Retrospective

0830L, August 27th, 1799.
198th Fighter Squadron, Seqoia AFB, Inyo, Northern Union.
Thirty-one years after the end of combat operations.

MALACHITE kissed its spouse on the cheek, sending a quiet radar detection ping over their link. ECLIPSE grumbled themselves awake and slowly began to disentangle their limbs before giving up and rolling over. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” it whispered.

It received a halfhearted [RAD:NONE] in response. “Oh, don’t you radio silence me, you told me to wake you up. We’re flying today!”

“Mmmmph,” they complained.

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” It sent some data to go along with its speech. “[WARN:LAUNCHx19|ECM|LAS|LEAK|OVERG].” ECLIPSE woke up with a start.

“Okay! Okay! I’m awake. Hel, Mal, nineteen?”, ECLIPSE vibrated, “I think one would have done the trick.”

“Last time I only did one, you sent me counterfire telemetry in your sleep. Come on, come get some breakfast. Sausage and eggs.”

“You did always know how to get to my heart.”

The pair ate breakfast silently, simply enjoying each other's company. In their “human” bodies, too— they might have been aces many times over, but that didn't pay the bills for the 30,000 calories a day of raw meat that dragons needed. And frankly, cooked food in human form tasted better than raw meat as a dragon. Not that it wasn't fun on occasion, but it wasn't something you made a life out of.

MALACHITE looked at the calendar on the wall. A lot had changed in thirty years. IVORY had been right all those years ago, but they’d also been wrong. Like their CO had predicted, they didn’t get as much flight time as they used to, but the post-war world hadn’t been as bleak as they’d expected. The cost studies the Air Force did showed that Blacklights were far more cost-effective than normal piloted craft in terms of air power per pound spent, so they were last on the chopping block, not first. They were still the primary fighter of the Air Force, even thirty-something years later. The old fighter jockeys had made some noise about that, but it was hard to argue with the numbers— and the Blacklights themselves. It’d gotten bad enough that it escalated to a holmgang, the old tradition of trial by combat. IVORY had demanded an aerial duel, which ended the way everyone expected, and the complaints had ceased.

The Force had been accommodating, thankfully. The powers that be had realized early on that Blacklights were closer to flocks of particularly dangerous wild creatures than they were a military unit, and without the pressures of wartime, they were left mainly to mind their own business. Stay competent, don’t overspend your fuel or maintenance budgets, and show up on time when ordered. They’d never get promoted past Colonel, but that was fine— flag officers didn’t get as many flight hours. It was an enjoyable life, at least, even if there wasn’t any real air combat to be had. It hadn’t expected to be sad to see a more peaceful world, but it was, in a lonely sort of way.

Tech had changed too, and definitely for the positive. Gone were the days of having to be in-form to speak properly; neural interfaces had seen to that. The practical mind-machine interface had been unintentionally invented by ODI in the last years of the war in an attempt to augment the reaction time of exoskeletons. At the time, the Essies had used it to link to the motor neurons in the spine, but everyone saw the possibilities after the war ended. Within a few years, they’d started designing bodies with built-in neural interface meshes, and the Blacklights had been early adopters. Sending telemetry for a purely biological body was perhaps a bit unnecessary, but it was more comfortable than just talking.

Despite all that, the Blacklights themselves were mostly unchanged. Sure, they had optical chips instead of silicon, but the actual airframes and engines were running up against the edge of what was physically possible with hydrocarbon fuels, even back in ‘65. Without any looming conflicts on the horizon, there was little reason to replace them. Their HP-FS forms were practically identical too, the only change being that they now got direct nerve input instead of needing the sensory harness. That form had also run up against the limit of physics, and they wouldn’t break 65G or so until someone cracked uploading. That probably wasn’t too far off either: dedicated optical rigs could simulate a brain, but moving a live one from neurons to transistors had been proving elusive.

The future was nice, all things considered. It had even gotten married. It was still amazed by that. Look at me, having a traditional gender role. Well, “traditional”. Marriage for them was certainly no declaration of monogamy, but that was normal for Blacklights. And they did still have rings: MALACHITE had one with a dark opal, and ECLIPSE had one with malachite.

“So, where do you wanna go today?”, it asked.

“[MISSION PACKAGE]. I was chatting with a guy over at DoR who was looking for some low-level footage and told him I might be able to help.”

“South of the border? Did you tell him how you were going to get it, or does he think you're going to fly a drone over?”

ECLIPSE grinned. “I thought it would be fun to surprise him.”

It laughed. “I'll ping Isaac about getting the [SPECN:AN/APD-107GP] on us before we get in-form. Was your guy talking about pushing the border again?”

