2013.04.26 - Cheonhado

Cheonhado Borderlands, East Asia

Over the past few months, East Asia and indeed the world has been on edge due to the escalating tensions between West and East Cheonhado.

In the 1970s, the nations were split after the United States and China worked together to broker a peace deal between warring factions from the more civilized sections of the nation and the rural, eastern mountain region. While the western side was ruled by democracy, the East was taken over by a military leader known as Won Byung-Hun.

Won ruled from the time of the fracture until last year, when he was replaced in death by his chosen successor, the young Yu Min-Sik. While Won was known for his steady hand, Yu has been frantic to keep power by making a presentation of strength in order to strengthen his place in the East Cheohondan power structure. Over the past month, the rhetoric of aggression between East and West has grown to a fever pitch. Just last week, Yu ordered missile testing on an island in the Pacific-the island was claimed by both East and West, and the latter had a medical research site. While the site was not near the site of the missile blasts, both factions mobilized their forces and a standoff along the border has ensued.

To attempt to broker a deal, Superman has been requested by both parties to intervene and help keep the peace while diplomats desperately try and prevent war.

By the time he lands, tanks and infantry are lined up on both sides of the countryside. To the east, the tall mountains hide much of the east from immediate view while the large plains and valleys of the west lead off towards the megacities of the west.

Superman checks in with his UN contact via a microphone headset as soon as he lands and begins to take stock of the situation. So far, no one has made a hostile move, but the situation is certainly tense. Using his vision powers, he can see the fear of the soldiers on either side.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is using the best technology they have, but it's honestly not all that great. They attempt to be the eyes and ears for the Man of Steel, but their technology is old and 'hand-me-down' from sympathetic governments.

Ensconced within her technological lair in the Clocktower, Barbara Gordon sorts through a plethora of conflicting reports. It's a twitter soundbite -- of all things! -- however, that alerts her to the fact Superman has just landed in the midst of the Asian standoff. She sits up in her chair a little more alertly and her fingers start flying over her keyboard with deft skill. Within seconds, she's called up the UN feed and tapped in to a dozen other satellites either currently in position to get a sense of the situation on the ground or in position to do so within the next several minutes. That, in addition to several local media feeds, radio comchatter, and camera nets gives her a wide array of data to chose from. Add to that her working knowledge of the major Chinese dialects, not to mention cutting edge translation software, and the data pattern she starts tracking can only be termed prodigious.

She picks up her headset and jams it on her head between keystrokes. Thumbing a com-frequency that will doubtlessly break into the UN transmission, the androgynous, digital voice of her online persona, Oracle, breaks into the conversation between Supes and his UN contact -- audible to both.

"Greetings, gents," she says lightly. "My name is Oracle. You may not know me, Mr. Dohme, but I wager Superman's heard of me. Your feed is a little lacking, sir. If you truly want up-to-the-nanosecond information on just what's happening there, you're going to need my help."

"Who is this?! How dare you-" Dohme's sharp words are cut off by Superman's more measured and almost soft tone. "The Oracle. You're right, I've heard about you. The rumors say you hack into difficult situations. The rumors also say you're here to help."

"Superman, this-" Dohme starts in again in an incredulous manner. "I think we could use all the help we can get, Mr. Dohme. I appreciate your desire for secrecy, but beggars can't be choosers."

It is in the middle of this interplay that the first salvo is fired. A nervous East Cheonhadan tank gunner thought he saw something, but it was likely due to nerves and tension. The mortar fires through the air faster than the eye can see, and Superman does not wait to have a chat about things. The time for action is now, and he hurtles through the air, breaking the sound barrier, with one arm outstretched, as he aims for the mortar.

At about the same time, the Oracle will notice something peculiar and something the United Nations is either unprepared to see or unwilling to admit. The areas around the large missile silos in the East have begun to mobilize. They lie deep underground and the United Nations simply do not have the ability to see it. But a young woman who sits in a wheelchair in Gotham certainly does.

Meanwhile, the battlefield starts to erupt in gunfire as the tension has turned to outburst. Though Superman is able to intercept the first mortar, he can't get to everything everywhere, can he?

Oracle's voice remains measured and calm, as always, as she surveys the mad scramble -- not to mention the tiny red streak that is the Man of Steel -- on the ground along the disputed border. "Yes, Superman, I'm here to help. And you need to know: The Eastern silos are spinning up. The military forces at those locations have also begun to mobilize. I believe I can run interference with the missiles, but there's little I can immediately do about the ground forces." Though, given enough time, she can likely disrupt communications. It's more important, though, that she starts shutting down those silo command programs. The trigger men can't fire a system they can't access.

Barbara fires up terminal program and fires off a worm virus to start tunnelling her way in. Baring anything too unforseen, she should be able to get past whatever cyber defenses they have in fairly short order.

