The Final War (alt-Draka story)

[Typhonis 1]

The Serfs can expect lighter treatment...their masters however........hope they like Siberia.

[darthdavid]

The Serfs can expect lighter treatment...their masters however........hope they like Siberia.

I hear Sibera's cold this time of year. *zing*

[Junghalli]

Were it not for the Panama Canal the Mascarene Archipelago would be the most strategically significant territory of the United States. It was a nondescript archipelago, consisting of two main islands (Reunion and Mauritius) and a few minor bits of land. It had originally been a possession of France. When France had become a Draka province during the Eurasian War the US had occupied many of its overseas colonies (most notably the state of French Guiana), officially to restore order. Everyone had understood that the real reason was they didn’t want them to fall into Draka hands but the Draka had officially been our allies, however reviled they had already become by the general population, so it wouldn’t have been politic to admit that openly. By sheer geographic good fortune the French had possessed a group of islands less than a thousand miles from Madagascar; easy striking distance of the Draka heartland. Almost immediately after the close of WWII the US and Soviet governments had started planning for “Operation Daybreak”: a combined Soviet-American attack on the Draka with the aim of liberating their Eurasian territories and, if possible, destroying the Dominate altogether. Among the preparations was the construction of a huge fleet and aircraft base on Reunion Island, which would be the perfect staging platform for attacks on Africa. But that was when the US had a huge card in its deck in the form of the atom bomb. Then the Draka got the bomb back in ’48 and that had been the end of Operation Daybreak for the foreseeable future. The gradual souring of relations with the Soviets had been the final nail in its coffin, making the whole plan completely unworkable. But the possibility of a future war with the Dominate had stayed very real to the Pentagon, so the base had stayed. Half of Reunion Island had eventually been claimed by the largest Navy and Airforce base in the world; America’s stationary aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean.

On the morning of September 16th a small Airforce VIP transport plane had landed at Reunion, one of many planes that took off and landed from the island. Supply lines to the Mascarenes were stretched thin. Everything had to be brought over via ship or plane from the American Hebrides and Chesterfield islands on the wrong side of Australia (the Philippines were closer, but Soviet Indonesia was in the way). Since the start of the war the situation had gotten slightly better now that supplies could be brought over from the British Pacific territories, but it was still less than comfortable. Especially considering that Australia had most of its cities nuked in the opening moves of the war and was taking more American aid than it was giving. So, generally, the arrival of the aircraft was not overly remarked upon.

A little later, however, the order had gone to launch every CVN and submarine and half the warships on the island and to begin preparations to execute Order 18: the nuclear option. That was when the men of Reunion Base first realized the arrival of Airforce General Henderson was something more than another high-up CO doing a routine inspection.

That evening the airmen stationed at Reunion Base, chiefly stealth bomber and fighter pilots, were called to the mess to receive their orders. Reunion Base had far too many personnel to all be crammed in one place; most of them would hear the General through closed-circuit television.

General Henderson looked out of the big packed mess, the Airmen leaning forward on their tables to see him better. “You’re going to Cape Town tonight boys!” he began. There was a moment of silence as the men processed his words and then a righteous cheer broke out. These men had been spoiling for a chance to give the Draka a taste of the full wrath of the US Airforce ever since 9/11.

“As of 0700 tomorrow the United States begins Operation Retribution” he explained. “Unrestrained bombardment with Scorpion missiles. By this time tomorrow the Draka will have a better idea of what it means to go up against the United States military. Half their Dominate will be in ruins, God willing. That’s the first half of the operation. The second… That’s where you come in.

“The Scorpions will take out the Dominate’s big cities, their big industry. But you’re the ones who are really going to have to put the fear of hell into them. Tomorrow night we’ll be launching the biggest air raid since WWII. Not just from here but from the American Seychelles, the Azores, the Cape Verde, every CVN within a thousand miles of the Dominate. The RAF will be helping us out with the bombardment of Europe. We use Valkyries and cruise missiles for the coastal raids, stealths for everything else. We’re going to take out roads, towns, pipelines, DAF and army bases, railroads, power generating facilities, every target of importance. When the Scorpions get through with them the Draka are going to be walking funny, when you get through with them they’re going to be lying on the ground with their hamstrings cut, their back broken, and their throat and wrists slit.”

“What about the Draka’s fighters and antiaircraft defenses” a Captain asked.

“The CIA thinks the DAF still has problems tracking stealth aircraft, especially at night. They have to rely on following heat coronae and most of their fighters don’t have the kind of infrared sensing devices to track us over long distance once we refitted the stealths with heat-masked engines. They won’t be totally helpless of course but you will air superiority and numerical superiority. Remember the DAF is small and most of their CVN based force is off in the US and they’re tapping a lot of their strength against the RAF over the Channel and Britain. As for air defenses… CIA intelligence indicates they’ve yet to be properly refitted to deal with stealth fighters mostly. They will be highly inaccurate.” He paused while the men shifted with nervous energy. “You will receive your particular orders from your individual Captains and Lieutenants. Operation Retribution begins tomorrow. I suggest you put all your affairs in order. That is all except… the Draka have an awful lot of death and suffering to answer for over the centuries ladies and gentlemen. Tomorrow night, make sure they pay.”

* * *

The formation of stealth bombers, escorted by stealth fighters, flew silently over the Indian Ocean. To the Draka radar stations lining the South African coast they were virtually invisible. Their engines were modified to give off as little heat as possible and dampened so as not to trip sound detectors. More than lip service had been paid to making these aircraft almost undetectable. Even the cabin lights were kept carefully low, so that the oldest method of detecting enemy aircraft would also be foiled.

Airman Kingsby checked the bomb load again. Some incendiaries and a tactical nuke. His squadron was under orders to go directly to Archona and wipe it off the map. It was more a psychological ploy than anything else, Kingsby suspected. The city could just as easily have been taken care of in the opening nuclear exchange, but the US wanted to send a message that the Airforce could crawl all over Draka territory at will, that they couldn’t even protect their own capital.

“We are feet dry” the pilot reported. “Repeat, we are feet dry.”

