'One typical operation is to drop infantry ahead of an armored assault which relieves them. As often as not, they immediately retreat and then attack another sector. Advance and retreat until the front loses all cohesion.
'At that point armored and helicopter infantry will form defensive strongpoints from which tanks and gunships will maneuver and close on isolated formations.
'This strategy is mirrored in their equipment: lightly armored and
very swift.'
-Pacific Command, G2
Jackson was deep inside the windowless warrens of the Pentagon on a cold December day. His expertise in aerial tactics was enlisted to understand how the Pacific aircraft achieved their performance with such small fuel loads. In planes not much bigger than twin-engine Cessnas, they were matching the performance and range of the top American fighters. Also they seemed to create white radio noise, but that might just be ECM, or electronic countermeasures.
At least now the Agency could deal with this mess themselves instead of waiting for the FBI to act. Jackson had been at home in Maryland, where he had been writing a biography of Billy Mitchell, when he heard the news of Peter Eden's arrest. He knew the FBI had waited too late, that the entire state of Pacific had gone renegade. He watch in horror at the protests, the riots, the disintegration of law and order. But he never believed, nobody believed they would take it this far. Army troops, sent to shut down their legislature's seditious session, had dissappeard.
Eden had many times inflamed the residents of Pacific. He had repeatedly attacked Washington gridlock and the President's vetoing of laws he claimed beneficial and necessary for his state's public good. He also accused the President of vetoing state laws, which were illegal, laws which Eden claimed to be pressing and important. Just a month earlier he had called for boycotting federal taxes; he disclaimed his state's responsibility to pay their share of national security which guarenteed their freedom.
Ryan Jackson had made a name for himself two years prior in his brilliant analysis a Russian Foghorn fighter which had crashed at Leghorn, Italy. Given the gravity of the situation, he had agreed to come out of retirement at the request of his old friend,.
"General Lopitale."
"Good morning, Ryan."
"General. It looks like we might get some snow yet."
"This is Mr Johansen from NRO." National Reconnaisance Office, a rarely publicised member of the intelligence community, was responsible for the nation's network of spy satellites. It was rumourred they had recently orbitted the KA-42 series, said to be able to read newspaper headlines by starlight. "NRO has some images which have a bearing on your work."
"Good morning." He laid out three pictures of a rebel aircraft, taken
from above. The bright exhaust plume was oddly smeared. "These images were
passed through a diffraction grating." Johansen explained. Jackson nodded.
A diffraction grating would separate light into its component wavelengths;
the different compounds and elements could be identified by their characteristic
spectral wavelengths. Soot from burnt hydrocarbon fuel glowed according
black body radiation: rather than emitting specific wavelengths, a continuous
band of light was emitted with the brightest color determined by temperature.
Careful analysis of the diffracted light would reveal the engine fuel and
temperature.
"We don't understand the results. Here, right as it leaves the engine,
we have almost nothing but continuous emissions in blue and violet spectrum.
We estimate the black body temperature in hundreds of thousands of degrees.
It is only further out in the plume that we see spectral series of nitrogen,
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and helium, in almost the same proportions as
found in the atmosphere. It's almost as if all they are doing is passing
the intake through an electric arc."
"How could they generate that much electrictity? And why bother?"
"That's what we don't understand."