The Final War (alt-Draka story)
Moderator: LadyTevar
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LordShaithis
- Redshirt
- Posts: 3179
- Joined: 2002-07-08 11:02am
- Location: Michigan
Jung! More fic! NOW!
If Religion and Politics were characters on a soap opera, Religion would be the one that goes insane with jealousy over Politics' intimate relationship with Reality, and secretly murder Politics in the night, skin the corpse, and run around its apartment wearing the skin like a cape shouting "My votes now! All votes for me! Wheeee!" -- Lagmonster
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MKSheppard
- Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
- Posts: 29842
- Joined: 2002-07-06 06:34pm
It's coming. He sent me Chapter 9, a fairly long and well done chapter. I gave him a few pointers on the action, he's probably rewriting it to take into account my pointers, just wait LS... 
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
CHAPTER 9
General Sheppard glanced out the window of his humvee as he inspected the defenses of the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. The city itself was a smoking ruin, the first logical target of the Draka ICBM attacks. At least it was well behind American lines so FEMA had time to evacuate all the survivors. That was more than could be said for the coastal cities like New York and Philadelphia, which were now deep inside the Draka-held zone. The people there could probably expect worse than no help, knowing the Draka. Despite the fact that the capitol was already a lost cause Sheppard had chosen a DC suburb to be the center of his army. It was right in the path of the Draka advance. The CIA thought their plan was to establish a deep beachhead on the East Coast and then swing around the Appalachians and advance down the St Lawrence River to seize the industrial Great Lakes region and the Midwest wheat belt. If Sheppard failed here he would conduct a fighting retreat to his fallback position in the northeastern states. If he failed there he would fall back to the St Lawrence River and if that failed… Ketsuko. The American government would never surrender to the Draka. Surrender to the Draka was not an option, not when you knew what it was like to live under them. It would be better for the human species to die than for the Draka to take over the world; death was preferable to being a serf. In the face of defeat the Pentagon was secretly preparing the ultimate scorched earth policy. The Army was to fight to the death, alongside civilian volunteer brigades which would be formed. First everyone with a gun, and when they ran out of those they would fight the Draka with k-bars, switchblades, sharpened poles, stones and bare fists if need be. Once the Draka crossed the Mississippi or the old Canadian border the standing order would be to create desolated zones before the Draka advanced, to tac-nuke every town that fell to them, and in the end perhaps even to use biological warfare. If the Draka wanted America they’d have to do what they did to the Afghans, and they’d rule a ruined and poisoned continent. The Pentagon was even covertly looking into the possibility of the creation of a KYAG virus; a genetically engineered pathogen designed to spread quickly over the planet and wipe out so much of the human race that civilization would collapse. When America fell samples of the virus would be disseminated to the Soviet Union and Japan, with a recommendation that should the Draka attack them they should release it when the last free city came under siege.
Sheppard dismissed these grim musings to continue this inspection. That shouldn’t be necessary. The Army he’d assembled would break the Draka. He’d assembled seventy divisions from all over the middle forty-eight and the Canadian states. The entire greater Washington DC area crawled with infantry and armor brigades. SAM batteries waited to greet the overwhelming air superiority the Draka were counting on to win this, which wouldn’t happen because Sheppard knew what they were planning and the USAF was pulling in fighters from bases all over the continental US. At the back of the army, in the ruins of Washington, Sheppard had his own nasty surprise for the Draka. Truck-mounted short range low-yield tactical nukes: the Army of the Potomac’s (AOTP) superheavy artillery.
Sheppard’s walkie talkie and he answered the call. “What is it?”
“General” came the anxious voice at the other end. “Our Predator overflights just-“
“I know” Sheppard said. “Our forward units are about to engage the Draka.” He ordered the driver to take him back to his command post. He entered the tent to be briefed by General Dalton.
“Sir, a Predator just picked up about fifty or sixty Draka divisions massing along our front from Bangor to Richmond. Just as the CIA indicated they’re massing their Legions, they want a big decisive battle as much as we do. More. If we fail here we can always pull back, but their whole war plan relies on beating us quickly. They’ll want to box us in and crush us completely.” Dalton indicated the map spread out on the table. “We think they’ll attack from the north and try a two pronged encirclement. They’ll divide the Draka contingents to spearhead each prong. The main holding force will be regular Janissaries and irregulars, bolstered by two brigades of Stormtroopers.”
“Good” Sheppard said. “They plan to box us in and then have their airforce pound us to hamburger. Instead they’re playing right into my hands. We will wait until they have begun the pincer maneuver and then use our superheavy artillery to open gaps in their lines here and here” he drew bloody slashes where he envisioned the Draka army being broken into three pieces. “The main bulk of the Janissary force in the center we will deal with by a combination of superheavy and conventional artillery, followed by heavy infantry thrusts backed by armored brigades. Knowing the general quality of Janissary regulars I doubt they’ll retain unit coherence very well under that kind of fire, although the Stormtroopers will probably be a lot more trouble. That will leave two smaller forces of what will probably be their better Janissaries, mixed with their Citizen divisions. I believe the best way to deal with these will be with a combination of superheavy and heavy artillery, augmented by air strikes if conditions allow, followed by an attack with our best mechanized divisions.”
“Just one thing” Dalton said, scratching his short but shaggy black beard. “You realize that this is the first time nuclear weapons will have been used as a land-based tactical weapon. Sets a rather disturbing new precedent. That bother you at all?”
Sheppard shook his head. “This is total war we’re talking about here Dalton. I can’t afford to fight with my hands tied. Would you rather live with a five percent increase in your risk of getting cancer or be a serf in the Dominate.”
“I’m glad to see your reputation is based on fact” Dalton said. “I’ll begin preparations.”
* * *
Captain Wilson’s tank Company drove through the streets of the Washington DC suburb, the lookouts continuously searching the well-to-do tree-lined streets for signs of Draka infantry or armor. Smoke curled from Army positions to the east which were being pounded by Draka artillery.
The lead Abrams turned a corner and ran into a Despoiler accompanied by two Enyos. The Despoilers’ transverse cannon fired immediately but it barely pitted the armor of the Abrams. The return fire was devastating to the flimsy, thinly armored Janissary transport. It caved in like a house of cards, its fuel tank exploding into flames and hideous shrieks coming from within as Janissaries were crushed or roasted alive. Janissaries began pouring out of the Enyos, realizing that their vehicles were death traps. The Abrams quickly obliterated the two Enyos and gunned down the fleeing Janissaries with its machine gun. A few escaped but most did not. Captain Wilson ordered the lead tank to turn back. They would continue their retreat towards the main army position. It was imperative that the Draka be drawn into place for the battle to be won, this much he had been briefed on.
Overhead he heard the roar of an unusually loud jet engine. Ever since 9-11 that was a sound that had sent chills down his spine, and in this case for good reason. He looked up and saw a formation of Falcon bombers and Ravager escorts. He barely had time to scream the order to move when they began dropping their bombs.
* * *
The Draka fighter wing obliterated Captain Wilson’s tank company, along with the entire neighborhood it was in. The place was too thick with US forces and destroying it would slow the advance of the army down. As it moved over toward the main city Falcons indiscriminately bombed places where resistance was stubborn or expected to be stubborn, in keeping with standard Draka military doctrine. Other Falcons hung back at the center of the formation, carrying the tactical nukes that the Draka planned to use to smash turn Sheppard’s army into disorganized panicking meat for the Janissary and Citizen divisions to carve up. The Draka high command believed the sheer unprecedented savagery of using tac nukes as infantry support weapons would surely weaken the American’s fighting will and destroy their unit cohesion, to say nothing of the physical damage the weapons would do to the army, especially the infantry. This was probably one of the great ironies of history, as the Americans had already one-upped them in the nuclear game, but of course they couldn’t know that.
Captain Karen Summers noted some of the escorts pealing off the bomber wings as her tactical wing of F-19s approached. “OK boys and girls, looks like they’ve seen us” she said over the common channel. “Prepare to engage. First priority is the bombers in the centers. They’ll be the ones carrying the nukes. Second priority is the rest of the bombers, don’t worry about the fighters except to keep them off your back.”
“Copy that” one of her Lieutenants said.
The wing of F-19s split up into individual squadrons and engaged the Draka fighters. A Ravager escort fighter went straight for Summers. She barely managed to evade. Faster than could be believed the Ravager was back on her, and again she just barely managed to get out of the way. Draka aircraft might not be all that great but their reputation for speed and maneuverability was based on fact. The Draka came at her again and this time managed to get in behind her. She quickly checked her screens.
“Donager, Rodman, help me out here” she ordered.
Donager and Rodman slipped in behind the Draka fighter. It tried to get away from them but Donager launched a missile and took it out. The two fighters split up to try and engage a nearby Falcon but were each intercepted by a pair of Ravagers. No sooner had they split up when another pair of Draka attacked her. She shot away from them and they came back, this time from the front. She banked to the side, preventing them from obtaining a hard lock. She shot away, circled back, and managed to slip in behind them. One of them she destroyed with a missile but the other one flew away. She went after it and it performed a crazy series of turns and was back behind her.
“Somebody take this thing off my back!” she called into the general channel.
“I got you” an Airman said as he swooped down on the Draka fighter from above. The Draka got out of the way and tried to attack him but he simply shot away and came back from the side, launching a missile that destroyed the Draka fighter.
The battle was ferocious and ugly. The Draka believed this to be the day they would break the back of the US military. Already bombers were fanning out from carriers all over the US, obliterating cities, infrastructure points, and military bases. They were having their greatest success in Mexico and Central America: Air Force units had been pulled away from those parts of the country to defend the American heartland. The Americans knew this and fought fanatically, refusing to abandon the battlefields until all the Draka bombers were destroyed. It was especially critical that these particular set of bombers not make their targets, or else Sheppard’s army might well face defeat. So the Air Force had thrown an overwhelming number of fighters into the skies above the Potomac River. The Draka never stood a chance against the huge formations that darkened the skies like swarms of gnats. Even if their fighters were really as good as their own propaganda liked to make them out as they wouldn’t have stood a chance. The bomber wings’ fighter support was quickly stripped away by vicious combat and the F-19s closed on the bombers themselves.
* * *
The city of Waterbury was silent, just like the town had been. There were no birds and no people. But there was noise. The sound of artillery barrages like a continuous rumbling thunder, the sharper booms of aircraft dropped bombs, and the fainter clicking of gunfire and clanking of moving armored vehicles. Every once in a while Tim Davies would see a tank of some other military vehicle moving past, either on the way to engage a Yankee force or looking for any survivors to mop up. Occasionally they passed dead vehicles. Some had the dragon of the Dominate painted on them, others the star and stripes of the United States. At one point Monitor Wederman shouted an order to take cover behind the nearest building. As he stretched himself out against the wall he peeked to take a look at what was going on. He saw a tank moving in the next street. An American flag was painted on its side. It stopped at the intersection, seemed to wait. Its turret swiveled around and fired twice. Then a shot from an unseen direction hit it and left the turret canting badly. A second shot killed it. The hatch popped and a visibly wounded Yankee attempted to climb out, only to be felled by machine gun fire. Decurion Carpenter led the lochos cautiously to toward the tank and sent Davies to scout ahead. He crawled low to the ground as he’d been trained and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a Hoplite tank move past. The driver pointed at the American tank and gave him a thumbs-up sign. He turned back to the lochos and gave them the all-clear sign. “One of our tanks just took it out” he explained to the Decurion. “It doesn’t look like there are any other Yankees in the area.”
“So this is that super-advanced US Army?” JM Danton said dismissively as he kicked the side of the tank. “This thing couldn’t dent the side armor on a Hoplite! Look at it, it’s pathetic!”
“It is pretty small” Davies agreed. It made a Hoplite look big, and a Thor MBT seem positively huge.
“And to think how they’re always talking about how hard it’ll be to take the Americans down” Danton snorted as they walked away. What he didn’t realize, of course, was that the vehicle in question was a Stingray light tank, not even remotely classified as an MBT by the US Army.
The lochos continued cautiously, keeping low to the ground, because they were only a few layers behind the front line. They frequently heard gunfire from the frontline lochi clashing with American roving units. Tim felt anxious, waiting for the Yankees to show themselves.
That finally happened when he turned a corner into an alley. There were several men in the alley. The darker color of their uniforms told him immediately that they were Yankees, even if he couldn’t see their insignia. One of them turned back to the rest of his lochos, shouted a warning. Tim and the others raised their rifles and fired. The shouter was hit in the chest and went down, as did two of his companions. JM Danton screamed and fell, a ragged wound in his leg. Monitor Wederman moved to help him but three more bullets impacted in his body and killed him. Tim took shelter behind a dumpster with JM Hensridge. Monitor Wederman killed a fourth Yankee, then ducked behind some cardboard boxes. The bullets chewed easily through the cardboard and nicked him in a couple of places but at least it kept the Yanks from seeing where he was. Decurion Carpenter skillfully picked off three more.
“Three left” Hensridge told Tim. “Their Decurion’s mine.”
“Jolie, don’t be stupid” Tim told her but she’d already rolled out from the side of the bunker. The last three Yankees were hiding behind another dumpster. She shot at them and they shot back and she fell. Tim grabbed her and pulled her behind cover. He saw her mouth gulp air like a fish’s and after a few moments he realized what he was seeing. She was trying to scream but couldn’t. The same thing happened to him back in school when he was eight or nine, when he’d gotten in a fight and ended up knocked off the roof onto hard concrete. He’d been OK in the end, only one of his shoulder blades cracked, but the pain had been so bad he just couldn’t make a sound. He couldn’t open his lungs. It was a terrifying state. You want so desperately to scream, because a scream draws attention, a scream tells other people you’re there and you need help. But you can’t, it’s too much effort to draw in the breath, and you think that maybe nobody’s going to know what happened and you’ll just lie there until somebody happens to walk by… or until you’re dead, whichever comes first. And while you’re lying there you’re wondering just what horrible damage has been done to your body to make it hurt this much, and if it’ll kill you or if you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
His hands were covered in her blood from dragging her. He opened her jacket and lifted her shirt to get a look at her wounds. The wound didn’t look so bad from the front. It was a neat circular hole just under the small fleshy mounds of her breasts. A smear of blood covered her torso. He’d never seen a girl without her shirt before, and he felt a small twinge of excitement, even though I knew it was hideously inappropriate. He called for help. At the back the wound was ragged and gushing blood in a thick stream.
“I’m coming” Decurion Carpenter shouted. She ran over to Tim and looked at Hensridge. “She’s been shot through the heart. There’s nothing that can be done. Hey, lookout!”
Tim turned around to see two of the remaining Yankees running towards his position. He sprayed them with a burst from his rifle. Their knees buckled and they fell, dumb unfeeling grins on their faces. Tim froze for a second. He’d thought himself prepared to do his duty, had trained his entire life for it, but he’d never actually killed anything before. He dismissed his discomfort, told himself that he was being of service to the state, that he had merely done what he was supposed to.
“Get back!” Carpenter shouted. It snapped him out of it and he ducked back behind the dumpster. “Enferadi! The grenade launcher!” she called over to JM Enferadi, who was taking cover at the open end of the alley. The blonde woman quickly attached the grenade launcher to her T-50A, loaded it, and shot it at the inadequate cover of the last remaining Yankee. There was a scream and he died.
“Clear!” she shouted. The surviving Draka came out of their hiding places.
“How many casualties” Carpenter asked.
“Three” Enferadi said, poking the dead body of Monitor Azeron with her foot.
“An even exchange” she said. “Enferadi, you’re the new Monitor.”
“Thanks!” the woman beamed.
Carpenter tapped Davies on the shoulder. “You alright?”
“Yeah” Tim said defensively. “Yeah, I’m alright. Of course I’m alright.” He hoped she wouldn’t make an issue of his freeze-up. It had only been for a split second. Barely enough to notice, right?
She squeezed his shoulder, and then turned to Monitor Wederman. “C’mon. Continue the advance, let’s go. There’s more of ‘em waiting for you. Lots more.”
