It had maybe been half an hour since he had been rescued. Shelton stared off into the distance at the conduit-laced roof of the brig, examining the pipes and trying to make sense of some of the labels. His language and the Cascadian language just did not mesh well. To his one side sat Jolie, wringing her wrists and humming a soft song to herself. To his right sat the overweight cook, who hissed and grunted under his breath as each movement of the ship no doubt made his serious chest wound sting. Jolie was trying to keep her split hoof off of the ground. Shelton could hear the ship's engines, could hear the liquids in the pipes above him, could feel her rolling and pitching... normally he felt comforted by such movements. He was like many Oceon seamen who felt a soul in their ship. He still missed [i]Olympus[/i]. She might have been an old barge of a freighter but he had always seen her as indestructible... a few hundred kilograms of HE had ended that feeling.
	Now he felt like he had been consumed by some great monster, this unnamed predator of a ship, and now he was awaiting his inevitable doom within her stomach. Every noise she made felt menacing to him, felt malicious, far from the comforting noises of the aging cargo ship he had known. Even this machine of war wanted his death and his destruction. He knew she would not be his doom, however. No... sometime in the near future she would regurgitate them all and let her handlers take care of the killing. Shelton did his best to relax with his hands and legs bound as they were. The bench was far from comfortable and it was rather cold in the room. That didn't bother him so much considering his species and his thick fur but he did worry about the less thick furred creatures among them. He also wondered what had become of his human crewmates, or his Captain, that blasted old fool who had led them into this situation. Now Shelton knew what it really felt like to be hated, as he had seen such hatred in the eyes of the Cascadian crewmen. He felt Jolie shift a little. His sharp feline eyes turned toward her. 
	Jolie was a reindeer with a snowy white belly, dark brown spotted fur everywhere else, and a pair of eyes that changed colors according to the seasons as is normal for her species. Hers were a startling color of blue right now. Even in the blue light Shelton's gaze was drawn to them as he looked into her soul of steel... she looked more pissed off than anything right now. It was admirable, because the array of fates laid out in front of her was nothing good. The bobcat smiled and she smiled back. She was around twenty nine years of age and he twenty five. The reindeer was built stoutly and was actually thicker than the bobcat, who was both shorter and more slightly built. It was a good look for her, though, finished off by her moderately sized antlers that had thankfully survived intact. Shelton looked down at her hooves and told her softly, "You need to keep as much pressure as you can off of those." She just nodded slowly, "I'm doing my best, Shelly. Not easy." He smiled just at her accent, which made her words sway and bounce in pitch in a sing-song way. She came from the Kings' Islands, where that odd accent had persisted even through a total language change and apocalypse. He simply laid his head on her shoulder and tried his best to scoot up to her side. Both of them felt a little warmer then, and a little less hopeless. They both closed their eyes as Jolie nuzzled her crewmate. Their affection for each other was bending the rules of their shipping company but they were cargo boat crew, not naval seamen, so it was mostly looked over or frowned upon at the most. 
	They just enjoyed the warmth of each other and dreams of what they could do with a shared life if they managed to survive. Both of them were thinking of leaving the Double Staff Shipping Company and moving back to the Kings' Islands to live near the shore. Maybe one of them would join the Coast Guard there, or they would own a small fishing boat. That was, of course, if they survived. Both of them knew execution was a real possibility. Both knew being sold as slaves was just as likely. Jolie held a faint hope that the trial would at least secure a better fate for them but Shelton knew it would be a ruse. He knew he might be killed and his fur taken for a coat, or his head mounted as a trophy, or forced to work to death in a mine somewhere. The reindeer worried about those just as much as she worried about some rich businessman with twisted fantasies and a will to spend a pretty penny on any young anthropomorphic female he could overpower. Perhaps these ghastly nightmares were false but neither of them had any way of telling. No Oceon had ever been in Cascadia willingly, and the Oceon government was not willing to risk a diplomatic nightmare with espionage. Whatever fate had in store for them, the two young crew just tried to comfort each other as best as they could, and avoid thinking of whatever might come next. He gave a soft purr, and she chuffed softly in reply. They didn't want to anger the guards.

