Global Peak (Part 11.0 up 05/29/09).
Posted: 2007-07-13 03:33pm
2047, Salt Lake City,
July 20th,
Free States Territories.
"And they still won't surrender. The damned fucking morons," People's Commissar Julius Whittaker ground out angrily, pounding his fist against the map-table. "We hold the heights and half the damned UoU campus and we've been hitting them with a thousand shells a day, half of them gas. The reports say a thousand civilians are dying every day from starvation alone. But they still won't yield."
"It's the fact that they're still holding Ogden that is more problematic to our interests," General Catherine Tang answered. She was known to the Mormon defenders--every single ward raised as a volunteer militia by this point--as 'the demon eunuch of castro district' on account of being a transexual from San Francisco, but the demon part was well deserved: She was one of the 'new generals' of the Government Army of the West. In the early years of the war that had now dragged on for seven years, most of the Army and Air Force had sided with the Walker regime in Texas which had proclaimed the Free States' Union to resist 'government collectivization on the pretext of peak oil'.
In desperation the government had used its control of the security services to draft anyone and everyone; millions of untrained workers had been thrown against the more prepared veterans of the Free States Union and millions of them had died. Most of their commanders had died with them or had been sacked. By the brutal calculus of general combat, however, a certain small percentage of the leaders had survived to gain experience and become professionals, and with elections indefinitely suspended and political reliability officers everywhere, these had actually been preferred as commanders to the old loyal officers of the US Army. Catherine Tang was one of these, a painter who had been voted by popular ballot as commander of a battalion sent to the defence of the Tahoe district from a Free States' attempt to seize Donner Pass by coup de main, and ending up now, six years later, commanding the whole Army of the Wasatch Front. She was young, too; only about thirty.
"And what about the loss of life?" Among Whittaker's other duties was to try and do as much as possible for the population of the occupied districts, but here he could only manage so much. The Mormon resistance had been utterly incredible. "We all know we have to chastise them, but..."
"They're going to die anyway, Julius," Catherine answered with a snort and toss of her head. "Colonel Hui?"
Her chief of staff stepped forward. "Yes, General?"
"Do you have the projections for how much food we'll be able to bring to the Wasatch Front when we've reduced their resistance?"
"Of course." A document was handed over, written on paper, now, as not even field headquarters could afford electronic document handling easily. Catherine pushed it to Julius' side of the table with a bitter look. "A thousand people a day may be dying inside the siege lines of Salt Lake City, but we're still losing a thousand people a week--and that's free citizens, nobody except the internal security directorate knows how much of our forced labour battalions are dying each week--in the Western Loyal States," by which she referred to California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon, Hawaii, and the reestablished Loyalist regime in Alaska after the separatist movement had been defeated by a rush deploy in the first year of the war there.
"Suffice to say, we only have enough surplus food for one-tenth of the population of the Wasatch front. Gassing them and blasting them apart in open combat is a mercy compared to that. The blood is already on our hands either way. We can send them out to the fields once they've surrendered to try and grow their own food like they were doing before, but it's to late for a goddamned harvest."
"And the political authorities in California would never permit water diversion of the Colorado's flow from the Imperial Valley," Whittaker answered and sighed. "Very well. It must be done. We can only hope that we can increase production again and stop relying so much on labour battalions once we've secured and repaired the Albertan oil infrastructure."
"And that's why this offensive is of secondary priority. Five million forced labourers on the farms of California, western Washington, and the Willamette valley do not enough food for sixty millions make, even with all the volunteers. My army troops have been fighting continuously on half rations since the moment we went on the offensive!"
A black man wearing a Marine uniform with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel stepped into the dilapidated 'McMansion' which had once been in the exurbs of Salt Lake City and now served, in the blistering head, as the centre of the command facility for the whole nation. An orderly gave him--he was sweating profusely, and with good reason, for it was damned hot--a glass of lemonade with precious ice in it.
"General, Commissar, Sirs," he saluted, and grinned broadly. The grin was returned.
"Jay, did you get that photo reconaissance I ordered?"
"Yeah, I did, General, and, good news." He tossed the pictures onto the table, and in a moment the bitter conversation of the Commissar and the General was forgotten: They could clearly see the smashed spire of the Mormon Temple and the shattered gleam of gold on the ground before it.
"Hah! We finally got it. Two damned months of shooting at it, leaving it hanging at a crazy angle and everything, and we finally knocked down the damned statue of the Angel Moroni."