* * *
“Jesus, I never thought I’d see the day we used one of these things” Corporal Mike Parisi shook his head as he regarded the big army-camouflage painted truck that sat idly on the grassy knoll, the four small tactical nuclear missiles mounted on its back pointing at the distant advancing Draka army like the horns of some belligerent triceratops.
Lieutenant Macon shrugged. “Which would you rather take, a five percent increase in your chance of getting cancer or being a serf under the Draka?”
“If you put it that way I’ll take the five percent increase in cancer” Mike said decisively. “My ass is sore just thinking about being a Draka serf!”
“Hold on a second” Macon held up a hand for silence and conferred with someone over his walkie-talkie. “Alright, that was the Colonel. We’ve got the launch order.”
“Coordinates?” Mike said, bending over the control panel of the launcher. Macon read them off. Mike fed them into the targeting system and keyed in the launch sequence.
“You might want to stand back sir” he said as he walked away from the truck. The countdown was winding down its last ten seconds. Parisi, Macon, and the driver got as far away from the truck as they could before the missile shot away, befouling the air around them with the acrid smoke of rocket fuel. He coughed and waved the smoke out of his face to watch the missiles arch over the deceptively placid morning sky and fall toward the distant horizon, disappearing with tremendous booms that shook the ground beneath their feet.
* * *
Cohortarch Karlsen scanned the surroundings with his binoculars. His men had just run into an American mechanized brigade and dealt with them, but he’d had to call in help from an armored Cohort. The grassy valley was now littered with smoking Hoplites and Bradleys and the dead bodies of his Janissaries. He continued pushing his Janissaries across the valley toward a nearby town. It was already burning, having been charged through by the Citizen advanced forces leading the pincer maneuver that would surround the Yankees like dumb sheep for the slaughter.
“Massuh!” one of the Janissaries shouted, pointing at the sky. “Massuh! Look!”
Karlsen looked up and saw the American missiles coming down at him. His last conscious thought was that he’d never seen a sun so bright… or so many of them.
Deep within the Draka army, surrounded by a huge contingent of Stormtroopers, Arch-Strategos Yolande Ingollfson’s mobile command post rolled down what had once been an interstate highway. To a passerby it would have looked like the Greyhound version of the armored trains Soviet officials had once traveled across Russia in. A medium-sized bus covered with thick armor plating and spiky with radio antennae and defensive weaponry. It traveled flanked by two Thor MBTs and four Hoplites crewed by elite Stormtroopers. Inside it was a warm dark grotto, lit only by internal lighting and what little peeked in through the tiny slits begrudgingly opened in the armor. The Arch-Strategos and her staff hunched over maps hotly illuminated by several desk lamps. The bouncing of the vehicle shook the deck under their boots. They paid no attention, engrossed in plotting their revenge for the grievous insult the Yankees had given the Draka.
While she planned out the total destruction of the Yankee army the Arch-Strategos was contemplating what she’d do with the American President when she caught him. It would have to be something dramatic. These Yankees were as stubborn as mules and they would need a strong demonstration of the consequences of defying the Draka. Besides, short of finding the bombardier who pushed the button that launched the nuke that sank the Dominance she could think of no more fitting target for her revenge. No ordinary death by breaking wheel or impalement would do for this one. Whatever it was it would have to emphasis the utter futility of resistance, the complete helplessness that his people were now reduced to. Ah, she had just the thing! He had two young daughters, his fate would be to watch as they were thrown to the Janissaries as a reward for their service. She would of course be sure to record the event and televise it over occupied America, to impress upon the Yankees their new status.
Her plans were interrupted by the urgent call of the serf technician coordinating the datalink.
“Masters! The Yankees are launching… they are…”
“Well, what is it you silly fool?” Ingollfson snapped at the visibly shaking Indian woman. “Spit it out bitch, we’ve got a war to fight in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Master. They… they are using atom bombs as artillery.” Her voice held awe, wonderment at the sheer audacity and ruthlessness-or desperation-of anyone who would employ such a tactic.
“We didn’t think the Americans had such iron!” Strategos Tull commented. Like the serf he had a reverent tone in his voice the Ingollfson didn’t like at all. Some Draka officers had (away from the ears of any serfs or rank and file) commended the Yankees on the unexpectedly good fight they had been putting up. As far as Ingollfson was concerned they were simply displaying the recalcitrance of the truly thick-headed. They were spoiled children fighting tooth and nail against the imposition of proper discipline.
Strategos Osgood began drawing big red Xs on the map to mark where the bombs were seen to be landing. “Clever. They waited for us to begin the pincer maneuver. They knew-predicted-exactly the kind of formation we would assume. Citizen forces leading the encirclement, with a nice big Janissary formation facing them. And they used it against us. See here-they are using the atom bombs to break our line in two places. They intend to divide us into three parts and isolate the Citizen contingents. I recommend a strategic retreat for now. We’ll try again tomorrow. And this time our irregulars will take point. We’ll get a few Stormtrooper Centuries to drive them.”
Ingollfson thought that time had been healing her wounds from the death of Myfwany. It would always be a scar, and a painful scar, but it was at least no longer bleeding. No longer crying out. But at the thought of conceding these… animals a victory it flared up again. They were animals, serfs, unworthy. And they had taken the life of one infinitely more worthy of life than them, infinitely more valuable than they could ever be, because they resented the inevitable. She had burned out her rage and felt that she no longer needed to kill them all, that it would be sufficient that she accomplish her original mission and crown them with the yolk. She had forced her anger down because she now led all the Draka Legions in America and she couldn’t afford to act as a walking wound. But at the thought of retreat it came all back again.
“No!” she said. “The key to victory is to smash them now. Drive the Janissaries forward!”
* * *
It was imperative to Sheppard’s plan that the gaps in the Draka lines remain open, and he was far too thorough to leave that to the flames and radiation. Even as the fires began to catch and burn American tank companies pushed themselves into the sides of the gap like a wedge into a wound. Abrams and Challengers roared in, their treads kicking up dust as they charged forward. General Sheppard had ordered that these initial thrusts consist entirely of tanks. He didn’t want to put exposed infantry in a zone only a few dozen kilometers or so from the site of the heaviest nuclear bombardment in human history.
To Captain Darrow the landscape looked eerie. The area was green and peaceful. In the distance he could see towns burning from Draka bombing and artillery barrages. And in the far distance he could pick out the thick clouds of smoke and ash thrown up by Davy Crocketts and other low-yield short range tac nuke detonations.
A group of Janissaries was moving through the fields to his right, trying to get away from the oncoming American tanks. They had little or no cover. The machine gun of a passing Challenger went off and they dropped like sacks of flower. Farther in another Janissary squad had managed to set up a basic ambush. One of them leaped out from behind the crumbling wall of a burned out house, leveling an RPG at the lead Abrams. He was gunned down before he could fire. His companion ran out and grabbed the RPG and he too was picked off. Darrow had the lead tanks smash the wall with its main cannon. The wall imploded, collapsing on the remaining Janissaries and killing some of them. The survivors were shot like fish in a barrel as they tried to crawl to a new hiding place.
Darrow got a call from one of his flanking units. “We’ve got a mechanized unit coming in from the side. Estimate one company.”
“They’re trying to close the gap” Darrow said. “Deal with them.” He radioed Colonel Donager to inform him of the situation.
The American formation continued moving forward, refusing to be drawn away from their objective. Darrow watched closely as a formation of Hoplites supported by a few Thors approached, spread out, and began trading fire with his tanks. Although the Hoplite was an adequate tank the Challengers and Abrams were altogether superior, and while the Draka (or, more likely, Janissary tankers) put up a determined fight they were eventually worn down, but at considerable cost to the Americans. The Thors were the hardest to deal with. They followed in the Draka tradition of obscenely up-armoring their tanks, and were one of the few tanks in the world that could take a hit from the Abrams main gun and keep fighting.
Darrow radioed Colonel Donager again. “Enemy attempt to seal their lines has been dealt with. Continuing to final objective.”
* * *
“Sir, our initial armored thrusts have successfully cut across their lines” Brigadier General Howard was grinning. “We’ve cut them in three pieces, just like you wanted, but they’re putting up a hell of a fight. Trying to break through the gaps we’ve opened.”
Sheppard nodded. “They know the war’s going to be a lot harder for them if they don’t beat us here. They’re going to be doing everything in their power to reconnect those Draka divisions to the main army. Send some more tanks and mechanized infantry to strengthen our positions there.”
“Yes sir” Howard said and went back to his post. Sheppard gestured for Dalton to come to him.
“Are all our forward units well dug in?”
“They’re in the process” Dalton winced slightly. “Some of them are still trying to extricate themselves from combat with the forward Draka units. It’ll take a little bit before we can begin bombardment in earnest.”
Sheppard nodded. “Understood. Meanwhile, let’s give them a little taste of what they’re in for. Start the bombardment, but save the superheavy artillery.”
“Yes sir!” Dalton said enthusiastically and turned to give the necessary orders.
In response to General Dalton’s orders every artillery piece from Maine to Virginia opened fire. The lion’s share was directed at the main portion of the army approaching head on, but the now isolated advance units were by no means spared. The purpose of the bombardment was to soften these forward units, which were expected to put up the most capable fight, and to utterly disorganize the main army. Every American artillery piece in the entire greater Washington DC area, save for the tac nuke launchers, opened fire in one mighty chorus. Everything from the lightest forward mortar position to the heaviest truck-mounted missile. The Draka army found itself assailed by every layer of the American’s artillery. Forward mortars disrupted and stalled advances, towed guns and self-propelled artillery savaged the rear lines, and guided missiles smashed command posts, weapons emplacements, heavy troop concentrations, and anything else worth singling out for destruction. The barrage sent heavy clouds of smoke and dust rolling into the morning sky, and from General Sheppard’s command post it sounded like a single continuous thunder.
Corporal Robert Walper crouched inside the trench. His hands were getting sore from having to deal with the recoil of the machine gun. Janissaries continued to boil out of the nearby buildings, trying to sneak around to the trench the Fifth Canadian was bunkered down in.
“Shit!” Private Dirk Silver cursed and pointed toward something.
“What?” Walper asked.
“They’re bringing in bulldozers! They’re going to fucking bury us alive!”
“Great” Walper muttered to himself as he saw that the Draka had, indeed, brought a bulldozer. A big one, with treads. The kind used for heavy earthmoving. He turned his machine gun on it, trying to hit the driver, but it kept coming. Bullets bounced off its frame and the huge, menacing blade in its front. The blade came down and began to push dirt in front of it. The Janissaries laid down a suppressing fire and Walper had to get his head down.
“Great!” he muttered. He was too distracted to realize his hand was on the cold chest of his dead Sergeant. “Now what the hell are we going to do?”
“Just what the doctor ordered!” a pair of Privates came running up to him, carrying an antitank cannon.
“Boy am I glad to see that thing” Walper said. “Think you can take out the dozer?”
“No sweat” one of them said as he loaded it. “Just give us a little covering fire.”
Walper waited until they’d finished loading the cannon and motioned to a couple of his men who began firing from inside the trench with their assault rifles. That quieted the Janissaries enough that Walper could go back to his machine gun. He kept up a high intensity of fire, making sure they didn’t dare put their heads up. The bulldozer was almost over him by now, scarily close, but he didn’t even bother with it. One of the Privates fired his cannon. The dozer buckled with the recoil and several pieces fell off of it. Its engines fell silent. The driver jumped down and Walper got him with the machine gun. He gave the Private with the antitank cannon a high-five.
“Keep down!” Lieutenant Moriboros said. “They could start pounding the Draks with nukes at any moment!”
Mark Sheppard tapped his desk impatiently, waiting for all the clear to come. The conventional artillery fire was devastating enough but it wasn’t halting the Draka advance. Something more powerful was required.
“Sir, all the men are dug in” General Dalton said. “Or almost all of them. We can’t do anything about individual squads that are still tangled with the Draks.”
Sheppard nodded. “Begin bombardment with superheavy artillery.”
Arranged at the back of the US Army lines were scores of truck-mounted tac nuke launchers. Some had expended their munitions to give the US Army its crack at breaking the Draka lines but most of them still sat armed and idle.
When the order came through the operators of those launchers silently and solemnly keyed in the launch sequences and stood clear. Scores of missiles took off into the crisp morning air and arched across the sky, down into the splintered Draka formation.
The forward American units were compelled to duck into trenches to escape the dangerous hot, debris-laden wind that the explosions produced. They couldn’t see what was going on, they were forced to hold plastic screens in front of their faces lest the brilliant flash of the exploding bombs burn out their retinas.
Compared to this barrage what had come before was like a gentle summer rain. After the first volley came the second, and the third, and the fourth. And in-between volleys the rest of the American artillery continued to pound the Draka without relenting or mercy.
Arch-Strategos Yolande Ingollfson coughed and tried to sit up. The sharp pain in her side told her that at least two of her ribs were broken. She ignored it. She was Draka and she would not show any sign of weakness even if her back was broken. Her staff was likewise pulling themselves up, coughing and gagging, gingerly touching bruises and lacerations and broken bones. Her MCC had been too far from the explosion to be badly damaged but it had been rocked severely, sending Ingollfson and her staff tumbling around like ragdolls. Her leg was pinned under the table and when she raised it she could feel bruises and a twisted ankle beginning to swell.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“We’re being saturation bombed with tac nukes” Strategos Tull said, holding a bloody nose.
“What’s the status of our forces?”
“Divided, disorganized, and a quarter of them already dead.”
“Ma’am” Strategos Osgood coughed as he got up, holding his bleeding head. “Ma’am we can’t hold up under this kind of fire! We have to withdraw! Come back when we have air superiority!”
“No” Ingollfson insisted. “We need an overwhelming victory here. This is our one chance to crush the Yankees. To concede victory to them here would be to concede victory in this entire theatre of war.”
“We don’t have to throw in the towel” Osgood said. “But we need to pull back our forces, regroup, and come up with a new strategy.”
Ingollfson shook her head. “The greatest weapon of The Race is our Will. Now is the time to use it. A lesser race might be broken by this but we will push through and triumph.
“Prepare the Artemis missiles. Ignore casualties, ignore losses, they can be replaced. What matters is victory.”
“The Draka are continuing their advance.” General Dalton reported.
Sheppard looked up, concerned. “Is our bombardment not having the effect we’d hoped?”
Dalton shook his head. “They’re being cut to ribbons but they’re trying to bull their way through by sheer determination.”
General Sheppard left his command tent and looked out over the battlefield. The US Army was throwing down a layered curtain of fire on the Draka. Tac nukes at the back, then missile and heavy artillery for the middle ranks, and mortars for the advance units. But the Draka drove their slave conscripts unhesitatingly into the withering fire, utterly heedless of casualties. They were, after all, simply animals to them. Useful animals but nonetheless animals, not worthy of consideration. Resources to be expended like so much fuel. The American officers watched this with shock. Many would later recall that there was a sort of surrealism watching something so alien to basic Western values. It was as if they were watching some horrible spectacle instead of participating in it.
“Jesus” Sheppard shook his head. “They really do believe all that shit about Will. Never mind. We can break this army. Let them come.”
He was ducking back into his command tent when a brilliant flash blinded him and a powerful shockwave lifted him off his feet and threw him onto the ground. He waited for his vision to clear, and then started to get up. Dust and ash was falling on him like a light shower. He blinked to get the grit out of his eyes. As he got up he winced at a pain in his side. Might have sprained something in there.
“You alright?” Dalton asked as he brushed himself off.
“Yeah” Sheppard said. He looked to the east to see a mushroom cloud dissipating in the atmosphere. Too close to him. Much too close. “What the hell? Did one of our missiles fall on us?”
One of the JOs who’d been manning the radios shook his head. “The Draka hit us with a nuke.”
“I thought the Air Force took care of their bombers?” Sheppard said.
The JO shrugged. Just then the ground shook and there were two more flashes of light, these ones thankfully more distant. “Looks like they’re using a Davy Crockett or something like that.”
