OOC: Yes, this plays hell with fluid time. And none of the military slang is even close to accurate. Just… shhh.Prologue
High above the jungles of Montaña Verde, a lone condor coasted on the thermals blowing in from the Verdean Ocean. It was a majestic creature: 10 foot wingspan of dark plumage, fringed with long, silvery fingerlike flight feathers; puffy white collar like a judge; and a killing beak of savage beauty. A flash of movement below drew the attention of its keen eyes and without a single flap of its wings, simply a
lean against the currents it was surfing, it tumbled into a dive. Only to pull up at the sight, not of prey, but of humans. Ragged little band, clad in little more than rags and toting aloft a red banner. Two of them lugging large, heavy metal tubes. They were heading up the hilltop at a slow pace, pausing every moments to argue and exchange carrying duties. Bored, the condor flicked its wingtips and curled away, onwards for prey. Behind it, the humans marched on determinedly. Much further away, invisible even to the condor’s hunter’s gaze, something else was flying through the sky.
Jason Þórhallursson could hardly claim that having to watch the Super Cup from home was a break from tradition. This was only the second year the New Græntfjaller Super Cup was even being held. It pitted his old club, Gunzlach, in the shadow of whose stadium he had literally grown up, with their most hated rivals, last season’s league champions, Steinaux, the dreaded Sausages from across the Odinsfluss river on the other side of North Háttmark. He’d watched last year’s match – a brilliant high-scoring thriller won by Gunzlach – from a packed pub in Banija, where he plied his trade (at the time for Busembe Timberwolves; after much griping about a poor sophomore season, he’d negotiated a $15mn krónor transfer to Herzegovina City) surrounded by cheering Græntfjallers as well as Banijans converted to the cause, for the night at least.
This one he was watching from Háttmark. But not, as had been planned, as a guest of honor in the Grand National Arena as Gunzlach fought, on home soil this time, to defend their pre-season trophy. Instead, he was sitting on the floor of his apartment, lit only by the blue flicker of the television screen, cradling a glass of wodka in the lap of his sweatpants. The VIP seat he’d been gifted as the club’s most beloved product, even if he no longer played for them, had no doubt been given away. The camera panned over the box of dignitaries and he saw some oily executive from Vínland Mótorvirkar exchanging pleasantries with a woman whom he did not need the caption that appeared on screen to identify: ‘Kaija Michaelsdóttir, Foreign Minister’. He poured his wodka down the grimace set across his features.
According to the name on her tag, the young woman piloting the G-O64 FuryFox ‘Aurora’, was called ‘Lt. Þorbergsdóttir’. It was a fairly common name; she probably wasn’t even the only ‘Lt. Þorbergsdóttir’ in the Græntfjaller Navy. She, was, however, most certainly the only ‘Princess Jessika’. Third in line to the Græntfjaller throne behind her older sister, Crown Princess Kassandra, and Kassandra’s son, Aaron, Jessika had always been insistent that her military career was not for show. She did not wish to get stuck on ceremonial duties, cutting ribbons or trotting about on horseback while the man and women she’d trained with fought, bled and died overseas for the defense of the realm, the promotion of democracy and liberty, and the profits of oil guzzling corporations. Not, necessarily, in that order.
Yet for all her demands for ‘real’ service, she had come to accept that the life of a serving military officer was one replete with tedium. She was stationed with the Second Fleet off the coast of Montaña Verde. A country all Græntfjaller military assets had been withdrawn from (at least officially, but what’s a paramilitary death squad or three between friends?). She was flying an ‘electronic warfare reconnaissance flight’, a fancy term for buzzing the rainforest in the hopes of spotting a PAL camp purported to be a transshipment hub for illegal weapons. There were all sorts of gory rumors circulating among the intelligence officers, which just went to prove that ‘military intelligence’ was a contradiction in terms.
As if some scruffy little rebels had got their hands on MANPADS; probably just some rusty rifles an overexcited informant had misidentified in the hopes of a few pesos.
“
Aurora One to
Hróðvitnir, negative visual. There’s nothing down there,” she sighed into her comms link.
