The Battle for Antarctica<\/p>\n\n\n\n
E<\/strong>veryone had his own reason for enlisting. I still remember the look on Mom\u2019s face when I told her where I\u2019d be going and what I\u2019d be doing. To their credit, when the suits showed up to the museum and waltzed into the restoration hangar, they didn\u2019t sugarcoat it. There was no talk of saving the world or buying a Camaro with your signing bonus. They told me three things: first, that they needed my plane; second, that they needed a plan; and third, that they needed me to come with them to DC to help make it. I might have refused right there. Honestly, I should have. But there was something about the genuine fear in their eyes that chilled me to my bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My brother Arthur was always more thoughtful and less fearful than me. He thought, planned, and analyzed every outcome before making a decision. I don\u2019t think in my entire twenty-five years with him I\u2019d ever seen him act irrationally or callously. When they came to him, they had an offer in hand that he couldn\u2019t refuse: service guarantees one ticket to the safest place in the world\u2014and he got to choose the passenger. The two of us had agreed we\u2019d get Mom and Dad to relative safety in Svalbard, and hopefully, when this war was all over, we\u2019d come and join them. Suffice to say, no parent would be happy about that arrangement, but my brother and I ended up winning the argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEd, hand me the 9\/16ths, will you,\u201d my brother muttered, a flashlight wedged between his teeth. How on earth he could stand the cold air here was a wonder. Every inch of exposed flesh felt like it was being sandblasted. Everyone has been \u201ccold\u201d before, but standing in gale-force winds, ankle-deep in fresh Antarctic powder, changes the meaning of the word. I dug around in the toolbox and handed him the socket wrench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the briefing had gone more or less as you\u2019d expect. With a very sour and deflated face, General West retreated to his quarters to get a stiff drink in before the shooting started. In the lower holds of our ship, the USCGC Elmo<\/em>, Gramps and Ernst were being read their last rites. The Russians\u2014though only on temporary loan to us\u2014worked with impressive efficiency and prepped our howitzers and AA guns. Of course, the engineering team\u2014poor bastards that we were\u2014got stuck out in the snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An X-15 is a beast. If my shining little lawn dart was a Porsche, my brother\u2019s baby was a Charger packing half a million horsepower under the hood. It\u2019d go from zero to three-thousand miles per hour in 60 seconds, and you\u2019d feel the engines in your chest from half a mile away. He had pulled out every stop to make sure she was ready for flight, and for the most part, the plane would be doing what it was built for\u2014going high and fast. Rigging it to carry a nuke was a small matter of putting a square peg in a round hole\u2014easy enough with a cutting torch. There was one major problem, though: the X-15 was originally an air-launched vehicle. Without a bomber wing to sling it under, we needed another plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Planes need to be moving to stay in the air. A 40,000-pound bird with wings thin enough to cut you had to be moving ludicrously fast. Anything below 200 mph, and you\u2019d be the proud driver of the world\u2019s fastest bobsled\u2014but about 100,000 feet too low for the mission. The solution, of course, came down to simply adding more thrust. In this case, a 300-foot-long rocket sled, painstakingly assembled by yours truly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat should do it, right?\u201d I asked hopefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell, once Kirill and Miles finish setting up the five-eighty-four.\u201d Arthur wiped a streak of grease across his forehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGreat. Well, since our job is done here\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re one lazy bastard, you know that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCome on! How aren\u2019t you cold?!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He just sighed. It was impressive how much of a stick-in-the-mud he could be. Worse still, he was probably right. It took us about ten more minutes to lower the plane onto the launch rail by crane and begin fueling. At the same time, our only functioning radar\u2014a World War II-era SCR-584\u2014was being set up about 100 yards away, connected to the bridge of the ship by gargantuan spools of cable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody knew what the interior of the storm was like, but all bets were on poor visibility with a high chance of showers. One of the Russians, Kirill\u2014a former SAM site operator\u2014was going to be tracking both the Hive and our plane on his scope and guiding our pilots via radio. We had no autopilot, of course, so the radio commands were more like requests than anything else. The pilot would hear one tone when he was high off the target and another when he was low, coming through his earpiece. When he was right along the bore axis of the radar beam (and directed right to the heart of the