“Want me to radio out the order to fall back?” the JO asked.
“No” Sheppard said. “I expected this. Stick to the original plan. Just make sure the units going into the gap don’t give the Draka a nice big funnel to shoot at. We begin the advance in fifteen minutes.”
“Alright! We move in ten minutes!” Lieutenant Breckenridge of the Sixth Canadian Mechanized Infantry bellowed. “Get to your vehicles! Go! Go! Go! Move it meatheads!”
Private Jarvis ran toward his squad, his lungs burnings. He fell awkwardly into step.
“I thought you weren’t going to show up” Private Beamis snickered.
“Ah piss off” Jarvis scowled.
“Alright! Get in!” Sergeant Dillard shouted. “Move it people! This is the battle of Armageddon you schmucks, let’s go!”
“Armageddon?” Jarvis rolled his eyes.
“Not too far from the truth” Beamis said. “They’re throwing nukes around man! Nukes!”
Jarvis ducked into the Bradley and sat down. The Sergeant secured the door and the Bradley started moving with a lurch. After several minutes of moving they started to come under fire. Bullets pinged audibly off the armor. The Bradley shook with the recoil of its cannon. After a few more minutes it came to a stop.
“All right! Let’s go!” Sergeant Dillard shouted. The door of the Bradley opened and Jarvis’s squad piled out. He looked around and saw a landscape devastated by DAF bombing and artillery bombardments from both sides. It looked like pictures of Europe or Japan after WWII.
“Get down!” Corporal Harness shouted and Jarvis ducked behind a broken piece of wall. He peeked out to see a tank roll past, its side bearing the flag of the Dominate.
“Don’t bother” Dillard said. “A tank company will take care of it. For now-look out!”
A Janissary Despoiler rolled out from behind a building. Jarvis ducked again. The Bradley’s main gun went off and struck the Despoiler in the side. Its thin armor crumpled like tissue paper and it was now on fire. Janissaries began boiling out. They were disorganized and panicked and quickly fell to assault rifle fire.
The last major concentration of Citizens was pinned down in Lynchburg, Virginia. Recon estimated that there were two divisions of Citizens, several more divisions of Italian and Dutch Janissaries, and a regiment and a half of Stormtroopers remaining.
General Leftcourt knew better than to underestimate the ferocity of a cornered animal. The Draka and Stormtroopers were fanatics and could be expected to fight, if not actually to the last man, then to something uncomfortably close to it. He ordered his mechanized units, which had been skirmishing with the Stormtroopers and Janissaries on the edge of the Draka kessel to withdraw to a safe distance.
“The mechanized units are at minimum safe distance and are safely dug in sir” Major General de Havilland said.
“Good” Leftcourt said. “Take them out.”
“Yes sir” de Havilland said.
A missile arched over into the center of the Draka position, carrying a Davy Crockett. The Davy Crockett exploded in the center of the Draka kessel, creating a mushroom cloud. Leftcourt turned to de Havilland. “I’m not sending men in there. Form a cordon and shoot anyone who comes out, the rest can burn.”
Arch-Strategos Ingollfson may not have ordered a retreat, but under the circumstances a retreat was inevitable. The Draka army had been trisected, bludgeoned brutally; its command structure smashed, and was now coming under heavy pressure from US infantry and armor divisions. Worse, the USAF had gained control of the skies and B-70 Valkyrie bombers were now beginning to conduct strafing runs, drowning especially resistant concentrations of Janissaries beneath burning napalm. The loyalty of the Janissaries had always been dependent upon fear, and now many of them were beginning to fear the fiery wrath of the American bombs more than they feared the anger of their masters. They broke ranks and ran, becoming easy prey for American roving units. The Draka charge turned into a bloody rout. The Draka commanders could only watch as the bulk of their army slipped through their fingers like so much sand, leaving them with a skeleton force of Stormtroopers, Citizen divisions, and a few exceptionally well-disciplined Janissary Chiliarchies. The Americans took many prisoners that day; many of the Janissary squads, cut off from their own Tetrarchies and isolated from any chain of command, surrendered without a shot fired. Now the last Draka holdouts were being methodically slaughtered with Davy Crocketts and the only thing standing between the Americans and the Arch-Strategos’s own personal body was two brigades of Stormtroopers.
In one disastrous day the Draka had lost the majority of their fighting force on the American mainland. The Americans had won the battle for their home country for the moment. To the Draka it was the latest in a bitter series of public humiliations. Another insult which would be avenged when the stubborn and damnably resourceful ferals of this continent were finally brought under the yoke.
“Ignore casualties, ignore losses” Strategos Osgood said mockingly. “All that matters is victory.”
“Shut up!” Arch-Strategos Ingollfson snapped. “If you were a Janissary I would have you hung from your own intestines after they’d been ripped out of your ass!”
“Oh yes, make no mistake. This… humiliation today was our own fault. Not the Americans” Osgood continued.
“We had no way of knowing they’d employ nuclear artillery on such a massive scale” Strategos Tull pointed out.
“Why the fik not!” Osgood roared. “It’s exactly what we were planning to do, only better! Your problem is that you expect the enemy to fight poorly. A good commander-which you are not-expects the enemy to be every bit as good as himself unless he has hard data otherwise!”
“We thought we had hard data otherwise!” Arch-Strategos Ingollfson screamed. “These are the same people who cry bloody murder every time a nuclear power plant goes up in their neighborhood!”
“And the only nation on the planet to actually use nuclear weapons in anger before Operation Alexander!” Osgood pounded his fists on the table. “Do you think they would rather have faced enserfment than swallowed a tiny uptick in birth defects!”
Ingollfson waved dismissively. “They are like disobedient children who kick and scream when their parents try to discipline them. They are nothing, chattel.”
“Ask the survivors of the 443rd Chiliarchy who just got a Davy Crockett on their heads-if there are any!” Osgood exploded. “They are a cornered animal and that’s something one does not underestimate!”
Ingollfson sighed in defeat as she rubbed her broken ribs. “How long until we can begin another offensive?”
Osgood shook his head in wonderment. “Listen, you hear that gunfire outside? That’s the sound of the Stormtrooper Chiliarchy attached to us fighting and loosing against the Yankees. It’s a good thing the engine on the MCC still works of we’d have been captured already. And you talk about new offensives? For the moment the best we can hope for is a fighting retreat.”
Ingollfson nearly exploded. “The Race has never retreated! Will never retreat! Does not retreat!”
“Arch-Strategos, be reasonable!” Strategos Tull said. “We cannot hold the territory we possess with the forces we have now. We will simply have to resign ourselves to loosing ground until reinforcements can be brought in from the Dominate.”
Ingollfson buried her head in her hands. “Very well, but what we cannot have we will destroy.” Her voice clarified, gelled by hate. “Our policy will be simple. We will create desert zones behind us as we retreat. When the Yankees retake their own towns and cities they will find nothing left. Our policy toward the Yankee serfs in our controlled territory will be as follows. Where feasible they will be shipped back to the Dominate for breaking and selling on the open market. When this is not convenient they are to be killed. All of them, down to the last infant and old man. Our policy will be one of depopulation. I want any country we concede to the Yankees to be as empty of human beings or useable resources as the surface of Pluto. Is this understood?”
“Yes Arch-Strategos” her advisors said as one.
General Sheppard glanced out the window of his humvee as he inspected the defenses of the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. The city itself was a smoking ruin, the first logical target of the Draka ICBM attacks. At least it was well behind American lines so FEMA had time to evacuate all the survivors. That was more than could be said for the coastal cities like New York and Philadelphia, which were now deep inside the Draka-held zone. The people there could probably expect worse than no help, knowing the Draka. Despite the fact that the capitol was already a lost cause Sheppard had chosen a DC suburb to be the center of his army. It was right in the path of the Draka advance. The CIA thought their plan was to establish a deep beachhead on the East Coast and then swing around the Appalachians and advance down the St Lawrence River to seize the industrial Great Lakes region and the Midwest wheat belt. If Sheppard failed here he would conduct a fighting retreat to his fallback position in the northeastern states. If he failed there he would fall back to the St Lawrence River and if that failed… Ketsuko. The American government would never surrender to the Draka. Surrender to the Draka was not an option, not when you knew what it was like to live under them. It would be better for the human species to die than for the Draka to take over the world; death was preferable to being a serf. In the face of defeat the Pentagon was secretly preparing the ultimate scorched earth policy. The Army was to fight to the death, alongside civilian volunteer brigades which would be formed. First everyone with a gun, and when they ran out of those they would fight the Draka with k-bars, switchblades, sharpened poles, stones and bare fists if need be. Once the Draka crossed the Mississippi or the old Canadian border the standing order would be to create desolated zones before the Draka advanced, to tac-nuke every town that fell to them, and in the end perhaps even to use biological warfare. If the Draka wanted America they’d have to do what they did to the Afghans, and they’d rule a ruined and poisoned continent. The Pentagon was even covertly looking into the possibility of the creation of a KYAG virus; a genetically engineered pathogen designed to spread quickly over the planet and wipe out so much of the human race that civilization would collapse. When America fell samples of the virus would be disseminated to the Soviet Union and Japan, with a recommendation that should the Draka attack them they should release it when the last free city came under siege.
Sheppard dismissed these grim musings to continue this inspection. That shouldn’t be necessary. The Army he’d assembled would break the Draka. He’d assembled seventy divisions from all over the middle forty-eight and the Canadian states. The entire greater Washington DC area crawled with infantry and armor brigades. SAM batteries waited to greet the overwhelming air superiority the Draka were counting on to win this, which wouldn’t happen because Sheppard knew what they were planning and the USAF was pulling in fighters from bases all over the continental US. At the back of the army, in the ruins of Washington, Sheppard had his own nasty surprise for the Draka. Truck-mounted short range low-yield tactical nukes: the Army of the Potomac’s (AOTP) superheavy artillery.
Sheppard’s walkie talkie and he answered the call. “What is it?”
“General” came the anxious voice at the other end. “Our Predator overflights just-“
“I know” Sheppard said. “Our forward units are about to engage the Draka.” He ordered the driver to take him back to his command post. He entered the tent to be briefed by General Dalton.
“Sir, a Predator just picked up about fifty or sixty Draka divisions massing along our front from Bangor to Richmond. Just as the CIA indicated they’re massing their Legions, they want a big decisive battle as much as we do. More. If we fail here we can always pull back, but their whole war plan relies on beating us quickly. They’ll want to box us in and crush us completely.” Dalton indicated the map spread out on the table. “We think they’ll attack from the north and try a two pronged encirclement. They’ll divide the Draka contingents to spearhead each prong. The main holding force will be regular Janissaries and irregulars, bolstered by two brigades of Stormtroopers.”
“Good” Sheppard said. “They plan to box us in and then have their airforce pound us to hamburger. Instead they’re playing right into my hands. We will wait until they have begun the pincer maneuver and then use our superheavy artillery to open gaps in their lines here and here” he drew bloody slashes where he envisioned the Draka army being broken into three pieces. “The main bulk of the Janissary force in the center we will deal with by a combination of superheavy and conventional artillery, followed by heavy infantry thrusts backed by armored brigades. Knowing the general quality of Janissary regulars I doubt they’ll retain unit coherence very well under that kind of fire, although the Stormtroopers will probably be a lot more trouble. That will leave two smaller forces of what will probably be their better Janissaries, mixed with their Citizen divisions. I believe the best way to deal with these will be with a combination of superheavy and heavy artillery, augmented by air strikes if conditions allow, followed by an attack with our best mechanized divisions.”
“Just one thing” Dalton said, scratching his short but shaggy black beard. “You realize that this is the first time nuclear weapons will have been used as a land-based tactical weapon. Sets a rather disturbing new precedent. That bother you at all?”
Sheppard shook his head. “This is total war we’re talking about here Dalton. I can’t afford to fight with my hands tied. Would you rather live with a five percent increase in your risk of getting cancer or be a serf in the Dominate.”
“I’m glad to see your reputation is based on fact” Dalton said. “I’ll begin preparations.”
* * *
Captain Wilson’s tank Company drove through the streets of the Washington DC suburb, the lookouts continuously searching the well-to-do tree-lined streets for signs of Draka infantry or armor. Smoke curled from Army positions to the east which were being pounded by Draka artillery.
The lead Abrams turned a corner and ran into a Despoiler accompanied by two Enyos. The Despoilers’ transverse cannon fired immediately but it barely pitted the armor of the Abrams. The return fire was devastating to the flimsy, thinly armored Janissary transport. It caved in like a house of cards, its fuel tank exploding into flames and hideous shrieks coming from within as Janissaries were crushed or roasted alive. Janissaries began pouring out of the Enyos, realizing that their vehicles were death traps. The Abrams quickly obliterated the two Enyos and gunned down the fleeing Janissaries with its machine gun. A few escaped but most did not. Captain Wilson ordered the lead tank to turn back. They would continue their retreat towards the main army position. It was imperative that the Draka be drawn into place for the battle to be won, this much he had been briefed on.
Overhead he heard the roar of an unusually loud jet engine. Ever since 9-11 that was a sound that had sent chills down his spine, and in this case for good reason. He looked up and saw a formation of Falcon bombers and Ravager escorts. He barely had time to scream the order to move when they began dropping their bombs.
* * *
The Draka fighter wing obliterated Captain Wilson’s tank company, along with the entire neighborhood it was in. The place was too thick with US forces and destroying it would slow the advance of the army down. As it moved over toward the main city Falcons indiscriminately bombed places where resistance was stubborn or expected to be stubborn, in keeping with standard Draka military doctrine. Other Falcons hung back at the center of the formation, carrying the tactical nukes that the Draka planned to use to smash turn Sheppard’s army into disorganized panicking meat for the Janissary and Citizen divisions to carve up. The Draka high command believed the sheer unprecedented savagery of using tac nukes as infantry support weapons would surely weaken the American’s fighting will and destroy their unit cohesion, to say nothing of the physical damage the weapons would do to the army, especially the infantry. This was probably one of the great ironies of history, as the Americans had already one-upped them in the nuclear game, but of course they couldn’t know that.
Captain Karen Summers noted some of the escorts pealing off the bomber wings as her tactical wing of F-19s approached. “OK boys and girls, looks like they’ve seen us” she said over the common channel. “Prepare to engage. First priority is the bombers in the centers. They’ll be the ones carrying the nukes. Second priority is the rest of the bombers, don’t worry about the fighters except to keep them off your back.”
“Copy that” one of her Lieutenants said.
The wing of F-19s split up into individual squadrons and engaged the Draka fighters. A Ravager escort fighter went straight for Summers. She barely managed to evade. Faster than could be believed the Ravager was back on her, and again she just barely managed to get out of the way. Draka aircraft might not be all that great but their reputation for speed and maneuverability was based on fact. The Draka came at her again and this time managed to get in behind her. She quickly checked her screens.
“Donager, Rodman, help me out here” she ordered.
Donager and Rodman slipped in behind the Draka fighter. It tried to get away from them but Donager launched a missile and took it out. The two fighters split up to try and engage a nearby Falcon but were each intercepted by a pair of Ravagers. No sooner had they split up when another pair of Draka attacked her. She shot away from them and they came back, this time from the front. She banked to the side, preventing them from obtaining a hard lock. She shot away, circled back, and managed to slip in behind them. One of them she destroyed with a missile but the other one flew away. She went after it and it performed a crazy series of turns and was back behind her.
“Somebody take this thing off my back!” she called into the general channel.
“I got you” an Airman said as he swooped down on the Draka fighter from above. The Draka got out of the way and tried to attack him but he simply shot away and came back from the side, launching a missile that destroyed the Draka fighter.