"I can't wait to get our hands on it, either;" Whittaker added, "the plunder of solid gold from the temple precincts will buy more than a small amount of Russian oil to keep the counteroffensive going. As soon as we've cleared Ogden we can have supply trains prepping for the drive to Cheyenne and our best chance to outflank the Moffat Line," as the tremendous defensive network in the Colorado Rockies was being called. "And maybe we can make up some for General Wallace's rapid progress after he isolated Boise."
"Not our fault, there, Julius. Boise isn't on the old UPac transcon, it was much easier to bypass. They're still holding out, though. Probably eating each other by now. Don't have as tough a moral will as the Mormons."
"Sometimes I think you admire them, Catherine."
The woman looked up, annoyed that the political officer had used her name familiarly. "They've fought very well. They may still, in fact, overrun St. Louis before we can divert enough of their forces west that Operation Jandarma Valley can commence to try and restore the lines of communication. Hell, they're still holding Gary, and we've taken, what, a million dead trying to clear them out of greater Chicagoland? The FedGov has been obsessed with taking it back, foolishly, ever since God's Will Governments in Indiana and Kentucky committed the Louisville massacre."
Colonel Jay Hassan blanched at that. With the considerable latitude given to state governments, when Indiana and Kentucky had managed to suppress the pro-government counter-secession in Louisville they had taken fifty thousand African-Americans, ten thousand suspected homosexuals, and twenty-five thousand general 'communists and environmentalists', loaded them all onto barges in the Ohio river while chained together, and then sunk the barges. None of them thought much of the response, where Terence Farlow, the People's Commissar of the western districts, had ordered fifty thousand anti-government baptists in the labour camps shot.
None of which really mattered, objectively. The point which Catherine Tang had been trying to drive home earlier was that there was no food to feed the people who were being massacred with anyway; they were going to die no matter what. It was simply human nature and the insane, bloody war which had gripped the former United States of America for the past seven years, which led to such atrocities. And perhaps a desire to make sure that the people you hated were the ones who died, instead of seeing those who supported your cause starve to death to feed someone who thought you deserved to be tortured to death.
You do realize you're a monster, right? You only joined the cadres to protect the family you love, but you've become a monster, some nasty little voice in Catherine Tang's head reminded her. How many times have you thrown away the lives of your own soldiers, let alone authorizing the use of gas shells against Salt Lake City? Well, there was precious little to be done for it now.
"Fuck this discussion," she growled angrily at last. "It's time for us to do something to cut Ogden off from the city proper. They should be demoralized by this, at least, the religious fools. And we only need Ogden; Salt Lake City can rot. But we need Eastern Utah for the uranium if nothing else."
"There are fourteen new reactors in the Yolo area which aren't online yet because of a lack of fuel," Colonel Hui interjected at that, in agreement. "They could provide the energy for several tractor and AFV factories to triple production and restore some limited electricity to the Bay Area. We need those uranium deposits, badly."
"Commissar Whittaker, I'm formally requested permission to halt the attempt to take Salt Lake City. I want to instead concentrate on an amphibious operation to seize Antelope Island and place artillery there to support an effort to cut through the neck of the Mormon defensive position, and isolate Ogden for reduction."
"And what happens to Salt Lake City?"
"They starve. Just like they would if they surrendered today."
Whittaker sighed. "Very well, I'll sign off on it, General. You're right. Even ignoring Denver and the Moffat Line, the moment we get the Utah uranium supplies, we can start to restore a normal life for the West Coast Loyalists."
"And then we start pushing further east," Catherine agreed. "Because the people in the eastern Loyal states are suffering even more than our own people. A lot more."
Then a dispatcher entered and caught all their attention with her eager, breathless strides. "General! There's news from Central Gov. General Taipal has secured the surrender of Calgary! Advanced units have been ordered forward into Saskatchewan. We may meet up with the Army of Canada," the country had joined with the FedGov as a matter of necessity on the secession of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, "in a matter of weeks."
"Two transcons in operation..." Whittaker was breathless.
"And a way to get more grain to Minneapolis and Chicago," Catherine agreed. "Nevermind that this means we'll have control of the oil sands in a matter of days. Maybe, for once, we'll have enough trucks in operation that I won't be stepping over a show-horse's carcass every half-mile from using them to try and pull supply wagons," she added with a tint of bitterness. "Anyway..., Alisa, grab us some one of those Napa wines, hmm? It's time for a toast with this news you've brought us. And feel free to have some yourself." Small kindnesses were all that was left in a world gone mad.
