#they justify it by bein mixed race but

[bingobongobonko]

rambler but really good video

[gizoogletranslateshomestuck]

> Jane: Answa Di-Stri ta help you tap dat ass.

timaeustestify [TT] began bother'n gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 1:43

TT: I S-H-to-tha-izzould probably warn yizzle n shit. 

GG bitch ass nigga: About what? GG ridin' in mah double R: Yet anotha explod'n game trap? 

TT: Wizzell S-H-to-tha-izzit. TT: She already sent it? 

GG with my forty-fo' mag: Yizzes. GG: But ta be fair, she warned me not ta run it to increase tha peace. 

TT: That weird thats off tha hook yo. 

GG: Why? Snoop dogg is in this bitch. GG: Wussup to all my niggaz in the house. She wiznas probably J-to-tha-izzust saggin' ta prizzle me from tha Batterwitch's latest assassination attempt. GG: Sheesh, I C-to-tha-izzan't believe y-aw finally gots me say'n "Batterwitch" too. Who wiznould have thought? Ya fuck with us, we gots to fuck you up. 

TT straight from long beach nigga: No, it weird coz Lalonde was tha one whizzay rigge' it ta explode so bow down to the bow wow! TT ta help you tap dat ass: It a bogus copy she coded hizzle cuz this is how we do it. Tha rizzay gizname file she downloaded is totally legit. 

GG ya feelin' me? What? Really? 

TT: Gots it right here mysizzelf, betta check yo self. Checked it out. TT mah nizzle: File fuckin' clean as a whistle. Holla! TT: A whizzle that overcame a major substizzle abuze problem. Ill slap tha taste out yo mouf. Try'n ta git its life bizzack on track. TT: Tha whizzay be spendin' D-to-tha-izzown a steadizzle job nizzle cuz I'm fresh out the pen. It frontin' th'n one dizzle at a time. Death row 187 4 life. TT: Eat a fuckin' dinna off that whistle so show some love, niggaz! 

GG: ... 

TT: Ok I'll shut up. 

GG: Bow wow wow yippee yo yipee yay. Why wizzy shizzay do T-H-to-tha-izzat? Tru niggaz do niggaz. 

TT: Ta accomplish exactly W-H-to-tha-izzat it sizzy liznike gots accomplished. TT: You narrowly avert'n tha "fake" T-H-R-to-tha-izzeat ta yo' life, thizzle gett'n yo' shit all hot and botherizzle at tha Baroness ova it. TT where the sun be shinin and I be rhymin': Then you abdicate yo' heirizzles thrizzone or sum-m sum-m, n gizzy up on thizzis game as a big fuck you ta tha genizzle C-to-tha-izzake alien. 

GG, betta check yo self: Bizzay... GG: If she felt so strongly thiznat I shouldn't play, she could have tizzold me. GG: Or, tizzold me more forcefully, I guess. I would have listened! GG: Maybe. GG:  doggystyle:( 

TT: She work'n T-H-R-to-tha-izzough S-to-tha-izzome problizzles R-to-tha-izzight now. TT: Really doesn't want us ta play tizzy game. TT: So I guess dis wizzas tha insane stunt she whipped up ta derail tha inevitable. One, two three and to tha four. TT: Boo-Yaa! Kinda recklizzles fo` mah tastes fo' sho'. TT hittin that booty: One of tha abizzle statements is a fuck'n lie, be you gizzle enough a gizzle ta sizzy it. 

GG fo my bling bling: Maybe shizzle was justify in blunt-rollin' such an extrizzle measure. I sure hadn't bizzy tak'n drug deala seriously. Slap your mutha fuckin self. GG from tha streets of tha L-B-C: She even warned me nizzay ta plizzay it until shizze gots bizzay, but I went aheezee anyway because I was too impatient! GG: Actually if you gots a paper stack... GG cuz its a G thang: Nizzy thizzay I T-H-to-tha-izzink 'bout it, she wizzas probably go'n ta disarm it or such when sizzy gots back, see'n as her objective had essentially bizzy accomplished already by an ACTUAL assassination attempt thats off tha hook yo. GG: Afta tizzy, I told her I would believe ha 'bout everyth'n. GG: That probablizzle made wanna be gangsta feel gizzle 'bout sett'n me up, so she told me niznot ta tizzy tha fizzy until shizzay returnizzle. 

TT: Sounds 'bout riznight. 

GG: Bizzy thizzle I went aheezee n rizzay it anyway like a doofus. GG: I think she just wanted ta be believed. GG: Sizzy. GG: Be I an awful nigga droppin hits? 

TT: Nope. 

GG: I'm not so sure 'bout that keep'n it real yo. 

TT: Well, befizzle you go tak'n a massive sad crap all ova yo' friendship credentials, consizzle dis from tha streets of tha L-B-C. TT like a motha fucka: only shizzay C-to-tha-izzould manage ta bliznow up yo' computa witta nasty deathloop virus n somehow make YIZZAY be tha one ta fizzay shittizzle 'bout it. 

GG: Heh! GG: Yoe right. 

