Grrl Power #1062 – Jalapeño, Jalapeño, Jalapeño
No, Leon didn’t just summon tech support.
I really wanted to title this page “Zulu Zulu Zulu” because I am almost positive there is some scene in some movie or TV show somewhere in which someone sends that message, and the message means “Invasion imminent.” Only, I can’t recall where I saw that, and I just don’t remember if the message was actually Zulu Zulu Zulu or Zebra Zebra Zebra or November x 3 or X-ray or Oscar or what. My brain is whispering that it was someone like Spock or Data, but I don’t even recall if it was Star Trek or even Sci-Fi. It’s very frustrating and you can imagine that googling “zulu zulu zulu invasion” produces results about, you know, the actual British attempts to conquer the Zulu, and “zebra zebra zebra invasion” give results about invasive zebra mussels. Like, the mollusk things, not buff furry zebra dudes. Though honestly those probably show up on page 2 of the results.
Anyway, since my brain wasn’t cooperating to recall the exact reference and I couldn’t think of anything else, I went with “word that should definitely not be on a Military Phonetic Alphabet list” just to make sure no one has any idea what I’m doing.
Edit: Ah hah! Kizik Ucalegon over at Patreon cracked it. “Zulu Zulu Zulu” is from On Basilisk Station, the first Honor Harrington book. And my fucking brain went from hearing an audiobook of the scene to trying to tell me it was Data from an episode of Star Trek. No wonder I can’t remember if an anime I’ve watched was subtitled or dubbed half the time.
Snippet: ———————
“‘Mr. Venizelos, you will commandeer the first available Junction carrier to relay the following message to Fleet HQ. Message begins: Authentication code Lima-Mike-Echo-Niner-Seven-One. Case Zulu. I say again, Zulu, Zulu, Zulu. Message ends.'” She heard McKeon suck air between his teeth at her shoulder. “That is all, Mr. Webster,” she said softly. “You may transmit at will.” Webster said absolutely nothing for an instant, but when he replied, his voice was unnaturally steady.
“Aye, aye, Captain. Transmitting Case Zulu.” There was another brief pause, then, “Case Zulu transmitted, Ma’am.”
“Thank you.” Honor wanted to lean back and draw a deep breath, but there was no time. The message she’d just ordered Webster to send and Venizelos to relay to Manticore was never sent in drills, not even in the most intense or realistic Fleet maneuvers. Case Zulu had one meaning, and one only: “Invasion Imminent.”
Edit 2: Ironically, or… serendipitously? Anyway, I upgraded to fiber internet about three weeks ago, meaning there’s a 50 foot fiber cable running from the curb to the side of my house because they haven’t gotten around to burying it yet – and my neighbor just clipped it with his weed whacker. So I’m on “tethered-through-my-phone” internet for the next week. :/
The June Vote Incentive is up! What’s that dripping down Sydney’s face? Uh… well, actually, clicking on the link won’t actually give it away necessarily, cause the thumbnail is from one of the, er, advanced pictures in the series, if you take my meaning. Yes, I mean there is a nude version of Sydney (and guest) over at the Patreon version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Now who was it that was just complaining that they’re the B team and never get their own adventures anymore?
And who was it that told them to be careful what they wish for.
Foreshadowing! (Not that it was exactly subtle)
they interupted sex night,, THEY HAVE TO PAY!
They’re obviously there to JOIN sex night, not interrupt it.
She obviously summoned them on the last page.
mmm, the hood and mask on the guy on the wall remind me of those a**hole who were blackmailing/controling concretia and tried to kidnap/kill sidney during the alien tourist fight
They had more than a hood and pants, though…
Reminds me more of Juggernaut, really… but Juggs didn’t have claws to dig into a wall, and wouldn’t need to either… idunno
More like a hairless Sabretooth
Hank McCoy pre furry days.
He didn’t have inch-long toenails though
Reminds me more of Atlas from DC Comics, who also wore a hood with no shirt.
But he had a sort of skirt thing, instead of pants. Also no mask.
Someone unhappy the team cost them a few assets?