July 20th,
Free States Territories.
"And they still won't surrender. The damned fucking morons," People's Commissar Julius Whittaker ground out angrily, pounding his fist against the map-table. "We hold the heights and half the damned UoU campus and we've been hitting them with a thousand shells a day, half of them gas. The reports say a thousand civilians are dying every day from starvation alone. But they still won't yield."
"It's the fact that they're still holding Ogden that is more problematic to our interests," General Catherine Tang answered. She was known to the Mormon defenders--every single ward raised as a volunteer militia by this point--as 'the demon eunuch of castro district' on account of being a transexual from San Francisco, but the demon part was well deserved: She was one of the 'new generals' of the Government Army of the West. In the early years of the war that had now dragged on for seven years, most of the Army and Air Force had sided with the Walker regime in Texas which had proclaimed the Free States' Union to resist 'government collectivization on the pretext of peak oil'.
In desperation the government had used its control of the security services to draft anyone and everyone; millions of untrained workers had been thrown against the more prepared veterans of the Free States Union and millions of them had died. Most of their commanders had died with them or had been sacked. By the brutal calculus of general combat, however, a certain small percentage of the leaders had survived to gain experience and become professionals, and with elections indefinitely suspended and political reliability officers everywhere, these had actually been preferred as commanders to the old loyal officers of the US Army. Catherine Tang was one of these, a painter who had been voted by popular ballot as commander of a battalion sent to the defence of the Tahoe district from a Free States' attempt to seize Donner Pass by coup de main, and ending up now, six years later, commanding the whole Army of the Wasatch Front. She was young, too; only about thirty.
"And what about the loss of life?" Among Whittaker's other duties was to try and do as much as possible for the population of the occupied districts, but here he could only manage so much. The Mormon resistance had been utterly incredible. "We all know we have to chastise them, but..."
"They're going to die anyway, Julius," Catherine answered with a snort and toss of her head. "Colonel Hui?"
Her chief of staff stepped forward. "Yes, General?"
"Do you have the projections for how much food we'll be able to bring to the Wasatch Front when we've reduced their resistance?"
"Of course." A document was handed over, written on paper, now, as not even field headquarters could afford electronic document handling easily. Catherine pushed it to Julius' side of the table with a bitter look. "A thousand people a day may be dying inside the siege lines of Salt Lake City, but we're still losing a thousand people a week--and that's free citizens, nobody except the internal security directorate knows how much of our forced labour battalions are dying each week--in the Western Loyal States," by which she referred to California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon, Hawaii, and the reestablished Loyalist regime in Alaska after the separatist movement had been defeated by a rush deploy in the first year of the war there.
"Suffice to say, we only have enough surplus food for one-tenth of the population of the Wasatch front. Gassing them and blasting them apart in open combat is a mercy compared to that. The blood is already on our hands either way. We can send them out to the fields once they've surrendered to try and grow their own food like they were doing before, but it's to late for a goddamned harvest."
"And the political authorities in California would never permit water diversion of the Colorado's flow from the Imperial Valley," Whittaker answered and sighed. "Very well. It must be done. We can only hope that we can increase production again and stop relying so much on labour battalions once we've secured and repaired the Albertan oil infrastructure."
"And that's why this offensive is of secondary priority. Five million forced labourers on the farms of California, western Washington, and the Willamette valley do not enough food for sixty millions make, even with all the volunteers. My army troops have been fighting continuously on half rations since the moment we went on the offensive!"
A black man wearing a Marine uniform with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel stepped into the dilapidated 'McMansion' which had once been in the exurbs of Salt Lake City and now served, in the blistering head, as the centre of the command facility for the whole nation. An orderly gave him--he was sweating profusely, and with good reason, for it was damned hot--a glass of lemonade with precious ice in it.
"General, Commissar, Sirs," he saluted, and grinned broadly. The grin was returned.
"Jay, did you get that photo reconaissance I ordered?"
"Yeah, I did, General, and, good news." He tossed the pictures onto the table, and in a moment the bitter conversation of the Commissar and the General was forgotten: They could clearly see the smashed spire of the Mormon Temple and the shattered gleam of gold on the ground before it.
"Hah! We finally got it. Two damned months of shooting at it, leaving it hanging at a crazy angle and everything, and we finally knocked down the damned statue of the Angel Moroni."