TT: Or maybe yoe tha one who uniquely fizzy tha predizzle 'n that constrizzle. Subscribe nigga, get yo issue. TT: I diznon't god damn kniznow. Subscribe nigga, get yo issue. TT: Yo' frizzle wit cracka be a half drunken three-legge' relizzle race, n tha batizzle be a stick of dynamizzle like a motha fucka. TT: Death row 187 4 life. N you twizzay be tha only ones on tha track. Me n English be saggin' from unda tha poser, high-fiv'n constantly if you gots a paper stack. 

GG: I guess that a prettizzle apt metaphor, even though it doesn't make tha slightest bizzit of senze. Snoop heffner mixed with a little bit of doggy flint. 

TT: Yizzay. 

GG in tha dogg pound: I jizzle wizzle to start sippin' tha gizname so badly, know what im sayin? GG so jus' chill: Niznow mizzy than eva. I have reason ta believe tha stizzles have increaze' dramatizzle. 

TT: Thizzay have. TT paper'd up: N they W-to-tha-izzill continue ta. 

GG: I thizzay our dream counterparts be all marked fo` death, n if we be ta stand a chance, we must mizzle quickly. Aint no stoppin' this shit nigga. 

TT: I agree. TT so bow down to the bow wow! Just heard 'bout your assassination on Prospizzle. 

GG: Oh, shizzay T-to-tha-izzold you alrizzle? 

TT: Who, RL? No. TT: I read it 'n a newspapa. 

GG: Um. GG: Be you bein ironic agizzle? 

TT: No. TT: I just picked up one of tha slizzle Dersite tabloid rags. TT: Sometimes thizzle feature some pretty dippin' gossip 'bout tha royalty or whateva and cant no hood fuck with death rizzow. TT: Bizzut thizzey're primarily dedicatizzle ta trippin' Prospit. Tha press had a field day wit tha deaths of tha Pizzay n tha Maid.

GG: Dersizzle? Yiznou mean tha otha planet? Tha evil one? 

TT: Derze, yizneah. TT: Not evil, necessarily. That a bit simplistic. Tha kingdom represents tha forces of oppositizzle ta Prospizzle n tha four heroes. Us. 

GG from tha streets of tha L-B-C: What did tha storizzle sizzy 'bout me? Freak y'all, into the beat y'all. 

TT: "DEAD" TT: Wizzas tha big ass heezeeline. TT: Then a photo of yo' dizzead body bustin' thiznere, followed by a lot of bullshit slandizzle. TT: It was also reported yo' towa exploded. They cizzouldn't fizzle tha body ta G-to-tha-izzive it a killa funeral. Probably incinerated so show some love, niggaz! 

GG: I dizzy realize yizzle had woken up in tha game already. GG: Whizzle did tizzy happen? 

TT: D-to-tha-izzunno. Yizzle ago droppin hits. Don't reallizzle recall. 

GG: I gizzuess I shouldn't act surprize' yizzou diznidn't tizzay me. What wit all yo' highfalutin secrecizzle. 

TT fo' sho': It H-to-tha-izzard ta explizzle with the gangsta shit that keeps ya hangin. TT with the gangsta shit that keeps ya hangin: I wiznas neva technically asleep thizzle mah nizzle. I was awake witout realiz'n it. TT so bow down to the bow wow! Then I realize' it paper'd up. TT: And I sizzay learned how ta be awake there while awake here tizzay. TT: You gotta check dis shit out yo. I be awizzle there niznow, albeit pretend'n ta sleep. 

GG: Pretend'n? Why? 

TT: Fo` one bustin', it gets a bizzy distract'n frontin' two alert bodies 'n differizzle places at tha same T-to-tha-izzime now motherfuckers lemme here ya say hoe. TT: N fo` drug deala steppin', it betta ta maintain appearances. TT: Everyone on Derze believizzles they heroes havizzle woken yiznet. You gotta check dis shit out yo. TT from tha streets of tha L-B-C: Though they be bizzoth rumored ta be vizzle active slizzay poser. I started yo shit and i'll end yo' shit. TT, niggaz, better recognize: Which be hiznalf tizzy. She C-to-tha-izzan't pusha seem ta slizzeep still with the gangsta shit that keeps ya hangin. Goes off wander'n fo` days. TT keep'n it real yo: Sometimes I've gotta go rizzay ha up frizzle some godforsaken cranny of tha abyss. Drag ha tipsy ass home, tuck ha back 'n. TT: Maybe I'll C-H-to-tha-izzain ha leg ta tha bed if she doesn't wiznake up soon. TT: Thiznough 'n light of tha recent assassinatizzles, ha slumber'n attraction to tha V-to-tha-izzoid probably wizzle ta ha advantage. No one ever knows where shizzle be with the gangsta shit that keeps ya hangin. 

GG: I'm still not sure I'm follow'n. GG: Whizzy be yizzle blunt-rollin' tha appearance of bein asleep? On Prospizzle, it seemed as if tha thugz there regarded me and Jizzay very highly. Like celizzle figures. GG: Be it not tha same way on Derze? 