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	Many, many kilometers away, three airplanes lanced the skies about four-thousand, five hundred meters up from the seas between Greenland and Iceland. Two of the planes were the familiar looking NF-05 Apollos, the supercarrier variants, save for their slightly elongated bodies and shoehorned second cockpit. These two aircraft were camera planes and observer craft. In the backseat of the second Apollo, Gantry Two, who was off of the middle plane's right wing, was a human named Carl with long blond hair and sky blue eyes. He wore a smile as he held his camera to his face and snapped picture after picture of the Oceon Navy's latest toy, the [url=http://i.imgur.com/bYl1be0.jpg]NB-14 Aphrodite[/url]. See, the Oceon Navy had faced a big problem ever since the [i]Song of Storms[/i] had been built. The Apollo was terrible at ground attack. Sure, they could carry a couple of two hundred and thirty kilogram firecrackers with only slight problems, but beyond that, the Apollo's controls turned to mush and the stall speed skyrocketed. Carrying the full bombload turned the Apollo from a rather twitchy and unstable but insanely maneuverable hellbeast into a brick with a broken desk fan as an engine. It needed to change. The NB-14 was promising to do that, with great speed for a bomber and amazing low-speed handling characteristics. She even had advanced radar and a cutting edge armament. The Aphrodite was the testing aircraft for the MBRF-12, which is a three-barrel twenty millimeter minigun capable of fire rates up to nine hundred rounds per minute. This deadly weapon was mounted in her nose and protruded slightly from underneath it, giving her a sort of unicorn like appearance.
	On top of that, she had four hardpoints on her wing, one centerline, and two missile rails on either wingtip. She was the only aircraft so far equipped with the brand new and mostly untested RGAG-07 anti-ground and anti-ship missile and the RCAA-11 Siren which was a beam-riding anti-air missile. These weapons were limited in effectiveness but could, in theory, become much deadlier if the electronics could be shrunk and the guidance mechanisms did not require a second crew in the back of the cockpit to control them. The Aphrodite had two crew, one to fly and one to operate the offensive weapons and radar. They were very expensive monsters but tests had proven them to be very, very effective. The two crew were protected by steel armor against small arms fire and some shrapnel, and the aircraft had very good redundancy in its systems. Carl smiled as he took her picture from her pointed nose, her streamlined nacelles and swept wings, all the way back to her butterfly tail. She was carrying nothing right now with clean wings and a clean bomb bay. The flight was just as boring as was expected for all but the two photographers, and the only radar contacts were a couple of airliners buzzing around. 
	That is, until Showtime 1, the Aphrodite, broke the radio silence and called out, "Attention flight, bogeys on radar, sixty five kilometers out at six thousand five hundred meters and fourteen degrees!" The Aphrodite's radar was damn good too. In the seat in front of him, Carl watched the pilot of the Apollo scan his radar, before shaking his head. The Apollo couldn't even detect that far. The pilot in front of Carl, Joacim, finally said to the bomber, "Call it in to ATC, Showtime. They might wanna know about this." Through his headset Carl could hear the chatter. "This is Showtime One to Reykjavik control, we have an unidentified pair of bogeys at fourteen degrees, sixty five kilometers out, merging fast at six zero zero. No IFF signature, and they are not in any lane I know of. How copy?"

ATC came back a few moments later, "Good copy, showtime. Standby." A few seconds of silence passed. Carl tapped his foot on the floor of the jet fighter and listened to the drone of the jet engine behind and below him. Finally, ATC came back on the line and told them, "Gantry Two, break off formation and investigate. No flights in that direction. Do not engage and avoid antagonizing if at all possible." The pilot acknowledged the call before putting the plane on her wingtip in a somewhat severe turn. Carl put his camera in his lap and held on to the handles that were stuck to the cockpit supports. He was getting shaken about quite a bit, as the Apollo strained to meet her pilot's demands and climb to the razor's edge of her service ceiling. An Apollo was guaranteed to fly up to six thousand two hundred meters. This bogey was three hundred above that. Carl gave the handle he was gripping a little rub, and encouraged the twin boom jet in his mind. [i]We need you, sweetie. We need you to do your best.[/i] Carl was aware that would probably do nothing but it made him feel better anyways. There was no denying that, beyond the danger of an engine failure or aerodynamic stall, they would be really up a creek without a paddle if these bogeys were hostile. They had no missiles and only a full load of cannon ammo. 

It took just a few minutes to get to intercept range. The Apollo was straining all the way. She was up to around six thousand five hundred and four meters now, but she was wailing like they were putting a hot iron into her heart and the way she was shaking and wobbling around was not reassuring. They couldn't even hope to get to top speed as the air was far too thin for the engine to make optimal thrust. Indeed, even with the balls to the wall, the pilot was only getting ninety percent power. They came within range of the two bogeys, however, and both pilot and passenger looked at the two through their naked eyes and a telescopic sight, respectively. What they saw astonished them. In front of them, roughly at two o clock, was a pair of diamond-shaped fighters with a strange marking upon their wings. The pilot opened the line again, "ATC, this is Gantry Two, we have made contact with the bogeys."