storm), he\u2019d hear the beat frequency of the two\u2014a kind of warbling sound. It was a far cry from a proper guidance computer, but the best we could come up with on such short notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the engineering team\u2014four airmen\u2014were running through checks on my F-104. I had done what I could to set everything up beforehand, so the fuel and ammo were loaded before we ever took it off the ship. I also got to check \u201carming a nuke\u201d off my bucket list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n The war began at 0900. The distant clap of a single gun swiftly grew into a chorus of ten thousand\u2014a sound you felt more than heard. Thousands of glittering lights danced on the horizon for as far as the eye could see, and the sun grew a shade darker under the canopy of lead in the air. You could almost hear the thunk of a thousand boarding ramps hitting ice and half a million boots, armed with rifles and grit, moving off to storm the beaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody here had personally fought the enemy, and we still didn\u2019t know what made them tick. For the most part, the attacks across South America were mindless and brutal: a tide of biomass swarms into the city and slaughters door to door. Biblical, sure, but it felt more like a natural disaster than a coordinated attack. It was like they lived just to consume. Never once had we seen the creatures defend what they took\u2014with the exception of McMurdo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Best estimates varied, and the reconnaissance photos were spotty at best. At minimum, two and a half million \u201ctroops\u201d stood motionless in the snow. Every eye peered out to the coastline, but otherwise they stood sentry\u2014never eating, never moving, and as far as anyone could tell, never even breathing. Shooting fish in a barrel would have been great, but unfortunately the fish didn\u2019t stay still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had waited for us to fire the first shot, and at once all hell let loose. A chorus of screams cut the air, and millions moved as one. Even fifty miles away, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I just hoped the poor bastards in the first wave would find more steaming piles of meat than monsters greeting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The air felt heavy. Not the cold and dense type of heavy\u2014that was a given here. It felt oppressive. Standing under the canopy of a storm that blotted out the sun and warped every ray of light to a dull shade of gray or red, I was hit with a thousand emotions. Most of all was dread. It hadn\u2019t felt real. It still didn\u2019t feel real. But here I was, and in a few hours, a thousand square miles of snow would be stained red with blood. Still, that wasn\u2019t quite it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n My radio squawked. \u201cEd! Is the one-oh-four ready for launch yet?\u201d Even through the static whine, I could hear my brother\u2019s breathless voice\u2014frantic, perhaps for the first time in his life. If I had more sense about me, I probably would have been too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReady as she\u2019ll ever be. Any word from recon?\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe general just said they\u2019ve taken the bait\u2014the main force is pulling away, and we\u2019ll launch in five minutes. They\u2019ve got air, so make sure those \u2018winders are armed and do your last checkouts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCopy\u2026 and good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou too\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n My radio went silent. I set my watch. Five minutes until we launch. Fifteen minutes until this was all over. I pictured it in my head. Ernst would be climbing into the cockpit any minute now. He\u2019d launch first off our mobile JATO truck and clear a straight corridor ten miles out from the Elmo<\/em>. Any airborne threat he\u2019d try to engage and draw off. Gramps would follow about two minutes after and close distance. In a little over a minute after launch, he\u2019d be impossible to intercept anymore. Our teams on the ground would guide him into the heart of the storm. He\u2019d hit the wall at 110,000 feet. He\u2019d fire a mile to the core. If we did everything perfectly, every one of us would get to go home today. That was a big if.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of a sudden, a strange feeling washed over me. The air didn\u2019t just feel heavy anymore; it felt\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I reeled around and looked back at the ship. Nothing had changed. The snow was still falling. The wind still sandblasted my cheeks. The rolling thunder on the horizon kept its pace. But I couldn\u2019t shake the feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like every one of my senses was screaming at me. No\u2026 it was like a sense I wasn\u2019t even aware I possessed was protesting. Nothing was wrong, and yet everything was. I reached for my radio and paused for a second. What if I was wrong? We couldn\u2019t risk the operation on some feeling in my gut\u2014and certainly not on my nerves. I took a deep breath and focused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Starfighter was almost ready. I chambered a round in the modified 30mm cannon and ran through the guidance checkouts on the last Sidewinder. The oversized vacuum tubes peeked out of holes in the housing, and the dull growl of the spinning seeker was strangely reassuring. No matter what, if it flew, this thing could kill it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. Not too long, unless you forget to breathe. The thumping in my chest grew louder and louder, but I choked it down. I felt lightning dance across the backs of my palms. If you\u2019ve never felt your hair stand on end before, it\u2019s quite an uncomfortable sensation. I almost felt myself relax when I saw Gramps and Ernst on the Elmo<\/em>‘s boarding ladder\u2014but then my brain fired on all cylinders and screamed at me, \u201cDown!