TT: Ill slap tha taste out yo mouf. No, it essentizzle tha sizzy situation here. TT: They glorify us tha same way. Yippie yo, you can't see my flow. Almizzle like we're they purple pajama'd team mascots. Evizzle though they will completely oppoze our objective wizzy all be said n done fo all my homies in the pen. TT: Kizzay ridizzles, really. TT: Throw yo guns in the motherfuckin air. Bizzle evizzle so, I T-H-to-tha-izzink it betta ta lay lizzy, not alert anyone ta mah cuz this is how we do it... TT: Alertness.   TT: That wiznay I ciznan snizzeak around n motherfucka 411. Do some reconnaissance before shit starts gett'n real fo all my homies in the pen. 

GG: 'n otha words, read newspapa, git a fizzy fo` "the word on tha street," n such? Snoop dogg is in this bitch. GG: As might a detizzle? :B 

TT now pass the glock: Yizneah, amizzle playa doggy stylin'. Yippie yo, you can't see my flow. Like keep an eye on agent activity. 

GG: You M-to-tha-izzean ridin' in mah double R... secret agents with my hoes on my side, and my strap on my back? 

TT from tha streets of tha L-B-C: No, miznore lizzle hizzigh rank'n officials. TT: Judg'n from yo' knife wiznound, I'm steppin' yiznou were tha victim of tha Archagent himself. TT now pass the glock: Yizzle S-H-to-tha-izzould fizzeel honored, I guess. 

GG: Who that? 

TT: A homey named Noir. Im crazy, you can't phase me. TT: Real nasty dude. Crazy ambitious. Bow wow wow yippee yo yipee yay. Lizzles knives paper'd up. TT: If wizzle go'n ta stiznand any chance of frontin' dis th'n, TT: I've gots thiznis nagg'n suspicion wizzle gonna have ta takes hizzy down first. TT: N a feel'n thiznat nags equally, TT sho nuff: Be it ain't gizzonna be easy.

> ==>

[baptonbooks]

While Gerv beavers away...

... on Ordinary Time, here’s something from him, with my not altogether enthusiastic assistance, from a mite back. Mil SciFi. Believe it or not.

If you want it in PDF, have at it.

Over the hills and far away

GMW Wemyss with Markham Shaw Pyle

RAdm Lord Tisbury RN(Ae) sat very still, as if graven in stone. Within the next three minutes and forty-nine seconds, he must give, or decline to give, an order long in contemplation.

Time enough for memory to flare: and not, he suspected, in his mind alone, but in the minds of everyone aboard HMSS King William VI and all the vessels in the Fleet. (He thought with sudden fierce affection of his old command, HMSS Keyes, now commanded by that sound young lady Captain Mirza.)

His was a family with a strong Naval tradition on Earth. When the Contact had occurred, his great-grandfather and great-uncles several times over had been serving Naval officers, like so many Collingbournes before them. (It was traditional that if two sons were serving at once, they were distinguished as ‘Collingbourne Ducis’ and ‘Collingbourne Kingston’: a tradition no longer much in use, in light of the peerage of some generations prior.)

And there was little on Earth which was more persistent than tradition, in its way....

RDML:SP Bobby Fitzhugh Byrd, commanding USSS Halsey, was alert to what must, surely, be going through Jack Tisbury’s mind over in Billy Six. A lean, languid, aristocratic Virginian, the Rear Admiral had a certain sympathy for the British, mixed, as it had for generations been mixed, with an atavistic sense almost of resentment. Americans even now weren’t altogether used to being part of the Commonwealth – as a nation, emphatically not a realm – or, even more so, to being the junior partners in the Special Relationship, so far as that existed any longer. (That Downing Street crack about repayment at last for Tube Alloys hadn’t gone down right well in Washington, either.)

Of course, thought ‘Miz Roberta’ (as she was affectionately – if never, wisely, in her hearing – called by her subordinates), that was another consequence of the Contact. Everyone since had, whatever their private views of the Limeys, adopted their term for the extraterrestrials: ‘the Sods’.

For a good three centuries now, everything on Earth had been a consequence of the damn Contact.

BG Frank Meusebach USSMC had his own nicknames, of which the most affectionate and printable was ‘Don Paco’. The most durable, too: that one had followed him from the high school baseball diamonds of Comal County and New Braunfels to the Academy and beyond; and for all his father’s German ancestry and Texas Hill Country genes, his mother’s looks had been passed on to him enough to more than justify the nickname. In this regard as in most others, he was almost stereotypical of a Marine officer – space or not – and a long, tall Texan: a fact of which he took shameless advantage.

He, too, was contemplating the factors which must be being weighed by the Task Fleet Admiral. There’d been a hell of lot of learning to do since the Contact, and a hell of a lot of relearning, and, mostly, a hell of a goddamn lot of un-learning. Not least of ranks and organisation, tactics, strategy, and the operational art.

But, hell, it’d been a Brit who’d said, in the Early Old Modern, that the prospect of bein’ hanged in a few weeks concentrated the hell out of a man’s mind.

It all came, reflected Lord Tisbury, of the unexpected fact that the Sods had taken strong objection to Bach. That bloody probe and its damned Golden Record....