* * *

The atmosphere in the central radar control facility for the Loire region was tense, apprehensive, frightened, and angry all at the same time. The TV was still on in the back and the lullaby-like droning of the Federal African Broadcasting Combine (FABC, not to be confused with the American ABC) was drifting in. It was difficult for the soldiers who staffed the facility to comprehend the true enormity of the US response. The Dominate had been dealt a savage blow. Many of the men had family and loved ones in cities that had been nuked by the Yankees. Many suspected the worst, but none would allow their emotions to interfere with their duties. So they continued their jobs, backs stiff with tension and voices threatening to crack but unable to articulate the nearly unbearable burdens of fear and grief they labored under. What was permissible were vows of revenge, and there had already been plenty of that over the day. There was one thing everyone knew: when the Legions got through with those Yankee bastards they’d curse the day their mothers had met their fathers. The Janissaries labored under the oppressive tension with even more difficulty than the Citizen personnel. Regardless of how they might hate their Draka masters they knew that being in the presence of frustrated, worried, angry people who had the power of life and death over you could be very dangerous. Frustrated and angry Draka had a tendency to do very bad things to any serf who did something to piss them off, and they all worked under the certainty that their lives might be forfeit at the drop of a falling pen. So it was with great trepidation that the serf technician interrupted Centurion Hugesson’s reverie.

“Master, forgive my interruption but we are picking up a very large number of contacts.”

Hugesson looked at the French serf technician, his elbow nearly tipping over his cold and forgotten cup of coffee. “Contacts?”

“Yes Master” the serf technician said. “Very many contacts, coming over the Channel from Britain. Master- we suspect it is an RAF raid.”

It took a second for Centurion Hugesson’s numbed brain to put all the pieces together. When he finally did he looked sharply up at the serf. “Get on the horn to Paris and tell them we’ve got an air raid over our north coast! Tell them to call up every DAF base that hasn’t been nuked and scramble every plane they have! Well, what are you waiting for, a picture? Do what I fucking tell you!”

“Yes Master!” the serf technician said earnestly as he ran off toward the phone.


The disciplined RAF formation of Typhoon fighters and Cyclone bombers passed quickly over the English Channel and into France. Airman Tolland could see the lights of cities and highways, making it look as if he was passing over some kind of festering volcanic landscape. He felt a shiver go down his spine. Draka territory. The lights of the northern coast were patchy, the major cities and fleet bases having been destroyed by British nuclear missiles in the opening nuclear exchange between Britain and the Dominate. As they passed further into France Tolland could see fires and eerily backlit nebulae of smoke and ash in the distance. Fires ignited by the American Scorpion missiles which had blasted the Dominate in the first bold stroke of Operation Retribution.

He checked his radar to see a formation of fighters crawling up behind him. The dots were blurry, the result of jammer systems. “Flight leader this is Tolland” he said. “I’ve got what looks like a formation of Hellions coming up on us.”

“Copy that Tolland” the Lieutenant said. “A wing dispatch and intercept, B wing stay with the Cyclones.”

Half the Typhoons peeled off and turned around, heading straight for the Draka aircraft. The Draka began to scatter, the Typhoons went after them.

* * *

The US stealth fighters and bombers had been one of the greatest embarrassments for the Dominate. They were almost invisible to the strings of radar installations that the Dominate relied upon to watch their skies for enemy bombers. The craft could fly into Draka territories whenever they liked, penetrate deep into their Dominate within being detected, and conceivably wreak untold damage. To detect them the Dominate had been forced to construct infrared detector arrays around their borders to track stealth aircraft by the heat of their engines. It had worked at first but then the Americans had introduced the Mk II stealth bomber with heat-baffling around the engines and power plant, and subsequently included that feature in every stealth aircraft they produced. Adjustments had been made to the detectors, but they still only worked half the time.

“What is it?” Centurion Berghoven scowled as the serf technician gestured for his attention.

“Master, we’re picking up an atmospheric heat bloom” the serf technician said.

“Stealth?” Berghoven asked.

“I-uh-we’re not sure” the serf technician said. “It’s all over the place.”

“Show me.” The serf technician led Berghoven over his console. Berghoven checked and saw hundreds of tiny streaks of heat moving in a methodical straight course toward the African coast.

“Fuck” he muttered. “Fuck me dead. Somebody call Cyrenaeca! No, better make it Archona!”

* * *

Airman Tolland fought to stay out of the field of fire of the Hellion fighter that was furiously on his tail. He flew to the side, allowing the Hellion to pass him, then tried to get in behind it. But his opponent was too skilled for that and shot around, trying to come around to his rear. Tolland jetted forward, then looped back and crawled back on the Draka fighter from the rear. The Drak slowed down and Tolland almost passed him but he slowed just in time to get a perfect shot from right behind him. “Gotcha!” Tolland said as he destroyed the Hellion with a missile, sending flaming pieces of it raining down on the French countryside below. He went back to cruise mode and checked his screens. The Draka were trying to hit the Cyclones but the Typhoons weren’t letting them. Two Cyclones had been blown out of the sky and one of them was damaged and going down, but the Draka were furiously engaged with the fighter escorts. The Hellions were better, more sophisticated aircraft than the Typhoons but the DAF was overextended and the British actually found themselves at a numerical advantage, and they were fighting off the Draka with commendable skill. An Airman screamed and Tolland saw his fighter going down slowly, part of an engine cowling blown off and burning jet fuel forming a comet’s trail behind him. Tolland ducked his fighter down and grimly sprayed the wrecked fighter with his cannons. He’d have expected anyone else to do the same for him: death was better than capture by the Draka.

He climbed back to altitude, looking for new targets. He saw a Hellion shoot down a Typhoon and moved to intercept before getting a quick call from the Lieutenant that two other fighters were already on it. Two Typhoons swept by it, trying to get a lock. The Draka shot down one of them but the other came in behind him and sent him to meet his maker.

“The bombers are almost over the first target” the Lieutenant said. “Keep those bogeys off them.”

The Typhoons regrouped and spread out to engage the last remaining Draka fighters. British and Draka aircraft were being shot down all over the sky, but they were succeeding in keeping the bombers safe. A flare shot out from one of the Cyclones and disappeared over the horizon. The southern sky brightened in a false sunrise as the tactical nuke obliterated the very DAF base from which those Hellions had probably been launched.

* * *

Airman Franklin saw the first lights of the North African coast coming up below him. This was almost too easy. His stealth had flown clear across Europe without being intercepted. From the window of the stealth bomber he’d seen the lights of occupied France pass below. He couldn’t see the other stealth bombers and escorting stealth fighters, but he knew they were out there.

“We are feet dry” he reported to Sergeant Velazquez.

“Got that” Velazquez said. “How far to Qattara?”

“Another ten, fifteen minutes” Franklin said. After fifteen minutes had passed he reported “We should be passing over our first target.”

“Yup, they’re blowing it up now” Velazquez said as he watched a railway line snaking through the Egyptian desert below him being obliterated. He grinned as he saw what was left of the track. “It’ll be a while before they get regular service back on that line, that’s for damn sure!”

