Lens of History (3)

STEC Archives, Print Document Division
Curator signature: Caroline
Format: Message, Personal
Object: Correspondences to Hymen G. Rickover, from New Jersey
Location (if known): STEC Mobile Base 01 “Tir’na’nog”
Time (if known): 1974

Admiral Rickover,

We’ve reached a tentative agreement with the Soviets. It took some convincing on our parts, but I’ve managed to persuade the higher-ups to let me take a peek at their AA operation plans. Thank me later.

In short? It’s a mess. FUBAR doesn’t even begin to cover it. The Soviets have been on-and-off throwing money and manpower in disparate directions without much to show for the last decade. I’m actually impressed by the KGB’s honesty here. When I asked them what have they learned so far, they showed us the entirety of their espionage attempts on STEC over the tenure of the last seven or eight directors.

Credit to them for trying. Credit to us for keeping a securely ran operation.

My guess? They’re being honest with us because they have nothing left to play. I suspect that they’ve figured out that we’ve got important stuff, and there are several bargaining chips that I can think of that would be of immense interest to the reds.

You’ll get the full report the day after tomorrow, but currently, the Soviet Union is entirely reliant on conventional land and coastal-based forces to counteract any Abyssal assaults on the USSR. Given the large vulnerable coastline, the Soviets have modified their traditional Deep Battle plans and currently focus on large numbers of mobile units with very limited field operational lifespan. Their current focus is stockpiling enough materiel and to enhance their winter-fighting capabilities, as the Red Army would be facing not only the Abyssals, but also the Arctic environment which would serve as a second enemy.

That’s about all the good news I have. Everything from the implementation to the theory to the command structure to the design of the equipment to the timetable is a mess. The coordination between different military services is poor, and I can’t help but wonder if the total absence of the Red Fleet (and their coastal defense units) in these plans are political in nature.

Honestly, I know there’s been gossip in the public regarding this build-up and interpreting it as evidence for some sort of communist invasion of Europe or even Alaska, but that really isn’t possible given their current force-readiness status. My little caper in the heads of those generals show that even they think those man-powered nuclear-tipped panzerfaust things are probably going to be entirely hit or miss against the Abyssals, and to turn them against much smaller targets? Pffft. Forget about it.