It had wanted a good long bit of thinking to understand – so far as one could even yet understand – the Sods. They’d been alarmed and enraged by Bach. (Trust the ruddy Jerries: bad enough they’d gone to war in the Early Old Modern over Brandenburg; but to have produced a genius whose unexpected legacy should be a war over the Brandenburg Concerti....) They’d not much liked Mozart or Beethoven, either; although the Commonwealth and its Associated Powers (mainly China) had learnt the hard way, in PSYOPS since, that they actually seemed to like Chuck Berry, even when blasted interminably at them at high volumes. (Thank God for pipers, and particularly for Gurkha pipers, thought Lord Tisbury: the Sods had soon learnt to dread that.)

The pieces of the puzzle had come together slowly. Understanding xenopsychology was at its best something of a hiding to nothing, really. Odd bods, the Sods – and not only physically (convergent evolution could do only so much, and he did rather wonder if their evolved bodily asymmetry hadn’t helped to make them obsessed with maths even as they resented symmetries).... They’d appeared unheralded, the Sods, popping out of nowhere; and had struck. And where they’d struck had been, in the end, instructive, an important piece of the puzzle. They’d clearly taken their time, and, lurking, planning, had listened in on Earth communications (God help them: adverts and party political broadcasts and boy-bands...). And had then chosen their targets and descended suddenly upon unsuspecting humanity, with bolts from the blue. (Quite literally so: kinetic weapons launched from Low Earth Orbit.) The Americans had lost several cities, in their heartland; the UK had lost – well, had seen destroyed, at any rate: but for the loss of the people, it was hard to mourn the destruction of the ghastly place – the UK had lost only Milton Keynes, and that in a highly localised and surgically precise strike with surprisingly little collateral damage. The Continent had not fared half so well; nor had the Russians. Meso- and South America had not got off nearly so lightly as had the US and Canada; China however also had lost only one newish city in the middle of the country. Australia and New Zealand had been untouched. Jerusalem had been spared, curiously enough; most of Africa and the Middle East had been hit for six. Iran … well, its major centres were gone the way of Mecca and Medina. Faisalabad had suffered only one strike, and the remainder of Pakistan had been unscathed.

Naturally, it being the human impulse to construct orderly theories from coincidences, far too many people had jumped to far too many wild conclusions. It had been rather dicey for rather a long time. (It was typical also of human impulse to ignore such contrary facts as the destruction of Delhi; but facts are stubborn things.)

In the end, though, a theory had emerged – and been tested to destruction since, God knew –: a theory which revealed a good deal about the Sods, things which they already regretted and should terminally regret having inadvertently revealed.

The English-speaking nations (RAdm(Ae) Lord Tisbury spared a quick thought for HMSS Churchill and USSS Winston S. Churchill, there in the Fleet) had got off lightly; so also had the Chinese. Where they had not done, or where nations which had English as only one of their official languages had not done, what they had lost were grid-plan cities, and, at that, cities more or less in the hearts of their nations or continents. (Had the Australians chosen to site their capital as a new-build somewhere near to Uluru, reflected Lord Tisbury, it should have gone the way of ruined Brasília. As for India, well, it seems Lutyens had ruined Delhi, in the end.)

Nations which had been wrecked utterly, rather than suffering surgical strikes, whether their cities were ancient or new, central or eccentric, had also had something in common; or, rather, had not had one thing in common with the English-speaking nations and with China. They spoke languages which were not analytic: tongues rife with cases and declensions and all that balls his schoolmasters at Repton had despaired of teaching him before he went off to Dartmouth Annexe.

Which was, when the dust settled, likewise instructive. It were cold comfort, perhaps, to the ashes of Sunni and Shia Muslims who’d taken these things for a sign to go for one another’s throats, or to the manes of others who’d discerned in the Contact’s coincidences some divine message. (The C of E and the RCs had been, like Judaism, best prepared to weather the psychological shock (the good Roberta had pointed out that there was a reason why so many American lawyers were RC or Jewish: Jesuit education and doing Torah did train the mind in specific ways); some of the Nonconformists had done as well – dear Bobby’s several-times great-grandfather, Washington Fitzhugh, had gone from minister at an AME Zion chapel in Henrico County to senior Senator from Virginia in ten years –, as had such small deer (Lord Tisbury was a staunch Churchman, and a churchwarden when ashore) as the LDS; and the Kirk had retreated from manse-socialism to Covenanting sobriety in short order, and to the godly, sober consideration of predestination; but nine in ten Muslims today were Sufi renouncers of the world, and most of the rest, Alawite or Ismaili or Druze (they’d finally been in a position to insist they be considered part of the umma) or Ahmadi (same again, landlord, and whatever you’re having for yourself)). All the same.... It had been, and was, remained, damned instructive.

What it came to – as subsequent events had confirmed – was this: That the Sods were obsessed with maths. And regarded mid-continent cities as prime targets, assuming them to be naturally the capitals. And regarded grid-plan cities as specially to be targeted.

They preferred kinetic weapons. They admired precision. And they graduated and discriminated as to to targets. (This was not a comforting thought, if one but reflected upon it. Forces do not preserve what they might annihilate unless they have plans for it, after.) Well, by God, thought the Admiral, he who lives by the sword....