“Coming up on second target” Franklin said. Velazquez acknowledged as the horizon brightened from the light of a tactical nuke taking out a DAF base. “There goes their air support. They never knew what hit them.”

“We’re approaching the Qattara complex now” Franklin said. Velazquez acknowledged. He could see the railway lines, roads, pipelines, and power lines snaking across the desert below on the infrared cams. Then, just ahead, he could make out the huge hydroelectric dam that formed the southern lock of the Suez Canal.

“I’ve got it in my sights” the bombardier said.

Velazquez looked down at the huge structure, now almost directly below. The Draka were peppering the sky with antiaircraft fire but it was obvious they couldn’t track the stealths. For a moment he was awed by the sheer size of the Qattara dam complex. It made Hoover Dam look small. Then he thought of all the human suffering that had gone into its construction, the thousands of slaves who had been worked to death building it, and his resolve was hardened. “Let’s waste some Snakes” he said.

“Launching now” the bombardier said. A tactical nuke flew out of the belly of the stealth and exploded close to the dam. At last, he thought to himself, all those souls had their justice. The stealths turned north, dropping multiple tac nukes over the length of the Suez Canal and completely wrecking it as a useable slipway. The shattered pieces of the dam locks would render it un-navigable, and they would have to be removed before anything more than a rubber raft could use the canal. Judging by the fact that many of these pieces were house-sized that would be a long and expensive operation.

* * *

Within the DAF operations wing of Castle Tarleton pandemonium had broken loose. There was no panic. Draka did not panic. But there was something that was about as close as one could get to it and remain in line with Draka standards of acceptable behavior. Harried junior and mid-level officers scurried about like anxious ants; scrambling the air defenses of Drakia proper and desperately running to carry out orders from their superiors. Janissaries and serf technicians huddled over their consoles, doing their best to blend into their own equipment like chameleons lest they somehow draw the ire of some pissed off Draka officer. The high officers of the DAF huddled around a huge heavy wooden table covered with reports, staring up at the huge tactical display on the walls and wondering how things had gotten this bad. This was the first time in living memory, in fact the first time ever that Drakia itself had come under attack by a foreign enemy.

“They flew clear across Europe and we never picked them up until they hit Qattara” Strategos Carl Lindbergh shook his head in wonderment. “Hundreds of kilometers of Dominate territory and we never even saw them! What the fik did you do with all that money we gave you for the infrared detectors anyway?”

“We couldn’t know our detectors would be that useless against their stealth aircraft” Strategos Vansteenburghe said.

“Aw bullshit!” Carl Lindbergh pounded his fist on the table. “Stealth aircraft aren’t new! We’ve known their capabilities!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is getting us nowhere” Arch-Strategos Karl Von Shrakenburg Jr. appealed for calm. “We deal with the situations as they are, not as we want them to be. Now, I want a concise and objective report, not a lot of waving your hands in the air and screaming ‘this can’t be happening! This can’t be happening!’ What is going on and what can we do about it.”

“It’s pretty bad Arch-Strategos” Lindbergh said. “Most of the time our detectors didn’t pick them up, we saw a few units coming in and assumed it was a raid not an attack of this magnitude-”

“You should have bloody well expected an attack of this magnitude after this morning” Arch-Strategos Von Shrakenburg said. He was gratified to see Lindbergh squirm but gestured for him to go on.

“They’re coming in from all over the place, hitting us deep in our territories before we even know they’re there. They’ve even got the audacity to attack Drakia itself but don’t worry; we’re scrambling interceptors as we speak.”

“And how’s that going?” Von Shrakenburg asked pointedly.

Lindbergh gestured helplessly at a serf technician. Radio feed immediately began issuing from the radio comm. on the table.

“This is Tetrarch Vedeker! I can’t see anything on my screens!”

“I hear you Master” the voice of a serf technician said. “I’m piping the feed from our detectors into your radio.”

“Ah, good, I can-Ah shit!” the report terminated in a hiss of static.

* * *

The airspace above Cairo was bright with missiles and flak bursts. Unable to track the American stealth fighters the Draka were resorting to the classic “poor man’s air defense” used by the Venezuelans back in the war of ’86: saturate the sky with fire and hope the enemy aircraft will blunder into some of it by sheer chance. In fact Airman Blair was keeping his stealth well clear of Cairo. As the escorting wings of stealth fighters dealt with the Hellions the Draka had sent up he was headed down the Nile, toward the Aswan Dam.

“I see it” he reported.

“Launch missile” the command came.

“Yes sir!” the bombardier said enthusiastically. A missile carrying a tactical nuke flew out of the stealth and bursted above the lake, its initiation creating a violent pressure wave in the water that broke the dam. The stealth was already over the horizon by the time the mushroom cloud began to dissipate. The dam was completely shattered and everything in its immediate area destroyed. Over the years a considerable lake had built up behind the dam: the annual flood waters of the Nile bottled and controlled. The heat of the nuke flash-boiled some of it but it couldn’t hope to evaporate it all. Now those waters, free at last, surged forward into their old channel like a mob of liberated prisoners. The lake emptied into the Nile river valley, creating a raging flood that would travel all the way down the river, sweeping towns in its path away like dirt. The raging waters would smash through Cairo, destroying the waterfront districts and killing thousands, before finally turning the Nile Delta into a shallow muddy sea and carrying away the radioactive debris and burned corpses of the destroyed city of Alexandria as if flushing a pus-filled infected wound. The agricultural areas around the Nile would be utterly ruined, their crops swept away or buried under new black mud. Moreover the Aswan and Qattara dams supplied the bulk of North Africa’s electricity and now that they were gone there would be blackouts all over that part of the continent. Even as Blair’s bomber flew over Egypt he could see the earth-stars below him wink out of existence.

* * *

“We’re coming up over the target now” the pilot reported.

“Watch those Hellions coming up on our six” radar said.

“Gotcha” Gomez said. “The Lieutenant's having the fighters deal with them now.”

Kingsby observed as the stealth fighters pealed off and engaged the Hellions. The Hellions outnumbered the stealths three to one but they could barely even track them and it was nowhere near an even fight. More like a turkey shoot. Three stealths did go down, although probably more luck on the Draks part than anything else.