“
Hróðvitnir to
Aurora One, one more pass over the valley, then return.”
“Roger
Hróðvitnir,
Aurora One out.”
She closed the comms channel and made to sweep the valley once more. Suddenly, excitement! It was tacos in the officers’ mess today, she remembered.
“You can’t blame them.” Seated next to Jason, Amanda Guttisdóttir was speaking through a mouthful of popcorn. She was a strict neutral, having never played for either the Gunners or the Sausages; she was just here to support her beleaguered friend before she flew back to Eura to resume her career with Holdenberg City. “They did you a favor, really. If you’d turned up, they’d probably have lynched you.” Her interpretation of a ‘support’ role seemed to involve a lot of very blunt home truths, Jason had noticed, though he couldn’t say he thought she was actually wrong. He was perhaps the most hated man in Græntfjall right now, after testing positive for drugs – and not even performance enhancing substances, just some club drugs he’d stupidly taken on a night out with… one of his ladyfriends – just before Græntfjall played in a WCC tournament on home soil for the first time, co-hosting the Cup of Harmony with Krytenia. They’d duly been smashed 4–0 by Barunia. On twii.tur, he’d seen video clips of people burning literal effigies.
“For abandoning me for one mistake? I gave everything to that club…”
“Until someone paid you millions to fuck off.”
“Look who’s talking.”
She shrugged and shovelled another handful of popcorn into her mouth. (Don’t worry, Holdenberg conditioning coaches, it was low-fat, unsalted, and had the look, taste, and nutritional value of packing peanuts.)
On the hilltop, sweat was pouring off Juan Alvarado Barrueco’s forehead; his shirt was soaked through enough to make his skinny physique all the more apparent beneath the thin rags. María Alejandra Cadaval Arboleda smiled at the young man – little more than a boy. “Take some water,” she encouraged. She knew they all held out from drinking from the canteens for as long as possible, competing to impress her. She wished they’d know that collapsing from dehydration wasn’t the way to her heart. Reluctantly, the boy swished a meagre mouthful of rainwater into his mouth from the dented canteen at his hip.
Suddenly, a bass rumble of thunder cracked across the valley. Or was it thunder? Alert ears perked up, eyes scanned the horizon. Santino Muñoz Villa clapped his hands; Juan dropped his canteen. The water leaked slowly out in the verdant moss underfoot as he concentrated on his task. Which, as it involved loading a shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile launcher with its deadly load, was an understandable bit of prioritization. María Alejandra silently scooped up the canteen and screwed the top shut, then moved next to Juan. “Calm,” she whispered. “Slow. The missile is fast enough for both of us.”
He gave her a helpless little puppy dog look, but another round of encouragement from Santino, cracking orders out amid volleys of shocking profanity, seemed to concentrate his mind rather better than did María Alejandra’s softly spoken words. He hauled the weapon up and nearly overbalanced; she had visions of his little ragdoll body bouncing down the hill. Fortunately, he didn’t fall, wincing as the heavy metal dug into his slender shoulder. He looked like he should be studying for math class, not aiming heavy weaponry. Perhaps, if the capitalists had not burned down his school and garrotted his teacher for the great crime of having a picture of President Santángel in the classroom, he still would be leafing through a textbook. María Alejandra’s countenance darkened. Juan was a sweet boy, but there was too much at stake at here to burn time on wasted sympathies.
Vicente Andrade Guillén was toting the other launcher, and emitted a chatter of excitement. From the opposite end of the valley, emerging from a bank of clouds pouring down like spilled milk from the mountains, a black figure. Getting louder, getting bigger, getting closer. Juan was shaking like a leaf; if he weren’t so dehydrated, he probably would have pissed himself. While Santino and Vicente aimed their weapon, María Alejandra moved in behind Juan, her fingers gently touching his flanks. She could feel his ribs, like the ridges on a güiro. She felt him stand a little straighter, too. A little stiller. She did not speak – she did not say anything. She did not need to. There was only one thing to do now.
