Star Spangled Sky

Data Log 1522

We've done it! We've induced a weak propulsion field using the principles of the fundamental forces! This could be the tool that wins the war. God only knows we need it.

Data Log 1528

Terrible news. New York has been destroyed. The Germans got there before us. We hear that others of the flying battleships are appearing over our cities. I can only hope that Washington stands firm. All we need is a little more time.

Data Log 1535

Its over. They held up longer than I expected, even after Washington and Chicago were reduced to hot glass. But when news arrived of Japanese soldiers in Seattle and San Fran, what remained of the Federal Government gave up the ghost. Do they even know we're here?

Data Log 1552

Our secret remains safe. Everyone who knows about Project Brooklyn is either ash or committed suicide not long after the surrender. I can't say I blame them. They gave everything to this project. Just as we now must sacrifice everything. We won't allow the Nazi's new dark age to go uninterrupted. Hal said we should use what we have to burn as many Nazi cities as possible before they're able to burn us. I'm not so sure. Commander Blake has ordered a special meeting for tomorrow afternoon. I hope he's got a plan that's better than 'Go down in a blaze of glory'.

***

It was 1946. Buried deep under an island in the Pacific, far from prying eyes. The Japanese were still mopping up these islands, but they were concentrating their strength on trying to subdue their Occupation Zone in North America, not to mention China. They wouldn't have the time or energy to devote to a long clean-up operation in the Pacific. Not at the moment anyhow.

This was Project Brooklyn, the most secret of the American 'Super-Weapon' projects. Under this tiny island was a veritable city of some ten thousand individuals. The majority were technicians and scientists, a considerable quantity were simply menial labourers and helping hands. But for Commander Franklin Blake, his contingent of highly trained military men were extremely important. Because they were all that was left of the United States Armed Forces, they were all that stood between the Project and the outside world. And crucially, they were iron fist that ensured his authority. He'd met with the section heads two days after they had received word of the surrender. They had agreed to recognise him as Acting President of the United States, and he knew they had only agreed to that because if they hadn't, his soldiers would have made it so anyway.

He sat behind a long table, at the far end of the canteen. Men and women were pouring into the canteen, the entire staff of the island. If the Japanese bombed them now, that would be it. The section heads sat alongside him. They knew his plan and had signed off on it, agreeing it was possible, if a long shot. Now he needed to tell the staff. The room was packed. The canteen was enormous, but even so. The walls were lined with his blue-uniformed men. A few people were sitting on the tables. He stood up.

'You will all be wondering where we go from here. As far as I can see it, we have a choice. We can either surrender as the rest of the Government did at Cheyenne and hand over our research to the Enemy. Or we can keep fighting.' the room was silent. Blake knew many people in this room would plump for the former option. 'I do not intend for American liberty, hard fought for in 1776, and a burning candle in a world of darkness to be quietly snuffed out in the course of an evening. For that is what this setback is, in the grand scheme of history. It may seem hopeless now, but this is but one moment in uncounted centuries. There is always hope, so long as you are willing to see it. But history, vast as it is, turns on the small choices as well as the large. Our choice today, though we are few in number, may change the destiny of the Earth. We must have the strength to see our task through, despite the cost, because in the long-run, all tyrants must fall.' He turned to Professor Illinois Smith.

'Thank you, Commander. As you know, a scant month before the Government's surrender, we perfected one of the technologies we have been working on here. The anti-gravity propulsion circuit. We even have a few operating craft, which have been nicknamed 'Spinning Plates' by the ground crew-' a few titters amongst the crowd '-and it is mine and the commander's belief that we can step up production of the Plates, and form a working fleet. However, our plan is not to bomb Germany into heck as I have heard some people suggesting. Instead, we are to play the long game. We are but a candle, we need time to become an inferno. We plant a colony, far from German reach, where we will be able to entrench ourselves and prepare'. He pulled down a hastily prepared map. 'Ladies and gentleman, The Moon!'

***

It is 1968. On Earth, the Thousand Year Reich is experiencing a cultural revolution, born from the availability of recreational drugs, Indian mysticism and the rise of a sexualised youth. Japan looks on in confusion, and struggles to hold down China. America is still divided, in the East as the American State, a Nazi puppet, in the West as the Federal Republic of America, an increasingly independent member of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Both of the world empires have flirted with space travel, but the Japanese lack the scientific-technological-industrial base to play such an expensive game, and German steps have been efficient but slow.

And on the Dark Side of the Moon, buried beneath the regolith is New Washington, a city of some 200-300 thousand. Swollen by Jewish immigrants, and other freedom seekers, carefully vetted, this little seed of America is growing. New Washington maintains links to the Resistance across the world, but in recent years as the ideologues have died and pragmatists have taken power, the early heavy flow of migrants to the Moon has become a trickle.

The military rule of Franklin Blake's time has given way to a restoration of democracy. However, the Constitution has been basically scrapped and rewritten, its provisions making little sense in a city-state on the Moon. Congress is unicameral, and the President is elected by popular vote rather than by an electoral college. The prohibition on immigrants being able to run for President has been dropped. A multi-party system has sprouted up, but there are two main parties. There is the Democratic Party, only loosely descended from that party, and is broadly the party of immigrants and scientists, wanting to see the Moon liberate the Earth, and also pursue a hard-nosed rationalist policy. And there is the Republican Party, again only tenuously attached to that former party, and it can be categorised as the party of the Moon-born blue collar worker, and of the military. They see Earth as doomed, and while they are eager to see more immigrants and are happy to undermine the Nazis when they can, see their destiny amongst the stars. There are other parties, often ethnic ones serving specific immigrant demographics, and there is a substantial Slavic Socialist Party made up mostly of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The New Deal never died on the Moon, and the current President, a Republican, keeps a framed picture of FDR on the wall of his spartan office. The economy is almost entirely operated by the state, with a Planning Commission that people have to go through if they want to set up something themselves. Socially, New Washington has cast off a lot of the racial and sexual prejudices of Earth. They need to mobilise the entire population, they need to accept any suitable immigrants, they hate the Nazis and everything they stand for.

Probably the biggest immediate crisis is news of a German translunar orbit. While New Washington is buried, smokestacks poke out of the surface, and if they are discovered, their number is up. And next to that is muscular atrophy. The low gravity of the Moon means Moon-born Americans are tall, thin, and pale and weak by Earth-born standards. Their weakness is partially counteracted by a state mandated fitness regime to build up muscle and bone density, but part of the reason for a Republican victory is a genuine fear that trying to liberate Earth would be pointless became the children of Luna are so spindly and weak.

Rockets and plates are being sent from the Moon to Mars and beyond to the Asteroid Belt, trying to plant colonies which will survive any Nazi retaliation against an American lunar colony.