“I’m getting the bomb ready” Kingsby said. The other stealth bombers were already dropping tac nukes over the suburbs of Archona. Kingsby watched through the infrared cams as they detonated, turning a sleeping town into a blazing inferno. It was a fairly respectable town from what he could see. The houses looked neat, tidy, and large. Probably not serfs. Good. He was surprised at how much he relished the thought of the Draka being subject to such treatment. If anybody deserved this it was them. They deserved all the pain human beings could endure… and more. When he’d been bombing Ecuador back in ’90 he’d been telling himself he was just doing a job. He’d tried his best not to imagine what was happening on the ground below him. This time was different. He enjoyed picturing the Draka being cleansed from the earth by the purifying fire the US Airforce was bringing to them, enjoyed imagining their flesh melting and falling off their bones while they were still alive. It felt right.

It troubled him a little that the bomb he was going to deliver to Archona would probably kill more serfs than Draka, but that was just too bad. He remembered the slogan the libbies liked to band around. “How can we help the serfs by melting their children’s eyes?” The obvious answer was that nobody would help them if the Draka won. Hell, you were better off dead than living under the Draka anyway. Killing a serf was a mercy.

“Alright, time to burn some rattlesnakes” Gomez said. “Launch it bombardier.”

“Yes sir” Kingsby said as he keyed in the targeting sequence and opened the bomb bay doors. The missile rotated outward, primed for launch. Kingsby launched it and watched as it streaked toward Archona, finally detonating in a huge mushroom cloud. The once proud capitol of the Dominate burned at its feet.

“Gentlemen the United States Airforce has spoken and I like it” Gomez said. “Now let’s turn around and get back to the Lake before we start running a thinner fuel margin than I’d like to.”

[LordShaithis]

Good stuff! More!

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'd like to point out that that flood will actually amplify as it goes down the nile. There's got to be several dams along the way, and each will be overwhelmed and burst in turn.

Just saying.

[phongn]

I'd like to point out that that flood will actually amplify as it goes down the nile. There's got to be several dams along the way, and each will be overwhelmed and burst in turn.

If the initiations were subsurface upriver, well, there's going to be a huge plume of very radioactive water sweeping through.

[Junghalli]

Peter ducked as bullets bounced off the concrete near him. The Draka chopper circled around, shooting at him as Jose dragged him behind a stalled sports car. The bullets tore into the car’s frail frame, punching neat holes in its siding. It had to be more than a hundred degrees out and the handle of his Desert Eagle was slippery with sweat.

“Hurry! Gas is next!” Jose shouted, indicating a nearby house with a wave of his Browning auto. Peter raised his head to see the chopper circling around. He was used to associating LA with the background rumble of thousands of cars, and the present quiet was eerie to him. He could hear the rhythmic thumping of the chopper’s rotors and, in the distance, gunfire as Draka and Janissaries clashed with the Army units and partisans that still infested the megacity. He started furiously climbing the hill in front of him, the dry earth giving away under his hands as he desperately pulled himself up toward the house. Burt cursed as he ran up against a wooden fence surrounding it. He took out a fire axe and quickly hacked through it. The three men ducked through and found themselves in a spacious yard with a swimming pool dirty with dried leaves. “In here!” Burt hacked through the screen door and the men ran into the house.

“Think we’re safe yet?” Jose said, putting on his gas mask.

“Head upstairs and hope they use a nerve agent or mustard gas” Burt said as he put on his gas mask and led the men up the stairs, encumbered by his many guns and other weapons. Burt had been one of those paranoid survivalist types before the Draka invasion, which made him ideal partisan material. He’d spent the first several days of the invasion effectively saying “I told you so” to anyone who would listen. He was the cell’s chief armorer, and had provided the Browning autos, pistols, and gas masks that Peter and Jose had to lug around. He even had a small antitank cannon that he hauled around with him, along with several solid brass 25 mm armor penetrating rounds.

Burt found the door to the upstairs locked. He took his fire axe and began breaking it down when it swung open and Peter found himself facing a gas-masked figure holding an AK-47. Thinking they had stumbled onto a Draka roving unit he raised his Browning, but then he noticed the shoulder patches on the figure. He was US Army.

“Man am I happy to see you!” Burt said.

The soldier turned back toward the dark room behind him and called “hey Sarge! Sarge we got some people over here! Look like refugees or something.” The voice was feminine.

“I am not a refugee” Burt protested. “Partisans ma’am.”

“Partisans?” a second figure, a man, said. Peter guessed this was the Sergeant.

“Yup. We’ve been doing some behind the lines disruption work. You know that landslide that took out the road while that tank company was going through Beverley Hills? That was his work” Burt gestured at Peter.

It was hard to read the man’s expression behind his gas mask but Peter got the feeling he was being examined. “That took out a whole armored company. You did that? I’m impressed. What, did the government train you for this?”

Peter shook his head. “Actually I’m a geologist. Specializing in rock formations. Came in a lot handier than I thought it ever would.”

Burt nodded. “He figured out a way to make a huge landslide with, like, five sticks of dynamite. Neat, huh?”

“Barrows” the man said, extending a gloved hand. It occurred to Peter that the full NBC protection suit he was wearing had to be awfully hot. “Sergeant Barrows.”

“Just call me Peter” Peter said as he shook his hand. “Afraid we may have brought some company with us.”

“Yeah, the chopper” Barrows said. “It’s a good thing they didn’t gas this whole place. Those gas masks won’t do you much good; most of the stuff they use goes through the skin.”

“Yeah well, I was looking to buy a suit off E-Bay but then the Draka showed up while it was still in the mail” Burt said.

“Well, I think we lost them” Jose said.

“Wait” Burt held up a hand. “Listen.” Peter strained and heard the tok tok tok of a chopper, growing steadily louder.

“Shit!” he cursed. “They’re coming back!”

“Alright!” Sergeant Barrows shouted at his men. “We got company, get ready to rumble!” A half dozen formerly bored-looking soldiers immediately jumped up, raising their weapons and standing ready to repel any invaders. A shadow briefly passed over the sun. Peter realized it was the chopper. The chopping of the rotary blades evened out, seemed to stay constant. Was it hovering over the house? He heard a swishing sound, like a rope dropping. Then a crunch on the wall, then creaking footsteps on the ceiling. More swishing sounds. The tension was nearly unbearable. Were they planting bombs?

“Sarge, maybe we should get out of here” one of Barrows’ men pointed out.