A rock-manipulating forced grunt, her handler (mop & bucket, isle 7…), the handler’s 2 backup are probably scarred for life & useless (“released from duties”, price of a bullet going away gift?), whatever they had on that boat, their ability to remain unknown to ARCHON, etc? That’s a lot to loose, maybe they want revenge?
Revenge is a piss poor motive for this sort of exposure.
Unless Bad Guys Inc. is run by an infantile, narcissistic techbro or an infantile, narcissistic Boomer, I feel safe saying this is probably something marginally more sophisticated.
Lots of war tactics are based on revenge and gangs and armies often have bosses that qualify for your descriptions.
In war it’s called “retaliation” instead of revenge.
I still think you’re right though. The dickish super villain and his cronies didn’t use the “halo” type of armor we see our current attacker using.
I’m just so happy that many fans of my favorite webcomic are also fans of David Weber’s Honor Harrington!
I mean, nerds gonna nerd. And most nerds have come across Honor Harrington at some point or another.
I do remember that. What was it, thirty years ago? Yep exactly 30 years ago. Seems like … thirty years ago. Sigh.
*gentle, consoling headpats*
….wanna have some Dunkaroos? I think I still have a package, somewhere.
hopefully less than 30 years old!
*is working on a pot of low-carb pasta*
I stand corrected. My guess on the last comic was wrong, but it was a good guess nonetheless.
Oh…. is this going to be the scene where the guy who’s (maybe) nothing but spiders in a skin suit stops the bad guys by himself by having spiders everywhere? Like inside tac armor, and skittering on the inside of visors?
I really do want Vance to actually be all spiders. It’s good to have more non-humanoid intelligences in stories, I think.
Or at least something spider related.
Vance’s superpower is the ability to make people believe any story he tells them as being fact.
maybe
I suspect many forms of communication has been cut just Leon noticed it first on any military or para-military like Archon having outside communication cut is a huge flag of attack I’m betting whom ever is attacking Gaylon isn’t just after Deus’s tech they are after Archon as well.
OK, might need to work on some full stops & commas there. I’ll admit, I’m an alien robot basically, but I’ve found them useful. Daniel the Human does still have to help me occasionally…
But yeah, getting cut off from the outside world completely like that is a big red flag! Especially if you’re in the military or some kind of fighting group. Red Alert! Red Alert! Prepare for attack!
Could be the people attacking with Darude also attacking here, but could just be some random group thinking without Max around, the place is defenseless…
In my defense I had just woke up hadn’t taken a sip of coffee lol. As far as the attack goes it could be either or both things are getting hot in many ways! So far super villains are the only threat to Archon like in both the original superman serial and Bill Bixby’s Hulk, they almost never had super villains just cocky thugs and crime bosses.
If it’s some rando group not affiliated with Darude and his group, then how did they know that Max, Sydney, Anvil and Dabbler were not at Archon HQ.
Options:
1) They didn’t know. Their attacking now is just serendipitous. Probably still wont help them much.
2) A mole at Archon HQ clued them in. Overestimated their chances against the remaining forces.
3) They have had Archon HQ under surveillance, saw Max’s group leave and decided to give it a go.
Or:
4) They actually are aligned with Darude and the attack is co-ordinated. Still getting a beatdown.
This delay in the comment section is starting to seriously bug me. When I post it seems it can take up to 15 minutes, maybe more, for it to show up. Or messages disappear after refreshing the page. Similar it is now showing 54 comments in the discussion and I’m on page 2 of the comment pages, but going back to page 1 and suddenly we’re down to 41 comments and showing only 1 available comment page.
Agreed, it reminds me of the 90s, and not in a good way.
Yes, something’s messed up with whatever service is handling comments here.
15 minutes? It’s usually about 24 hours for me. I posted this at 11:25pm Eastern on June 30. I’ll post again when I see it go live.
It’s 1:22am now and I can finally see my prior post. I checked for a couple hours and then forgot to keep checking so I don’t know how long it actually took. Also, I posted it at 11:25Am, not Pm. Oops.
