Mercenary Black Mamba

The military satellites were huddled together in the range above 1,000 kilometers. The orbit above 2,000 kilometers was not easily captured by a camera, and an overcharge of the radiated energy and electron made it difficult to control a satellite. The orbit below 200 kilometers was due to a massive revolution of the Earth around the sun, depleting fuel faster and risking getting burned out.

People like to peek. Voyeurism had been one of the fascinating art motives for thousands of years. Realizing that the sky was the perfect place to watch, more than 100 military satellites were launched each year. For the period of 30 years, the launched satellites numbered 2,000. The 250 in the allocated public zone was not a big number at all.

The 250 satellites were mostly maritime recon satellites, such as the American recon satellite Keyhole (KH-11), the Soviet recon satellite Zenith, radar satellites, and military satellites such as communication information satellites. There were quite a few commercial satellites but he didn't have time to check or the ability to do so.

"Chicken, is there an altitude limit?"

"Mom, what do you think of me?" Garuda answered in an offended voice that suggested that its pride was hurt.

"You look like a chicken to me, what else?"

"Should we go to the moon or the mars?" Chicken bluffed.

"That's fine. We have flies to swat. First, that one."

Mu Ssang pointed at the flying object approaching from 30 kilometers ahead. After losing sight of its target, the Black Eye was approaching to check the sudden change in weather. It had walked into hell on its own feet.

"What is that?"

The pilot blinked. The size of the object caught in a lens hood and its distance wasn't proportional.

The operator spotted the Garuda without a defensive matrix and yelled, "Oh shit! Chris, turn, turn!"

"What are you talking about?"

The pilot manned the front camera.

"Idiot, it is the UMA that we were warned about countless times."

"Oh, Jesus!"

The Black Eye turned rapidly. The CIC information officer had warned them. When one faced the UMA, one should fall back right away.

Garuda, accelerating rapidly, caught up with the Black Eye. The Garuda was Mach 30 and the Black Eye was 780 kilometers per hour low-speed recon unit. They were incomparable from the beginning.

"We do not need to expend expensive energy just to kill some fly."

The Garuda wielded lightly its tail. A five-meter wide micro-lattice tail struck at a sonic speed. The body exploded like a firework. When struck by the Garuda's tail, even a tank with 680mm armor was slashed open. The 8mm aluminum-alloy body was no more firm than a sheet of paper. The Black Eye, met with a sudden opponent, disappeared from Bunker Hill's radar before it had time to call mayday.

The scouter tracked the black dot passing by faster than a bullet at an altitude of 25,000 meters. It was the SR-71 recon unit known as Black Bird.

The Garuda soared after finishing vector calculations. A spark erupted after a collision. The CIA Burette 3 that was on a recon flight along the equator at Mach 3 collided with Garuda.

The radar caught Garuda but it still couldn't evade an object flying into it at many times the speed of sound.

"Fucking Russian!"

The last thought the Japanese-American pilot Jerar thought of was that of the incoming Soviet ballistic missile.

A week later, the story of the recon satellite of the Ministry of Defense getting smashed by an asteroid above the equator was covered by the New York Times. The headline was "The Most Unfortunate Airplane Ever". Of course, the article was drowned out by the most horrible news titled "The Worst Space Show In Human History".

A flash of white light streaked the night sky. The Dragon Lady gliding in the sky 25,000 meters above the ground was struck by the lightning. The aircraft struck by the accelerated photon cannon was ground into a fine dust.

"Is it a video game?"

There was an exclamation. The four recon aircraft units in the atmosphere disappeared in a moment. Whenever the Garuda struck a unit or shot one down, it was no different from a video game as the targets disappeared from the screen.

He didn't empathize with the pilot and the operator who would have turned into ash without having any time to scream. Flashbacks largely depended on visual stimuli. The artillery, the air force, and the navy had fewer PTSD patients than the army. The ancient soldiers who fought covered in blood with spears and swords were all PTSD patients or had superior mental resilience.

The Garuda with its anti-gravity device activated appeared like a ghost in the thermosphere 1,000 kilometers above the ground.

"Great!"