"Roger that. Do you know type or model?" The pilot looked over his shoulder, waiting for Carl to answer. He could see there were planes, but with his naked eyes, he could not see details at the long range they were at. Carl opened the channel and told ATC,"Negative, ATC. Not able to make positive identification."

"Can you describe any markings, Gantry Two?"

"Roger, ATC. A white circle with a cutout for a five point star in the center, with red wings. There is also an English word, Navy, I think, and some kind of squadron marking on the tailfin."

There was an odd pause. It drug on for a while as Carl raised his camera and snapped several pictures. He wanted to get more angles, but he was not eager to approach. Finally, ATC came back with, "...rr-oger, Gantry Two. Confirm a white circle, five-point star silhouette, and the word NAVY on the side." 

Carl replied an affirmative. Another long pause, and then, "Gantry Two, reroute to Moreau. Maximum speed. There will be refueling aircraft available if need be. Do not re-enter formation." The pilot acknowledged the order this time. The plane banked sharply again. The Apollo raced off towards the Capital, with her engine whining and her nose down as she broke the sound barrier with a loud thunderclap. Carl held on for his life once more with a dozen pictures of these strange aircraft clinging to the film of his camera. He had no idea what the big deal was. They were odd planes but maybe it was just some hobbyist's design... or an unauthorized test. They could have come from the Faroe Islands with that kind of course. Whatever Carl thought, the pilot did not care, and they continued their race West to the capital of Oceos. 

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Rasp just could not get a break. Over the past while, the world seemed to have exploded. There was a crisis developing rapidly in the NAU, a cargo ship had gotten sunk in Cascadian waters, and now planes from the future, or more the past, were buzzing over his territory while he had just a handful of interceptors to deal with them. It was going to be a hell of a season. He sighed and rubbed a hand through his headfur while he looked over the transcripts from the [i]Kazoo[/i], an LNG tanker, which was one of the ships that had heard the [i]Olympus'[/i] maydays. He looked up at his Foreign Relations Adviser and asked softly, "What the hell do we do...?" The Naval Secretary, a female lynx with more scars than atoms, stared at him with her one good eye and told him, "We have an aircraft carrier now, sir. We can threaten..." He held up his hand and waved away her suggestion, "[b]One[/b] carrier, Agnes. [b]One[/b]. She doesn't even have proper strike planes. Who the hell knows what they have stashed up their sleeves? We can't just go barging in. I need a direct line to whoever their leader is. Get me in touch with someone. I want to reason with them." Agnes turned away, sighing, but she soon perked up again as Rasp said to her, "That being said... how are our assault carriers?" She recited it off the top of her head. 

"[i]Sonnet[/i] is still undergoing maintenance, but [i]Serenade[/i] is nearly done." Rasp closed his eyes and let his shoulders sag, "Put her on emergency alert. Tell her to set sail as soon as possible with a commando team from the 12th Regiment aboard, with the fastest assault choppers we can fit on her. Send her and a couple of destroyers to the edge of their EEZ, in Arctic Federation territory. Tell her not to engage, unless we tell her too." Agnes tilted her head, "Sir? May I ask your plan?" He smiled at her and just told her, "You are my Naval Secretary, Agnes. [i]Song of Storms[/i] is going to go help the NAU, if they choose to accept our assistance. [i]Serenade[/i] will launch a raid to get those crew out by force if we can't negotiate. I plan too. I am hoping I can negotiate with the Cascadians in exchange for something. If not..." He scratches at one of his ears, "...well, I hope the Kamchats or the Arctics are in for some good old fashioned fisticuffs." Agnes looked down and bit her lip. The one-eyed lynx eventually shrugged, "I can't thin' of another way todo it, sir. Jus' no way. Can't take 'em one on one, can't take 'em espionage. One hell of a problem here, and I approve your plan, sir." He looked over to the FRA. He just shrugged dejectedly, "I can help you where I can, sir, but these Cascadians want our asses off the planet. They just... hate us. I can't find a single act of goodwill between our people or our countries. Not a single one. All I can tell ya is good luck, sir. They are extremely, extremely biased. If they could they'd probably nuke us."

