The Voice Acting Alliance presents: Timepiece - The Destruction of Satellite 4.

Tagline - Five producers. One week. One tragedy.

Synopsis - Over the course of a week, five of the VAA's top producers detail the events of a desperate military surgical strike that becomes humanity's greatest tragedy.

SERIES OF EVENTS
The war between sat3 and sat4 has been going on for nearly half a decade. Two self-sustaining intra-orbit platforms are hardly the ideal stages to wage war, so in time the conflict has simmered from high-intensity skirmishes (with sat3 using a fleet of manned ships and sat4 relying on a less sturdy but more available automated defense system) to a state of attrition. Both satellites are losing the war at this point, and projections are that, in their current state, each satellite can sustain their poplations (rougly 1.1 billion people in each of the four satellites) for three or less years. In light of this disturbing fact, Sats 1 and 2 have remained neutral, accepting only the most disheveled refugees from this senseless conflict. The situation is dire.

Enter "Operation: Blackout".

Satellite 3's military has produced one final, desperate attempt to turn the tide of this war for resources. A handful of elite fighter pilots willing to die for sat3, the wing known as "Angel Squadron" will be the key component for the operation. Sat3's defenseive armada will abandon their traditional guard positions and begin a coordinated attack on a particular habitat airlock on sat4's external surface, obliterating any anti-fighter defenses and jamming the lock frequencies on the habitat airlock, effectively keeping it open. With the path clear for a squadron of fighters to punch through, the Angels split into eight wings of six fighters (Angels Evens and Odds, designated as Angel-1, Angel-2, etc), then split into two distinct formations - The Evens run defense outside and fight toe-to-toe with enemy fighters, while the Odds break into sat3's habitat and perform their attack run.

Each Angel fighter is equipped with an experimental electromagnetic pulse emitter. The emitter lets out a pulse that can negate nearly 1 terajoule's worth of electrical activity, and such a weapon will be required to take out the Angels' intended target - Sat4's energy production (EnPro) facility, located a moderate distance from the squadron's tactical entry point. The plan is to get a fighter into the satellite, fly out to the EnPro facility, and send an EMP pulse right into it. The effect of neutralizing the satellite's main source of energy is akin to shutting off the main breaker in your house - complete and total power disruption of the satellite.

The sort of humanitarian crisis this could create was anticipated by Sat3's administration - the military's standing orders do not allow attacks on non-military targets, and prior to the attack the chief administrator publicly announces that sat 3 would be accepting refugees from the resulting catastrophe. If not for the fact that it allows the beauracrats to save face, accepting people fleeing from a dying satellite would be seen as a gracious act, part of a noble end to a long and senseless war.

But something goes terribly wrong.

With their path cleared by Sat4's armada and encountering little resistance, Angels Odd make their way into the Sat3, only to be greeted by a hail of anti-air fire immediately after making their way into the habitat. Nearly all offensive craft are shot down, and any that had made their way past the barrage are picked off...save one pilot who flies near the top of the habitat's done, well out of the range of ground-based fire. With his craft damaged to the point where he can no longer charge his EMP emitter and enemy fighters on the way, the pilot makes a decision to overload his engine and plunge into the EnPro facility at near-ballistic speeds, impossible to track with fire and using his fighter's fissile fuel system to create a localized EMP pulse...

However, the resulting explosion's yield is equal to 4 megatons. With an explosion thousands of times more powerful than that which leveled Nagasaki detonated inside the EnPro complex, a massive and unexpected chain reaction consumes the satellite, eventually culminating in an massive explosion that wipes out the satellite, and any craft within 3,000 kilometer radius - this means most of the Sat3 armada and civilians attempting to seek refuge. The death toll is in the billions.


THE SERIES OF EVENTS...IN CLIPS
...But spelling it out isn't that much fun, is it? The point of this collaboration is to give each producer a chance to put together a short clip - 3-5 minutes, based on one brief facet of the events described above. Listener A, having heard only the first clip, will have no idea of the bigger picture, but Listener B, who heard Monday's and Tuesday's clip, might eagerly be awating Wednesday's clip to see what will happen. The point is to make five seperate pieces, small sketches of a larger work that, when put together, will make something like the scenario described above form in the listener's mind. 

The clips as scripted are evocative of some of the stuff we see on the news that makes us cringe - a general calmly taking about military maneuvers that will one day claim the lives of our homeland's soldiers. President Bush's speeches ramping up to the invasion of Iraq. "At-the-front" news items, shot with grainy cameras and dug into the middle of a heated firefight where anything can go wrong. A sort of insidiousness pervades each clip, an uneasy and desperate atmosphere where a plan like this is mildly conceiveable.


The clips are as follows. Titles use "T-minus" to count down towards the destruction of Sat4.

#1 (T-6h22m) - Angel Squadron's mission briefing. A cut-and-dry detailing of the plan, target's location, method of attack, etc. 

#2 (T-1h37m) - A televised adress from the head adminstrator of Satellite 3 that details that the battle is being fought, why it's being fought.

#3 (T-0h22m) - A snippet of in-flight, "in the cockpit" dialogue as the Angels break through the defensive screen and prepare to enter the satellite. 

#4 (T-0h05m) - A newscast from Sat4, breaking news from the point where sat3 fighters are being massacred. The reporter notices the lone fighter plunging into the Enpro facility, then fades out. Entire clip ends in a burst of horrible static, signifying the destruction of sat4.

#5 (T-0h01m) - A portion of the operation's log from the Fleet Commander's flagship. Shockwaves from sat rock the ship as a chilling residual communication from the pilot is picked up and played.