“Get down… now!” Barrows commanded. The soldiers began overturning furniture to form makeshift cover. Peter imitated their actions, hiding behind an overstuffed chair. He made is just in time. There was a sound of gunfire, shattering glass, and bullet going whump into the chair’s heavy upholstery. Heavy boots kicked in the cracked window panes and big, dark-skinned Janissaries hanging from climbing ropes ducked in through the windows. The Janissaries moved quickly, already laying down a suppressing fire. The soldiers raised their rifles and began firing back. Two of the Janissaries fell down. One of them took out a grenade and threw it toward the overturned desk Peter was hiding behind. It landed right in his lap. Peter stared down at it for half a second, realized reflexively that he definitely didn’t want it, and threw it back. A Janissary yelled in surprise and fear and attempted to kick it away only to have it explode in his face, blow off his foot, and riddle his body with lethal shrapnel. Several other Janissaries screamed and collapsed on the floor in pools of blood as metal fragments were driven into them at high speed.

“Peter man! You should play for the Dodgers!” Jose laughed as he raised his Browning above the desk and started spraying the area with gunfire. Two of the Janissaries had grabbed a small nightstand and were using it as cover. Another one was hanging outside the window, keeping himself behind the wall and firing into the room one-handed. The Janissary Corps T-50 assault rifle was not meant to be fired one-handed and his accuracy was atrocious but he wasn’t trying to hit anybody, just keep their heads down. He was barely even bothering to look where he was shooting. Peter heard the sound of a door being broken down below.

“There’s another Fire Team coming up from below” Rodriguez said. “They’re trying to surround us.”

“We better get out of here before they get impatient” Barrows said. Peter tended to agree. Despite being relatively ignorant of all this military stuff he knew enough to be having visions of the Draka bringing in an attack helicopter or a couple of more Janissary squads or ordering a passing bomber to drop a bomb on him and obliterate him effortlessly.

The soldiers retreated to the door, laying down suppressing fire to keep the Janissaries from killing them all when they abandoned cover and staying as low to the floor as possible. One of the Janissaries nailed Jose and he went down with a half dozen bullet holes. Peter wasn’t sure whether or not he was still alive and wanted to go check on him but one of the soldiers grabbed his collar and forced him to move. As he left Burt tossed the Janissaries a little present: a couple of bombs he’d improvised from a piece of plastic pipe. A big explosion blew open the door of the room and filled the hall with acrid smoke and the screams of dying Janissaries.

“What the hell was in those things?” Barrows said incredulously, having expected some glorified fireworks.

Burt grinned. “Just nails and some common household chemicals in the proper proportions.”

“Get ready!” Barrows shouted as he spotted another three Janissaries running up the stairs, doing that incredibly annoying warbling of theirs. He threw his last grenade at them and hid behind the corner. There was panicky fumbling for protection but it was too late: the grenade exploded and killed two of them. Rodriguez dealt with the wounded survivor with a burst of assault rifle fire. Peter ran down the shrapnel scored stairs and to the door, but felt a hand on him.

“Stay back” Rodriguez said. Peter was in no mood to protest.

One of Barrows’ men eased the door open slightly and looked out as the Sergeant had everyone else hug the wall. The man’s eyes widened as he saw something and then the door opened violently, hitting him in the face. He desperately kicked it closed again and it hit the face of the lone Janissary guard about to shoot him, knocking him cold.

“Go!” Barrows screamed and Peter started running. The chopper that had been hovering above the house was already beginning to move, spraying machine gun fire in his direction. One of the soldiers fell, clutching a hole that went clear through his leg. One of the others moved to help him but then a dozen bullets hit home in his chest with a sound like meat being tenderized.

“Into those trees!” Barrows shouted, pointing at a grove close by. The men ran for it. The machine gunner on the chopper really went wild then. Bullets flew all over the grove, knocking off leaves and branches, stripping bark, and sending wood pulp flying. Thankfully the grove was dense and nobody was killed, although one soldier got a grazing shot in the shoulder than sent a piece of bloody flesh flying and elicited a couple of screams from him.

“Damn, I’d give anything for a Stinger right now” Burt observed.

“He’s moving off” Rodriguez said as the chopper banked off and started moving away.

“Yeah, next comes an attack helicopter and poison gas” Burt said. “We’d better get out of here Sergeant.”

“Agreed” Barrows said as he watched the chopper disappear over central Los Angeles and gestured for his men to begin moving again and seek a new refuge for the night.

PS: felt confident enough to post this installment w/out running it by Shep, any mistakes are mine.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yay! I'm there, good for me. If yoiu wanted to change it to "Just call me Chewie", my friends actually do call me that, since I'm big and of shaggy beard. Thanks for making me smart enough to throw the grenade back, guess the Janissary forgot to count before throwing.

[LordShaithis]

OMG, Burt from Tremors!

Kickass!

[CaptainChewbacca]

OMG, Burt from Tremors!

Kickass!

I'm hanging with Burt from Tremors?!!!!!

W00T!!!

[Junghalli]

I'm hanging with Burt from Tremors?!!!!!

I'd feel sorry for the Draka if they were anyone else.
Hmm, I think I'll keep the crossovers below madness level but one must wonder whether this universe has graboids.

[Junghalli]

Tim Davies had never been to America. In fact he’d never left Drakia Province until he’d been conscripted. Some others in his lochos were better traveled, but only the Decurion had ever been beyond the present boundaries of the Dominate, and that had been during what the Draka vainly called the Kirgiz Campaign, even though the tiny scraps of Turkmenistan and the Pamir mountains they’d managed to seize in that war hadn’t been anywhere close to Kyrgyzstan. Before the Eurasian War the Dominate had cordial if not actually friendly relations with some nations, but then they had used their defensive pact with Stalin as an excuse to seize the bulk of their present Eurasian territories, demonstrating spectacularly the truth of their ambitions toward the rest of the world. The hardening of borders had begun then, and after the war almost the entirety of the Old World had disappeared behind what American and British analysts called the Iron Curtain; the mutually hostile newly-forged continent-spanning mega-empires of the USSR and the Dominate. The mega-empires had effectively become self-contained worlds, trading minimally with nations outside their own borders (with the exception, perhaps, of the communist satellite states the USSR struggled and mostly failed to bring into being in that last besieged bastion of the traditional nation-state; South America). Even in the relatively open “free world” there was comparatively little international travel. The major powers, controlling huge portions of the planet, could effectively find whatever they might need within their own vast domains. In this closed world the Dominate was the most isolationist power of all; looking beyond its own borders only for threats or conquest. That was not to say the Draka were ignorant of the world beyond their Dominate, for only a fool was ignorant of his enemies. It was to say that they tended to have very little first hand experience of anything beyond the fences and barbed wire and machine guns that faced eternally toward their north and east; their border with the USSR.

