5. A Sinking Feeling

Written July 12th, 2023

Central Calendar, Day 9 Month 12 1639, Vauxnia Harbor

Egon looked out at the town as gunfire erupted across the entire island, starting and quickly stopping as the men from the sky sprinted through the entire town, flowing like water through the streets and alleyways.

What even are they? This must be some kind of magic!

Until now, even this world’s magic had barely been able to scratch the armor of their tanks, and it definitely hadn’t allowed people to drop without any kind of parachute through the skies.

Looking up in the sky, Egon finally saw it: the slight color change in the sky from the non-reflective body of one of the AS-23 ground support craft. To him it looked like an alien, completely foreign even to this world. He’d seen dragons, magical cannons, even mages summoning lightning, but this was different. The blurry diamond seemed to grow a curved horn, and that’s when Egon’s stomach dropped.

Someone in the bridge had also seen it and screamed, “INCOMING–” but they didn’t make it as the explosion engulfed the ship, showering those inside with broken glass and metal.

—

“All ships damaged; we’ve taken out their control centers.”

Three of the CV-8 IFVs advanced to the shipping warehouse. They may have modern composite armor, but a half-meter wide shell from that ship is still a force to be reckoned with. With the gunner lobbing 36mm shells into windows and through enemy vehicles, the resistance that Jaime Bates was seeing was minimal to say the least. The active protection system had shot down a slow moving enemy rocket, but that was the only real threat that it detected.

The gate whirred quickly open. “EVERYONE OUT! LET’S GO!” Jaime shouted to his men, spurring them into swift action. Smoke grenades were deployed around the vehicles, blinding anyone without their thermal optics.

“Breaching!”

Ahead of him the breaching charges had been set, designed to break doors and walls down without damaging things behind. Now all three of them blew and flash-bang grenades were launched inside, blinding and deafening anyone nearby. Jaime’s helmet filtered out the sound, and he led his squad into the room. Over one hundred men were sitting on the floor, hands bound, lined up in neat rows in the warehouse. They were trying to cover their ears and eyes any way they could.

Men in gray jackets flooded in from the rooms around the main area, which were quickly dispatched with stun launchers from Jaime’s team members. Overall, 40 Gra Valkans were stunned and captured. They had no chance to fire a single round before they were taken as prisoners. All of the Vauxnian men in the building were alive if a bit dazed. Ava had told him to raise his visor, something he rarely, if ever, did.

Now he did, stowing his weapon and raising his hands. His five squad members followed suit. The other two squads went upstairs to clear the rest of the building, leaving them alone with the Vauxnians.

Outside the 103mm shells and armor piercing missiles from their AS-23 could be heard slamming into the metal hulls of the Gra Valkan ships, disabling cannons and flooding compartments.

“We’re here to help.” Jaime waved at two of his men to go untie the nearest Vauxnians.

At first, they retreated, but once they saw the knives Jaime’s men were wielding were to cut their bindings, they almost started clambering over one another to thank the squad.

The Skies West of Vauxnia

The Gra Valkan planes were state of the art. The inverted V-12 engine was supercharged and allowed them to go extremely high while maintaining power, and the new maneuverability upgrades they had finally implemented after the transfer to the new world made it unbeatable in a dogfight. The extra fuel tanks they carried for reconnaissance made them slower and less agile, but nothing in this world could come close even with the handicap. And these were just the ones light and small enough to be used on an aircraft carrier.

None of their radios were working so they were all just flying a predetermined route, but each of them carried droppable colored flags for emergencies.

Suddenly, the aircraft far out to the right burst into flames. No signal had been dropped. This wasn’t an engine failure; those were nowhere near this spectacular. As the aircraft escaped the smoke, Tobias could see that the aircraft had been mercilessly destroyed. He instantly dropped the large, red flag, hoping that the aircraft to his left would see and drop theirs, but when he looked over, they had been shot down as well.

No one had seen any aircraft or ships out here, so what was doing this? Tobias quickly and automatically dropped the extra fuel tank, even though there was still some left, and started running evasive maneuvers for enemies he couldn’t even see. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted it, a fuzzy, diamond that didn’t seem to even be a single color. It shifted as the angle changed. From below it came a series of flashes, guns, as it fired on him. At that distance he expected the rounds to take some time reaching him, but he was in for a rude awakening when the tail and left wing of his aircraft were suddenly and violently ripped away from him.

The force of the hits almost threw him out of the cockpit as his plane fell precipitously into the ocean, now uncontrollable.

—

“That’s the last scouting plane done for.”

None of them had been seen, the enemy didn’t use any kind of radar on their planes, the electronic warfare suites on all of the AS-23’s were sitting there doing almost nothing. The high velocity 25mm rounds made short work of the craft that the Gra Valkans used. The U.S.F.D. would have to analyze the photography to see what kinds of capabilities they were up against, but all the pilots so far were hopeful. They seemed to be ancient, pre-space propeller planes, so just on altitude they would be lacking, not to mention speed or electronics.