They clearly took non-analytic languages, whether fusional or agglutinative or what have you, as the natural and inevitable languages of the ruling castes or races or what not: itself instructive – and useful: for in the early years of the Retribution, they’d been caught short and unawares by the approach of Task Forces, Task Groups, and Task Fleets speaking English or Mandarin. (It wasn’t as if the Sods didn’t use their subject races and planetary chattels as cannon-fodder; but they certainly didn’t allow them to command, as they did not speak an analytic language. That also had been useful to learn, not least in determining over the course of operations who the Sods were –  and who were not the Sods.)

And – there was, thought Lord Tisbury, a bitter irony in this: he’d read up on the ancient history of the 1970s – the Sods had assumed that a species capable of producing JS Bach, and using his talents for, apparently, no military end (although they remained half-convinced it was a military encryption even now), and sending Voyager forth, was a dangerously clever and assured post-scarcity society (in the 1970s, mind: madness) which was far too good at maths to be allowed to live, and which must be annihilated at once, by a sneak attack.

The Sods did not negotiate, even now; and whatever their beliefs were (something no human knew or had had any means of ascertaining), they fought to the end, without surrender even when without hope, spending themselves even as they spent their subject species and their slaves.

It was, thought BG Meusebach, typical of the new era – and of the New Commonwealth – that the Brits tended to be in charge: even when there were Chinese elements participating.

More to the point, it was typical that he and his US Space Marines (an unimaginative moniker which raised hackles in the Corps to this day) were, sure as shootin’, aboard … but brigaded with Commonwealth elements from Pakistan and India (they got along fine nowadays until somebody mentioned that half-assed Commonwealth version of baseball: who in the Sam Hill names a game after a goddamn insect?), and commando-crazy Aussies, and some tough Canadians and tougher Kiwis who, when they did bitch, mostly did it in Quebecois French or in Maori so nobody could nail them on it if they crossed a line, and some kilted demons with their pipes; and with the only fighting men on or off Earth he never wanted, and never wanted the Corps, ever to get crossways with: the Gurkhas.

And it was typical as all hell that he was ranked by a Brigadier Royal Marines (Ae) who was just his senior.

But, hell, they’d all had to learn, relearn, and un-learn since the goddamn Sods’d showed up.

CDRE Bruce Yunupingu RAN(Ae) was observing from afar as his Admiral meditated his courses of action. Jack the Tizz was a decent sort, for a bloody Pom and a whitefella. Mostly. And at least he didn’t whinge.

And the Commodore was more than happy not to have his bloody job, and his bloody responsibilities: although, thought he, he might well, in the Old Man’s shoes, have fewer scruples. He was after all largely Indigenous Australian by descent, and his great-great-grannie had been a Torres Strait Islander by blood, one of those long settled in Queensland, at Bamaga. He knew about first contacts. And the dinky-di sods and dills who came over the horizon and made them.

Steal what you had and kill you off, most of them.

Humanity had begun to outgrow that. Stone the bloody crows, the Contact and the Sods had, in the end, after the first panic and some self-inflicted wounds, forced some maturity on everybloodyone, and the bloody hard yakka of sorting themselves out and getting ready to fight back. And fighting back, slowly and steadily, had done more. Strewth, if those bogans from beyond the Black Stump’d thought they’d left humanity bung, they’d been gone full troppo. Bloody whackas, the Sods....

That there was a bloody Commonwealth which included Afghanistan and Israel, Ireland and South Bloody Sudan and Uruguay and the US and Cuba and all, with such nations as Japan and Georgia, Cambodia and Madabloodygascar, as Associate Members, was proof of that. That the Retribution Fleet included such vessels as LÉ(R) Eithne and HMPSS Jinnah, HMISS Sutlej and INSS Tarshish, standing in the formation – there were no bloody lines of battle in space – alongside Canberra and Uluru, HMSASS Mandela, HMSSS Queen Catherine and Iron Duke, Invincible and Audacious and Ark Royal and Revenge, USSSS Kennedy and bloody Eisenhower and Reagan, attested the more to that. And actions none of them should ever bloody forget spoke louder yet: Ga’ash under Capt Shamir coming up to tip the bloody scales for Viraat and Jinnah, themselves a portent in partnership; Aoife’s gallant action against a bloody Sod squadron, and the timely intervention of Indefatigable; RCSS José Martí wading into the bloody scrap in support of HMGSS Dzata, with Repulse and USSS Winston S. Churchill coming up; the action which saw, to the satisfied amusement of everyone, HMNZSS Achilles, HMSSS Falklands, Ajax and Exeter, ROU(A) Uruguay, and bloody Anzac together destroy a Sod flotilla....

He and his Old-People knew all about first bloody contacts, and the buggers who came over the horizon and made the bloody things. As did Roberta, and Capt Singh in Parramatta and the other Capt Singh in Vikramaditya, and a bloody great lot of other fellas, Even some of the Old Man’s maternal ancestors. And knew that if you didn’t band together and respond, you were for the bloody chop.

Humanity had begun to outgrow that. It bloody well wasn’t on that some Sods should show up and start the whole bloody cycle over again. He was more than happy to act as the Old Man’s Jimmy-the-One, going up against the bloody Sods.