"I can't wait to get our hands on it, either;" Whittaker added, "the plunder of solid gold from the temple precincts will buy more than a small amount of Russian oil to keep the counteroffensive going. As soon as we've cleared Ogden we can have supply trains prepping for the drive to Cheyenne and our best chance to outflank the Moffat Line," as the tremendous defensive network in the Colorado Rockies was being called. "And maybe we can make up some for General Wallace's rapid progress after he isolated Boise."
"Not our fault, there, Julius. Boise isn't on the old UPac transcon, it was much easier to bypass. They're still holding out, though. Probably eating each other by now. Don't have as tough a moral will as the Mormons."
"Sometimes I think you admire them, Catherine."
The woman looked up, annoyed that the political officer had used her name familiarly. "They've fought very well. They may still, in fact, overrun St. Louis before we can divert enough of their forces west that Operation Jandarma Valley can commence to try and restore the lines of communication. Hell, they're still holding Gary, and we've taken, what, a million dead trying to clear them out of greater Chicagoland? The FedGov has been obsessed with taking it back, foolishly, ever since God's Will Governments in Indiana and Kentucky committed the Louisville massacre."
Colonel Jay Hassan blanched at that. With the considerable latitude given to state governments, when Indiana and Kentucky had managed to suppress the pro-government counter-secession in Louisville they had taken fifty thousand African-Americans, ten thousand suspected homosexuals, and twenty-five thousand general 'communists and environmentalists', loaded them all onto barges in the Ohio river while chained together, and then sunk the barges. None of them thought much of the response, where Terence Farlow, the People's Commissar of the western districts, had ordered fifty thousand anti-government baptists in the labour camps shot.
None of which really mattered, objectively. The point which Catherine Tang had been trying to drive home earlier was that there was no food to feed the people who were being massacred with anyway; they were going to die no matter what. It was simply human nature and the insane, bloody war which had gripped the former United States of America for the past seven years, which led to such atrocities. And perhaps a desire to make sure that the people you hated were the ones who died, instead of seeing those who supported your cause starve to death to feed someone who thought you deserved to be tortured to death.
You do realize you're a monster, right? You only joined the cadres to protect the family you love, but you've become a monster, some nasty little voice in Catherine Tang's head reminded her. How many times have you thrown away the lives of your own soldiers, let alone authorizing the use of gas shells against Salt Lake City? Well, there was precious little to be done for it now.
"Fuck this discussion," she growled angrily at last. "It's time for us to do something to cut Ogden off from the city proper. They should be demoralized by this, at least, the religious fools. And we only need Ogden; Salt Lake City can rot. But we need Eastern Utah for the uranium if nothing else."
"There are fourteen new reactors in the Yolo area which aren't online yet because of a lack of fuel," Colonel Hui interjected at that, in agreement. "They could provide the energy for several tractor and AFV factories to triple production and restore some limited electricity to the Bay Area. We need those uranium deposits, badly."
"Commissar Whittaker, I'm formally requested permission to halt the attempt to take Salt Lake City. I want to instead concentrate on an amphibious operation to seize Antelope Island and place artillery there to support an effort to cut through the neck of the Mormon defensive position, and isolate Ogden for reduction."
"And what happens to Salt Lake City?"
"They starve. Just like they would if they surrendered today."
Whittaker sighed. "Very well, I'll sign off on it, General. You're right. Even ignoring Denver and the Moffat Line, the moment we get the Utah uranium supplies, we can start to restore a normal life for the West Coast Loyalists."
"And then we start pushing further east," Catherine agreed. "Because the people in the eastern Loyal states are suffering even more than our own people. A lot more."
Then a dispatcher entered and caught all their attention with her eager, breathless strides. "General! There's news from Central Gov. General Taipal has secured the surrender of Calgary! Advanced units have been ordered forward into Saskatchewan. We may meet up with the Army of Canada," the country had joined with the FedGov as a matter of necessity on the secession of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, "in a matter of weeks."
"Two transcons in operation..." Whittaker was breathless.
"And a way to get more grain to Minneapolis and Chicago," Catherine agreed. "Nevermind that this means we'll have control of the oil sands in a matter of days. Maybe, for once, we'll have enough trucks in operation that I won't be stepping over a show-horse's carcass every half-mile from using them to try and pull supply wagons," she added with a tint of bitterness. "Anyway..., Alisa, grab us some one of those Napa wines, hmm? It's time for a toast with this news you've brought us. And feel free to have some yourself." Small kindnesses were all that was left in a world gone mad.
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