The town was empty for the most part, having been evacuated by the Americans before the first Janissary Chiliarchies began landing. It was quiet and unspectacular for the most part, right on the coast. Over the clanking of steel and the sound of the boots of the marching occupation force Tim could hear waves crashing against the shore and the honking of gulls. He suspected the town was called Bar Harbor; he’d read it on a road sign. Strange name. The walls of the houses were riddled with bullet holes. The official line the officers were trotting out was that the Americans had been quickly routed by ferocious and numerous Janissary units but Tim thought, just from looking around, that the fight had been a lot harder than the senior officers had let on. Dead Janissaries and Yankees were still being disposed of. The streets were littered with expended shells were often blocked by wrecked Draka or Yankee vehicles. One thing he noticed was that the Yankees loved to splash virtually every available surface with garish advertising. In a more sensible country like the Dominate of the USSR a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste or some other common household item would simply be labeled with the name of the product and the name of the manufacturer. But here that same bar of soap of tube of toothpaste would be given colorful packaging designed to draw the viewer’s attention like a lightening rod and a small essay would be written on the back singing its praises and extolling its superiority to other products. Each billboard and package was more inventively and outrageously emblazoned than the next, with visual attractions that ranged from the humorous to the solemn to something that looked more appropriate an advertisement for the services of a wench than a cell phone or a pack of cigarettes. The sheer energy that had been expended in making each advert stand out was amazing, to the degree that the advertisers seemed to have become victims of their own success and were being forced to come up with increasingly startling messages in order to pierce the jaded senses of those they were trying to appeal to. It all seemed very silly and despite the somber mood among the men after hearing of what had happened back home some of his mates had laughed at the more ridiculous stickers and posters.

When news had come that Durban had been nuked it had been a very bad moment for Tim. His mother ran a shop there and he had immediately feared the worst. It had taken three hours to finally get a chance to try to call home-every third JM was worried about a family or a friend living in one of the bombed cities and the satellite radios and phones were in constant service, with each man being given just a few minutes to use it, and still the lines took literally hours to whittle down. He had done his best to hide his anxiety, trying to project an image of himself as emotionless and capable of handling the crises without support or difficulty. But he did very much love Mom and the thought of her dead or maimed made the air turn to ice and his stomach and bones to ache with tension. It was with tremendous relief that he finally got through to one of her friends who lived in a small town nearby and found out that she was largely OK, although recovering from some minor injuries. He’d managed to speak to her for a few minutes. She sounded weak and shaken but at least she was alive. He hadn’t seen her much, like all Draka he’d been mostly raised in a boarding school, but he was very much fond of her and elated to know she was more or less alright. He didn’t jump for joy, that would have been undignified, but even the general gloom of the day couldn’t keep his spirits down and he’d been one of the few who managed to laugh at some of the Yankees’ silly commercial jingles.

Two lochi from his Tetrarchy were billeted inside an abandoned house with a driveway blocked by a scorched and broken eight wheeled vehicle of unfamiliar design. It might have been a Janissary APC but it was heavier, sturdier-looking than any type he was familiar with. Sure enough, painted on one side was the Yankee flag with its single star looking out from a dark blue square in the corner of a field of red and white stripes. He’d never seen an enemy tank up close and he gave it a brief examination. It might easily have passed muster as a Citizen APC. He didn’t know whether to approve of the craftsmanship or find that distressing. The hatch was open and smelled of blood and burned flesh. A dead Yankee soldier lay on one side, shot in the attempt to crawl out of his burning vehicle. He had a shaved head and a large nose with a trickle of dried blood coming out. Jewish features perhaps. Tim felt a sudden surge of curiosity about this man who had died fighting against the inevitable. Had he realized that the triumph of the Master Race was inevitable and chosen to fight anyway? Or had he believed his side actually stood a chance of ultimate victory? Overcoming his unease at touching a corpse that was already beginning to smell he searched the man’s pockets. He found the predictable field items (of sturdier manufacture than equivalent Draka gear, Tim couldn’t help but notice) and a picture of him, a plump dark-haired woman, and two boys. His family? The only other personal item was his dog tags, which identified him as a James Sarbowsky. Finding nothing else of interest he asked Decurion Carpenter if she knew the vehicle type and she responded absentmindedly that it was called a Bradley. He thought it was an unimpressive name for a war machine.

The house he was billeted in was comfortable, cozy even, if somewhat bare. It had the look of having been picked over by a family leaving in a hurry and not expecting to come back. Anything valuable and portable had been taken away, leaving only the large furniture and personal odds and ends. Nevertheless it compared quite favorably with having to stay in a tent. It actually reminded him strongly of Mom’s home. One of the Monitors of the other lochos found a newspaper, dated to September 11, with a huge boldface headline that simply read BASTARDS! On the kitchen counter they found some fuzzy confections like giant white hairballs that were still edible, although the JM who sampled them had pronounced them disgustingly sweet. A couple of JMs found some porn but quickly threw it away in disgust. The material was titillating only to a culture of Pilgrim descendants with a notorious nudity phobia. Decurion Carpenter herself quickly paged over one and announced her total incomprehension of a society that seemed to willfully forget that clothing was, after all, not part of your body. There was nothing of military value, but of course that was to be expected.

In the evening the report came in over the radio that a team of serf technicians had succeeded in fixing a local generator plant. They did not turn on the lights: that would have been too much of an invitation to overflying recon planes and bombers. They sat in the dark house, those that smoked passing the time by puffing cigarettes, the embers of their smokes looking like red stars in the darkness. Monitor Wederman turned on the TV to see if he tune in to any Yankee channels and thus polish his skills as an engineer. The Decurion assented so long as the blinds were closed so that the light would not be visible outside. After some fine tuning he achieved his first success: the successful reception of a beer commercial which involved two men ogling a woman who would have earned top dollar in the backrooms of any club or hotel. One of the men, spying the woman’s breasts, which were voluminous enough to put the stereotype of a Draka woman to shame, commented “Wow, you think they’re…?” At which point the woman held two beer bottles up and said, in a sly come-hither tone “oh yeah, they’re plastic. And they’re spectacular.” Tim had to admit the message totally escaped him, except that the woman was admirably honest if nothing else. He was still trying to figure it out when the commercial ended and a man that Tim recognized as the American President appeared. Tim could sense the men around him tensing. He wore a smug, satisfied look that they longed to wipe off his face with their fists and the heels of their boots. Monitor Wederman started to change the channel but Carpenter stopped him. “Listen” she said. “Know your enemy.”

The President will now address the nation the announcer declared.