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I probably wouldn\u2019t have seen what came next had I been standing anywhere else. For a split second, an almost imperceptible darkness flashed across the ground\u2014like the shadow of a sundial sweeping an arc across the snow, made visible by the low rays of light streaming in from the sun behind me. The world didn\u2019t move in slow motion or stop. Everything happened faster than I could perceive, but I heeded the screaming voice in my head and dove. By the time I heard the crack, purple flames spilled over the bow of the Elmo<\/em>. A second later, a gale of wind and searing heat rushed over my back and echoed in the air I had been standing in a moment ago. A deafening roar pierced the air, and my radio flared to life. Shouts and screaming, damage reports, bearings and ranges\u2014all flooded in over the same noisy channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The flames had spread across the whole deck now. The crew of the AA guns didn\u2019t even get a chance to fire before the rolling torrent of heat stripped flesh from bone. The deck flashed and groaned as belts of autocannon ammunition went up like popcorn. Ernst and the old man had made it just off the ladder and hit the snow before the fire consumed the railings. I felt my heart lift for a second. Like only trained pilots from a bygone era could, they sprinted to their planes. Gramps ran to the foot of the launch ramp faster than I\u2019ve ever seen an old-timer move. Before I could blink, he was scrambling up the ladder. Ernst ran toward me and the Starfighter, and for a split second I wondered why he never tried for the Olympics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gramps had closed the canopy of the X-15 and had run through the fastest preflight I\u2019d ever seen. For a split second, the turbopumps whined, and a glowing exhaust plume flickered brilliantly to life. A split second later, the glow was replaced by a five-story fireball of fuel, a heap of molten slag, and a twisted titanium skeleton. The force of the blast knocked Ernst off his feet and sent a jagged shrapnel knife through his chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every sense I possessed told me that this was an act of God\u2014divine retribution for something somebody (or everybody) did. But my brain screamed at me, issuing orders to regroup though I had lost command of my senses. I didn\u2019t feel like a sinner on judgment day; I felt like prey, hunted in the shadows by a predator\u2014so I scanned the sky. What I saw made my heart sink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wings. Wings as black as night filled my vision of the sky above. I don\u2019t think my mind could keep up with my eyes. I scanned every inch of the\u2026 thing. Pages from picture books, stories, and fairy tales flashed in my mind, and a single word breathlessly escaped my lips: \u201cDragon\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I watched it slowly circle around to my front. It saw me as clearly as I saw it. It felt like it was weighing me\u2014sizing my soul against its own. For a second, it spared a look of consideration and gazed straight into my eyes. My brain responded with searing pain\u2014a thousand wires crossed. Some screamed \u201cRun!\u201d, some threatened to draw my arm to the pistol on my hip, and some just froze. In the end, I just trembled on the ground like a leaf, paralyzed in its gaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everybody thinks about their death. Thinking about your death is not the same as feeling it. The bravest men intellectualize their demise, and they aren\u2019t moved by it. I wasn\u2019t a brave man. I was a coward. I felt with every sliver of bone and nerve and sinew that I was going to die, and I screamed at myself for being so stupid\u2014for enlisting in a hopeless war, for volunteering for a \u201csafe\u201d mission, for dragging my only brother along\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I decided to accept death. I didn\u2019t want to, but I couldn\u2019t fight it. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and no way to fight. Though my mind screamed in protest, I drowned it out. The cold knives against my skin dulled. The beating drums of cannons grew muffled and distant. Even my vision started to fade as the world desaturated. I gave up. My body knew I did and was going to make my end as painless as possible. For a split second, I was thankful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Graceful as only an apex predator could be, the thing reared up in the air and opened its mouth. I felt the protest in my soul fade as I saw the purple flame coalesce in its maw. A beautiful purple light gleamed out of every crack in its thick scaly armor. I couldn\u2019t feel the radiant heat brush my skin, but I knew it was coming all the same. In a second, I would be ash\u2014out of existence. But to my surprise, that second never came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A burst of fire met the dragon. A trio of sharp cracks arrived in my ear a pause after the sparks danced from its hide. Dead? No, I couldn\u2019t imagine something like a rifle could kill it. All the same, it wildly reared its head, searing steam blowing from its nostrils. It was both angry and impressed. Would there really be a man so foolish and rash as to challenge it? If not in firepower, it had met its match in spirit. The beast locked eyes with my brother, but he locked eyes with me. With trembling hands, he held his rifle and faced down horror, but he held his ground. I saw him a hundred yards away mouth the words, and heard my radio crackle to life: \u201cFinish it. For all of us\u2026\u201d Then he was no more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I felt something inside me break\u2014not like a rubber band drawn to the point of snapping, but like a wall that held me back. I was given the chance that was his, and I wouldn\u2019t stop even if it killed me. I felt a fire rise behind my eyes. The color flashed back to the world. Searing heat poured from my heart into my limbs. A trillion neurons all screamed in perfect unison. The wind that gnawed at me felt like home. I started running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t know how I was moving\u2014half on instinct and half on some fuel I didn\u2019t know I had. A fire I didn\u2019t know dwelled within me, and I knew it would burn me out. I fanned it all the same. I was sprinting now. I flew up the ladder and into the cockpit of the Starfighter. Maybe it was fate that I was the one sitting at the controls, but it was a fate my brother made. I had never flown a plane, but I knew every inch of the dash\u2014every gauge and every screw. I remembered every time Ernst guided my hands over the controls. I couldn\u2019t fly, but I could fly her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I entrusted my hands to the stick and my soul to the fighter. I had the cockpit closed by the time the dragon had even turned its head back to me. The rush of pressurized oxygen flushed through the vents and danced like music in my ears. I trusted everything. I checked nothing. My finger found a small switch on the firewall that read \u201cJATO Engage.\u201d Let\u2019s dance!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 100,000 pounds of thrust slammed me back into my seat like a kick from a mule. The world below me sped away, and the flaming carcass of the Elmo<\/em> receded in my mirror, but the beast grew closer. I was in the air but not home free. I hadn\u2019t had time to start the engine on the ground. I found a heavy caution-striped lever and pulled it home. A small thump in the airstream let me know my emergency generator had deployed. Lights flickered to life across the cockpit as the aircraft came to life\u2014this was probably the world\u2019s first in-air startup. The booster had burned out and cleanly dropped away, skittering into the snow below. The jets would take it from here. I slammed the throttle to the firewall and felt the dull clunk of the afterburner engaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was gaining speed\u2014a hundred miles per hour off the launch trailer, two hundred soon after. But it wasn\u2019t fast enough. The dragon reared its head and roared, purple light filling its stomach once more. The radio on my hip sang to life one more time, and I heard a friendly old voice fill the speakers: \u201cEagle-2, glad to see you made it up. Let us handle your tail, but we\u2019ll let you do the rest.\u201d I started to raise my voice in protest, but a hail of rocket fire pelted the side of the beast, and two ancient propeller planes drew it off. They were dead, and they knew it. I closed my eyes and kept climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n The world below me was shrinking now. As I pulled higher, I knew the stars should have started to fill my view, but the storm took their place. The stick felt light in my hands. A dozen hours of simulator time had paid off with interest. I wasn\u2019t sure I could land, but I could fly. I spared a glance at my gauge. I hadn\u2019t even noticed when I broke the sound barrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sparks of howitzer fire lit the shores below, and it looked like a thousand little candles flickered gently in the snow. A black tide of men swarmed to meet an ocean of ashen-red bodies and found themselves hopelessly outnumbered. I grit my teeth and turned my eye back to the storm. I was in the air, and under optimal conditions I had a 3% chance of completing the mission. I had run those numbers myself. But conditions weren\u2019t optimal. I had no radar guidance, I had no flight plan\u2014hell, I shouldn\u2019t even be up here. All the same, I was the best hope those soldiers had, and that Beretta on my hip didn\u2019t feel quite so light anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Mach 2, I began to climb\u2014as fast as this plane