The battle was ferocious and ugly. The Draka believed this to be the day they would break the back of the US military. Already bombers were fanning out from carriers all over the US, obliterating cities, infrastructure points, and military bases. They were having their greatest success in Mexico and Central America: Air Force units had been pulled away from those parts of the country to defend the American heartland. The Americans knew this and fought fanatically, refusing to abandon the battlefields until all the Draka bombers were destroyed. It was especially critical that these particular set of bombers not make their targets, or else Sheppard’s army might well face defeat. So the Air Force had thrown an overwhelming number of fighters into the skies above the Potomac River. The Draka never stood a chance against the huge formations that darkened the skies like swarms of gnats. Even if their fighters were really as good as their own propaganda liked to make them out as they wouldn’t have stood a chance. The bomber wings’ fighter support was quickly stripped away by vicious combat and the F-19s closed on the bombers themselves.
* * *
The city of Waterbury was silent, just like the town had been. There were no birds and no people. But there was noise. The sound of artillery barrages like a continuous rumbling thunder, the sharper booms of aircraft dropped bombs, and the fainter clicking of gunfire and clanking of moving armored vehicles. Every once in a while Tim Davies would see a tank of some other military vehicle moving past, either on the way to engage a Yankee force or looking for any survivors to mop up. Occasionally they passed dead vehicles. Some had the dragon of the Dominate painted on them, others the star and stripes of the United States. At one point Monitor Wederman shouted an order to take cover behind the nearest building. As he stretched himself out against the wall he peeked to take a look at what was going on. He saw a tank moving in the next street. An American flag was painted on its side. It stopped at the intersection, seemed to wait. Its turret swiveled around and fired twice. Then a shot from an unseen direction hit it and left the turret canting badly. A second shot killed it. The hatch popped and a visibly wounded Yankee attempted to climb out, only to be felled by machine gun fire. Decurion Carpenter led the lochos cautiously to toward the tank and sent Davies to scout ahead. He crawled low to the ground as he’d been trained and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a Hoplite tank move past. The driver pointed at the American tank and gave him a thumbs-up sign. He turned back to the lochos and gave them the all-clear sign. “One of our tanks just took it out” he explained to the Decurion. “It doesn’t look like there are any other Yankees in the area.”
“So this is that super-advanced US Army?” JM Danton said dismissively as he kicked the side of the tank. “This thing couldn’t dent the side armor on a Hoplite! Look at it, it’s pathetic!”
“It is pretty small” Davies agreed. It made a Hoplite look big, and a Thor MBT seem positively huge.
“And to think how they’re always talking about how hard it’ll be to take the Americans down” Danton snorted as they walked away. What he didn’t realize, of course, was that the vehicle in question was a Stingray light tank, not even remotely classified as an MBT by the US Army.
The lochos continued cautiously, keeping low to the ground, because they were only a few layers behind the front line. They frequently heard gunfire from the frontline lochi clashing with American roving units. Tim felt anxious, waiting for the Yankees to show themselves.
That finally happened when he turned a corner into an alley. There were several men in the alley. The darker color of their uniforms told him immediately that they were Yankees, even if he couldn’t see their insignia. One of them turned back to the rest of his lochos, shouted a warning. Tim and the others raised their rifles and fired. The shouter was hit in the chest and went down, as did two of his companions. JM Danton screamed and fell, a ragged wound in his leg. Monitor Wederman moved to help him but three more bullets impacted in his body and killed him. Tim took shelter behind a dumpster with JM Hensridge. Monitor Wederman killed a fourth Yankee, then ducked behind some cardboard boxes. The bullets chewed easily through the cardboard and nicked him in a couple of places but at least it kept the Yanks from seeing where he was. Decurion Carpenter skillfully picked off three more.
“Three left” Hensridge told Tim. “Their Decurion’s mine.”
“Jolie, don’t be stupid” Tim told her but she’d already rolled out from the side of the bunker. The last three Yankees were hiding behind another dumpster. She shot at them and they shot back and she fell. Tim grabbed her and pulled her behind cover. He saw her mouth gulp air like a fish’s and after a few moments he realized what he was seeing. She was trying to scream but couldn’t. The same thing happened to him back in school when he was eight or nine, when he’d gotten in a fight and ended up knocked off the roof onto hard concrete. He’d been OK in the end, only one of his shoulder blades cracked, but the pain had been so bad he just couldn’t make a sound. He couldn’t open his lungs. It was a terrifying state. You want so desperately to scream, because a scream draws attention, a scream tells other people you’re there and you need help. But you can’t, it’s too much effort to draw in the breath, and you think that maybe nobody’s going to know what happened and you’ll just lie there until somebody happens to walk by… or until you’re dead, whichever comes first. And while you’re lying there you’re wondering just what horrible damage has been done to your body to make it hurt this much, and if it’ll kill you or if you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
His hands were covered in her blood from dragging her. He opened her jacket and lifted her shirt to get a look at her wounds. The wound didn’t look so bad from the front. It was a neat circular hole just under the small fleshy mounds of her breasts. A smear of blood covered her torso. He’d never seen a girl without her shirt before, and he felt a small twinge of excitement, even though I knew it was hideously inappropriate. He called for help. At the back the wound was ragged and gushing blood in a thick stream.
“I’m coming” Decurion Carpenter shouted. She ran over to Tim and looked at Hensridge. “She’s been shot through the heart. There’s nothing that can be done. Hey, lookout!”
Tim turned around to see two of the remaining Yankees running towards his position. He sprayed them with a burst from his rifle. Their knees buckled and they fell, dumb unfeeling grins on their faces. Tim froze for a second. He’d thought himself prepared to do his duty, had trained his entire life for it, but he’d never actually killed anything before. He dismissed his discomfort, told himself that he was being of service to the state, that he had merely done what he was supposed to.
“Get back!” Carpenter shouted. It snapped him out of it and he ducked back behind the dumpster. “Enferadi! The grenade launcher!” she called over to JM Enferadi, who was taking cover at the open end of the alley. The blonde woman quickly attached the grenade launcher to her T-50A, loaded it, and shot it at the inadequate cover of the last remaining Yankee. There was a scream and he died.
“Clear!” she shouted. The surviving Draka came out of their hiding places.
“How many casualties” Carpenter asked.
“Three” Enferadi said, poking the dead body of Monitor Azeron with her foot.
“An even exchange” she said. “Enferadi, you’re the new Monitor.”
“Thanks!” the woman beamed.
Carpenter tapped Davies on the shoulder. “You alright?”
“Yeah” Tim said defensively. “Yeah, I’m alright. Of course I’m alright.” He hoped she wouldn’t make an issue of his freeze-up. It had only been for a split second. Barely enough to notice, right?
She squeezed his shoulder, and then turned to Monitor Wederman. “C’mon. Continue the advance, let’s go. There’s more of ‘em waiting for you. Lots more.”
* * *
“Jesus, I never thought I’d see the day we used one of these things” Corporal Mike Parisi shook his head as he regarded the big army-camouflage painted truck that sat idly on the grassy knoll, the four small tactical nuclear missiles mounted on its back pointing at the distant advancing Draka army like the horns of some belligerent triceratops.
Lieutenant Macon shrugged. “Which would you rather take, a five percent increase in your chance of getting cancer or being a serf under the Draka?”
“If you put it that way I’ll take the five percent increase in cancer” Mike said decisively. “My ass is sore just thinking about being a Draka serf!”
“Hold on a second” Macon held up a hand for silence and conferred with someone over his walkie-talkie. “Alright, that was the Colonel. We’ve got the launch order.”
“Coordinates?” Mike said, bending over the control panel of the launcher. Macon read them off. Mike fed them into the targeting system and keyed in the launch sequence.
“You might want to stand back sir” he said as he walked away from the truck. The countdown was winding down its last ten seconds. Parisi, Macon, and the driver got as far away from the truck as they could before the missile shot away, befouling the air around them with the acrid smoke of rocket fuel. He coughed and waved the smoke out of his face to watch the missiles arch over the deceptively placid morning sky and fall toward the distant horizon, disappearing with tremendous booms that shook the ground beneath their feet.
* * *
Cohortarch Karlsen scanned the surroundings with his binoculars. His men had just run into an American mechanized brigade and dealt with them, but he’d had to call in help from an armored Cohort. The grassy valley was now littered with smoking Hoplites and Bradleys and the dead bodies of his Janissaries. He continued pushing his Janissaries across the valley toward a nearby town. It was already burning, having been charged through by the Citizen advanced forces leading the pincer maneuver that would surround the Yankees like dumb sheep for the slaughter.
“Massuh!” one of the Janissaries shouted, pointing at the sky. “Massuh! Look!”
Karlsen looked up and saw the American missiles coming down at him. His last conscious thought was that he’d never seen a sun so bright… or so many of them.
Deep within the Draka army, surrounded by a huge contingent of Stormtroopers, Arch-Strategos Yolande Ingollfson’s mobile command post rolled down what had once been an interstate highway. To a passerby it would have looked like the Greyhound version of the armored trains Soviet officials had once traveled across Russia in. A medium-sized bus covered with thick armor plating and spiky with radio antennae and defensive weaponry. It traveled flanked by two Thor MBTs and four Hoplites crewed by elite Stormtroopers. Inside it was a warm dark grotto, lit only by internal lighting and what little peeked in through the tiny slits begrudgingly opened in the armor. The Arch-Strategos and her staff hunched over maps hotly illuminated by several desk lamps. The bouncing of the vehicle shook the deck under their boots. They paid no attention, engrossed in plotting their revenge for the grievous insult the Yankees had given the Draka.
While she planned out the total destruction of the Yankee army the Arch-Strategos was contemplating what she’d do with the American President when she caught him. It would have to be something dramatic. These Yankees were as stubborn as mules and they would need a strong demonstration of the consequences of defying the Draka. Besides, short of finding the bombardier who pushed the button that launched the nuke that sank the Dominance she could think of no more fitting target for her revenge. No ordinary death by breaking wheel or impalement would do for this one. Whatever it was it would have to emphasis the utter futility of resistance, the complete helplessness that his people were now reduced to. Ah, she had just the thing! He had two young daughters, his fate would be to watch as they were thrown to the Janissaries as a reward for their service. She would of course be sure to record the event and televise it over occupied America, to impress upon the Yankees their new status.
Her plans were interrupted by the urgent call of the serf technician coordinating the datalink.
“Masters! The Yankees are launching… they are…”
“Well, what is it you silly fool?” Ingollfson snapped at the visibly shaking Indian woman. “Spit it out bitch, we’ve got a war to fight in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Master. They… they are using atom bombs as artillery.” Her voice held awe, wonderment at the sheer audacity and ruthlessness-or desperation-of anyone who would employ such a tactic.
“We didn’t think the Americans had such iron!” Strategos Tull commented. Like the serf he had a reverent tone in his voice the Ingollfson didn’t like at all. Some Draka officers had (away from the ears of any serfs or rank and file) commended the Yankees on the unexpectedly good fight they had been putting up. As far as Ingollfson was concerned they were simply displaying the recalcitrance of the truly thick-headed. They were spoiled children fighting tooth and nail against the imposition of proper discipline.
Strategos Osgood began drawing big red Xs on the map to mark where the bombs were seen to be landing. “Clever. They waited for us to begin the pincer maneuver. They knew-predicted-exactly the kind of formation we would assume. Citizen forces leading the encirclement, with a nice big Janissary formation facing them. And they used it against us. See here-they are using the atom bombs to break our line in two places. They intend to divide us into three parts and isolate the Citizen contingents. I recommend a strategic retreat for now. We’ll try again tomorrow. And this time our irregulars will take point. We’ll get a few Stormtrooper Centuries to drive them.”
Ingollfson thought that time had been healing her wounds from the death of Myfwany. It would always be a scar, and a painful scar, but it was at least no longer bleeding. No longer crying out. But at the thought of conceding these… animals a victory it flared up again. They were animals, serfs, unworthy. And they had taken the life of one infinitely more worthy of life than them, infinitely more valuable than they could ever be, because they resented the inevitable. She had burned out her rage and felt that she no longer needed to kill them all, that it would be sufficient that she accomplish her original mission and crown them with the yolk. She had forced her anger down because she now led all the Draka Legions in America and she couldn’t afford to act as a walking wound. But at the thought of retreat it came all back again.
“No!” she said. “The key to victory is to smash them now. Drive the Janissaries forward!”
* * *
It was imperative to Sheppard’s plan that the gaps in the Draka lines remain open, and he was far too thorough to leave that to the flames and radiation. Even as the fires began to catch and burn American tank companies pushed themselves into the sides of the gap like a wedge into a wound. Abrams and Challengers roared in, their treads kicking up dust as they charged forward. General Sheppard had ordered that these initial thrusts consist entirely of tanks. He didn’t want to put exposed infantry in a zone only a few dozen kilometers or so from the site of the heaviest nuclear bombardment in human history.
To Captain Darrow the landscape looked eerie. The area was green and peaceful. In the distance he could see towns burning from Draka bombing and artillery barrages. And in the far distance he could pick out the thick clouds of smoke and ash thrown up by Davy Crocketts and other low-yield short range tac nuke detonations.
A group of Janissaries was moving through the fields to his right, trying to get away from the oncoming American tanks. They had little or no cover. The machine gun of a passing Challenger went off and they dropped like sacks of flower. Farther in another Janissary squad had managed to set up a basic ambush. One of them leaped out from behind the crumbling wall of a burned out house, leveling an RPG at the lead Abrams. He was gunned down before he could fire. His companion ran out and grabbed the RPG and he too was picked off. Darrow had the lead tanks smash the wall with its main cannon. The wall imploded, collapsing on the remaining Janissaries and killing some of them. The survivors were shot like fish in a barrel as they tried to crawl to a new hiding place.
Darrow got a call from one of his flanking units. “We’ve got a mechanized unit coming in from the side. Estimate one company.”
“They’re trying to close the gap” Darrow said. “Deal with them.” He radioed Colonel Donager to inform him of the situation.
The American formation continued moving forward, refusing to be drawn away from their objective. Darrow watched closely as a formation of Hoplites supported by a few Thors approached, spread out, and began trading fire with his tanks. Although the Hoplite was an adequate tank the Challengers and Abrams were altogether superior, and while the Draka (or, more likely, Janissary tankers) put up a determined fight they were eventually worn down, but at considerable cost to the Americans. The Thors were the hardest to deal with. They followed in the Draka tradition of obscenely up-armoring their tanks, and were one of the few tanks in the world that could take a hit from the Abrams main gun and keep fighting.
Darrow radioed Colonel Donager again. “Enemy attempt to seal their lines has been dealt with. Continuing to final objective.”
* * *
“Sir, our initial armored thrusts have successfully cut across their lines” Brigadier General Howard was grinning. “We’ve cut them in three pieces, just like you wanted, but they’re putting up a hell of a fight. Trying to break through the gaps we’ve opened.”
Sheppard nodded. “They know the war’s going to be a lot harder for them if they don’t beat us here. They’re going to be doing everything in their power to reconnect those Draka divisions to the main army. Send some more tanks and mechanized infantry to strengthen our positions there.”
“Yes sir” Howard said and went back to his post. Sheppard gestured for Dalton to come to him.
“Are all our forward units well dug in?”
“They’re in the process” Dalton winced slightly. “Some of them are still trying to extricate themselves from combat with the forward Draka units. It’ll take a little bit before we can begin bombardment in earnest.”
Sheppard nodded. “Understood. Meanwhile, let’s give them a little taste of what they’re in for. Start the bombardment, but save the superheavy artillery.”
“Yes sir!” Dalton said enthusiastically and turned to give the necessary orders.
In response to General Dalton’s orders every artillery piece from Maine to Virginia opened fire. The lion’s share was directed at the main portion of the army approaching head on, but the now isolated advance units were by no means spared. The purpose of the bombardment was to soften these forward units, which were expected to put up the most capable fight, and to utterly disorganize the main army. Every American artillery piece in the entire greater Washington DC area, save for the tac nuke launchers, opened fire in one mighty chorus. Everything from the lightest forward mortar position to the heaviest truck-mounted missile. The Draka army found itself assailed by every layer of the American’s artillery. Forward mortars disrupted and stalled advances, towed guns and self-propelled artillery savaged the rear lines, and guided missiles smashed command posts, weapons emplacements, heavy troop concentrations, and anything else worth singling out for destruction. The barrage sent heavy clouds of smoke and dust rolling into the morning sky, and from General Sheppard’s command post it sounded like a single continuous thunder.
