The scorching sun beat down on the backs of the Ranger's necks as they slowly crawled up the rocky slope. For the past day and a half, Ruford B. Hughes and Josh Sawyer had been trekking up the face of one of Kafrica's steepest mountains. The clouds, thin and pitiful against the might of the afternoon sun, sapped their strength as they labored up the sheer slope. Their mission was to establish a radio link to the Task Force on its way to finish off the Drimp Regime once and for all - and the best place for a signal was atop the massive seven-thousand meter high K2. Once in enemy territory, the mountain was captured without a fight as Stahlsieg, Zokesian, Kafrican Security forces pushed south in the drive to Sopost. The fighting had been the easy part - the harsh mountains and hot summer were a far more formidable foe to these men. But they were hard, born in the deserts of Puge and Obtund, men who had spent their lives in the rocky hills of Kolus were the only ones who could make the climb.
Seven hours later, exhausted and with the light of the fading sun glowing from the west, the men finished the radio array. The quiet roar of jet engines could be heard to the south, as Zokesian bombers periodically flew south to unload their bombs on the enemy. The shockwave from the attacks could not be heard but felt, as kerbin itself felt as if it were shivering. The finely tuned radio set finally began picking up signals from the task force, and Hughes relayed the information via his AN/PRC 100 backpack radio to the Perigrine orbiting overhead silently. He couldnt see that either, but he knew it was there by the analog pulse it sent through the radio indicating its presence to him and him alone— churr....churr....churr....
Three hundred kilometers southwest, Task Force 17 was steaming towards Kafrica. Driving east-southeast, and giving the continent a wide berth, the force slipped slowly closer to its objective. Lord Admiral Reinhard Carliel Montaulk, 1st Lord of Hegland looked out off the bridge of his flagship, the Emperor Zeroth, listening to the telltale signals of the radio array finally getting through to his force. His bearing was now fixed and he had his course. As Commander of 1st Fleet, Task Force 17, Lord Admiral Montaulk had one simple mission - find and destroy Drimp. Bring glory to the navy and honor to Zokesia. The Navy had been doing well to this point, while the Air Force fell flat on its face with ineffective bomber strikes, malfunctioning SEAD missiles and the embarrassing loss of a South Star ELINT aircraft over neutral airspace - the Navy was firmly in the lead in the eternal struggle against its greatest foe. Now, he would personally lead 1st Fleet and the task force to glory in one final strike against the terrorists who had dared attack Chikushinal and its allies.
How out of touch was the Lord Admiral. The people of Zokesia, now watching the war escalate further, have been slowly growing tired of fighting another nations' war. Anti-war demonstrations had grown in numbers since the outset, and with the President refusing to acknowledge the rising sentiment that the Confederacy's money was better spent elsewhere, military budgets continued to rise.
The navy itself was also undergoing a tumultuous time, though one that was less obvious. This one the Lord Admiral knew all too well about. The task force arrayed around him was no less than five different ship types - built in five seperate decades and with varying degrees of age, wear, and newness about them. The two De Ward class Guided Missile Destroyers were new, untested - but were the sleek, elegant future of the Navy. High Command went all in on the DDG concept, ordering twenty-five to be built over as many years, but even up to last year the ships were not in a state that could be considered nearly ready for war. It would be their trial by fire, and ultimate test to operate so far from home for the first time. The other small ships in the fleet suffered from similar issues. Barker D. Young, the Mythic-Class Frigate was a Coast Guard asset, not used to operating with the task force, but again, High Command's vision of an integrated Coast Guard and Navy meant they were in the formation as if they were no different than the slate gray destroyers they were dwarfed by.
The other three ships could be nothing further from different; the dinosaurs of the navy, the Rommel and Kercia were ships from another era. Modernized, painted over, rebuilt - they were still nearly seventy years old, and their hull lines cried from rust as the old ships struggled to keep pace. They were in the twilight years, their paint a different shade from the rest, their crews another culture altogether from the white-glove navy of the future Admiral Montaulk was building. They were dirty, oily and sweaty grease monkeys who still took pride in their cannons, even though the missile age was here to stay. Like a royal guard, they stood in outdated equipment as sentries guarding the future from stepping foot on their beloved past. Even his own flagship, the Zeroth was an anachronism in itself - the newest, best and most sophisticated aircraft of Zokesia on the deck next to planes built for a war a half century ago. Half his ship was falling apart, and the other half had stopped working and was replaced a decade or more before he ever stepped foot on a Navy ship.
What was he to do? Only so much can change so fast, and the future was coming whether they liked it or not. Change was a good thing, but it couldn't come quick enough. So as the old Navy saying goes,
"hurry up and wait."