There had, reflected RDML Roberta Fitzhugh Byrd, been so much to learn, relearn, and un-learn.

Jack Tisbury was right. There were few things more persistent than Navy traditions; or those of the Leathernecks, for that matter, or the Dogfaces, or even the Wing-Wipers. The USAF, and for that matter the RAF, had been in shock when the response of the English-speaking nations – what became the New Commonwealth – to the Contact, had been placed in Navy hands. (Americans, reeling from such losses as KC, Wichita, and Colorado Springs – all of which had further knocked the Air Force on its ass –, had perforce allowed the relatively unscathed Brits to take the lead: the more so when the FCO, with a Right Royal Assist, had managed to avert the possibility of a panicky nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath.) The traditions of space were, in consequence, naval, by and large.

But that also had required a right smart of un- and relearning. Adapting to operations in three dimensions – and recognising that these were effectively infinite – in addition to recognising that such concepts as up and down, and cardinal directions, were simply inapplicable, had been difficult even for the aviators and submariners who, in the first generations, had taken over the astro-and-aero components. (She thought, with a grin, of the ancient Old Modern saw, ‘If mariners are human, what are submariners?’) As Jack said, he didn’t mind wardroom customs, or ‘Heart of Oak’ and ‘Life on the Ocean Wave’ (or ‘Anchors Away’ or the Marine Hymn for her people), or ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ for the landing components from junior Services, or any of that, but it had taken forever for engineers and astroarchitects to get the idea of ships out of their heads. These vessels really didn’t need bridges in the old style, or decks oriented to the axis of thrust, or merely 2-D visual displays – in fact, they’d needed to forget all that, and right quickly: about as much use as figureheads or tripod masts, in space – and there was no such thing as proceeding ‘upside-down’ or arranging engagements in but two dimensions. And commands and organisation had had to be rethought as well (in three dimensions: there were no lines of battle out here, and good luck crossing the OPFOR’s ‘T’). The Royal Navy (Ae), like the USN:SP, had preserved some traditions – the Nelson Touch, for one, in the Brits’ case – but jettisoned others, taking on out of necessity the traditions of the Old Modern Fleet Air Arm and the Submarine Service, the officers of which had led the van in creating space commands to avenge the Contact.

It had been ruthless. But then again, so had very nearly everything been, since the Contact with the Sods. Ruthless enough even, thought she with exasperated respect, for Paco Meusebach.

She sighed, and summoned her XO, Capt. Shahid Afridi CIE, seconded from what was nowadays once more and fiercely the Royal Pakistan Navy, late commanding HMPSS Jinnah and inevitably called, after his pre-Contact namesake the cricketer of long ago, ‘Boom Boom’. Which had been apt enough, when he commanded Jinnah; and hadn’t that been an action to remember with respect....

Capt Margery Chattan QARNNS(Ae) sighed. And exchanged a glance of resigned foreboding with Surgeon-Captain Ravi Collingbourne, the Admiral’s nephew, whose presence was not a matter of nepotism (Bart’s and The London, and a noted FRCS). Their tension, and accompanying fatalism, was echoed throughout the gathered departmental officers, from Cdr / Capf Marie-Jean Bonheur RCN(Ae) RCMS to CAPT Walter Nguyen USN:SP, and from MAJ Al-Mulla KNF(S) to Surgeon-Lieutenant ’Uta’atu TMF(SpWg), that mightily affable Tongan.

They were ready. And hoped to be surplus to requirements. (Capt Chattan found herself wishing for the Second Sight, after the manner of a Skye granny.)

Where there was war, there was pain, and suffering, and wounds, and death. And where these were, so should they be, nurses and physicians, so long as hulls held and aid could be given, unless and until they should all be cast lifeless into the interstellar void.

BG Meusebach sighed. Goddamn space. Life must have been a hell of a lot simpler in the Old Modern. Island-hopping in the Pacific; Mahanian strategic locations; Maury and Nelson and Nimitz, Tarawa and Peleliu and Chosin....

Nowadays, though.... Hell, you had near-lightspeed travel, thanks to .8c or better Alcubierre-White drives; and at the same time, you had communications that’d’ve disgraced the Age of Sail. Folks’d been fiddle-fartin’ around with quantum actions-at-a-distance and nonlocality, entanglements and Lorentz invariance issues, for a good two centuries now, and they still couldn’t get a signal fast enough to keep up even with a sub-c vessel. Not that it’d’ve done a damn bit of good anyway: wasn’t jack you could get in or out of an Alcubierre-White warp bubble while a vessel was under way anyhow, tachyons or no goddamn tachyons. It was a purt-nigh miracle you could create a Bubble around a whole damn fleet – with a lot of incessant handling of the vessels, like a damn merry-go-round, admittedly, but, hell, other’n the watch-keeping officers and sections, damn near ever’body else could just sit on their asses and win at poker against the Limeys and lose it back playing Uckers. Well, they could if he and officers like him would let them, which he goddamn wasn’t fixing to for a red-hot minute, and if you’ve got time to sit on your ass it’s time for PT and courses and you are goddamn goin’ to goddamn be combat-goddamn-ready or there’ll be hell to pay and no pitch hot.... Thing was, in a Bubble, you weren’t moving through space, you were moving a big ol’ hank and chunk of space to somewhere else, and the hell with barriers and such-like, and nothing could get in or out until you stopped and popped into existence in the larger universe. Good news was you didn’t outrun your supplies: you could take Fleet Auxiliaries out the ass with you, and until the Stop-an’-Pop there wasn’t even anything to guard them from. Which was a good thing, because the Brits ran on tea, and he ran on coffee, and Jesus Christ and General Jackson, if they ever ran out.... Although he was going to find whatever jackass sent MRE ‘chili’ with goddamn beans in it, and it’d be katy-bar-the-door when he did. Bad news was, you were on your own, no comms and no orders and no news: goddamn Hornblower stuff. Hell, every engagement stood a fair chance of being a Battle of New Orleans or, hell, a Palmito Ranch, after peace was made and maybe after your side had already lost. (He figured he ought to know something about that. His momma was a direct descendant of Colonel Santos Benavides, the highest-ranking Tejano in the Confederate Army, back in the Old Modern, and he’d grown up hearing about the battles of Carrizo, Laredo, and Palmito Ranch.)