Rasp rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair, looking across the round table at Oliver and replying sarcastically, "Ever the optimist, ain't ya?" Oliver just shook his head, "I love this country, mister President, but we are [i]weird.[/i] Have you ever compared us to the rest of the world? We live out on some broken islands in shacks and sheds and do what we want. We turn into animals, have sex like its a game of kickball, party all week, and then we go home and do what we want. Yeah, there's incentive to work, but the country ticks along just fine even if some folks just go wander out in the woods and dick around all day. We are [i]weird[/i], and these Cascadians... really do not like it. You have a couple of weeks at best, Rasp. Then those guys will all be sold as slaves for who knows what purpose, or executed. Talk to them gently and softly, or else you could make them mad. They think you're a dumb cat, mister President, and nothing more. Think of them like that. The Cascadians look at you as if you are some stupid beast that licks his balls and pisses on things all day. Nothing more. They don't get us, and we don't get them, so this whole chess game starts off with a ticking bomb underneath the board which somehow is set up in a minefield. And you gotta defuse the bomb with your tail and can't even move one tick the wrong way or everything, and I mean [b]everything[/b], goes to Hades." After that monologue, the old human sat back with his arms across his chest and sighed. He looked like a pouting child, and finally finished it off by simply reciting, "I don't like it."

Rasp quirked a brow and glanced at Agnes, then back to Oliver. "I knew there was a reason you got elected to help me, Oliver. You have the grace of a boulder but you do know how to get a point across." He chuckles, "An explosive chess game in a minefield... sounds like a good sport to me." Agnes was just sort of staring, which was her only face nowadays. Oliver watched as Rasp typed a few things into a console, then clacked the enter key. The Oceon capital building had a centralized computer system, with the actual mainframe taking up most of a basement level. Even the consoles themselves were huge and clunky, and mostly remained bolted to the desks. He then looked up before standing up, scooting his chair back and smiling at his two colleagues. "Well, thank you for your time. I have other matters to attend too, I am afraid... I just hope the Speakers sign off on this plan. I know Britt has, don't know about the other two... this is for the best, though, okay?"

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It had been an hour and forty five minute flight at maximum speed with the fuel light flickering the entire time. The engine was toasted and it died from fuel starvation just as the plane kissed the apron, and the ground techs didn't even have time to hook up a tug before Carl's camera was taken. From there, under armed guards, it was carried and its film developed in an armored truck over to a bunker on the outskirts of Moreau. This was one of the original buildings from the Mother Colony. The wolfess clutched the pictures to herself tightly as she rode the elevator downwards, deeper into the thawed Earth, and eventually into a huge concrete complex. This wolfess was the right-hand woman to Britt, the Speaker of Greenland, and was entrusted personally with carrying this precious cargo. This nondescript bunker was where Destiny lay. She was one of the most advanced computers in the world when the Day of the Last Signal came. Here she was, a hundred years later, still ticking away. Before the wolf and her precious cargo could enter her inner sanctum, however, she had to be scanned and fully searched. The full body cavity search was far from pleasant, but she passed, and was allowed to enter a stinging sterilization shower in the nude and then put on a clean suit. Only then was she allowed through a blast door and into a small concrete room lit by bare bulbs with nothing but a chair and a desk at one end, and another blast door at the other. This was not Destiny. No, her body was in the other labyrinthine chambers of this complex, stretching kilometers. A technician, really more a monk of this AI, stood nearby the desk. He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. 

With her heart in her throat, this wolfess, Asa, slowly approached the desk. The desk held a monitor and a camera on a swivel arm. As she approached it, the camera's light suddenly flickered on. The camera swiveled and pivoted, moving to stare right through the visor of the clean suit with its glaring synthetic gaze. The technician held his hand up. After a few moments, Destiny flashed a green light underneath the camera, allowing the wolfess to continue. Asa swallowed the lump in her throat and approached the desk again. She sat in it, and looked to the monk for help. He told her, "Ask, and she shall answer." With shaky hands, Asa selected the best picture of the strange fighter, and held it up to the computer's camera eye. In a soft, stuttering voice, Asa asked, "D-Destiny.. what aircraft is this?" The computer stared at it a little bit longer. Finally, that green light came up again. The monitor, a strange transparent projection device, flickered to life. Asa eyed it and grew wider eyed by the second as she read. Eventually, after reading the summary, she sat back and whimpered, and then said to herself, "Holy fuck..." The monk looked at her strangely. Then she asked him, "C-can I get a copy of this readout?" Destiny just flashed her green light. After a few seconds of this flashing a cassette tape slid out from a slit beneath the monitor. Asa took it with a shaking hand and stood up, thanking the technician before leaving in a huff and a hurry.

Particle beams and speeds of over Mach Six. No Oceon fighter even stood a chance.