Corporal Robert Walper crouched inside the trench. His hands were getting sore from having to deal with the recoil of the machine gun. Janissaries continued to boil out of the nearby buildings, trying to sneak around to the trench the Fifth Canadian was bunkered down in.
“Shit!” Private Dirk Silver cursed and pointed toward something.
“What?” Walper asked.
“They’re bringing in bulldozers! They’re going to fucking bury us alive!”
“Great” Walper muttered to himself as he saw that the Draka had, indeed, brought a bulldozer. A big one, with treads. The kind used for heavy earthmoving. He turned his machine gun on it, trying to hit the driver, but it kept coming. Bullets bounced off its frame and the huge, menacing blade in its front. The blade came down and began to push dirt in front of it. The Janissaries laid down a suppressing fire and Walper had to get his head down.
“Great!” he muttered. He was too distracted to realize his hand was on the cold chest of his dead Sergeant. “Now what the hell are we going to do?”
“Just what the doctor ordered!” a pair of Privates came running up to him, carrying an antitank cannon.
“Boy am I glad to see that thing” Walper said. “Think you can take out the dozer?”
“No sweat” one of them said as he loaded it. “Just give us a little covering fire.”
Walper waited until they’d finished loading the cannon and motioned to a couple of his men who began firing from inside the trench with their assault rifles. That quieted the Janissaries enough that Walper could go back to his machine gun. He kept up a high intensity of fire, making sure they didn’t dare put their heads up. The bulldozer was almost over him by now, scarily close, but he didn’t even bother with it. One of the Privates fired his cannon. The dozer buckled with the recoil and several pieces fell off of it. Its engines fell silent. The driver jumped down and Walper got him with the machine gun. He gave the Private with the antitank cannon a high-five.
“Keep down!” Lieutenant Moriboros said. “They could start pounding the Draks with nukes at any moment!”
Mark Sheppard tapped his desk impatiently, waiting for all the clear to come. The conventional artillery fire was devastating enough but it wasn’t halting the Draka advance. Something more powerful was required.
“Sir, all the men are dug in” General Dalton said. “Or almost all of them. We can’t do anything about individual squads that are still tangled with the Draks.”
Sheppard nodded. “Begin bombardment with superheavy artillery.”
Arranged at the back of the US Army lines were scores of truck-mounted tac nuke launchers. Some had expended their munitions to give the US Army its crack at breaking the Draka lines but most of them still sat armed and idle.
When the order came through the operators of those launchers silently and solemnly keyed in the launch sequences and stood clear. Scores of missiles took off into the crisp morning air and arched across the sky, down into the splintered Draka formation.
The forward American units were compelled to duck into trenches to escape the dangerous hot, debris-laden wind that the explosions produced. They couldn’t see what was going on, they were forced to hold plastic screens in front of their faces lest the brilliant flash of the exploding bombs burn out their retinas.
Compared to this barrage what had come before was like a gentle summer rain. After the first volley came the second, and the third, and the fourth. And in-between volleys the rest of the American artillery continued to pound the Draka without relenting or mercy.
Arch-Strategos Yolande Ingollfson coughed and tried to sit up. The sharp pain in her side told her that at least two of her ribs were broken. She ignored it. She was Draka and she would not show any sign of weakness even if her back was broken. Her staff was likewise pulling themselves up, coughing and gagging, gingerly touching bruises and lacerations and broken bones. Her MCC had been too far from the explosion to be badly damaged but it had been rocked severely, sending Ingollfson and her staff tumbling around like ragdolls. Her leg was pinned under the table and when she raised it she could feel bruises and a twisted ankle beginning to swell.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“We’re being saturation bombed with tac nukes” Strategos Tull said, holding a bloody nose.
“What’s the status of our forces?”
“Divided, disorganized, and a quarter of them already dead.”
“Ma’am” Strategos Osgood coughed as he got up, holding his bleeding head. “Ma’am we can’t hold up under this kind of fire! We have to withdraw! Come back when we have air superiority!”
“No” Ingollfson insisted. “We need an overwhelming victory here. This is our one chance to crush the Yankees. To concede victory to them here would be to concede victory in this entire theatre of war.”
“We don’t have to throw in the towel” Osgood said. “But we need to pull back our forces, regroup, and come up with a new strategy.”
Ingollfson shook her head. “The greatest weapon of The Race is our Will. Now is the time to use it. A lesser race might be broken by this but we will push through and triumph.
“Prepare the Artemis missiles. Ignore casualties, ignore losses, they can be replaced. What matters is victory.”
“The Draka are continuing their advance.” General Dalton reported.
Sheppard looked up, concerned. “Is our bombardment not having the effect we’d hoped?”
Dalton shook his head. “They’re being cut to ribbons but they’re trying to bull their way through by sheer determination.”
General Sheppard left his command tent and looked out over the battlefield. The US Army was throwing down a layered curtain of fire on the Draka. Tac nukes at the back, then missile and heavy artillery for the middle ranks, and mortars for the advance units. But the Draka drove their slave conscripts unhesitatingly into the withering fire, utterly heedless of casualties. They were, after all, simply animals to them. Useful animals but nonetheless animals, not worthy of consideration. Resources to be expended like so much fuel. The American officers watched this with shock. Many would later recall that there was a sort of surrealism watching something so alien to basic Western values. It was as if they were watching some horrible spectacle instead of participating in it.
“Jesus” Sheppard shook his head. “They really do believe all that shit about Will. Never mind. We can break this army. Let them come.”
He was ducking back into his command tent when a brilliant flash blinded him and a powerful shockwave lifted him off his feet and threw him onto the ground. He waited for his vision to clear, and then started to get up. Dust and ash was falling on him like a light shower. He blinked to get the grit out of his eyes. As he got up he winced at a pain in his side. Might have sprained something in there.
“You alright?” Dalton asked as he brushed himself off.
“Yeah” Sheppard said. He looked to the east to see a mushroom cloud dissipating in the atmosphere. Too close to him. Much too close. “What the hell? Did one of our missiles fall on us?”
One of the JOs who’d been manning the radios shook his head. “The Draka hit us with a nuke.”
“I thought the Air Force took care of their bombers?” Sheppard said.
The JO shrugged. Just then the ground shook and there were two more flashes of light, these ones thankfully more distant. “Looks like they’re using a Davy Crockett or something like that.”
“Want me to radio out the order to fall back?” the JO asked.
“No” Sheppard said. “I expected this. Stick to the original plan. Just make sure the units going into the gap don’t give the Draka a nice big funnel to shoot at. We begin the advance in fifteen minutes.”
“Alright! We move in ten minutes!” Lieutenant Breckenridge of the Sixth Canadian Mechanized Infantry bellowed. “Get to your vehicles! Go! Go! Go! Move it meatheads!”
Private Jarvis ran toward his squad, his lungs burnings. He fell awkwardly into step.
“I thought you weren’t going to show up” Private Beamis snickered.
“Ah piss off” Jarvis scowled.
“Alright! Get in!” Sergeant Dillard shouted. “Move it people! This is the battle of Armageddon you schmucks, let’s go!”
“Armageddon?” Jarvis rolled his eyes.
“Not too far from the truth” Beamis said. “They’re throwing nukes around man! Nukes!”
Jarvis ducked into the Bradley and sat down. The Sergeant secured the door and the Bradley started moving with a lurch. After several minutes of moving they started to come under fire. Bullets pinged audibly off the armor. The Bradley shook with the recoil of its cannon. After a few more minutes it came to a stop.
“All right! Let’s go!” Sergeant Dillard shouted. The door of the Bradley opened and Jarvis’s squad piled out. He looked around and saw a landscape devastated by DAF bombing and artillery bombardments from both sides. It looked like pictures of Europe or Japan after WWII.
“Get down!” Corporal Harness shouted and Jarvis ducked behind a broken piece of wall. He peeked out to see a tank roll past, its side bearing the flag of the Dominate.
“Don’t bother” Dillard said. “A tank company will take care of it. For now-look out!”
A Janissary Despoiler rolled out from behind a building. Jarvis ducked again. The Bradley’s main gun went off and struck the Despoiler in the side. Its thin armor crumpled like tissue paper and it was now on fire. Janissaries began boiling out. They were disorganized and panicked and quickly fell to assault rifle fire.
The last major concentration of Citizens was pinned down in Lynchburg, Virginia. Recon estimated that there were two divisions of Citizens, several more divisions of Italian and Dutch Janissaries, and a regiment and a half of Stormtroopers remaining.
General Leftcourt knew better than to underestimate the ferocity of a cornered animal. The Draka and Stormtroopers were fanatics and could be expected to fight, if not actually to the last man, then to something uncomfortably close to it. He ordered his mechanized units, which had been skirmishing with the Stormtroopers and Janissaries on the edge of the Draka kessel to withdraw to a safe distance.
“The mechanized units are at minimum safe distance and are safely dug in sir” Major General de Havilland said.
“Good” Leftcourt said. “Take them out.”
“Yes sir” de Havilland said.
A missile arched over into the center of the Draka position, carrying a Davy Crockett. The Davy Crockett exploded in the center of the Draka kessel, creating a mushroom cloud. Leftcourt turned to de Havilland. “I’m not sending men in there. Form a cordon and shoot anyone who comes out, the rest can burn.”
Arch-Strategos Ingollfson may not have ordered a retreat, but under the circumstances a retreat was inevitable. The Draka army had been trisected, bludgeoned brutally; its command structure smashed, and was now coming under heavy pressure from US infantry and armor divisions. Worse, the USAF had gained control of the skies and B-70 Valkyrie bombers were now beginning to conduct strafing runs, drowning especially resistant concentrations of Janissaries beneath burning napalm. The loyalty of the Janissaries had always been dependent upon fear, and now many of them were beginning to fear the fiery wrath of the American bombs more than they feared the anger of their masters. They broke ranks and ran, becoming easy prey for American roving units. The Draka charge turned into a bloody rout. The Draka commanders could only watch as the bulk of their army slipped through their fingers like so much sand, leaving them with a skeleton force of Stormtroopers, Citizen divisions, and a few exceptionally well-disciplined Janissary Chiliarchies. The Americans took many prisoners that day; many of the Janissary squads, cut off from their own Tetrarchies and isolated from any chain of command, surrendered without a shot fired. Now the last Draka holdouts were being methodically slaughtered with Davy Crocketts and the only thing standing between the Americans and the Arch-Strategos’s own personal body was two brigades of Stormtroopers.
In one disastrous day the Draka had lost the majority of their fighting force on the American mainland. The Americans had won the battle for their home country for the moment. To the Draka it was the latest in a bitter series of public humiliations. Another insult which would be avenged when the stubborn and damnably resourceful ferals of this continent were finally brought under the yoke.
“Ignore casualties, ignore losses” Strategos Osgood said mockingly. “All that matters is victory.”
“Shut up!” Arch-Strategos Ingollfson snapped. “If you were a Janissary I would have you hung from your own intestines after they’d been ripped out of your ass!”
“Oh yes, make no mistake. This… humiliation today was our own fault. Not the Americans” Osgood continued.
“We had no way of knowing they’d employ nuclear artillery on such a massive scale” Strategos Tull pointed out.
“Why the fik not!” Osgood roared. “It’s exactly what we were planning to do, only better! Your problem is that you expect the enemy to fight poorly. A good commander-which you are not-expects the enemy to be every bit as good as himself unless he has hard data otherwise!”
“We thought we had hard data otherwise!” Arch-Strategos Ingollfson screamed. “These are the same people who cry bloody murder every time a nuclear power plant goes up in their neighborhood!”
“And the only nation on the planet to actually use nuclear weapons in anger before Operation Alexander!” Osgood pounded his fists on the table. “Do you think they would rather have faced enserfment than swallowed a tiny uptick in birth defects!”
Ingollfson waved dismissively. “They are like disobedient children who kick and scream when their parents try to discipline them. They are nothing, chattel.”
“Ask the survivors of the 443rd Chiliarchy who just got a Davy Crockett on their heads-if there are any!” Osgood exploded. “They are a cornered animal and that’s something one does not underestimate!”
Ingollfson sighed in defeat as she rubbed her broken ribs. “How long until we can begin another offensive?”
Osgood shook his head in wonderment. “Listen, you hear that gunfire outside? That’s the sound of the Stormtrooper Chiliarchy attached to us fighting and loosing against the Yankees. It’s a good thing the engine on the MCC still works of we’d have been captured already. And you talk about new offensives? For the moment the best we can hope for is a fighting retreat.”
Ingollfson nearly exploded. “The Race has never retreated! Will never retreat! Does not retreat!”
“Arch-Strategos, be reasonable!” Strategos Tull said. “We cannot hold the territory we possess with the forces we have now. We will simply have to resign ourselves to loosing ground until reinforcements can be brought in from the Dominate.”
Ingollfson buried her head in her hands. “Very well, but what we cannot have we will destroy.” Her voice clarified, gelled by hate. “Our policy will be simple. We will create desert zones behind us as we retreat. When the Yankees retake their own towns and cities they will find nothing left. Our policy toward the Yankee serfs in our controlled territory will be as follows. Where feasible they will be shipped back to the Dominate for breaking and selling on the open market. When this is not convenient they are to be killed. All of them, down to the last infant and old man. Our policy will be one of depopulation. I want any country we concede to the Yankees to be as empty of human beings or useable resources as the surface of Pluto. Is this understood?”
“Yes Arch-Strategos” her advisors said as one.
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NecronLord
- Harbinger of Doom
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First post!
EDIT: Superb and fan-tastic!
EDIT: Superb and fan-tastic!
Last edited by NecronLord on 2005-11-19 06:06pm, edited 1 time in total.
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
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darthdavid
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LordShaithis
- Redshirt
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Challengers? What are British tanks doing fighting in the continental US?
If Religion and Politics were characters on a soap opera, Religion would be the one that goes insane with jealousy over Politics' intimate relationship with Reality, and secretly murder Politics in the night, skin the corpse, and run around its apartment wearing the skin like a cape shouting "My votes now! All votes for me! Wheeee!" -- Lagmonster
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Black Admiral
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Shathis: Possibly they're part of a force like the one we had deployed in Germany during the Cold War.
Oh, and brilliant stuff Jung.
Oh, and brilliant stuff Jung.
"I do not say the French cannot come. I only say they cannot come by sea." - Admiral Lord St. Vincent, Royal Navy, during the Napoleonic Wars
"Show me a general who has made no mistakes and you speak of a general who has seldom waged war." - Marshal Turenne, 1641
"Show me a general who has made no mistakes and you speak of a general who has seldom waged war." - Marshal Turenne, 1641
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Battlehymn Republic
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CaptainChewbacca
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I wonder how long its going to be before New England is habitable again. Just how fucking big IS this front?
P.S. I bet that after the Battle of Armageddon (There's no other name for it) the Draka will refer rightly to General Mark Sheppard as "Thor's Grandfather".
P.S. I bet that after the Battle of Armageddon (There's no other name for it) the Draka will refer rightly to General Mark Sheppard as "Thor's Grandfather".
Stuart: The only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
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Spice Runner
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CHAPTER 10
The population of Bakersfield, California had recently increased by a factor of six as over twenty divisions of National Guard pulled from the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Columbia, Alberta, and Nevada converged on it. Most of the US Army was still tied up in the continuing effort to drive the Draka out of the Eastern Seaboard. Word had it the Draka were carrying out a horrific scorched earth policy, killing everyone in the occupied zones and nuking towns as they fell to General Sheppard’s advance. The rest of the Army was either in Britain or tied down guarding the extended territories of the US from any new Draka incursions. There were no troops available to flush out the Draka forces in the Los Angeles basin. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, so they weren’t worth the trouble of routing. But the California Governor, or “Governator” as his supporters called him after a role he’d played during his extensive career as a muscle actor prior to going into politics, had problems with the idea of between three and four hundred thousand Draka and Janissaries infesting his state’s largest urban area.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger strode across the encampment and ascended the platform to address the troops. He’d traded his normal business suit for a camouflage field uniform and padded helmet. In one of his muscular arms he carried an unloaded M-16. It was only morning but it was already getting warm and a slight sheen of perspiration could be seen on the Governor’s brow. Thousands of National Guard troops stood in a wide circle around the podium, some sitting or leaning on a tank, APC, or humvee. Schwarzenegger looked out over the ranks. He knew these were simply what could be spared from the real campaign in the east. Forty year old reservists and kids fresh out of boot camp. But it was still the best military in the world and he felt confident in his troops.