“My fellow Americans” Bush began. "Until today the Draka believed themselves to be unvanquishable, undefeatable, untouchable. Gods of war and death striding over the world, cutting down all who stood in the way of their evil and horrific plan for nothing less than the eventual total subjugation of the human species. None could oppose them, the entire human race was equal under their boots, or so they believed. They said that we could never stand against them, that the brave men and women of our armed forces would fall in front of them like grain in front of a tractor. They said that we were weak, lazy, and afraid, that our soldiers would surrender and run at the first sight of their guns. They said that their military was the finest in the worlds, that it crushed ours in every important way. They said that for every one of them we killed they would kill five of us. At the beginning of the war, on the very day of 9-11, their Archon sent me a message saying that I should-and I quote-spare your people needless suffering, accept the inevitable, and arrange for a peaceful and orderly transition from American rule to Draka rule. They were that confident in their victory.

“Yesterday my fellow Americans they have learned what Americans can do when their freedom is at stake. Today dozens of cities in their Domination are burning. Last night the brave men of the US Airforce proved the Draka belief in their own superiority to be dead wrong. The kill ratio in the air above Drakia last night was 2.6 Draka fighters for every stealth. They couldn’t even find our stealths; the proud Dominate Air Force was reduced to the same tactics the Ecuadorians and Venezuelans tried to use against us-with similar success. Stealth bombers inflicted devastating damage to their industrial complex-an industrial complex based upon the suffering and oppression of billions.

“While we celebrate our victory I also ask for a moment of silence for all those innocents killed in our bombings. It is a great tragedy that our nuclear devices cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent, the oppressors from the oppressed. They died for world freedom, and they will be mourned with the same honor with which we morn the men and women of our own armed forces, for they gave their lives for the same cause. To those poor souls enslaved in the Domination I give my solemn promise; we will not forget you. God willing, you will be saved…

One of the JMs could take no more. “Aw fuck you! You fucking gutterslime Yankee bastard! Give me five minutes alone with that Texan sonofabitch! I’ll have him begging for mercy and death, the strutting little cunt!” he roared as he smashed the TV set in with his boot. He continued to pound it and had to be physically dragged away. Decurion Carpenter leaned over to Tim and whispered into his ear.

“The bomb in Cape Town killed his whole family.”

“Decurion” Tim whispered back. “It isn’t true, is it? That their Air Force is better than ours?”

Carpenter shrugged. Her face was very close to his and he felt the same discomfort he always felt in proximity to a woman. “Yes, it is. That much better… it may be propaganda. He’s probably trying to comfort his own people, give them a victory to gloat over. These Americans-they’re proud people Davies. In some ways every bit as proud as we are. They react badly to being slapped around, and by badly I mean violently and with surprising skill and determination. I’m not sure about this whole war to be honest. On the one hand they must be dealt with at some point. Carthago delinda est. But… they will make the worst serfs. I think it may be necessary to implement the Bactrian Solution in the end. Imagine it Davies, the Bactrian Solution on a nation of six hundred million. Can you even conceive of the deaths?”

“Gods” Tim muttered.

She put a hand on his knee. “Best not to think about it tonight. The Tetrarch tells me that tomorrow the Dominate plans its counterstroke. Tomorrow you ride against the US Army.”

[Ford Prefect]

Most, most excellent.

[Setzer]

You should be writing more. Is it possible you can quit your job, maybe give up eating for a few days? Get your priorities straight, sez I.

Tha being said, Onward, Brave Americans! Rip out the snake's guts and feast upon their entrails! They will all taste oblivion... which tastes just like Red bull... which is disgusting!

[NecronLord]

Counterstroke eh? Humm...

[LordShaithis]

Jung has cooked up a scenario in which Shrub can shine. One where we really ARE facing an entire empire of irredeemable monsters who actually DO hate our freedom.

[NecronLord]

Jung has cooked up a scenario in which Shrub can shine. One where we really ARE facing an entire empire of irredeemable monsters who actually DO hate our freedom.

Good point. Not that I mind at all. It's rather nice escapism in that regard.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Bush certainly seems a lot more eloquent than usual, it's weird imagining him making those speeches.
All I can say to tv-kicking-Draka is: You have sown the wind, and you shall reap the whirlwind, bitch!

[Junghalli]

The next chapter I plan on posting will be the battle royale. Sorry folks, this one's gonna take a while.

Bush certainly seems a lot more eloquent than usual, it's weird imagining him making those speeches.

Really? I actually consciously tried to keep the, shall we say, unique flavor of his speeches while I was writing them. "This cowardly attack is motivated by one motivation and one motivation only: they hate our freedom!" I thought I wasn't doing to badly, myself when I read his speeches in the fic I can really hear his voice saying it. But then again I probably think more of him than most people on this board.
RE the comments made about Bush in this timeline, you are correct. Somebody like Bush is exactly what you need to fight the Draka. Well, OK, history offers better candidates, but for fighting a "good war" against a real life evil empire he probably wouldn't be half-bad IMHO. Much to the dismay of many here no doubt he'll probably go down with the likes of Churchill and FDR in this timeline's history books.

All I can say to tv-kicking-Draka is: You have sown the wind, and you shall reap the whirlwind, bitch!

That's what's so irritating about Sterling's original TL: they don't. Well, their character shields are off here. Short of Gwendy's wormhole project gone wrong dumping her in this universe there's precious little that can save them.

Actually, I'm not even sure that would be a good thing for them. Vicious animals have a tendency to abandon their kin when they're too weak to survive. If dumped into one of the more realistic Drakaverses Gwendy might take one look around and decide that a "Master Race" that's getting its ass kicked by "mere" Americans, Russians etc. isn't worthy of survival. She might convince them to help her build a wormhole, promising the Final Society Draka will help their brothers win their war, and when the wormhole actually opens instead of the saviors they're expecting they get the boot in the face for all eternity just like everybody else.
Come to think of it that might actually make a decent fanfic.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I found it entirely Bush-ish to say "Motivated by one motivation", but maybe that was just me.

The Draka will crumble before our powerful STRATEGERY!

[Junghalli]

A little teaser for the battle royale, which will be in the next chapter.


It was late at night but the Pentagon was still fairly busy. With the war against the Draka it was busy all hours now. And it wasn’t actually the Pentagon of course. That venerable structure had been wrecked by the Draka bombing of Washington DC. But the name had informally been slapped on the large Toronto office tower that the Defense Department had appropriated. Fredrick Lafarge was studying Draka troop movements in the Los Angeles basin. The war was going well there. The Los Angeles basin had precious few ways out, especially now with the radioactive ruins of San Diego to the south. The US Army was holding the Draka inside the valley, and intel indicated the city itself was writhing with partisan activity and the Draka were rapidly running low on supplies. The Draka Legions had been expected to live off plunder until they could seize a serviceable cargo ship harbor, and the defenders of LA had made sure to render the harbor quite unusable before conceding it. He could only imagine the frustration of the Strategos in charge of that particular operation. Lafarge shook his head at some of the decisions of Castle Tarleton: they had genuinely expected the Americans to essentially lay down and die! It spoke volumes about what low regard they held their opposition in… and how little they understood the forces that opposed them.