was ever designed for. The world was a blur below now at 1400 miles per hour. It took all my strength to wrestle the stick back against the tremendous force of the air. The engine temperature rose higher and higher. The faster I flew, the hotter the air was getting. The hotter the air got, the hotter the engine got. It couldn\u2019t hold out long at these speeds. Even as I climbed higher and the air grew thin and wispy, the storm looked larger than ever, and the temperature kept climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I closed my eyes. I don\u2019t think I had prayed in years, but it didn\u2019t matter now. To whatever God was listening\u2014to whatever God could make it count\u2014please give me a chance. My finger found a small switch\u2014\u201cSEC. Engage\u201d\u2014and flicked it. The screech of the turbopumps rose into a deafening roar, and my onboard rocket engaged. Half the weight of my plane was fuel just to power it. It would push me faster and higher than the turbine could alone, but every ounce of fuel it burned took insulation away from the wings. I pushed higher and faster still but flew closer and closer to the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mach needle climbed: 2, 2.5, 3. The air, once faintly whistling around the fuselage, grew into a roar. The hull groaned under the stress and heat. The metal under my boots glowed an angry red. I almost eased off the power until I saw the faint flicker of blue lightning off my nose\u2014St. Elmo\u2019s fire. I kept going, and then I hit the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The air at 100,000 feet is thin\u2014so thin I was now using the small reaction control rockets in my nosecone to control the plane; there wasn\u2019t enough air for the control surfaces to push against. That was why the torrential force of the storm took me by surprise. The whole plane shook with tremors that sent my gut into my throat. If I hadn\u2019t lost the contents of my stomach that morning, it would have been all over the cockpit. It was a small miracle the seals hadn\u2019t failed yet\u2014this high without a pressure suit, I wouldn\u2019t just suffocate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I felt the plane lurch violently\u2014the flaps, if I had to guess. That would make it a bear to land, but I doubted I\u2019d be landing anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the midst of the storm, my mind finally cleared. Sure enough, I couldn\u2019t see the stars above or the Earth below. I had no radar guidance, and Kirill\u2014along with the rest of the engineering team\u2014was dead 120,000 feet below. My hand was steady on the stick, and the gentle puffs of the RCS thrusters calmed my mind. For the second time that day, felt a sense I didn\u2019t know I had\u2014a premonition, a warning. I strained to touch it, and very faintly, it touched me back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I couldn\u2019t describe what it was like. As natural as sound or sight or smell, I sensed a flow around me\u2014like some nerves I didn\u2019t know I had feeling a great current sweeping me along a river. The Hive wasn\u2019t pushing me away; it was pulling me in! The flickers of St. Elmo\u2019s fire grew into long blue tendrils along the plane, and for the first time today, I followed my gut. Then I saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hive would be difficult to describe. It looked like an inside-out raindrop, reflecting and spilling glittering rays of white light across the clouds. I couldn\u2019t tell if it was moving or I was anymore. It skittered about and shook violently, pulsing and beating like an arrhythmic heart, and as I grew closer, I felt the soft heat on my skin spilling through the canopy glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A blaring alarm brought me to my senses: bingo fuel. My turbojet had died long ago, starved of air this high up. The tiny rocket engine powering me had only a few seconds of fuel remaining. I reached down to shut it off, and the cacophony of noises in the cockpit got a little quieter. I armed the nuclear rocket onboard. Only Ernst and I knew the secret, but I\u2019m sure my brother figured it out at the end. We never were able to find fuel for this one\u2014and this was only ever going to be a one-way trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The light that filled the cockpit grew bright and comforting. The nose melted and warped from the heat, but I felt a sense of calm wash over me even as the plane started to disintegrate around me. In my last moments in this world, I said a prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGod, please let this count,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I pushed the detonator. For a second, I heard a click, and the world faded to black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Battle for Antarctica Everyone had his own reason for enlisting. I still remember the look on Mom\u2019s face when I told her where I\u2019d be going and what I\u2019d be doing. To their credit, when the suits showed up to the museum and waltzed into the restoration hangar, they didn\u2019t sugarcoat it. There was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-serial","category-laststarfighter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dannysserverserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}