“Sounded like that might be in the cards. I figure, maybe we do this, maybe we can convince DoR to release a few warheads to us if they actually decide to start pushing south.”

“You had me at airspace penetration, you don't need to sell it. You have a flight plan in mind?”

It sent one. MALACHITE read it over, raising an eyebrow at what it saw. “You know, I think I'm in love with you.”

ECLIPSE gave it a kiss on the cheek. “[CONFIRM].”

1630L, August 27th, 1799.
Air Traffic Control, Sequoia AFB, Inyo, Northern Union.
Thirty-one years after the end of combat operations.

I always hate this part, he thought as the massive interceptors came zooming in just meters above the treetops. It was certainly less than their full speed, and he took mild comfort in the fact that they’d supposedly stopped doing supersonic flybys after breaking his tower’s windows a few decades ago. The big aircraft pushed themselves into flat spins just meters above the runway, lowering their gear and using their engine thrust to brake as they landed backwards. The Blacklights came down with the faintest touch, like they always did.

Apparently, the 198th had figured out the trick at some point during the war, and they'd insisted on doing it ever since. They’d insisted that it was to reduce landing times, but everyone knew they just did it to show off. Someone had even convinced the designation committee to append the VSTOL tag to the airframe, as if they were going to do emergency operations off of a highway. If they'd been normal aircraft, the maneuver would have been the riskiest thing he'd seen a pilot do in his life, but Blacklights didn't make those kind of mistakes.

He let go of the breath he’d been holding and keyed up the mic. “SERAPH PALISADE, confirming touchdown for ECLIPSE and MALACHITE. Hang a left on taxiway three and then you’re out of my hands.”

“Acknowledged, SERAPH,” replied a silky-smooth androgynous voice. That was ECLIPSE. MALACHITE didn't like to talk over the radio, and when it did, it inserted some digital buzz into its vocoder. He’d only been here half a year, but he’d figured out which of the big planes were which pretty quickly. They were friendly enough once you got past their quirks. Air traffic control for Blacklights was… non-standard, to say the least, especially because Sequoia was an otherwise quiet airbase. Maybe back in the day it had been complex, telling gung-ho fighter jockeys to divert when one of the interceptors came screaming in, but Sequoia was just an oversized relic from the war at this point, and they hadn’t had actual fighter jockeys for a generation. In some way, he wished he’d been there to see full squadrons of them sortieing, dozens of the black darts blasting out of the underground runways.

But this was good too. Peace was nice, after all.

1030L, August 28th, 1799.
Room 408, Memorial Hall, Sequoia Community College, Inyo, Northern Union.
Thirty-one years after the end of combat operations.

It strolled into the class exactly thirty seconds before 10:30, and got the projector on with a second to spare.

“Good morning, and welcome to History 341, Modern Military History. If you’re not here for that, you’re— yeah, one every semester.” The misplaced student sheepishly ducked out of the room.

“Okay, now that we have everyone, hopefully, welcome to History 341, Modern Military History. I’m Mala Anders. You can call me Professor Anders, Mala, just Mal, Doctor, almost anything’s fine. Quick show of hands, how many people are taking this because they’re military history nerds?” A dozen or so hands went up. “And how many are taking this because your friends told you I’m an easy grader and you just want the credit?” More hands that time. It smiled.

“Well, I will neither confirm nor deny my reputation as a professor. There is something that I’ll address right now, though: yes, I am the same person as the one that comes up when you search my name online. This is me as a professor, if you want to see me as MALACHITE, come visit me on base when I’m not teaching. Any questions there?”

A few hands went up. “Okay, let me hit the ones everyone does first. Is that kill count real? Yes. Would have been more, but the essies ran out of planes. Do I like it? Yes, more than anything. When can we see you fly? Demos are the first weekend of every month, or any day I’m not teaching if you’re nice about it. Any questions that I didn’t just answer?”

The hands went down. I think I’m getting good at this. “All that said, I’m not just some schmuck with a chest full of medals that they shoved off to a community college instead of a retirement home. I do actually have a doctorate, and it’s not an honorary one. And please don’t try and stroke my ego, I’ll drop you a letter grade. Moving on… You all should have been emailed a syllabus. I’m not going to read it to you, because I think you probably wouldn’t have gotten this far if you were illiterate. And also because the dean doesn’t have enough pull to make me.” That got some chuckles. “We’re gonna get right into it. Anyone have any questions about the class that the syllabus didn’t cover before we start the lecture?”

No hands went up immediately. “Okay. Today we’re going to talk about why the war went the way it did and set the tone for the semester. Does anyone know why ODI lost the war?”

“Seattle?” someone volunteered.