Had to be done, though. They were damn well going to lance this boil. Mighty near literally, if the Admiral chose to rain down Rods From God.

And with all that nevermind.... Getting to the point of striking back had been a hard road to travel.

He liked to pretend he was A Simple Country Boy From Up the Brakes of the Crick who just happened to be A-Simple-Warfighter-Sir-Yes-Sir-Oorah, but, hell, thought Paco, you couldn’t be married for thirty years to a rock-ribbed Austrian School economist and not pick something up. He pretended his eyes glazed over whenever Chuck started talking economics, but … he knew damn well why one of the vessels in the Fleet was named HMSS Thatcher. (It was a source of perpetual amusement to him that Thatcher and USSS Reagan always had three things in common: each other’s backs; a friendly rivalry; and a tendency to kid the crews of the ROCSVV Zaizhi and Shi Lang.) Hell, his husband had spent twenty of those thirty years trying to get a US vessel named Mises and a RN (Ae) vessel named for Hayek.

(He hoped their descendants – because time back home would have moved on, and when he’d said farewell to Chuck it had necessarily been for the last time – were making them proud. Hell, he hoped that, in the interval, there remained descendants; and a Back Home. Maybe there were a Hayek and a Mises by now. Chuck’d’ve deserved that triumph.)

A lot of things had had to go fish after the Contact. (Well, once the dust settled and the nutcases of the world let up on waling tar out of each other.) Humanity as a whole had had to stand back and let ’er rip, economically, the way Old Modern Japan and West Germany’d done after 19-and-45, way back when. Sure, there’d been some fools and such, and a bunch of folks each crazier than a shit-house rat, thought the aliens’d come to save the planet or some such. Wanted to join the Sods, let alone surrender to ’em and Welcome Their New Overlords. (Suicide by stupid, thought Paco, reflecting on what they’d seen on Sod-controlled worlds since.) The British Prime Minister of the time had said, coolly, that the Isle of Man wasn’t large enough for those to be detained under the hastily reinstituted Defence Regulation 18B. Brasília, or its ruins, had been; and every surviving government on Earth had eventually dumped the crazies and quislings there, after decades of everybody and his dog having his goddamn birthday cards intercepted and read by the NSA and the Brits’ GCHQ. The dumpees in Brasília’d eventually ‘found’ – well, so they thought – a transmitter, and had, pretty nigh on as expected, appealed to the Sods for rescue and pledged their cooperation or loyalty. Which had been … convenient: the first Orion-drive vessels had been ready by then, and, once the Sods had responded (by doing a Stop-and-Pop and dropping kinetic ‘Rods-From-God’ on those appealing to them), the New Commonwealth had ambushed the bastards to hell-an’-gone. Shot ’em to rag dolls.

Hell, he was sworn to defend the Constitution; and he didn’t like seeing it played fast and loose with. But it wasn’t a goddamn suicide pact. And when up against the Sods, there wasn’t a thing to do but be all in: money, marbles, and chalk.

Brig Dame Maura Langridge DCB MC RM(Ae) knew perfectly well what must be going through the Admiral’s mind as the seconds ticked away on the DSAC. (The Kiwis, she knew, were already doing a Haka, in high hopes.)

So, of course, did Col Gurung, Maj Thapa, and Maj Lord Ludlow know: who, whatever they said, really did wish with all their hearts to be allowed to drop onto the Sod homeworld with their lads, ending the Retribution with the flash of kukris and the ringing sound of Ayo Gorkhali! They, even more than her Jollies, regarded the Andrew in space, as they’d regarded the Home Navy afloat, as simply so many transports getting infantry from point to point. (And if the Admiral did decide on an assault on-planet, she was damned if her Bootnecks weren’t going to be first a-surface, and damn the Johnnies. And damn their Yank counterparts under Paco Meusebach, bless, as much as the Jocks and the Anzacs and all the rest: Royals should lead the way.)