“We’ve got some prisoners here; we’ll need to get them secured. Some of the Vauxnian’s are in bad shape, as well. The shit these people were doing…” Ava’s message trailed off, uncharacteristic of her. “Send in some of the medical SM-23’s, we’re probably going to need a few.”

While the AS-23 had a medical suite on board, it was geared towards soldiers, and they would usually require evacuation to the main base for proper medical treatment. The SM-23 was geared as a medevac/flying hospital, with a multitude of beds for full hospital-level treatment even in transit, as well as ample cargo space to deploy a tent hospital from.

Vauxnia, General Store

Across from Namys was one of the soldiers that had saved the rest of the island, beside her was Casey, the mechanical man who had rescued her. None of their saviors looked human, even those who were verifiably human. Massive suits of armor covered every inch in plates, giving all of them an imposing, dangerous look. After hearing about the “battle” from some of the people that had been rescued, she almost didn’t believe it.

The soldier across released some seals on her helmet and removed it, revealing short cropped brown hair and hazel eyes. A definitely human face, unlike Casey’s facsimile. She extended her gauntleted hand.

“Colonel Ava Matthews, United Systems Frontier Defense Force. Pleased to finally make your acquaintance.”

Her gauntlet was perfectly room temperature and felt cold to Namys’ touch as she shook Ava’s hand. They both returned to their seats, the chair under Ava’s suit protested heavily at the weight.

“Namys Fenric, head of the village of Vauxnia.”

“Unofficially, I would like to offer you my condolences for what happened to your people. I’m no diplomat, so it can’t be official yet, but I’ve seen atrocities like this and no matter how often it happens it’s no easier to look at. We will do what we can to keep it from happening, at least here.”

“We are eternally grateful, but we have never heard of anyone living to our north. Even here it gets completely inhospitable during the winter, and the nearest northern landmass is eternally covered in snow and ice.”

“For us, greenery and liquid water were a surprise to find. Where we come from, the entire planet is still completely covered in a thick layer of ice.”

“You were…on a different planet? But how did you get here?”

“I’m not sure if we’re supposed to say, but honestly, we don’t know. What we do know is that we’re currently cut off from our normal supply lines and are in severe need of food and other resources that we would normally get from our ships.”

“We only have enough for ourselves stockpiled for the winter, but with what you have done for our island, the least we can do is allow you to use part of it. Our small town is the only one in the whole archipelago, and we pretty much stick around here. If you can use the land, it’s yours.”

The Gra Valkans had tried to enslave them, but Ava said they would not be replacing their government or enslaving anyone on the island. Instead, outlining some possible annexations of the island so that the U.S.F. base could grow food. Namys thought it was too little, but Ava wouldn’t hear it.

“A diplomat should be arriving shortly. We sent for one as soon as we could.”

—

Outside of the building the air trembled. Namys and some of her fellow Vauxnians went to the door to look out and see what it was. A blue diamond was descending from the sky. No propellers, no visible wings, it was just in a very well controlled fall to the ground. As it neared them, the rumble increased in frequency and landing feet appeared from the bottom of the diamond. The ramp to the rear opened and four men wearing black suits, not unlike a Mu formal suit, stepped off the vehicle.

Finley Price and his aides had been bored to tears until today, only having Corpo nutjobs to deal with, and the prospect of maybe getting some diplomacy done today gave them all exorbitant amounts of energy. Their smiles even put off Casey and Ava, neither of which had ever seen a diplomat smile like this.

As the engines powered down and the din subsided, Finley stretched out his hand to Namys, the leader of this minor village they had stumbled upon.

“My name is Finley Price, I’m a diplomat for the United Systems Frontier on Omuen 6. I’d like to discuss utilizing some of your land for crops and food production.”

On this day the Vauxnian Islands and the United Systems Frontier made a formal alliance. Included in the agreement were the following:

• Vauxnia will remain a fully autonomous state, with its own leadership and laws, unless they directly oppose or interfere with the U.S.F.

• The U.S.F. will maintain a small military presence on the island, but outside of the city of Vauxnia so as not to interfere with Vauxnian daily life.

• The southern half of the island will be utilized by the U.S.F.

• Military technology from the U.S.F. will be closely guarded, but some non-military technology will be introduced to Vauxnia to improve their lives.

• Any invasion of Vauxnia will be seen as an invasion of the U.S.F. controlled territory and will be defended at all costs.

• The prisoners taken from the Gra Valkan Empire will be housed on the U.S.F. controlled territory of Vauxnia.

More clauses were added and approved as things moved forwards, and both the Vauxnians and the U.S.F. were grateful that they could finally relax.