a welcome home steak waiting on you.”
Then the second missile curls back in on itself and flies toward the American soldier bivouacked on the border. Streaker doesn’t notice. Nor would he have cared if he had. Shit happens, right? But this shit started happening over 300 billion years ago and its trajectory was sharp as the chunk of rusty red metal unearthed by the second explosion. A small mound really, some aerocelled into bits of the metal that float on the air. Little microscopic bits that get inhaled by two soldiers in a field artillery unit nearby. South, in almost the dead center of Antarctica, The Universe senses herself expand. Like unfurling. Little sparks of humanity. Humanity. Not truly smart enough, but willing to try anyway.
It's happened before. Many times, in-fact. Much devotion has been spent on her from those infected with her mites.
But these humans are easily amped up, so she has also learned to be careful with her new toys.