Of course, Asia has some of the best hackers in the world. It's possible one of them might be good enough to give her a run for her money. She's hoping not, however.

Oracle's cyber-attack on East Cheonhado is extremely effective. Not only does it disrupt communication between the military and the politicians, it buys precious time. Out of the silos, all 17 immediately stop their deployment. At first.

The Lieutenant Colonel stationed at the 17th silo takes the shutdown of the communication as a dire sign. From their distance, they cannot tell what is happening to their capitol, their leaders, and their people. The leader orders all connections with their networks shut down, and proceeds to begin to send his men to recalibrate the missile and prepare for a manual launch sequence. It is around this time that Oracle will notice, through visual scanning, that the warhead on this missile is not the normal run of the mill warhead.

It seems that the rumors of East Cheonhandan nuclear capabilities were treacherously true.

---

On the field of battle, Superman is zipping throughout the countryside trying to intercept as many mortars and bullets as possible. Some are still getting through. As fast as he is, he simply cannot stop it all. He cannot be in two places at one time.

The tanks are now mobilized and lead the line as the infantry begins to charge. This situation is going from bad to worse right quick.

Oracle's fingers continue to fly over her keyboard, occasionally switching to a second or third console. "Be advised," she says across the UN channel, "Missile silos have been shut down. However, East Cheonhado silo 17 is still operational. I have visual confirmation of a nuclear warhead. I repeat, East Cheonhado silo 17 nuclear and spooling up manually. I can't shut it down from here. Superman, if anyone's going to stop that nuke, it's going to have to be you."

In the meantime, she starts looking at ways to hack into those advancing tanks on both sides. Maybe she can BSG them and shut them down like the Cylons did the Colonial Navy -- i.e. remotely. That'll be a trick, though. And it'll require commandeering their communications channels rather than just interrupting them.

A small smile touches her lips. That could be very useful, actually. She sets her capture programs loose and calls up tech schematics for the tanks from the Chinese military database -- from whence the armoured vehicles first came.

Oracle gets root within the communication system. Because of the earlier disruption, the military leaders in the capitol are using digital messages to communicate. Though the specific instructions are in a language she does not know, the code of the system is something she is extremely familiar with.

Superman's eyes go wide as Oracle's message gets to him. Just as it does, the silo fires alive when the rockets fire, and the large missile lifts off abruptly from its home and takes flight in the air!

As she traces the system code, Oracle smiles. A few keystrokes gain her access to the core programming and she starts rewriting quickly, looping digital orders such that they bounce back from whence they originate, rather than reaching their destination. That should buy her a few moments to put their language through a decrypter and pass it through the translation matrix. The sooner she can start reading it, the sooner she can start passing misdirection.

In the meantime, she checks the progress of her worm. "Bingo," she murmurs softly to herself, off com. The digital tunnel is wide open. A quick keystroke sends a kill order to the battlefield technology, attacking the simplest of electrical subroutines. So many vehicles, these days, operate via computer -- even though they're manned. Just look at the cars on the roadways, today. Military vehicles are no different. In fact, many of them have been computerized for much longer. Their defensive systems are fairly robust... but the easiest way to shut them down is simply to shut off the power. So, that's what Oracle aims to do -- shut off the power.

She can't do much about the infantry, of course, other than scramble their coms.

Almost simultaneously, the tanks of the East all refrain from working and come to an abrupt stop. Inside, commanders are slamming on their controls with closed fists among gritted teeth. The tight quarters are filled with yelling and screaming as the battle the world has feared for 40 years has gone decisively against the East. The tanks from the West continue on, of course, and within moments the tide of the battle swings in the direction of the democratic nation. Large blasts along the battlefield erupt like mini-volcanoes, spraying dirt and blood in every direction.

Superman would likely be there to prevent the Western tanks, but as Oracle noted earlier, he has bigger fish to fry. A quick mental calculation shows that the missile is headed to the commercial center and most populous area of the west. The intent is to kill as many as possible. The jet stream of the missle clears the battlefield and many of the soldiers look up, all equally horrified.

A red streak tails the missile as Superman grows closer and closer. Just to the west of the battlefield, he finally reaches his hands on the metal casing of the nuclear device and leans backwards as he tries desperately to overmatch the powerful jet engines.

The force is too fierce, unfortunately, and metal scraps tear away from the ICBM leaving Superman with hands full of expensive trash, but no closer to preventing massive amounts of death.

Besides, Oracle herself can stop the Western tanks the same way she did the Eastern. And, frankly, if it prevents a bloodbath, she'll do it. But, still, she can't prevent the infantry from doing what infantry do. "Mr. Dohme," she says calmly into her mic, "If you have any pull, whatsoever, with the Western Cheonhado forces, you might want to intervene. I have disabled the Eastern tanks and I can disable the Western, as well, if it will prevent unnecessary bloodshed."