“Men of the National Guard” Schwarzenegger began in his signature Austrian accent. “First let me say I feel a great debt for this country. If not for America I might be doing driving a tank myself now as the baddest Jannissary you've ever seen.” He paused for laughter. "But instead I am now the Governor of California. I am here because this is America. This is the land of the free, and the home of the strong."
“Now Los Angeles needs to be cleaned up. The Draka forces there must be terminated at all costs. The Army can’t do it; they have too many men fighting to kick the Draka off the East Coast. So I am asking you, the people, to fight with me... to kick those snaky bastards out of our FUCKING COUNTRY!.” With that he brandished his M-16 and the National Guard soldiers erupted in wild cheers. As they applauded Schwarzenegger walked to a humvee and gestured to the troops. “Let’s do it!”
The troops scrambled to climb into APCs and humvees and trucks and the huge caravan of National Guard units began moving down Interstate 5.
The population of Bakersfield, California had recently increased by a factor of six as over twenty divisions of National Guard pulled from the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Columbia, Alberta, and Nevada converged on it. Most of the US Army was still tied up in the continuing effort to drive the Draka out of the Eastern Seaboard. Word had it the Draka were carrying out a horrific scorched earth policy, killing everyone in the occupied zones and nuking towns as they fell to General Sheppard’s advance. The rest of the Army was either in Britain or tied down guarding the extended territories of the US from any new Draka incursions. There were no troops available to flush out the Draka forces in the Los Angeles basin. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, so they weren’t worth the trouble of routing. But the California Governor, or “Governator” as his supporters called him after a role he’d played during his extensive career as a muscle actor prior to going into politics, had problems with the idea of between three and four hundred thousand Draka and Janissaries infesting his state’s largest urban area.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger strode across the encampment and ascended the platform to address the troops. He’d traded his normal business suit for a camouflage field uniform and padded helmet. In one of his muscular arms he carried an unloaded M-16. It was only morning but it was already getting warm and a slight sheen of perspiration could be seen on the Governor’s brow. Thousands of National Guard troops stood in a wide circle around the podium, some sitting or leaning on a tank, APC, or humvee. Schwarzenegger looked out over the ranks. He knew these were simply what could be spared from the real campaign in the east. Forty year old reservists and kids fresh out of boot camp. But it was still the best military in the world and he felt confident in his troops.
“Men of the National Guard” Schwarzenegger began in his signature Austrian accent. “First let me say I feel a great debt for this country. If not for America I might be doing driving a tank myself now as the baddest Jannissary you've ever seen.” He paused for laughter. "But instead I am now the Governor of California. I am here because this is America. This is the land of the free, and the home of the strong."
“Now Los Angeles needs to be cleaned up. The Draka forces there must be terminated at all costs. The Army can’t do it; they have too many men fighting to kick the Draka off the East Coast. So I am asking you, the people, to fight with me... to kick those snaky bastards out of our FUCKING COUNTRY!.” With that he brandished his M-16 and the National Guard soldiers erupted in wild cheers. As they applauded Schwarzenegger walked to a humvee and gestured to the troops. “Let’s do it!”
The troops scrambled to climb into APCs and humvees and trucks and the huge caravan of National Guard units began moving down Interstate 5.
Last edited by Junghalli on 2005-11-20 11:28pm, edited 1 time in total.
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admiral_danielsben
- Padawan Learner
- Posts: 336
- Joined: 2004-05-05 05:16pm
- Location: The Vast Right-Wing Trekkie Conspiracy HQ
Make up your mind: does Arnold have an AK-47, an M-16, or both?Junghalli wrote: In one of his muscular arms he carried an unloaded AK-47.....
...With that he brandished his M-16...
-DanielSBen
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"Certain death, small chance of sucess, what are we waiting for?" Gimli, son of Gloin
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"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
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"If your lies are going to be this transparent, this is going to be a very short interrogation" -- Kira
"Then I'll try to make my lies more opaque..." -- Gul Darhe'el (DS9: Duet)
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"Certain death, small chance of sucess, what are we waiting for?" Gimli, son of Gloin
----------------
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
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"If your lies are going to be this transparent, this is going to be a very short interrogation" -- Kira
"Then I'll try to make my lies more opaque..." -- Gul Darhe'el (DS9: Duet)
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LordShaithis
- Redshirt
- Posts: 3179
- Joined: 2002-07-08 11:02am
- Location: Michigan
*waves his M-16 threateningly*admiral_danielsben wrote:Make up your mind: does Arnold have an AK-47, an M-16, or both?
Listen you, Jung can write whatever he wants!
*points his musket at your head*
You got that?! Good!
*slings his phaser and walks away*
If Religion and Politics were characters on a soap opera, Religion would be the one that goes insane with jealousy over Politics' intimate relationship with Reality, and secretly murder Politics in the night, skin the corpse, and run around its apartment wearing the skin like a cape shouting "My votes now! All votes for me! Wheeee!" -- Lagmonster
Strategos Towns was not a happy man. Janissaries and serf technicians kept well out of his way, for when a Draka was unhappy they tended to die.
If everything had gone according to plan his forces should now be advancing up Highway 1 towards San Francisco. But things weren’t going according to plan. What Castle Tarleton hadn’t counted on was that the Los Angelos basin made a perfect trap for an invading army. There were precious few ways out of it, especially with San Diego and Anaheim being radioactive ruins. It had taken minimal effort for the US Army to box him in Los Angelos and keep him confined. The situation in the city was getting bad. Supplies were quickly running out and his men had long ago been forced to revert to plundering supermarkets to feed themselves. Even that wouldn’t last long. Towns had appropriated all food, fuel, and medical supplies from the surviving population and the city was beginning to starve. When they attempted to resist he’d had the population decimated, the rioters shot, and rebel enclaves gassed, but this only momentarily stopped the riots. The people could see that starvation was imminent and they were quickly growing desperate enough to try anything. Instead of striding through the streets of San Francisco and Las Vegas as a triumphant conqueror Towns was effectively reduced to the status of military governor of a city constantly on the verge of total rebellion. As if that weren’t bad enough Los Angeles was crawling with resisters. He found these “Bangers” particularly annoying. It was embarrassing to have his Janissaries and even sometimes Citizen lochi picked off piecemeal by what he’d been told amounted to common street thugs. He’d finally sent out a century of his best Stormtroopers to hunt them down. They were interrogating one of them now.
“I aint telling you mutha fuckas shit” the Banger growled as he was restrained by two Stormtroopers.
Strategos Towns merely nodded to one of the Stormtroopers. “YYYYEEEOOOOWWWW!” screamed the Banger as his shoulder was skillfully dislocated.
“Fuck you you fuckin’ KKK-Nazi homo fag bitch” the Banger gasped.
“I am going to enjoy slowly breaking your resistance tremendously” Towns said. “His arm now.”
“Hey what-AAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!” the Banger yowled as the Stormtroopers broke his other arm.
“Master!” a Janissary came running in. He stopped when he saw Towns’ expression.
“I ordered no interruptions!” Towns roared, grabbing his pistol and preparing to shoot the Janissary for his impudence.
“But Master, a huge force of Yankees is approaching from the North and East. We estimate between fifteen and twenty divisions! AAYYYEEEE!” the Janissary yelped as Towns shot at him. He decided not to kill him but the bullet nicked one of his earlobes and sent him dancing like a marionette in the hands of a puppeteer having a stroke.
“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse” Towns groaned and rubbed his shaved head. “Prepare our defenses!” he turned to his Stormtroopers. “Dispose of that hairy ape would you? We’ve got more important concerns for the moment.”
* * *
Private Kurgan took aim and shot the Janissary in the chest. The slave conscript went down, twitching weakly in a pool of his own blood. Two more Janissaries peeked out from behind the barricade, firing their T-50s at Kurgan’s squad. Corporal Elfdart screamed as a bullet entered his leg. He fell onto one knee, clutching his wounded thigh, and the Janissaries shot him again. Kurgan noted that the Janissaries looked like Indians. He didn’t dwell on the thought for long as he was under fire. As one of the Janissaries finished off Elfdart Private Naysmith got him. The other Janissary had ducked back behind the barricade.
“Go!” Sergeant Poe shouted and circled around the barricade. He threw a grenade and ducked back to safety. He motioned the squad forward and Kurgan followed. Three of the Janissaries were lying dead from the grenade. Three of the still living ones took aim at Poe. Poe shot two of them and Kurgan shot at one but missed. Naysmith finished him off. The Janissary Sergeant tried to run but Poe shot him in the back.
“I believe that’s all of them” Sergeant Poe radioed the Lieutenant. “You can start sending the tanks in now.”
The men hastily slapped C4 onto the concrete barricades and blew them up. The dust had barely cleared when the first Abrams tank came roaring through, its treads kicking up dirt and concrete dust.
Bullets pinged off the armor of Lieutenant Butcher’s Abrams as it charged down I-5 into Los Angeles proper. The Abrams’ turret swung toward the direction of fire and fired. A section was torn out of the side of a nearby building but the fire continued. Butcher dispatched two squads of infantry to clear it. When the report came that the Janissaries there had been eliminated he continued the advance. It wasn’t long before gunfire again behind to hit the tanks. Butcher checked and saw a hastily made barricade of sandbags piled in the middle of the highway. A Fire Team of what he judged to be South Asian Janissaries were hunkered down behind it, trying futilely to halt the advance of the Americans with machine gun fire. Butcher couldn’t help smiling as he saw the expression of fear and growing panic on their faces as his tank continued toward them, totally unmindful of the hits. Butcher ordered his infantry escorts up in case they had any unpleasant surprises. The Janissaries scrambled out of the way just before the Abrams plowed through their totally inadequate fortification like it wasn’t even there. Three of them fell as they attempted to run, dropped by the Abrams’ machine gun. The fourth managed to make it into a building. Butcher dispatched some infantry to finish him off and then continued on.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ducked behind a humvee as heavy machine gun fire raked his position. The bullets tore into the humvees engine compartment. Schwarzenegger could hear the wheeze of air escaping ruptured tires. Motor oil began to drip down from the engine block and pool on the ground.
“They’ve got us pinned down here Governor” Lieutenant Colonel Dudley said. “We can’t advance until we get that those four buildings clear. Until then they’ve got us in a perfect crossfire four ways. And we know they’ve got at least one antitank cannon” he gestured at the broken remains of a Bradley for emphasis.
“Why not storm them?” Schwarzenegger asked.
“We don’t have enough men” the Lieutenant Colonel explained.
Schwarzenegger shook his head. “We have two platoons.”
Dudley looked uncomfortable. “To be perfectly honest Governor what I meant was we don’t have enough men to storm the buildings and keep you safe.”
Schwarzenegger looked hard at Dudley. “Lieutenant Colonel, I did not come down here to a burden on you. I came down here to help you clean up Los Angeles. I was a tanker at one time, I may be a little rusty but I can handle myself. If you can storm that building do it. Or am I going to have to go in there and kick the butts of all the Draka by myself?”
Dudley took out his walkie talkie. “Alright Lieutenant, get your men ready! Time to rock and roll!”
Sergeant Garibaldi could see the Janissary shooting at him from the window of what had once been an upscale Beverley Hills house. He took aim and sent off a long burst. The bullets shattered the glass of the windowpane but didn’t get the Janissary, as he was firing again in a second. Garibaldi shot at him a second time and this time he slumped over with half his face chewed away by assault rifle fire. Another Janissary took over and Garibaldi shot him too.
“Go!” he shouted to his men. “Time to show these kids how to do it.” Garibaldi’s platoon was regular army. It had been stationed at the edge of the Los Angeles basin until Schwarzenegger had started his counteroffensive. As soon as the National Guard started making some headway the bulk of the regular army units had joined them, although some had been left behind in the fixed fortifications that might prove too valuable to abandon in case things went badly.
Private Aguero kicked in the door and Garibaldi threw in a grenade. They waited until right after it had gone off and went in. Three Janissaries were dead on the floor. Two more were still alive. Before they could react Garibaldi gestured toward Corporal Harlow, who launched a grenade at them from his rifle. Garibaldi’s men ducked behind some furniture and the Janissaries were both killed.
“We’re done here!” he shouted. “Move on!”
Garibaldi’s squad moved back outside. From this street they had a spectacular view of the embattled city. They could see where many pockets of city had already been raised by Draka bombing. Now the shoe was on the other foot, and pockets of heavy Draka resistance were being systematically razed by Valkyrie bombers operating out of Vandenberg and Edwards Air Force bases. The Draka had already expended most of their air power and the fight for the skies had been minimal. They weren’t going quite as heavy with the bombing as the Draka had, since they wanted to spare civilians as much as possible. Los Angeles also had to be the perfect place in the world to be bombarded by artillery, surrounded as it was on three sides by hills. And being bombarded it was. To Garibaldi it sounded as if a very heavy thunderstorm were going as shells from the towed gun positions on the hills around LA slammed home. Garibaldi radioed the Lieutenant for where he should go next, then motioned his squad to move up. Then something emerged from behind a building. Garibaldi recognized it as a Despoiler APC.
“Shit!” he swore. “Everybody find some cov-“ before he could finish the word the Despoiler rocked violently. Garibaldi heard the sounds of a grinding, dying engine and motor oil and fuel beginning to drip out from ruptured tanks. The door of the Despoiler opened and Janissaries began to pile out. Garibaldi ducked behind a lamppost and shot one of three of them as they boiled out. Harlow got one. Then they got smart enough to realize that stumbling out of the APC right into the street wasn’t a good idea. But their immediate surroundings offered very little cover. They began trying to get out and Garibaldi was surprised to see them being taken out by a sniper from behind.
There was a rattle of gunfire and Privates Norman and Simeon fell dead, shot not from the front but from the sides. Of course! Garibaldi cursed himself for being so stupid as to forget about the Despoiler’s infantry tenders and turned around to face them. He saw a Janissary duck out from the house right in front of him to kill Private Cabot. He waited until he appeared again and was surprised to see him fall dead before Garibaldi could fire. Whatever gun the sniper was using had to have a huge caliber because it left a giant hole in the Janissary’s chest through his flak jacket. Garibaldi gestured for Harlow and Cavanaugh to move up with him and rushed to the back of the house where the Janissaries had been shooting from, hugging the walls. When he looked he was surprised to find them already dead. Standing over them were two men. One was a US Army Sergeant. The other was wearing civilian clothes and a baseball cap and holding a Browning auto and with an elephant gun slung over his shoulder.
“Identify yourself” Garibaldi said.
“I’m Burt Gummer” the man in the civilian clothes said. “This here’s Sergeant Barrows.” He turned toward the house. “The rest of you can come on out!”
The buildings flanking the avenue were full of Draka and the attempt to storm them quickly degenerated into vicious hand to hand fighting. A US Army Private screamed as a Draka shot him at point blank range. Then his buddy shot the Draka, the muzzle of his M-16 less than two feet from the Draka’s face.
“Uuunnnggg” Arnold Schwarzenegger groaned as a huge, muscular Draka soldier landed a powerful haymaker on his face. The pain brought a momentary discomforting awareness of his position. This was not one of his movies, this was real life. He could die here. He pushed the disturbing thought out of his mind and twisted the arm in which the Draka was holding his rifle, causing it to fall to the floor. Schwarzenegger began reaching for his Desert Eagle but the Draka had unbelievable grace for such a big man and kicked it out of his hand. Schwarzenegger dislocated his shoulder and punched him with the other hand, causing him to fall to the ground. The Draka immediately kicked him viciously in the stomach.
