The Dragon Lady

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. There never were any dragons at all as far as I can remember. Or perhaps better explained as like not the fire breathing, fang winged, eating the princess type. But in the here and now exists a far worse kind. At least in my personal opinion. And all my comrades' opinions also.

There were, however, always Valleys. That I can say with certitude. But even that word is relative in the here and now. For example, I am presently observing the central valley of old New York City. The former island of Manhattan to be exact. That is the here, here. This is the eve of what will be the Sixth Battle of New York. 6th NY to be brief. The previous five battles have pretty much reduced the Megalopolis of York to an ocean of rubble. And some spots. The spot I am perched on for example, the wreckage piles up into what looks like natural valleys. Save for the fact these consist of twisted I beams, pulverized concrete. And bodies. Millions of them.

It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, I can only say the road to the hell I am in was paved with nefarious ideas. Good intended or not, we are all most certainly in hell right now. And we will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I am just being perfectly honest with you.

My name is Lieutenant Jack Thomas Michael, J.T., assigned to Echelon III (E3) United States Forces (USF) Northern Command (NORTHCOM). As alluded to earlier, we are prepping for the opening artillery barrage for 6th NY. Not to sound cynical, but this one, like the last five, can go either way. But there is hope for optimism this time. Echelon III has done a Yeoman's job of rolling up the Opposing Forces (OPFOR) north flank. And USF Flotilla NYC has a tight blockade around almost all of the Former Manhattan Island (FMI) and has emplaced a very nice mine field where the encirclement could not be completed. So hopefully they can hold off the sea Dragons.

Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) has a nice surface to air missile (SAM) roof thrown up. And by now the aerial threat has been exhausted to drone strikes or swarms, the Dragons of the air, for which we have abundant man portable air defense (MANPADS) to mitigate.

Contrary to popular fantasy, it is the ground bound, wingless Dragons that rule the Valleys here. Or anywhere left worth fighting, and dying, for. To be certain there are different variants, wheeled or tread, multi-barrel or missile artillery, etc. But by far it is the land Dragons that achieve, execute, i should say, the highest kill ratios.

Please do not read into why we call the OPFOR Dragons. It is literally for lack of imagination. It is simply calling them by what was their source, the U-2 spy plane, in military slang called the Dragon Lady. Conceived as a high altitude spy plane, surveillance is more the operative word, the Dragon Lady spy and surveillance system spawned sea and ground variations. Foreseeing the utility of evolving the passive intelligence role into an active one, all the Dragon Lady variants became armed as appropriate for their new roles. Air, land, and sea warfare. And as the technology evolved, manned, partially manned, unmanned, hybrid, and remote control.

These very efficient surveillance and death machines quickly became embedded into the doctrine and order of battle of all the Nations military forces. Friend, foe, and neutral alike. Speaking solely for USF, the need for a seperate combatant command was realized and thus formed. The Assisted Decision Solution (ADS), we call them the After Dark Syndicate, was formed to unify all the Dragon Lady spawn to unify command and control. I guess this is the good idea, nefarious intentions part.

Born from the informal intelligence sharing syndicate between the United States and the United Kingdom before the US formally entered WW2 evolved the formal intelligence sharing name Five Eyes (FVEY). Composed of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Five part of Five eyes. This grew into a global syndicate capable of intercepting any communication over any frequency anywhere in the world. This was achieved by a network of giant antenna arrays placed strategically around the world to sweep up any and all frequency message traffic and exploit it as necessary.

Naturally as communications tech leaped exponentially, so did the appetite to consume and exploit it. So inevitably every telephonic, cellular, internet, text, any form of voice or text communication basically, became fair prey. Stalked by a ravenous apex predator with five eyes. Which also grew, formally and informally, to ten, and then fifteen eyes. At last confirmed count.

For decades these predators feasted in abundance. Shamelessly. Whole subterranean honeycombs were blasted out of granite mountains, drilled into vast plains, and hid in plain sight in stout telephone exchange buildings to house the legions of men and machines intercepting, analyzing, collating, and exploiting the many terabytes of intercepts.

The exploiting part is where clandestine collection became operational exploitation. And where any pretense of being bashful about having the goods on anybody, anywhere was dropped with extreme prejudice. For sure the game always charged the price of admission as blackmail, set ups, frame jobs, and extortions of all breeds. But there was always time and place, and a sense of proportion, considered. Until everybody everywhere got too much of a good thing. Which all the eyes saw, and spread throughout their peoples. To exploit other peoples. In abundance. Sans proportion.

Outrageous behaviors usually done in the dark of night sort of started to be done without compunction in the light of day. By amateurs drunk by power and hubris. To powerful people with no sense of humor about being toyed with by amateurs. Hubris or not. So this is the genesis of the current troubles we face. The aforementioned powerful people had powerful friends. Who had friends with powerful weapons. Who were professionals instead of amateurs. And so bodies began being found in inconvenient places with inconvenient circumstances world wide. This later became referred to as the culling.

Press conferences eventually became inadequate to sort of tidy up the extreme untidiness going on. And it was when word got around the campfire that intrepid investigative journalists, unattributed sources, and secret grand juries began trying to fill this void is when panic started. Someone fucked up. Sometimes that is all you really need to start a shit show. And it started to rain shit in capital cities around the globe.

Fast tracked into production by national industrial conglomerates desperate to, at the same time, be prepared to reap massive contacts in panic orders, or make their own personal semi automated forces, the leap from passive surveillance to both hybrid surveillance and hunter/ killer was as exponential as excessive.

Now from that sequence of events from the brief synopsis I just gave from then to now is fast, insane, and really fucking weird. City states with DragonFly death drones swarming through their cavernous metropolis valleys eviscerating the eponymous enemies of the state. DragonFish submersible wolf packs sending everything from pontoon boats, warships and passenger ferries to Davy Jones locker.

The inter-continental, internetworked surveillance system became known worldwide as the GORGON STARE. Because it had so many sets of eyes. And would turn you to stone ( charcoal) ( or red moist clay) if ADS control or any of its ever changing allies decided to.

Anyway, as stated before, my unit and I are forward observing areas to best direct the monstrous opening barrage to prepare for 6th NY. For five weeks straight almost three thousand train cars have unloaded untold amounts of high explosive shells for our 900 tube artillery Echelon artillery forces. Win, loose, or draw. What little left of this island will be lowered by ten feet after the barrage.

I just received a data burst (DATBURST) to reconnoiter a suspected OPFOR position we had just left. We have been assured that the OPFOR has no ability to spoof our encrypted communication network so I am sure it's just an abundance of caution that we are being sent back to our prior hide sight. I confirmed via my datapad that there was still no sign of enemy activity. I was not getting a good data send response, so I decided to move to a higher spot. And then i………..

END GORGON STARE H/K PROFILE FOR ECHELON III NEW YORK CITY

SPOOF DATBURST EFFECTIVE. KILL RATIO 97%

HUNTER/ KILLER PROFILE INITIATED FOR MORE ECHELON III PERSONAL

LOCATING

LOCATING

LOCATING

FOUND….CLASSIFIED…CONTINUE ECHELON III PACIFICATION. ADS CONTROL OUT