It's really too bad there aren't any Star Wars style satellites around -- you know, the ones with ray guns Oracle could hack into and use to incinerate the warhead before it blows half the tiny island to hell and back. Then again, a tractor beam would work, too. Or perhaps some other sort of EM pulse to knock out its systems. She scans her inventory of what she knows is up there to see if there's anything at all that might work. Maybe the Lexcorp satellites have something she overlooked.

Even as her eyes scan the lists, however, her fingers are typing out a different message -- sending it over tapped com lines to both forces. "Cease fire. General order. Cease fire. Pull back. General order. Repeat." And she lets that cycle, tagging it with the appropriate high level identification codes each force expects to see.

At the battlefield, Oracle's last trick seems to work best. Dohme explains that if he had any pull, none of this would have ever happened, and it's a desperate response by a desperate man in a desperate situation.

But as she sends the cease fire commands, screaming erupts on the battlefield. The tanks stop dead in their tracks, and a few moments later, so does the gunfire. Both sides look confused, but eventually everyone stops shooting. Gradually their attention turns upward.

The pieces of metal fling away from and angered Superman, like empty pizza boxes catching in the wind. With angry eyes he takes to the air once again, pushing himself to his limits. This time he approaches directly from the bottom.

His arms splay as wide as possible as he embraces the missile in a bear hug. No one hears his guttural scream as he uses all of his might to move the rocket in a new direction, but everyone sees the smoke trail unexpectedly change directions and head straight upwards.

Oracle doesn't need to hear the primal scream to know it happened. She can see it large as life on her main monitor, thanks to eyes-in-the-sky. Dohme, she decides, is about as useful as a three-dollar bill, however. She lets out a silent sigh of relief as reports of the cease fire start coming in. Even so, the confusion is still dangerous. The pullback is haphazard at best.

Nevertheless, she watches the missile trajectory change, and tracks its likely course. Satisfied that it will very likely end up careening off into space, she whispers a silent prayer of thanks to whatever force it was that was able to send someone like the Kryptonian along to lend a hand on the big blue marble.

Oracle's assumption is right. Superman breaks out of the Earth's atmosphere. From this distance, the missile's internal mapping system eventually gives up, out of range and discombobulated, on trying to right itself, making it far easier to guide.

Superman makes a face as he reaches back and gathers his energy. Then, with a tight and intense shift of his muscles, he hurtles the ICBM out into space. Within a split second, it disappears from Oracle's viewpoint and the immediate danger is over.

Down on the ground, the battle seems to be finished. Though most of the soldiers are in retreat, there are two platoons, one from each side, who have taken the rare opportunity to talk with someone from the other side of the border. Since the 1970s crossing over the border and communication between the two sides has been nil.

It starts with a few utterances that cannot be heard or deciphered from Oracle's means, but it seems to be amiable. The soldiers begin talking, and eventually one of them pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his uniform and offers it to the other. Soon, the soldiers are nodding, talking, and smoking. About what is anyone's guess.

As the ICBM disappears from scope, Oracle refocuses her attention on the confused battlefield. Calling up a zoom of where those two platoons meet, she works swiftly to tap the local comlines to see if there's any chance of using a radio as a passive transmitter, just to catch a little hint of what the exchange is. Even if she does succeed in the hack, however, she doesn't speak Cheonhadon. It's enough, however, to hear the tentative laughter.

"Huhn," she muses to herself, letting a bit of smile settle on her lips. "Maybe there's hope, yet." Providing, of course, the officers for each side don't do something stupid.

Turning her attention back to the UN channel, however, she announces, "Missile trajectory confirmed as out-of-system. Congratulations, Superman. Looks like we won, this round. I still maintain control of the battlefield technology and will relinquish control upon confirmation of UN command of the area. If there's anything else I can do for you, don't hesitate to call."

"Well that's the real trick, Oracle," Superman says. His voice tells her that he's smiling. "No one really knows where or how to contact you." After a brief pause, Superman adds, "Thank you for your help. This would have ended very, very badly without your help."

As the battle is now breaking up, both sides make contact with the United Nations in an effort to call for an immediate cease fire. The revelation that the East has nukes makes the West very interested to talk. The embarrassment about the unsanctioned launch makes the East extremely willing to talk to the West.

In the end, being this close to annihilation has a profound effect on both sides and their desire to cooperate. Only time will tell, but it seems that while this could have been a very much, much worse. The silver lining is that it has probably convinced both sides to consider a more conciliatory approach.

And thank God for that. The last thing this poor, beleaguered world needs is a nuclear war. That it's been averted tells Barbara she's had a good day. Thus, it's with definite good humour that she sends her final message.

"Superman," the androgynous digital voice over the com replies with what sounds like a hint of amusement and mild, benign reproach. "The whole world is online and I am the Oracle. I'll get your message, rest assured."