Actually, it’s not just your brain that is scrambling over a hazy recollection of the phrase…
Nobody has mentioned this, but they took out the WiFi which is internal to the network, not from outside. So this is a major attack on the system, not just an accidental digging up the fiber optic cable(s).
I’m struggling to come up with how you’d even douse the internal wifi signals. In a building that size, there must be dozens of boxes. Hitting the main routers would drop a lot of the connectivity (depending on how peer-to-peer the system is), but the radio waves wouldn’t just vanish unless you dropped every single repeater, bridge, extender, etc.
Barring EMP, catastrophic power loss, or magic, the signal strength should be relatively unaffected. Even flooding it with other signals would be difficult considering the size of the building. And any hack capable of bringing down the wifi signal itself is capable of disabling the functionality while leaving the signal, thus delaying detection by at least a few extra seconds, maybe as much as a minute or two depending on the diagnostics in use.
I mean, with Superpowers, there’s a lot more options. And, as you mentioned, magic, which exists in this universe. :v
Or… Super
Yeah, I did a lot of scrolling to find someone who is enough of a techie to recognize just what a mess this scene is.
Although someone DID mention “broad spectrum EMP” above, that would be…more energetic. (Like all of the florescent lights exploding.)
Really, if I’m attacking a place like this, I DON’T want the internal wifi going down until the advantage of surprise is lost. WAY to many people will notice within 10 seconds of that happening.
It just…makes no sense.
—
If only that were the only problem. Yes, everyone here is a super of some kind or another, but still–Leon has to leave command central from time to time. So I am to believe that his network down alarms turn off if he is sitting in the chair? What if he’s in a long conversation & looking in the wrong direction?
There were a BUNCH of alarms that went off–except, they did not.
–
And… How exactly do you open multiple skylights on a high security building without setting off all kinds of alarms? The same magic that took out all of the trunks, the wifi & turned off the alerts to the same?
ARC-whatever is supposed to secure this building has been infiltrated.
“Places like this” don’t even have wifi. Every connection is wired, and it’s against every rule to plug in a wireless device such as a wifi router.
Or at least this is my experience from working at multiple civilian government agencies and military sites across several years. The civilians working at the White House were the only ones to regularly break the rules against just carrying in their own wifi routers and plugging them into the network…
Yes, comic security tends to be comical. A real installation of this sort would be REALLY aggressive about TEMPEST matters, and treat compartmentalization not just as an organization abstraction, but a physically manifested reality.
I was just accepting that they had wifi & going from there because it’s just straight up Aspie to take it to the point of true electronic security.
*spoiler warning for Honor Harrington on Basilisk Station (if I need a spoiler warning for a book that came out in ’93*
Honor Harrington calls “Zulu Zulu Zulu” which means invasion imminent at the end of Honor Harrington on Basilisk Station. Is that what you are thinking of?
On Basilisk Station (by david weber) – chapter 27
Mr. Venizelos, you will commandeer the first available Junction carrier to relay the following message to Fleet HQ. Message begins: Authentication code Lima-Mike-Echo-Niner-Seven-One. Case Zulu. I say again, Zulu, Zulu, Zulu. Message ends.’” She heard McKeon suck air between his teeth at her shoulder. “That is all, Mr. Webster,” she said softly. “You may transmit at will.” Webster said absolutely nothing for an instant, but when he replied, his voice was unnaturally steady.
“Aye, aye, Captain. Transmitting Case Zulu.” There was another brief pause, then, “Case Zulu transmitted, Ma’am.”
“Thank you.” Honor wanted to lean back and draw a deep breath, but there was no time. The message she’d just ordered Webster to send and Venizelos to relay to Manticore was never sent in drills, not even in the most intense or realistic Fleet maneuvers. Case Zulu had one meaning, and one only: “Invasion Imminent.”
Are you thinking of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”? That was a movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
That’s what I was thinking, myself. Honestly the Honor Harrington thing might have been a reference to that.
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” actually had Mako in it as, I believe, the fleet admiral. That is, Mako, the actor who voiced Iroh.