“No, but that’s a common belief. I'll admit to some deceit with that question: we’re going to be tackling the myth of single things winning the war. The momentum changed at Seattle, but that’s not really the why. The main point I want you to leave this class with, and that I'm going to keep harping on over and over, is that the essentialists lost the war because they couldn’t have won it.”

“Now, you might be wondering, ‘Mal, of course they couldn’t have won, don’t you know about the something-or-other doodad that we made?’, and the answer is sure, I know about all the doodads. Hel, I am one of those doodads. Half your parents probably still are some of those doodads. Anyone in here have a Shatterscale or Sprinter?” A few hands went up.

“Anyone’s parents still have a Bladewyrm?” Three hands.

“Okay, anyone have a Bladewyrm themselves?” One hand, a dark-skinned woman in the front row. Mala grinned. “Nice! What for?”

She shrugged. “I like blood sports.”

Mala raised an eyebrow. “Very nice.”

It continued, “Okay, back on topic: tech and biology helped, but the main point I want to make is that there isn’t any individual thing that pushed it over the edge. The reason ODI lost was structural, not technological.”

“We’ll cover war aims more specifically on Wednesday, but I want you to keep this in mind. At the end of the day, essentialists wanted transhumans to stop existing. Sure, they wanted land and economic gains too, but extermination was a core part of the ideology. There were two ways they could have done that: win by force of arms and start shooting people, or break out the gas and the nukes. Now, they always planned to do the latter, but they knew that doing that would incite a response, so they planned to neutralize the majority of the PDT’s chemical or nuclear response capability before engaging in any serious extermination. Obviously, they never got that far, then jumped the gun at Davao, and got the Feds to join in for good measure.”

“Their problem, at the end of the day, was that they were fascists. Essentialism is very strongly related to fascism; I’m sure you have covered or will cover that in history class. Fascists are ideologically unable to objectively evaluate the strengths of their enemies. Their enemy is simultaneously weak and cowardly and contemptible, but also powerful and dangerous. This extends to military decision-making. A lot of the things we’ll discuss in this class will seem like obvious missteps on ODI’s part. That's because a lot of the time, they were.”

It took a breath. “Okay, audience participation time. One of you military history nerds who raised your hands earlier, give me an example of this. You, back left.”

“Their air doctrine from Seattle onwards?” he ventured.

“Elaborate on that. Sorry to put you on the spot, but you’re onto something, keep going.”

“Um, they didn’t have air superiority, and they kept building expensive fighters instead of using those resources to make air defenses, even though they had defenses that worked. When they lost Seattle and Downriver, they kept pouring money into aircraft instead of changing the way they fought.”

“You are coming dangerously close to stroking my ego,” it warned, “but you’re correct. ODI wasted a ton of resources on aircraft that just weren’t effective post-1765. They had better tech for the first half of the war, but tech is different from a fundamental superiority like the Essies thought they had. When the tech pendulum swung the other way and the PDT started filling out Blacklight squadrons, they didn’t react rationally. Good answer. I have some stories to tell about that one too, but I'll save that for when we cover the invasion in more detail. Okay, someone give me another example.”

A few seconds passed before a hand went up. It motioned for the student to answer. “The bombing of Davao.”

“Good, but more details, please.”

“They could have just done Davao slowly with evictions like they did in Borneo, but instead they brought the Federation into the war.”

“Decent! Davao was mainly intended to be a show of strength when they started losing in the Pacific. Also important to remember that they bombed more than just Davao, but Davao did get the worst of it. With the Feds, there’s an argument to be made that they were going to join the war anyway, but we’ve got a whole section for their participation coming up later. One more example, please.”

The woman with a Bladewyrm raised her hand, “Not really a specific one, but any of the urban combat?”

Mala motioned for her to continue. “ODI kept fighting in terrain that heavily favored transhumans instead of bypassing it. I guess because they wanted to prove they could win fights directly?”

“Kind of, but that one isn’t actually as straightforward as you might think. You usually don’t have any choice about fighting in urban environments, unless you’re willing to demolish entire cities or devote a ton of manpower to a continued siege. ODI commanders had a lot of political pressure to secure quick victories, and PDT defenses were oriented to intercept their artillery. That meant that they had to go in and fight in close quarters, which consistently went poorly for them. You’ve got a Bladewyrm, so you know what I’m talking about.”

She nodded. The engineered combat forms were stupendously lethal in close quarters, and the late-model versions could hold their own even against modern neural-interface exoskeletons. During the war, they'd killed as many Essies as the artillery had. Mala continued, “These are good thoughts to be having. Now that you have some idea of what I want you to be thinking about, we’re going to start our first unit with pre-war politics…”