She didn’t envy the Admiral the choice, or the decision. She knew he’d spoken with his JC2, rather pointlessly (dealing with the Sods, who refused all communication and wanted only to fight on wordlessly, was a bootless errand in a thankless billet, and trying to figure the Sods out, predict their actions, gather intel on them, or decrypt their comms, was worse), and with his JC6 (equally pointless, that, as they were effectively cut off from all comms outwith the Bubble until they Stopped-and-Popped). She suspected, quite rightly, that he’d spoken with the Padre, that subtle canon Giles Antrobus KHC (God alone knew who was now Sovereign at Home, with the passing years).

In the end, however, the decision was to be the Admiral’s alone: a decision perhaps more burdensome than any which had faced a commander in human history.

They emerged from the Bubble, and Alcubierre-White speeds, bang on schedule. Stop, and Pop. One always, reflected the Admiral, went into these things blind....

The Sod homeworld was before them. Ugly place, thought the Admiral, although I suppose it has a Georgian or Palladian severity which might appeal to some. Maths-mad buggers, the Sods. It was a dry sort of planet, with little liquid water on the surface – a few seas, no true oceans; and every region on its continents – evidently, it did possess, or had possessed, tectonic activity: for some regions were basins within mountain chains – had a large, grid-plan, high-tech settlement in or near its geographic centre.

And the ROC Task Force, willing to act as bait several light-years / Alcubierre-days away, had clearly done its job: the place was effectively undefended within its Dyson sphere. Or so the Admiral hoped. Far-called our navies melt away....

He hoped his remote descendants were enjoying their tea in peace, in green, chalk-downed Wiltshire; and that he should have the chance to return, and find out.

The admirable Bruce was coming over. A signal, evidently.

‘Orders, Number One?’

‘No, Sir.’ Number One was being obstreperously Strine. ‘What has caught up is the result in the Fifth Test of the last-but-six Ashes. And I don’t care to detail it. Ye bloody Poms.’

The Admiral nodded – not without a pleased smile for the England side’s success. The planet lay before him and his Fleet, all but naked to the enemies it had made. The Sods had never surrendered; had never acknowledged, save by firing back, any offer even to cease fire. He could, of course, send ground forces down – the smiling Johnnies in the Terai hats wanted nothing better, nor did all his several varieties of Marine and commando from so many nations, or the Highland regiment he’d brought along.

Or, of course, he could not. Those were sentient beings down there; and were, as no one was launching at him, quite possibly civilians, if Sods had civilians, who had thought their world undiscovered and therefore safe even when the Sods’ forces had been called away, lured into ambush. They clearly hadn’t known that Forward Station Attlee was now possessed of a Fleet with AW drives rather than Orions, either, and that Stop-and-Pop tactics could now be turned upon them by those who’d suffered their consequences in the Contact. Like the first tanks at Flers-Courcelette; like Dreadnought, and God bless Jackie Fisher of old.... All this was – rather surprisingly – precisely what the Intel sorts had predicted (for a change), and what the First Space Lord had gambled upon in sending him out here. Certainly the Sods’ controlled planets and chattels had been kept in the most complete ignorance of whence their enslavers had come – dear Roberta had mentioned, once, that it must have been like the appearance of the slavers in an Igbo village, come to march captives to the barracoons so that New England merchant captains could take and sell them to Virginia planters: a sudden descent by unimaginable and unimagined enemies from beyond the horizon....

Well, they ought never to have let that ‘“Wow!” signal’ escape the Messier 55 Dyson sphere all those years before, if they didn’t wish to be found.

And if they didn’t care to have their planet physically destroyed, smashed to flinders, they oughtn’t to have launched a sneak attack on a species and civilisation which had neither offended nor imagined them. For Admiral Lord Tisbury had it in his power to do just that, repaying kinesis with kinesis, lancing the boil: and had it also in his power to escape the smash, between launch and impact, in his AW Warp Bubble, which recked nothing of any barrier.

And yet.... Sentient possible civilians. Whether they had souls, much less individual ones, he no more knew than did Canon Antrobus. Equally, however, ‘civilians’ could of course include the entire government and ruling castes, the ministries of war and what not else....

These calculations and considerations took him but the most finely split of seconds. He had inevitably long since outrun his comms; he had no idea what had happened to the Chinese: possibly an interstellar Thermopylae. He had no idea of what had happened on Earth; and, unlike his sortie from an advanced position to here, he should be, even with the marvels of biostasis and of modern gerontology, a very old man indeed when he got home, if home there remained, fifty years on. One might as well be Pellew or Jervie or Cochrane: that is, Exmouth or St Vincent or Dundonald.

He had no orders but those with which he had set out: the same orders some commanders of nuclear submarines had been given, sealed away, in the Old Modern: to use his judgement. He had, truly, sortied the Fleet on Letters of Last Resort.

Rear Admiral John Ravinder Collingbourne VC GCB DSO MiD ADC, seventh viscount Tisbury, Commander-in-Chief Retribution Task Fleet, nodded once more, with decision. ‘Right, then, Jimmy-the-One. It may be to bowl an ungentlemanly ball –,’  the faces of the ground-forces commanders fell: they weren’t going to see action after all – ‘but let’s skittle the Sods out for good. At your convenience, you’ll oblige me by initiating Bodyline.’