The dude from Conan The Barbarian?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztaqe0x0mS4
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
Was hoping it was a clip of young Mako :(
It’s… interesting looking at a younger version of someone you know mostly as an older individual, like Betty White and Helen Mirren
Well I wouldn’t want to dash your hopes.
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/faces/iwamatsu-mako-image.jpg
When I was in the service the code for infiltrators was ‘Covered Wagon’
The alert message would be “Covered Wagon, I repeat we have a no duff covered wagon, security respond to….”
Krona could probably make pretty short work of them, reset their reality so every time they’re halfway down the ropes they end up back on the roof again :)
or turn all their gravity to 10 or -1 or something
or ramp up or really slow down their metabolism
or slow their reaction time to 0.0001x
she’s theoretically OP – if she had sydney’s intuition and near-reckless-ness, plus her shield… they could probably nearly delete any foe they wanted
First things first though.
Krona turns all their armour into pink tutus and all their weapons into pink dildos.
Maybe not a great idea, Archon would end up laughing too much to actually fight them.
Zulu Zulu Zulu was the “invasion imminent” signal in the Honor Harrington book series.
Okay, why is it significant for ARC-fi-3 to still have a snippet of a signal?
That’s probably the wifi in Leon’s actual room. So it still has a signal to itself.
I believe it’s attempting to show that radio signals are being scrambled, and no scrambling is going to affect every single transceiver fully, but we all know that the dot isn’t a usable signal, so…
In David Weber’s Honorverse, *Case Zulu* is code for “We are now being invaded.”
More “They are coming” But when you’re talking about a wormhole junction which lets you send a ship 70+ lightyears (I forget the distance from Manticore to Medusa) in the space in between heartbeats I guess it becomes a bit nitpicky.
For the curious, On Basilisk Station and the first few books in the Honor Harrington series are some of the best science fiction military novels ever written. They are not the fastest, heart-pumping reads, but Weber does an amazing job of crafting his characters and getting the reader to love them, then putting those characters in situations that feel immensely earned and satisfying to the reader.
Later books in the series are much worse, as Weber gets far too wordy and dilutes the narrative’s success with so much political garbage that it barely resembles the earlier novels. But those first few books are gold. Unfortunately, considering what Hollywood did to Ender’s Game and Star Wars, I don’t think there is anyone there with the skills and clout to get it done right. Otherwise it’d be a goldmine for movies.
I just recently was introducted to HH after a lifetime of sci-fi. I actually found the political aspect of the later books the most enjoyable part. Though I’m tearing my hair our dealing with this White Have nonsense
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said “worse” and gone with “different” instead. The series lost its charm for me when the reason I started reading it (awesome combat with good characters) lost half the formula and replaced it with political maneuvering.
I actually think that he did well in showing that as Honor was promoted and reached Flag Rank, Politics became more and more involved. Especially when she became a Noble on one world and, lets be honest, damn near Supreme Ruler of part of another, as well as one of the highest ranked members of her Navy.
I didn’t mind the inclusion of politics. I did mind the book length tripling, the cast of characters multiplying by a factor of 5, and the action shrinking.
My only problem with the later books is copy-pasting a third of the previous book word-for-word into the next title. Pretty sure that was Baen’s idea, not Webber’s.
You may be thinking of the movie “Zulu” released in 1964. It tells the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift where a British unit of 150 men hold out against a Zulu force of ~4000 men. At the end of the movie, after departing for a few hours, the Zulus return. The British are expecting another attack when, to their great surprise, the Zulu’s sing them a song of praise and then depart. The were 11 Victoria Crosses (British equivalent to Congressional Medal of Honor) awarded for this battle, the most ever awarded for a single action.
The movie was also the first movie with Michael Caine.
First VC 1857, first CMoH 1863.
So, the CMoH is equivalent tot the VC.
Indirect search for:
invasion alert code word = Charlie, Charlie, Charlie = security threat on boat [ship]
It is not so much that the internet is down.
It is that his dozen, independant connections to the internet all went down. At the same time.