“One little mistake…”
“
Kind of bigger than little, though. It’s not ‘whoops I scored an own goal’, ‘whoops I got a red card’. It’s ‘whoops I got caught taking illegal drugs’.”
“They’re talking about decriminalizing them now.”
Amanda frowned. She hadn’t seen that announcement in the papers. Nor had she ever noticed Jason take much interest in politics. When she’d come over she’d asked him about what he thought about the decision to pull troops out of Montaña Verde and all he’d said was he thought Dolfo was a great signing for Gunzlach. The lanky Verdean goalkeeper was warming up on the pitch now, all arms and legs. He was an imposing physical specimen to see guarding a goal, to be sure, though she thought he was a bit young. If it were her, she’d test him early with a long-range strike, and be sure to watch for him drifting off his lines. There was a vulnerability there…
“
Aurora One to Hróðvitnir! Aurora One to Hróðvitnir! Mayday, mayday!”
So many alarms and sirens were going off, bathing the cockpit in a hellish red light. The ‘left engine failure’ indicator was so shrill and shrieking, Jessika thought it must have been installed inside her eyeballs. The controls were jumping in her hands like she was trying to keep tight the reins of a bucking steed. Thick smoke billowed across her vision and there was an ominous howling keen that told her some part of the cockpit had been ripped open.
“
Hróðvitnir to
Aurora One, condition report!”
“
Aurora One to
Hróðvitnir. Left engine is gone. I think there’s damage to the fuselage.” Her eyes settled on a strip of blinking lights. The top light blinked – off. Then the next. “Leaking fuel.”
“
Hróðvitnir to
Aurora One, can you make it back on one engine?”
“
Aurora One to
Hróðvitnir. Affirmative. Over.”
Her back of the envelope math told her she’d be struggling for fuel by the time she was out over the ocean, but just getting there was the priority; she could worry about ditching over the ocean once she was actually over the ocean. She decided to cut speed and head to a lower altitude to conserve fuel. It was a good plan.
Amanda hadn’t been sure Jason even wanted Gunzlach to win, so bitter was he about their treatment of him. His howl of delight when a full-stretch Dolfo blocked Hrærekur Jvarsson’s stinging penalty shot soon disabused her of that notion, though. She wasn’t even supporting Gunzlach herself, but his enthusiasm was infective, grabbing her and spinning her in a whirlwind of cheap popcorn. That Hrærekur was their national teammate – their former captain, no less – mattered not a jot in this moment. He was a Steinaux man, and they were, apparently, all in for Gunzlach, and nothing else registered.
He’d kicked over his wodka and hurried to the freezer to fetch a refill as Steinaux took the corner and Dolfo soared out to pluck the ball from the air. The young Verdean unleashed a huge throw up towards Momoko Wakabayashi, whose gorgeous first touch allowed the fast-break to develop quicker than Hjörleifur Reynarsson and Jasmine Gardener could hurry back. The Gunners had been under the hammer in the first half, but since the young Savigliane forward Rinaldi had come on, there’d been a real increase in intensity. Wakabayashi found Rinaldi with a long pass. Jaida Bissette surging up the left flank took over. From defending the penalty Liam Hughes’s clumsy foul had given away, Gunzlach were now pouring shirts into the Steinaux box. The cross… Tommy Diaz leaping high…
Juan held his breath so long María Alejandra was about to check he hadn’t passed out, knees locked. Then a bony finger squeezed the trigger. She was sent sprawling to the mossy hilltop and he nearly dropped the heavy weapon on her. The rocket soared away.
It had been a good plan. Drop speed, drop altitude, just head back for the Fleet. And it was a good plan for almost four more seconds before Juan’s SAM slammed into the right wing of the jet.
“Noooooooooooooooooooooo!”
“Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss!”
The header crashed into the net even as Diaz tumbled to the ground. Jason and Amanda were literally jumping for joy. On the screen, Wakabayashi slid on her knees towards Diaz. Crowd shots of Gunners fans in dark red. Sobbing white-clad Sausages brought jeers. In the box, Kaija embracing the businessman VIP. Jason, who’d been holding Amanda in a crushing hug, dropped her unceremoniously.