The four-dimensional space synchronized with the scouter had no boundary whatsoever. A vast night sky appeared in front of their eyes. It wasn't a hologram but a screen that was projected in the real night sky. On the screen, 250 targets were represented as flickering red dots.

"250 targets across 1,200,000 square kilometers. A vast-range electromagnetic pulse. A 300GHz microwave was induced."

The scouter analyzed its targets and appropriate means to handle them. Military satellites operated at lower altitudes because of the characteristics of their mission. They had to alter their orbit often. Unlike stationary-orbit satellites, they required a booster with high propulsion power. Even if the satellite was not destroyed, with only its booster damaged, the entire satellite became spatial debris and soon fell by the force of gravity.

"Mom, there are 2,356 flies. Shall I exterminate them all?"

"No. The ones in high places are benevolent insects. Only kill what is around us."

The Garuda vomited a basketball-sized sphere. The sphere filled with tritium and strontium floated in between the two horns.

Electricity alternated the two horns and heightened the quantum field. The voltage rose until the covalent bonds of the electron pairs started breaking down. The sphere shone an ominous shine as if it were the heart of the Devil itself and bulged in many places.

"This is going to be destructive."

Black Mamba stared at the glowing small sun with eyes full of interest. The more talented a subordinate was, the better off the world and the master were. He leaned and looked at the screen as if spectating a game.

"Here it is. Eat it!"

The sphere was flung away. A pillar of teal light sliced open the space. The laser cannon struck the sphere that was 100 kilometers away. The sky and land were washed in a flash of white light. There was no medium to transfer sound in the space. Despite the atomic bomb-like explosion, the silent shockwave occupied the space.

As it approached the ground, the pulse was faced with interference from a highly dense atmosphere. In the thermosphere without atmosphere, the pulse intensified thousandfold. The speed of transference was almost as fast as light. The supra-high-density gamma ray covered the space 2,500 kilometers wide and 3,000 kilometers high.

If it were a simple EMP explosive, only the electronic circuit would be destroyed, but the special EMP explosive Garuda made was a quantum bomb infused with tritium and strontium sequestered by the quantum field. The gamma ray as destructive as a 500 megaton atomic bomb swept away the electrons on the satellites' equipment in orbits from an altitude of 500 kilometers and 3,200 kilometers.

The electron-less atoms clamored up and dispersed, looking for their atoms. When there was a movement of electrons, there flowed electricity. With stirred atoms, there occurred a strong repulsive force. The electricity of five million amperes fried the electronic circuit and the atoms were dislocated.

A splendid space show flourished. The electronic equipment of the 500 satellites in the space razed by the gamma ray exploded like popcorn.

The small satellites under one metric ton used solar panels, nitric oxide, and liquid hydrogen as fuel, while the large satellites between 10-20 metric tons used a small atomic reactor as the power source. A vast space show unfurled.

A silent flash of light covered the universe. When a fuel tank exploded, the light lit up a few kilometers, and when a reactor exploded, dozens of kilometers were lit up. Thousands of fireballs fell, attracted by gravity. The indigenous people along the equator may make some wishes looking at the vast show of shooting stars.

"Whoa! That's great!"

Mu Ssang stood without realizing it. Compared to this, the EMP was like a child's toy. The United States developed a bomb that could destroy electronic circuits 1,000 meters around. France developed an EMP explosive that affected 300 meters around. It was not mass-produced but made in a pilot plant. The Chicken dismantled half of the satellites above the equator with a single unidentified sphere. This one was not a natural but a space catastrophe.

"Cleaning accomplished. Four hundred fifty-eight flies were still alive. 1,259 dead flies and pieces of space debris. Did I do well, Mom?"

"You did. You did well."

Black Mamba complimented with utmost sincerity. The United States and the Soviet Union wouldn't attempt to track them for a short while. 99% of the 110 or so satellites that were launched into space each year were the military satellites of the United States and the Soviet Union. Even France relied on the United States for its military and communication satellites. These were assets well destroyed.

Sending one military satellite to an orbit cost an astronomical amount depending on the satellite's weight. The cheapest Soyuz-U launch rocket cost 20,000,000 dollars and the most expensive Titan IV cost 320,000,000 dollars.

