GWOT VI - Doom
Feb. 15th, 2020 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Doom
"Lives don't count in integers. They count in infinities." - Lois McMaster Bujold
I had one helicopter.
One.
And I'm not saying, even now, how it got to Iowa except that we didn't fold the rotors and put it on an American cargo aircraft.
It was very busy. Flying scout troops out, servicing the most urgent casevac requests (combatant <> medevac, therefore not protected by laws of war), long range video recon that tended to result in mortar attacks one to two days later, sling hauling around ammo and other priceless stuff.
In the Falkland Islands war, later analysis determined that one heavy lift cargo helicopter, a Chinook, loaded over 40% of the UK relief force's cargo from ship to shore. Some of that stuff could not have been moved in any other way, too. They had brought more choppers, but the ship they'd been on was missiled and burned.
I had only brought the one medium helicopter and I was abusing it … and her crew … like it was a cargo chopper. And I had only three mechanics, and was running out of spare parts. By any reasonable maintenance standard, I should have deadlined it yesterday.
I hadn't.
I wouldn't.
###
*HOOT* *HOOT* *HOOT*
"Fire and explosion, all personnel turn to. Report to fire and rescue stations! Turn to! Turn to!
###
Pilot. Co pilot. Crew chief. One of three mechanics, riding along to work on a stubborn hydraulic leak.
It hadn't been the hydraulics. It had been a turbine blade, a survivor mechanic said.
The helicopter had been one hundred fifty feet up with a cargo net full of mortar ammo just off the ground on a one hundred and fifty foot cable.
Maybe the pilot could have landed.
She chose to hit the emergency cargo release explosive bolt and bank hard port. For the safety of the people on the ground.
That meant the rotor blades hitting the ground, snapping off and flying out on the prairie instead of into the open air ammo dump.
It had also meant no chance of a landing anyone could walk away from.
###
They had the chopper cabin put out with hand extinguishers in less than a minute.
It didn't matter.
###
And that's the true story of how I killed four California aviators.
Because I needed that chopper's capabilities _now_, before the Xtians could work out an air defense plan or figure out where all these problems for them were coming from.
My poor man's teleporter.
I opened my laptop, selected four of the six letters to families that I'd already written, added date and time and a couple details.
Clicked SEND.
In the three days before they augured in, casevac alone had been fourteen missions saving thirty five souls, three of them injured California scout soldiers.
That Chinook I mentioned, the one from the Falklands in '82.
It had augured in too. Recovered, repaired. But flown beyond her limits.
And for the same basic reason.
Now I had zero helicopters.
Had the crew known all this?
Of course.
"Lives don't count in integers. They count in infinities." - Lois McMaster Bujold
I had one helicopter.
One.
And I'm not saying, even now, how it got to Iowa except that we didn't fold the rotors and put it on an American cargo aircraft.
It was very busy. Flying scout troops out, servicing the most urgent casevac requests (combatant <> medevac, therefore not protected by laws of war), long range video recon that tended to result in mortar attacks one to two days later, sling hauling around ammo and other priceless stuff.
In the Falkland Islands war, later analysis determined that one heavy lift cargo helicopter, a Chinook, loaded over 40% of the UK relief force's cargo from ship to shore. Some of that stuff could not have been moved in any other way, too. They had brought more choppers, but the ship they'd been on was missiled and burned.
I had only brought the one medium helicopter and I was abusing it … and her crew … like it was a cargo chopper. And I had only three mechanics, and was running out of spare parts. By any reasonable maintenance standard, I should have deadlined it yesterday.
I hadn't.
I wouldn't.
###
*HOOT* *HOOT* *HOOT*
"Fire and explosion, all personnel turn to. Report to fire and rescue stations! Turn to! Turn to!
###
Pilot. Co pilot. Crew chief. One of three mechanics, riding along to work on a stubborn hydraulic leak.
It hadn't been the hydraulics. It had been a turbine blade, a survivor mechanic said.
The helicopter had been one hundred fifty feet up with a cargo net full of mortar ammo just off the ground on a one hundred and fifty foot cable.
Maybe the pilot could have landed.
She chose to hit the emergency cargo release explosive bolt and bank hard port. For the safety of the people on the ground.
That meant the rotor blades hitting the ground, snapping off and flying out on the prairie instead of into the open air ammo dump.
It had also meant no chance of a landing anyone could walk away from.
###
They had the chopper cabin put out with hand extinguishers in less than a minute.
It didn't matter.
###
And that's the true story of how I killed four California aviators.
Because I needed that chopper's capabilities _now_, before the Xtians could work out an air defense plan or figure out where all these problems for them were coming from.
My poor man's teleporter.
I opened my laptop, selected four of the six letters to families that I'd already written, added date and time and a couple details.
Clicked SEND.
In the three days before they augured in, casevac alone had been fourteen missions saving thirty five souls, three of them injured California scout soldiers.
That Chinook I mentioned, the one from the Falklands in '82.
It had augured in too. Recovered, repaired. But flown beyond her limits.
And for the same basic reason.
Now I had zero helicopters.
Had the crew known all this?
Of course.