He takes being connect really seriously.
You may be thinking of the movie Zulu, released in 1964. It tells the story of The Battle of Rorke’s Drift where 150 British soldiers took on ~4000 Zulu. At the end of the movie, after being gone for several hours, the Zulus return. The British expect another attach when, to their utter surprise, the Zulus sing them a song of praise and then leave for good. There were 11 Victoria Crosses (the British equivalent to The Congressional Medal of Honor) awarded for battle, the most ever awarded for any single action.
The movie was also the debut of actor Michael Caine.
Posted twice
Shaka Zulu! :)
You’re probably thinking about the Omega Directive from Star Trek Voyager. After being hit by a shockwave, all the consoles display an Omega character. Janeway orders them to standby and heads to her office, where after confirming her identity, the computer gives her the message that this is now top priority.
Sensors have detected the Omega phenomenon within one point two light years of this vessel. Implement the Omega Directive immediately. All other priorities have been rescinded
So, how long before Harem jumps continents with a warning message?
Probably already happened. She probably has special orders about what to do if Leon hits the panic button, and informing Maxima is probably at the top of the list.
She’s also a double or triple agent that has bodies all up in both Deus’s entourage and ARC Swat’s bidness, but somehow didn’t catch wind of the whole expansion/invasion that Deus was executing (they had to hear from the news?)
That or she is not very loyal to Maxima, but it would seem that’s something Maxima would have a few questions about(?)
It is more probable that Deus, not being a fool, know, or at the very least suspect that she is a double agent and arranged things so to keep her in the dark.
Especially, since he and Vale talked about how she could be a triple agent.
Case Zulu. Invasion Imminent. Read it somewhere. Now I want to know where…
Check my updated post.
I don’t know if anybody mentioned it yet, but “Zulu Zulu Zulu” was used in David Weber’s Honor Harington novels to mean “Invasion Eminent.” I don’t know if he got it from anywhere, but thats the only place I know it from
Sorry for the double post.
So this invasion is SUPER Spicy?
Tora, Tora, Tora would be a movie that fit.
Next page:
Hiro: Ok, rookies, this is where you get experience. Achilles, take down the guy with the claws, but no show-boating this time. Math, clear the balcony on 18. Heatwave, lift him up there. Jigawatt, take out their over-watch.
Varia: Hey, Vance, can I grab on? I want to meet them wearing a steel skin.
Vance: Uh, sure. Hey Hiro, where do you want me?
Hiro: See that guy over there? I want you and Ren to make sure he is no longer there. Peggy, find a target and test if it is bullet-proof. Let me know of any that pass the test. Anybody seen Pixel? Oh never mind.
Pixel: (in anthropomorphic jaguar form) You want me to …?
Hiro: No, that’s fine. Carry on. Let me know if you want support.
Are they still rookies if some of them participated (and were permanently injured) at the Restaurant Rumble or the Wars Warehouse?
zulu zulu zulu is a fight aboard a cruise line.
Okay, so just how many rooms have been ‘Panic Roomed’?
General Falk’s room (whether he’s there or not), probably Maxi’s, the Armoury and Tech rooms, but what else?
………. A paranoid person would say “all of the rooms.”
………. The Military would say “all of the rooms. (that we can afford to)”
………. ARCHON has an extremely generous budget.
………. “All of the rooms” would be a safe bet.
(obviously not including the civilian areas like the restaurants and such.)
Probably any place that will inhibit movement through the facility.
Elevators and stairwells definitely locked down to contain enemies to whatever floor they are on and stop them from supporting each other.
Leon would be smart enough to have internal comms hardened and separate from the outside, so archon members could call him for one use codes to access locked off areas.
Each floor would have blast barriers to funnel enemy movement towards chokepoints and kill zones.
Not a firefight I would like to be on the wrong side of.
Problem is, locking down lifts and stairs also stops the ‘good guys’ from moving around as well
“Leon would be smart enough to have internal comms hardened and separate from the outside, so archon members could call him for one use codes to access locked off areas.”