“Fool! You can’t stop the Domination!” the big Draka yelled.
Schwarzenegger ignored another kick to the face, grabbed his Desert Eagle, and pointed it at the Draka’s face.
“Hasta la vista baby.”
He pulled the trigger and the Draka immediately went limp.
Schwarzenegger lifted a beefy hand to his lip and it came away with a smear of blood on one finger. He could feel his split lip beginning to swell. A Sergeant ran up to him.
“You OK Governor?”
“Never felt better” Schwarzenegger said as he followed the squad into the next room, this one having been cleared now.
Paul felt the urge to cover his ears. The artillery bombardment was very close and the noise was enough to give you a headache. Garibaldi’s platoon moved at a crawl, trying to hack its way through the Draka units in front of it to reconnect to another advancing American thrust.
Paul slid down the hill, barely controlling his fall as bullet loosened the soil above him. Finally he made it to the bottom. Burt Gummer was there, firing his Browning in short bursts along with Garibaldi and a Corporal named Harlow.
“We’ve got to get off this hillside” Garibaldi said. Paul agreed. It was very steep, almost sheer, and the soil was being loosened by the shooting and the vibrations of the arty bombardment conducted through the ground. He could feel the soil giving way under his shoes even now.
“Lookout!” Harlow screamed. Paul turned around to see two Janissaries coming down the path toward him, sweat beading on their dark brows as they navigated the treacherous slope. Without waiting to be told Paul pulled out his pistol, carefully drew a bead, and shot the leading one. He fell over with a hole in his face spurting blood. The second one tried to straighten to shoot but his position was too precarious. Burt got him before he could finish the motion.
“I’m out of bullets” Paul said. He felt momentarily faint. He’d never actually killed a man before, or really imagined he ever would.
“Let’s go” Garibaldi said. They slid down the hillside until they landed on the bottom, covered with dry dust. It was sticking to Paul’s skin. Garibaldi pulled out his walkie talkie and cursed after a few minutes.
“What?” Burt asked.
“I can’t raise the rest of the platoon” Garibaldi said. “Looks like we’re on our own for the moment. We’ll have to circle back. I’ll scout ahead.”
The groups continued down the ravine, which lead to a street. No sooner had they gotten to it when they came under fire from a nearby house.
“Fuck!” Garibaldi swore. “This area’s crawling with Draks!”
“How many would you say?” Burt asked.
“In the house?” Garibaldi shrugged. “Almost certainly too damn many for us to take.”
Paul turned to Burt. “Think you can get one of your bombs through that window?”
“It’s our last one” Burt whispered tightly.
“Well what the hell else are you gonna use it for?” Paul argued.
Burt shrugged and crept up to the hedge around the house. One of the men inside tried to shoot at him. Garibaldi laid down a covering fire. Burt cut the fuse short, lit it, and threw it forcefully at the window. It disappeared inside and an instant later there was a big explosion in the house. Burt raised the muzzle of his elephant gun and, when there was no response, turned back to Garibaldi.
“I think it knocked them out.”
Garibaldi nodded and they began moving again, climbing down toward the valley and then back up around the hill. They kept low to the ground, trying to stay out of sight of the Draka and Janissaries that were undoubtedly all around. It was an incredibly tense journey. Paul half expected to be shot at any given moment. The heat made the slow movement all the more frustrating. They were just beginning up the hill when they heard a firefight up ahead. Burt motioned Paul behind a convenient tree trunk. Paul peeked out and nearly jumped for joy when he saw a tank with an American flag painted on it rumbling down the street.
“Looks like they decided to meet us halfway” Burt commented.
Strategos Towns had put his headquarters in an expensive hotel on Sunset Blvd. The Americans were now getting very close to that building and Towns was throwing everything he could into the defense of his headquarters and, more importantly, his person.
A couple of Janissaries jumped out from behind a stalled van obstructing the boulevard, screaming and spraying bullets with wild abandon. Sergeant Deacon ducked behind another stalled car to avoid the fire. Bullets punched holes in his cover, tearing up the flimsy blue door panels.
“Look at them!” Corporal Kerny said. “We can’t break through that!”
“You distract them” Deacon said. “Gillis, Herndon, you’re with me. We’ll sneak around the back of them and take them from behind.”
“Are you crazy?” Kerny protested.
“You’d rather spend another five hours here getting shot at?” Deacon asked.
“OK, but I still think its crazy sir” Kerny said.
Deacon gave the signal. He began to make his way around the Janissaries, keeping close to the walls. Meanwhile the rest of his squad began a highly visible advance toward them, meeting withering fire. The Janissaries fought as if borderline crazed, probably high on something, but they were surprisingly good shots. Deacon winced as he saw one of his men drop. He was almost there now. He was actually standing next to them. He made he wasn’t seen and slipped in behind their lines. Herndon and Gillis raised their rifles.
“Surprise mutha fuckers!” Deacon said cheerfully. As the Janissaries turned around he and the rest of his men began shooting. The Janissaries were unprepared to face fire from behind them and were massacred before they could react. This caused a ripple effect along the Janissary and Draka lines, weakening it in its entirely, and the rest of the National Guard soldiers took advantage of this. They pressed a hard attack on the wavering Draka ranks, beating them back and finally causing them to cave. Like a balloon the Draka line of defense, once ruptured in a few places, quickly folded. The Draka and Janissaries began a hasty retreat back to their headquarters, saturating the area with covering fire to insure as many as possible made it to safety.
Deacon’s walkie talkie buzzed. “Tell your squad to stay where they are” Colonel Travis said over the radio. “We’re having the building bombarded.”
The Guardsmen pulled away to a safe distance, training their guns cautiously on the building in case the Draka tried anything. As they waited a helicopter began to take off from the roof of the building.
“It’s him!” Colonel Travis shouted. “It’s the Strategos! Destroy him!” In response to his order a Stinger missile flew up and hit the chopper. It wobbled for a few moments like an unstable top, flames licking out from it, then finally gave in to gravity and fell to the street with a tremendous crash of shattering glass and rending metal. The fuel tank exploded and screams could be heard issuing from the cabin. The door opened and a human figure ran out, flames surrounding him like some eerie aura. One of the JOs shot him with a pistol, putting him out of his misery. There was no way of knowing immediately whether or not that had in fact been Strategos Towns.
Deacon heard the sound of a jet engine and looked up to see three Valkyrie bombers escorted by two Rapiers passing 50,000 feet overhead. One of the Valkyries launched three missiles which struck the building the Draka were holed up in and reduced to rubble.
“Gentlemen” Colonel Travis said. “The city’s ours!”
The National Guard soldiers cheered and hollered as three men walked over to the edge of the ruined building and raised an American flag over it.
If everything had gone according to plan his forces should now be advancing up Highway 1 towards San Francisco. But things weren’t going according to plan. What Castle Tarleton hadn’t counted on was that the Los Angelos basin made a perfect trap for an invading army. There were precious few ways out of it, especially with San Diego and Anaheim being radioactive ruins. It had taken minimal effort for the US Army to box him in Los Angelos and keep him confined. The situation in the city was getting bad. Supplies were quickly running out and his men had long ago been forced to revert to plundering supermarkets to feed themselves. Even that wouldn’t last long. Towns had appropriated all food, fuel, and medical supplies from the surviving population and the city was beginning to starve. When they attempted to resist he’d had the population decimated, the rioters shot, and rebel enclaves gassed, but this only momentarily stopped the riots. The people could see that starvation was imminent and they were quickly growing desperate enough to try anything. Instead of striding through the streets of San Francisco and Las Vegas as a triumphant conqueror Towns was effectively reduced to the status of military governor of a city constantly on the verge of total rebellion. As if that weren’t bad enough Los Angeles was crawling with resisters. He found these “Bangers” particularly annoying. It was embarrassing to have his Janissaries and even sometimes Citizen lochi picked off piecemeal by what he’d been told amounted to common street thugs. He’d finally sent out a century of his best Stormtroopers to hunt them down. They were interrogating one of them now.
“I aint telling you mutha fuckas shit” the Banger growled as he was restrained by two Stormtroopers.
Strategos Towns merely nodded to one of the Stormtroopers. “YYYYEEEOOOOWWWW!” screamed the Banger as his shoulder was skillfully dislocated.
“Fuck you you fuckin’ KKK-Nazi homo fag bitch” the Banger gasped.
“I am going to enjoy slowly breaking your resistance tremendously” Towns said. “His arm now.”
“Hey what-AAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!” the Banger yowled as the Stormtroopers broke his other arm.
“Master!” a Janissary came running in. He stopped when he saw Towns’ expression.
“I ordered no interruptions!” Towns roared, grabbing his pistol and preparing to shoot the Janissary for his impudence.
“But Master, a huge force of Yankees is approaching from the North and East. We estimate between fifteen and twenty divisions! AAYYYEEEE!” the Janissary yelped as Towns shot at him. He decided not to kill him but the bullet nicked one of his earlobes and sent him dancing like a marionette in the hands of a puppeteer having a stroke.
“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse” Towns groaned and rubbed his shaved head. “Prepare our defenses!” he turned to his Stormtroopers. “Dispose of that hairy ape would you? We’ve got more important concerns for the moment.”
* * *
Private Kurgan took aim and shot the Janissary in the chest. The slave conscript went down, twitching weakly in a pool of his own blood. Two more Janissaries peeked out from behind the barricade, firing their T-50s at Kurgan’s squad. Corporal Elfdart screamed as a bullet entered his leg. He fell onto one knee, clutching his wounded thigh, and the Janissaries shot him again. Kurgan noted that the Janissaries looked like Indians. He didn’t dwell on the thought for long as he was under fire. As one of the Janissaries finished off Elfdart Private Naysmith got him. The other Janissary had ducked back behind the barricade.
“Go!” Sergeant Poe shouted and circled around the barricade. He threw a grenade and ducked back to safety. He motioned the squad forward and Kurgan followed. Three of the Janissaries were lying dead from the grenade. Three of the still living ones took aim at Poe. Poe shot two of them and Kurgan shot at one but missed. Naysmith finished him off. The Janissary Sergeant tried to run but Poe shot him in the back.
“I believe that’s all of them” Sergeant Poe radioed the Lieutenant. “You can start sending the tanks in now.”
The men hastily slapped C4 onto the concrete barricades and blew them up. The dust had barely cleared when the first Abrams tank came roaring through, its treads kicking up dirt and concrete dust.
Bullets pinged off the armor of Lieutenant Butcher’s Abrams as it charged down I-5 into Los Angeles proper. The Abrams’ turret swung toward the direction of fire and fired. A section was torn out of the side of a nearby building but the fire continued. Butcher dispatched two squads of infantry to clear it. When the report came that the Janissaries there had been eliminated he continued the advance. It wasn’t long before gunfire again behind to hit the tanks. Butcher checked and saw a hastily made barricade of sandbags piled in the middle of the highway. A Fire Team of what he judged to be South Asian Janissaries were hunkered down behind it, trying futilely to halt the advance of the Americans with machine gun fire. Butcher couldn’t help smiling as he saw the expression of fear and growing panic on their faces as his tank continued toward them, totally unmindful of the hits. Butcher ordered his infantry escorts up in case they had any unpleasant surprises. The Janissaries scrambled out of the way just before the Abrams plowed through their totally inadequate fortification like it wasn’t even there. Three of them fell as they attempted to run, dropped by the Abrams’ machine gun. The fourth managed to make it into a building. Butcher dispatched some infantry to finish him off and then continued on.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ducked behind a humvee as heavy machine gun fire raked his position. The bullets tore into the humvees engine compartment. Schwarzenegger could hear the wheeze of air escaping ruptured tires. Motor oil began to drip down from the engine block and pool on the ground.
“They’ve got us pinned down here Governor” Lieutenant Colonel Dudley said. “We can’t advance until we get that those four buildings clear. Until then they’ve got us in a perfect crossfire four ways. And we know they’ve got at least one antitank cannon” he gestured at the broken remains of a Bradley for emphasis.
“Why not storm them?” Schwarzenegger asked.
“We don’t have enough men” the Lieutenant Colonel explained.
Schwarzenegger shook his head. “We have two platoons.”
Dudley looked uncomfortable. “To be perfectly honest Governor what I meant was we don’t have enough men to storm the buildings and keep you safe.”
Schwarzenegger looked hard at Dudley. “Lieutenant Colonel, I did not come down here to a burden on you. I came down here to help you clean up Los Angeles. I was a tanker at one time, I may be a little rusty but I can handle myself. If you can storm that building do it. Or am I going to have to go in there and kick the butts of all the Draka by myself?”
Dudley took out his walkie talkie. “Alright Lieutenant, get your men ready! Time to rock and roll!”
Sergeant Garibaldi could see the Janissary shooting at him from the window of what had once been an upscale Beverley Hills house. He took aim and sent off a long burst. The bullets shattered the glass of the windowpane but didn’t get the Janissary, as he was firing again in a second. Garibaldi shot at him a second time and this time he slumped over with half his face chewed away by assault rifle fire. Another Janissary took over and Garibaldi shot him too.
“Go!” he shouted to his men. “Time to show these kids how to do it.” Garibaldi’s platoon was regular army. It had been stationed at the edge of the Los Angeles basin until Schwarzenegger had started his counteroffensive. As soon as the National Guard started making some headway the bulk of the regular army units had joined them, although some had been left behind in the fixed fortifications that might prove too valuable to abandon in case things went badly.
Private Aguero kicked in the door and Garibaldi threw in a grenade. They waited until right after it had gone off and went in. Three Janissaries were dead on the floor. Two more were still alive. Before they could react Garibaldi gestured toward Corporal Harlow, who launched a grenade at them from his rifle. Garibaldi’s men ducked behind some furniture and the Janissaries were both killed.
“We’re done here!” he shouted. “Move on!”
Garibaldi’s squad moved back outside. From this street they had a spectacular view of the embattled city. They could see where many pockets of city had already been raised by Draka bombing. Now the shoe was on the other foot, and pockets of heavy Draka resistance were being systematically razed by Valkyrie bombers operating out of Vandenberg and Edwards Air Force bases. The Draka had already expended most of their air power and the fight for the skies had been minimal. They weren’t going quite as heavy with the bombing as the Draka had, since they wanted to spare civilians as much as possible. Los Angeles also had to be the perfect place in the world to be bombarded by artillery, surrounded as it was on three sides by hills. And being bombarded it was. To Garibaldi it sounded as if a very heavy thunderstorm were going as shells from the towed gun positions on the hills around LA slammed home. Garibaldi radioed the Lieutenant for where he should go next, then motioned his squad to move up. Then something emerged from behind a building. Garibaldi recognized it as a Despoiler APC.
“Shit!” he swore. “Everybody find some cov-“ before he could finish the word the Despoiler rocked violently. Garibaldi heard the sounds of a grinding, dying engine and motor oil and fuel beginning to drip out from ruptured tanks. The door of the Despoiler opened and Janissaries began to pile out. Garibaldi ducked behind a lamppost and shot one of three of them as they boiled out. Harlow got one. Then they got smart enough to realize that stumbling out of the APC right into the street wasn’t a good idea. But their immediate surroundings offered very little cover. They began trying to get out and Garibaldi was surprised to see them being taken out by a sniper from behind.
There was a rattle of gunfire and Privates Norman and Simeon fell dead, shot not from the front but from the sides. Of course! Garibaldi cursed himself for being so stupid as to forget about the Despoiler’s infantry tenders and turned around to face them. He saw a Janissary duck out from the house right in front of him to kill Private Cabot. He waited until he appeared again and was surprised to see him fall dead before Garibaldi could fire. Whatever gun the sniper was using had to have a huge caliber because it left a giant hole in the Janissary’s chest through his flak jacket. Garibaldi gestured for Harlow and Cavanaugh to move up with him and rushed to the back of the house where the Janissaries had been shooting from, hugging the walls. When he looked he was surprised to find them already dead. Standing over them were two men. One was a US Army Sergeant. The other was wearing civilian clothes and a baseball cap and holding a Browning auto and with an elephant gun slung over his shoulder.