The production cost was also astronomical. It cost 30,000,000 dollars at the least. A Keyhole (KH-11) cost 400,000,000 dollars per unit. One satellite then cost from 50,000,000 dollars to 700,000,000 dollars. Considering miscellaneous loss, the Garuda ended up causing a loss of one thousand trillion won of American assets.

"The GPS will be unusable for a while. Hahaha!"

Mu Ssang giggled looking at the aftermath he caused. The intelligence agencies of powerful countries like the CIA and KGB were going to be on it, but he couldn't care less. A poor one's heart aches at one broken plate but a rich one cares not if a pot is broken.

The direct loss calculated by the Secretary's Office of the White House and the CIA amounted to one thousand trillion dollars. There spread a joke that the United States was called the heavenly country because the Secretary yelled "One thousand trillion? Fuck!" ("One thousand trillion" and "heavenly made" sounds similar in Korean.)

* * *

Two hundred meters below Area 51.

Sector 7 was bustling, unlike the usual times. The speaker buried in the ceiling kept yelling orders. Hundreds of electric carts ran up and down the corridors to retrieve the goods and security officers wearing blue shielding aprons and helmets sprinted across the place with high-voltage taser batons.

The partition wall opened. Three agents wearing shielding aprons dragged out a chimera that looked like a mixture of gorilla and alligator. The chimera screeched and glared.

"Attention!"

An agent waved a baton. The chimera, ill-spirited, looked down slyly.

"What were they thinking, letting out an undomesticated one?" an agent waving a baton complained.

"An order is an order. Hurry."

The agent with an iron chain pulled the chimera. An underground space as big as three soccer fields was filled with chimeras soon. As soon as a new chimera arrived, the sprinkler on the ceiling sprayed it with phenol.

In another corridor, expressionless, broad-shouldered men lined up. Next to each of them wearing a helmet, a controller with a laptop which had the size of two palms followed.

"Woo... ugh!"

Letters were automatically typed on the screen. "I'm thirsty." The computer analyzed the electric signal and tone and deduced the meaning of the utterance.

"You are thirsty?"

The agent threw the water bottle carelessly. The stocky body somersaulted deftly like a cat and caught the water bottle in the air. When it flicked its claw, the aluminum cap was sliced off and flung away.

These were mechanic humanoid Haunters that looked like Billy killed by Samdi in Cenote, Ituri. They were like cyborgs whose flesh was a mixture of machine and artificial muscles who had low intelligence and had their verbal cortex disabled.

A roar erupted in the space. Another space was filled with small and big monsters. The smaller one was five meters long and the large one was 30 meters long. The underground corridor was filled with roars and stench.

"Hurry up, Galaxy and Hercules will arrive in an hour."

The speaker roared.

* * *

"Mom, our grudge shall be repaid a hundredfold. Let's go to Rwenzori."

"We eat the less appetizing later. Let's handle the anthill first."

Black Mamba was not someone who could smile off an offense. Since he began the destruction, he was going to see it to the end.

"Project the map."

The Block-I/IA GPS satellite in the Medium Earth Orbit (2,000-3,578 kilometers) was destroyed due to Garuda's blundering. The GPS terminal would have been disabled.

A vivid hologram of the Earth that was almost as indistinguishable as the real thing. Mu Ssang pinched the North American continent between his thumb and index finger and pulled it out. He zoomed in on the state of Nevada on the piece of the map.

With his index finger, he poked the oval desert 165 kilometers north of Las Vegas. It was Area 51 hidden north of the Groom Lake airbase. The hologram calculated the distance. It was 14,500 kilometers north of the Ituri jungle.

"The GPS terminal is a stone-age hammer compared to this."

He didn't miss the destroyed GPS satellite.

"How long will it take?"

"1,400 seconds!"

"It has accelerated. Activate the defensive matrix. Go!"

"Hurrah! We're going!"

With a great flash of light, the Garuda disappeared from the sky above Ituri. Garuda rapidly accelerated to Mach 30 and crossed the African continent, the Atlantic, and North America.

"That was awesome!"

He was more surprised by the space he found himself in than the surprising speed. Despite the speed of 10km/sec, his field of view wasn't affected. No matter what posture he assumed, he felt comfortable as if a latex cushion was supporting him. He was on the outside but the space he found himself in didn't seem to be affected by it.

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