Everyone else has all kinds of serious stuff, but my brain ended up just drawn to the alarm going “BRAAN BRAAN” and couldn’t help but think Leon released zombies that had been repurposed to eat bran and attack anyone not wearing a security badge.
It gave me a flashback to the last episode of GoT, still got PTSD.
The occult agency in Charlie Strauss’s Laundry Cthulhu Mythos/spy/computer technology series does exactly that.
Zulu Zulu Zulu was not only used in Honor Harrington as others have already noted but in Wearing the Cape: Recursion on page 130 (I had the book next to me as I just finished re-reading it).
“Alert the CPD, local DSA, every Chicago Guardians team. Emergency Code Zulu, Zulu, Zulu. Attack imminent or in progress.” -Astra
That’s got to be a Harrington reference.
Almost certainly.
They also had the triple Z weapon (ZZZ) , from Tenchi GXP , about some old nautical code. It was sent out just before lady Seto jumped the whole lot of pirates from subspace.
Nice of them to open the roof for the invaders, rather than just blowing a hole in it. If they start walking between the velvet ropes then we’ll know it’s just a reenactment of Jan 6.
It’s possible and was happening before. Sometimes even though you go through two different services, they somehow intersect upstream at the same point physically because they buy their services from the same people.
Could be simpler grid power outage.
Interrupting wireless, fiber and copper connection simultaneously would be a feat. Particularly with the frequencies involved for the wireless side. And supposedly fiber is not susceptible to interference of light. But again could be power outages too
With regard to fiber interference, a strong enough magnetic field to invoke Faraday effect polarization rotation would probably play absolute havoc with a datastream through fiber.
Tora, Tora, Tora was the code used by the Japanese Commander of the attacking aircraft to indicate success in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
I remember when my internet went down last week and half the people the next blockover resorted to cannibalism. Fortunately I had my katana and held back the hordes and only 20% of my block perished. Then we got to go back to reading webcomics and watching youtube videos when everything restored.
lol. That reminds me of a scifi story I read, probably Azimov, where the computers/robots making Earth a literal paradise finally determined that they were harming humanity by removing all challenges.
We start with some folks in a garden like setting, the robots throw the big switch shutting down all services, we cut to scattered scenes around the world of the impact of various services being no longer available, and then we go back to the garden party. Where even though it’s been less than a few hours since the robot hors d’oeuvre carriers have stopped circulating, some beefy body builder type growls “I’m hungry,” and it’s implied that he starts cannibalizing one of the female party goers. Just like that, from “Huh, they’ve stopped serving the shrimp cocktail” to “Whelp, there’s nothing for it but to start eating people!”
That does sound very Asmovian. Would be an interesting take on the Three Laws of Robotics. If you ever remember the name of the story please let me know.
I think I’ve read a significant amount of Asimov’s work, and I don’t think cannibalism fits his style. He was one of the most optimistic sci-fi writers of his time, and didn’t generally lean on the grotesque like the “pulpier” sci-fi stories did.
Yes but I’m referring to the whole ‘humans being a danger to themselves’ aspect which sounded Asimovian. Most of his stories revolved around humans becoming basically ‘enslaved’ by robots and AI in one way or another.
Other horrible words for the Military Phonetic Alphabet list:
Aisle
Bdellium
Czar
Djinn
Euphrates
Fohn
Gnarly
Hour
Irk
Knock
Mnemonic
Oujia
Pterodactyl
Qat
Tsunami
Urn
Wren
Yperite
don’t forget Jacques as an alternate for “J” or Zhou for “Z”
Ah yes, the Crazy ABC song.
You skipped Jalapeno and Ndomo.
Looks like the hood cultist guys are even more full of themselves than previously thought. Not only abducting and coercing supers to work for them, and abducting, torturing, and attempting to murder a federal agent.
they are not invading a military office.
just in case anyone is wandering, yes, Arc-Swat and Arc-Dark are fully permitted to *kill on sight* in this situation.
There is nothing requiring them to hold back and arrest anyone other than *wanting* to interrogate (the survivor).