Countdown 200,199…

Countdown – Alfa

Genre: War/SF
Description: Find out what will happen? Will the war on the South be won? Will the Plusses triumph? Will the Alfa rise? It’s war: triumph and victory / tragedy and loss – Countdown: Alfa.

The story:
Twenty five. Twenty four. Twenty three. Twenty two. Twenty one… Missile launch stopped.
Missile launch aborted.
“We really have to get ourselves some new jobs. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“New Jobs? Heh? You think you’re the only one whose nerves are getting’ racked up.”
“It’s true, my nerves are starting to get… erm… restless.”
“Well, you can get a new HFBS(High Frequency Brain System) after we finish these couple of missions.”
“But when do you expect we will finish?”
“When the ECA(Eastern Continental Alliance) gives up!”
“Meaning… never?”
“No, meaning when either of the sides will stop this enormous fight…”
“I don’t think they’ll ever stop. Since the re-division of lands, it’s been tremendously difficult to even get either of the sides to sit at the discussion table.”
“I don’t get this. Why are they…”
“Right, WE don’t care. Let the others be preoccupied with that. We’re just the engineers.”
“Yeah, but how many other people in Gradkey know how to operate an MON(Missile Orbit Neutralizer)?”
“Shh, someone’s coming”.
Missile launch in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two… Missile launch aborted. Stand by.

It was the year YL01 (yellow-light-zero-one), which, in the old system would translate to 4001. Every hundred years would have the name of the first new color discovered in that time.
The war on the South was heading to stand still. With the Southerners quickly advancing and with the Northerners lagging behind on scientific discoveries, it was beginning to get dangerous. The war of the Northern and Southern hemispheres had begun in 2999, when the great Deportation moved all the pluses to the North and all the minuses to the South. The plusses were people that had most of their genetic code intact, and the minuses were people, but people modified. Some were a lot better than the normal humans were, but some had gotten out of control, and had formed groups and tribes, all having the same goals, to destroy the plusses.
It was in fact because of some experiments that went wrong in the labs of the South that the war had started. It was president Henderson 17 that had managed to create the Northern Community, an alliance of all the countries in the Northern hemisphere. The community had the goal of isolating the North from the South and thus protecting the Plusses.
Since then genetic technology had been banned in the North, the Plusses trying to build the Alfa – the mega ship that would transport all the people of the Plus to space. The Alfa was supposed to be ready by 3900, but with rampaging attacks from the South, and with a severe lack of uranum-2(the advanced form of uranium), the ships construction had not been finished until today.