There were no cheers or celebrations. They’d seen the plane go down in a ball of fire. But that didn’t mean the mission was complete. Now they had to head down and find the wreck. Recover what they could. And if the pilot was still alive…
Santino drew a huge knife from his belt. Four deep grooves were carved into the hilt. He pointed it flat, catching the early evening sun, down towards a plume of dark smoke puncturing the rainforest canopy.
“I’m just saying, right now your name is mud.”
The game had, in truth, petered out slightly disappointingly. Not that Jason and Amanda cared. They greeted the full-time whistle with applause, then rushed out onto the balcony to whoop into the night air as the Gunzlach sky exploded with fireworks and rifle bursts, with cheers and songs, with an entire neighborhood celebrating – not the meaningless trophy. But just putting one past their rivals.
“It’ll blow over. I just need to get back in the team, score a few goals. Do some charity stuff, too, maybe, you know, eat a little shit.”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” Right on cue, some revellers on the next balcony recognized him, and in response to his wave, yelled out: “Fuck you!” Boos echoed down the street.
A cowed Jason retreated back into his apartment, rubbing his neck. A man used to being loved by everyone (Steinaux fans excepted, though even they made an exception when he was in blue-and-white) was having a hard time adjusted to being hated by everyone (Steinaux fans gleefully to the fore, but Gunzlach fans not far behind).
“You don’t think there’s anything I can do?”
“Like what?” asked Amanda sceptically. “It’d have to be pretty big. What are you going to do?” She chuckled, and added a sarcastic joke: “Rescue a princess or something?”
“Assess the crash site but do not engage any hostiles. Rules of engagement apply. Any questions about the mission, Lieutenant?”
“Just one, Captain.” Lieutenant Ásbergur Sveinbjörnsson hesitated, glancing around the flight deck. “Is… is someone going to explain what the fuck any of this has to do with club football?”
Captain Talía Rósmundsdóttir smirked as she flipped down her aviator sunglasses and stepped back to allow the cockpit hood to descend over Lt. Sveinbjörnsson.
“Strap in, son…”
New Græntfjall Super Cup
Gunzlach 1–0 Steinaux
Gunzlach defended their pre-season super cup trophy through Tommy Diaz, whose 60th minute header won the day after his compatriot, Liam Hughes, had moments earlier given up a penalty. New Verdean signing Dolfo, who saved the penalty, was named man of the match.Week 1
Maigburg 0–0 Altendalur
Steinaux 1–0 Folte
GT Molding 5–0 Estdal
Fliserboding 2–0 Gunzlach
Hagejoki 3–2 Hofvinger
Korsbach 1–0 Mokofen
GT Molding laid down an early marker in the first game at their shiny new stadium, crushing Estdal. Alicia Gainsbourg got her Golden Boot hunt up and running with an early goal, her compatriot Michael Arciniega netted a brace, and the BFGs got in on the action with goals for both Fredrik Thorleifsson and Mathias Kristersson. Hagejoki, meanwhile, celebrated their return to top flight football by winning the match of the week. Substitute Axel Vidarsson headed home the winner after Sophie Asvardssdóttir and Kristo Jostsson scored in the first half; Lyngar Rögnvaldursson and Clotho Sulaka scored for the Northern Wolves, who also had five players booked. The biggest upset was the Locusts beating the Gunners, the latter fresh from their Super Cup heroics. Maybe the step down to routine league football in a stadium smelling of old cabbages was too much for them, as they looked far below title contender strength. Sara Aðalsteinnsdóttir and Mũthũngũ Watene netted the goals for Fliserboding. Steinaux, meanwhile, recovered with a fairly routine win (the goal from the slightly less routine Paan Kleveir, the only non-human player in the league). Mokofen lost their first ever GPL game, away at the Sabres, courtesy a crushing header from Tiog midfielder Noruose Nerauro. Maigburg tried to shrug off the racism issues of last season and the loss of their best players; holding Altendalur to a goalless draw was an impressive upset, but failed to answer where the goals will come from with Eiríka gone.