The situation in the east was not as good. The Draka had established beachheads all along the northern Atlantic coast and were continuing to expand their controlled territory every day. General Sheppard was still preparing his counterattack and for now the best the Americans could do was stage a fighting retreat. He smiled a little. General Mark Sheppard had a reputation for being aggressive and doing whatever it took to achieve victory. He had given the nickname “Nukey Nukey” back in the Ecuadorian War for his (strongly overruled) plan to use a tac nuke on the rebel holdouts near Quito. He was just the man for the job. If the Draka still expected their actions to be met with anything less than total warfare they would be very disappointed.

There was a knock at the door and a tall, skinny Colonel with Southeast Asian features entered and saluted.

“Colonel Phongn?” Lafarge said.

“Sir, you may want to take a look at this” Phongn handed Lafarge a voluminous hard copy.

“I’ve already got a ton of work to do son” Director Lafarge said. “You better summarize this for me.”

Phongn cleared his throat. “Well sir, as you know the CIA has been working on breaking the Draka’s standard military encryption codes for some time. We only had partial success until a couple of days ago. A Seawolf sank a Draka sub-later identified as the DNS Gladius-off the coast of Baja. Well, they had a pretty good location on where the Gladius went down and they sent some submersibles to see what they could get from the wreck. And we managed to find enough data to break their code! We’ve been listening in to their communications and we found this” Phongn tapped the sheets of paper Lafarge was holding. “The plan overview for the Draka response to Operation Retribution. Everything. How their subs are going to slip through our defenses, where they plan to bomb, the distribution of their fleet… It’s as if we had somebody listening in as they planned the whole operation! When they strike-we’ll be ready for them. We can intercept their subs before they launch their missiles, have our aircraft already scrambled when they start their bombing runs…”

Lafarge put a paternal hand on Phongn’s shoulder. “You’ve done us proud Colonel.”

Phongn shook his head. “This country rescued me from the slave pens of the Dominate. No thanks is necessary.”

* * *

Dawn was breaking over the cold waters of the northern Pacific. A few hundred kilometers off the coast of the far northern United States the Citizen and Janissary crew of the Mournblade prepared to bring untold devastation to the western region of what had once been British North America. The Americans would pay for their foolish defiance as the Draka taught them their place in the new order. The Mournblade class was the most advanced, state of the art vessel the Dominate possessed. The Mournblade had been more than a submarine; like the Yamato and the Bismarck it had been a symbol of the might of its creators. The fastest, stealthiest, most advanced, most lethal sub Draka technology and industry could produce.

It was, however, not the silent predator its operators believed it to be.

Not far away two Seawolf class USN subs; the Bonito and the Gato, hovered above the ocean floor. Their sonar was silent, their engines dead. Within their corridors the men even went so far as to talk in whispers, lest the Draka sonar operators pick up the sound of their conversation. The Mournblade class was mercifully rare and expensive, but it was worth the money the DN had sunk in it. It wasn’t quite as stealthy as the Soviet’s infamous Red October class, but the Seawolfs would have been hard pressed to detect it. But they didn’t have to. Back in the 80s the USN had scattered listening devices all over the ocean floor around the North American mainland, creating an exclusion zone where anything noisier than a pebble skipping the water would surely be picked up by one receiver or another. Even the Red October’s caterpillar drive could not defeat the latest advanced equipment the USN had recently upgraded the grid with (although it still completely confounded the Draka). The Gato and Bonito didn’t know where the Mournblade was but the listening grid did, and the information was relayed to them. As soon as the sonar men heard the first faint cavitations of the Mournblade’s propeller they knew exactly what was coming.

The Mournblade had just enough time to detect the incoming torpedo and know they were doomed. By the time it could react the torpedo had already struck amidships. The depth was sufficient that water poured in with the force of multiple atmospheres of pressure. The Mournblade’s advanced watertight door system came into play. The critical engines, weapons systems, and bridge were protected behind heavy pressure-sealed doors. The system left the bulk of the crew to drown, but that was of no import to the Draka. They were simply Janissaries, slaves; inferiors unworthy of consideration. Some Janissaries desperately tried to keep one of the watertight doors from closing as the water rose to the level of their necks. One woman took a crowbar and tried to lever the door open just enough to slip through, but it was of course futile. The door was closed by a powerful hydraulic mechanism that resisted any attempt to force it. The Draka watch officer simply laughed at her pathetic attempts to pry the door open as he watched the chamber quickly fill with dark water through the surveillance cameras. She gave a final despairing scream as her last precious bubble of air was reduced to nothingness. As the Mournblade’s surviving crew fought to bring its damaged systems back online the Bonito struck. This time her propeller was destroyed and she began rapidly overending and sinking into the depths. Her crew was left to either drown or die a more lingering death as the sub drifted below pressure depth.

All over the Atlantic and the Pacific similar stories were unfolding. Seawolfs and Tridents waited in the paths of Dominate submarines and CVNs, falling upon them before they could launch their missiles. The aircraft were launched further out to sea, so there would still be a large Draka force for the USAF to deal with, but the Draka missile attack upon the United States mainland was severely blunted. Most of the missiles that did get through were launched toward Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Cities in the lower states of the US would suffer terribly. But the intercepted transmissions of the battle plan had allowed the USN to turn the area around the American heartland into a baited steel death trap for the DN.

[LordShaithis]

Kickass. But if I recall, the last letter of Phongn's handle is actually his last initial. I believe his surname is Nguyen.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Why do I get the feeling Mark Sheppard is going to be President and have Arnold Schwarzenegger as his VP?

[MKSheppard]

Why do I get the feeling Mark Sheppard is going to be President and have Arnold Schwarzenegger as his VP?

I'll just take over the world in a fascist coup like in that Duchess of Zeon fic

[Spice Runner]

That would be something indeed, President Mark Shepard presiding over the U.S. in the opening years of the new Cold War. Speaking of which, are ya planning a sequel Jung? I'd understand if you didn't have the time or interest. But it would be interesting to see a fic set in the world literally divided half and half between the two mega-empires.