Phase after phase the operation played out. Each strike was a calculated cut. Bases that once blustered with the threat of launch now lay stripped of their teeth. Northern islands, coastal facilities, false factories, all were rendered impotent one by one.
The Core moved with a grace that hid the violence underneath. They did not broadcast their success to the world as each base fell. They waited until they could show the string of evidence.
By the second day, the ripple had become a wave. News leaked, not from the Core but from Nortasian reports, that missile stockpiles were irreversibly damaged, that the launch architecture had been corrupted, that dozens of technicians had defected or vanished. Northern ports were closed and the Icelandian Defense Council called emergency meetings.
Nortasia's media went wild. But this time the story they told was not the same as before. This time their President had acted, and he had done it with a strange restraint.