“Identify yourself” Garibaldi said.
“I’m Burt Gummer” the man in the civilian clothes said. “This here’s Sergeant Barrows.” He turned toward the house. “The rest of you can come on out!”
The buildings flanking the avenue were full of Draka and the attempt to storm them quickly degenerated into vicious hand to hand fighting. A US Army Private screamed as a Draka shot him at point blank range. Then his buddy shot the Draka, the muzzle of his M-16 less than two feet from the Draka’s face.
“Uuunnnggg” Arnold Schwarzenegger groaned as a huge, muscular Draka soldier landed a powerful haymaker on his face. The pain brought a momentary discomforting awareness of his position. This was not one of his movies, this was real life. He could die here. He pushed the disturbing thought out of his mind and twisted the arm in which the Draka was holding his rifle, causing it to fall to the floor. Schwarzenegger began reaching for his Desert Eagle but the Draka had unbelievable grace for such a big man and kicked it out of his hand. Schwarzenegger dislocated his shoulder and punched him with the other hand, causing him to fall to the ground. The Draka immediately kicked him viciously in the stomach.
“Fool! You can’t stop the Domination!” the big Draka yelled.
Schwarzenegger ignored another kick to the face, grabbed his Desert Eagle, and pointed it at the Draka’s face.
“Hasta la vista baby.”
He pulled the trigger and the Draka immediately went limp.
Schwarzenegger lifted a beefy hand to his lip and it came away with a smear of blood on one finger. He could feel his split lip beginning to swell. A Sergeant ran up to him.
“You OK Governor?”
“Never felt better” Schwarzenegger said as he followed the squad into the next room, this one having been cleared now.
Paul felt the urge to cover his ears. The artillery bombardment was very close and the noise was enough to give you a headache. Garibaldi’s platoon moved at a crawl, trying to hack its way through the Draka units in front of it to reconnect to another advancing American thrust.
Paul slid down the hill, barely controlling his fall as bullet loosened the soil above him. Finally he made it to the bottom. Burt Gummer was there, firing his Browning in short bursts along with Garibaldi and a Corporal named Harlow.
“We’ve got to get off this hillside” Garibaldi said. Paul agreed. It was very steep, almost sheer, and the soil was being loosened by the shooting and the vibrations of the arty bombardment conducted through the ground. He could feel the soil giving way under his shoes even now.
“Lookout!” Harlow screamed. Paul turned around to see two Janissaries coming down the path toward him, sweat beading on their dark brows as they navigated the treacherous slope. Without waiting to be told Paul pulled out his pistol, carefully drew a bead, and shot the leading one. He fell over with a hole in his face spurting blood. The second one tried to straighten to shoot but his position was too precarious. Burt got him before he could finish the motion.
“I’m out of bullets” Paul said. He felt momentarily faint. He’d never actually killed a man before, or really imagined he ever would.
“Let’s go” Garibaldi said. They slid down the hillside until they landed on the bottom, covered with dry dust. It was sticking to Paul’s skin. Garibaldi pulled out his walkie talkie and cursed after a few minutes.
“What?” Burt asked.
“I can’t raise the rest of the platoon” Garibaldi said. “Looks like we’re on our own for the moment. We’ll have to circle back. I’ll scout ahead.”
The groups continued down the ravine, which lead to a street. No sooner had they gotten to it when they came under fire from a nearby house.
“Fuck!” Garibaldi swore. “This area’s crawling with Draks!”
“How many would you say?” Burt asked.
“In the house?” Garibaldi shrugged. “Almost certainly too damn many for us to take.”
Paul turned to Burt. “Think you can get one of your bombs through that window?”
“It’s our last one” Burt whispered tightly.
“Well what the hell else are you gonna use it for?” Paul argued.
Burt shrugged and crept up to the hedge around the house. One of the men inside tried to shoot at him. Garibaldi laid down a covering fire. Burt cut the fuse short, lit it, and threw it forcefully at the window. It disappeared inside and an instant later there was a big explosion in the house. Burt raised the muzzle of his elephant gun and, when there was no response, turned back to Garibaldi.
“I think it knocked them out.”
Garibaldi nodded and they began moving again, climbing down toward the valley and then back up around the hill. They kept low to the ground, trying to stay out of sight of the Draka and Janissaries that were undoubtedly all around. It was an incredibly tense journey. Paul half expected to be shot at any given moment. The heat made the slow movement all the more frustrating. They were just beginning up the hill when they heard a firefight up ahead. Burt motioned Paul behind a convenient tree trunk. Paul peeked out and nearly jumped for joy when he saw a tank with an American flag painted on it rumbling down the street.
“Looks like they decided to meet us halfway” Burt commented.
Strategos Towns had put his headquarters in an expensive hotel on Sunset Blvd. The Americans were now getting very close to that building and Towns was throwing everything he could into the defense of his headquarters and, more importantly, his person.
A couple of Janissaries jumped out from behind a stalled van obstructing the boulevard, screaming and spraying bullets with wild abandon. Sergeant Deacon ducked behind another stalled car to avoid the fire. Bullets punched holes in his cover, tearing up the flimsy blue door panels.
“Look at them!” Corporal Kerny said. “We can’t break through that!”
“You distract them” Deacon said. “Gillis, Herndon, you’re with me. We’ll sneak around the back of them and take them from behind.”
“Are you crazy?” Kerny protested.
“You’d rather spend another five hours here getting shot at?” Deacon asked.
“OK, but I still think its crazy sir” Kerny said.
Deacon gave the signal. He began to make his way around the Janissaries, keeping close to the walls. Meanwhile the rest of his squad began a highly visible advance toward them, meeting withering fire. The Janissaries fought as if borderline crazed, probably high on something, but they were surprisingly good shots. Deacon winced as he saw one of his men drop. He was almost there now. He was actually standing next to them. He made he wasn’t seen and slipped in behind their lines. Herndon and Gillis raised their rifles.
“Surprise mutha fuckers!” Deacon said cheerfully. As the Janissaries turned around he and the rest of his men began shooting. The Janissaries were unprepared to face fire from behind them and were massacred before they could react. This caused a ripple effect along the Janissary and Draka lines, weakening it in its entirely, and the rest of the National Guard soldiers took advantage of this. They pressed a hard attack on the wavering Draka ranks, beating them back and finally causing them to cave. Like a balloon the Draka line of defense, once ruptured in a few places, quickly folded. The Draka and Janissaries began a hasty retreat back to their headquarters, saturating the area with covering fire to insure as many as possible made it to safety.
Deacon’s walkie talkie buzzed. “Tell your squad to stay where they are” Colonel Travis said over the radio. “We’re having the building bombarded.”
The Guardsmen pulled away to a safe distance, training their guns cautiously on the building in case the Draka tried anything. As they waited a helicopter began to take off from the roof of the building.
“It’s him!” Colonel Travis shouted. “It’s the Strategos! Destroy him!” In response to his order a Stinger missile flew up and hit the chopper. It wobbled for a few moments like an unstable top, flames licking out from it, then finally gave in to gravity and fell to the street with a tremendous crash of shattering glass and rending metal. The fuel tank exploded and screams could be heard issuing from the cabin. The door opened and a human figure ran out, flames surrounding him like some eerie aura. One of the JOs shot him with a pistol, putting him out of his misery. There was no way of knowing immediately whether or not that had in fact been Strategos Towns.
Deacon heard the sound of a jet engine and looked up to see three Valkyrie bombers escorted by two Rapiers passing 50,000 feet overhead. One of the Valkyries launched three missiles which struck the building the Draka were holed up in and reduced to rubble.
“Gentlemen” Colonel Travis said. “The city’s ours!”
The National Guard soldiers cheered and hollered as three men walked over to the edge of the ruined building and raised an American flag over it.
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CaptainChewbacca
- Browncoat Wookiee
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California has some very unforgiving terrain. Its the best for everyone nobody ever fought a war out here.
I'm a little bummed my "group" showed up without me. If I could just have been there to see Arnold shoot the guy and say "That almost makes this war worthwhile."
P.S. Elfdart's killing people!
I'm a little bummed my "group" showed up without me. If I could just have been there to see Arnold shoot the guy and say "That almost makes this war worthwhile."
P.S. Elfdart's killing people!
Stuart: The only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
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technomage
- Padawan Learner
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- Location: Somewhere beyond the Rim
Did they capture a Draka flag or two? You could have a few soldiers express the depths of their contempt by pissing on it, or using it for toilet paper. Preferably in front of captured Citizens.
Also, if you want to get really sick and sadistic, you could have a male Draka be raped with a knife. Preferably a serrated one, after being caught doing some of their pedophilistic shit. In a situation like this, I could easily see some pissed-off soldiers or militia amusing themselves by avenging some of what the Draka did to the local civilians.
Also, if you want to get really sick and sadistic, you could have a male Draka be raped with a knife. Preferably a serrated one, after being caught doing some of their pedophilistic shit. In a situation like this, I could easily see some pissed-off soldiers or militia amusing themselves by avenging some of what the Draka did to the local civilians.
"Mother, implement Case Omega."
-the last time Colin MacIntyre gives an order without thinking it through.
-the last time Colin MacIntyre gives an order without thinking it through.
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Thor Muhammedsen
- Redshirt
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- Contact:
What "Forty-Eight States"?
What "forty-eight" states? In this timeline, the eastern part of what we know as Canada has been part of the United States ever since United States came into being. The rest of what we know as Canada has been added during the Nineteenth Century in just the same way as the rest of what we know as the United States was. For the people in this timeline, these is no essential difference between North Dakota and Manitoba. Assuming that these states would have formed under exactly these names and boundaries - there could easily have come about a state spanning what is the US-Canada border in our timeline. Why not, when there had never been a division of North America between the US and Britian and this quite arbitary straight line across the continent had never been drawn on the map? Anything further west than the Great Lakes would not at all be associated with the name "Canada", since it has never never had been in any way part of a political unit called "Canada". People in this timeline would probably think of Canada as a former Britsh colony which was incorported in the US centuries ago, a purely historiacl term, or altenatively "Canada" would be a regional name for the cluster of states directly north and a bit northwest of New England. There would be no ""forty-eight states", nothing special about these particular forty-eight distinguishing them from dozens of other states.Sheppard dismissed these grim musings to continue this inspection. That shouldn’t be necessary. The Army he’d assembled would break the Draka. He’d assembled seventy divisions from all over the middle forty-eight and the Canadian states.
By the way. the writer knows better than anyone else how astronomically vanishing is the chance that such a radically different United States would have exactly the same political set-up with the same people on top as our timeline. Even if George W. Bush gets born at all, after nearly two hundred years of a different history (which is unlikely) the whole political system would be radically different, different voting patterns, probably different political parties altogether, Texas would be an immeasurably different place in a world where the whole of Mexico had been part of the US for a century and half and the Rio Grande had never been a border... The only point I can see in positing this extremely unlikely scenario is to put Mr. Bush in a position where an aggressive and warlike attitude is eminently justified, so as to make more palatable his taking such an attitude in the reality we know for a cause which seems more and more undoubtful by the day...
But if already this very unlikely premise is taken, why not be completely consistent about it. I mean, why is it Colin Powel who gets to take the final Draka surrender? Why deprive Condoleeza Rice of her rightful share? If already you make the US political setup identical to ours, go the whole hog.
"Even behind the highest peak of hopelessness the sun will still rise" (Henri Levy, member of the French Resistance who was tortured to death by the Gestapo, 1943)
Re: What "Forty-Eight States"?
Sorry for neglecting the fanfic, I'm rather busy right now as final exams are coming up on the horizon. I'm afraid this may not get updated very often.
Good point about Canada though.
The original Draka TL had an FDR in it. Given that I hardly find it whoppingly more unlikely that there would be a George W Bush.Thor Muhammedsen wrote:By the way. the writer knows better than anyone else how astronomically vanishing is the chance that such a radically different United States would have exactly the same political set-up with the same people on top as our timeline.
Good point about Canada though.
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Thor Muhammedsen
- Redshirt
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A MODEST PROPOSAL
The most basic and obvious - and also most often violated - rule of alternative histories is that within say a generation after a major historical change you could not expect to find an individual we know from our reality being born since the widening wave of effects would change who meets and marries whom, and when they have children, so the people we know do not get born. This is very logical and obvious. (Look at the result of even a very trivial change - say a man gets a phone call in the evening which delays by five minutes the time he would have otherwise gotten in bed with his wife - and that already causes a different sperm to fertilize the ovum that night than the sperm which would have done it had the man not received the phone call, and the child conceived that night gets a different selection of the father's genes than if the father had not gotten that call, and if the child turns out to be a president or a general or a scientific genius, that can be very important...)
So, there is a very small chance that there would be an FDR in a world which started to diverge from ours a century and a half before, in which slavery is not dead but a flourishing and expanding institution, where the United States encompasses a far bigger territory etc. Stirling already sinned against the basic convention of alternate history, also by the assumption that while the Draka are busy conquering Africa and the Middle East and enslaving Blacks and Arabs, the rest of the world goes on in pretty much the same way as in our timeline, fighting the same wars, having much the same leaders doing much the same good or bad things, until the moment when the Draka burst in on them and force their attention in the most brutal way imaginable.
You timeline compounds this by several orders of magnitude. Another fifty years pass in which the Draka enslave much of Europe and Asia while the rest fall to the Soviet Union, earth-shaking events by any criteria which would have very much implications on who lives and who dies and certainly on which man gets to have sex with which woman and conceive which children - and still you have a George W. Bush, and a Colin Powel, and a Dick Chaney, and a Bill Clinton, and a Michael Moore, and a Fidel Castro, and a Hugo Cahves, and an Arnold Swartenger, and a Vladimir Putin, and... All of them take in this so different world the same positions which they have in our reality, or as close as possible, which so improbable as to pass beyond the ridiculous.
(If the Soviet Union survived into the 2000's, Putin would have likely ended as head of the KGB, but very unlikely as the boss of everything - the Soviet system just did not let the security people climb that high. And Castro's grandparents came from Spain to Cuba at a time when in our timeline it was still a Spanish colony but in the Draka timelines was already part of the US. And our Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in 1947 in Austria, the son of Gustav and Aurelia Schwarzenegger - who in the Draka timeline would be either serfs, refugees or dead and in any of the three cases unlikely to produce exactly that son. And if the very existence of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in this world is doubtful. How much more so the possibility that they would follow one upon the other in the white House in exactly the same manner, and that the American political scene and the attitudes of liberals and conservatives would be so much the same in a world with such totally different issues. (You obviously dislike Michael Moore very much, but do you seriously think that he would take the same attitude to war with the Draka as to Bush's adventure in Iraq?). And the possiblity that the same presidents get elected in the same way with a totally different electorate, with Hispanics coming close to being the majority of the voter body or already past this treshold, and Blacks as a smaller ethnic group possibly coming to be considered a buffer holding the balance between Whites and Hispanics which would increase the chance of a Black president as a compromise candidate, not to mention these pesky French-speakers in Quebec who had been a chronic United States problem for two centuries and more?
In fact, I think you just can't throw in all these improbabilities without giving any logical explanation and expect us to "suspend our disbelief". Since you didn't let me offer you one.
Suppose that all the different Draka timelines are not a spontaneous development of the objective continuum in the multiverse, but rather the result of a deliberate interference by some nefarious people try or beings, who are displeased with our timeline and want for a sinister purpose of their own to have a Draka-dominated world in its place. Suppose that the structure of space-time is such that the there is "A Law of Reality Conservation", i.e. that the waves radiating from the moment when a historical change was made do not freely propagate, but rather the shape of the continuum (like some physical materials) all the time tends to bend back into its original form? Making that assumption, which is legitimate since it all speculation anyhow, would make sense of much that is otherwise ridiculous in your timeline (and to an only slightly lesser degree, in Striling's original one as well). What do you think?
So, there is a very small chance that there would be an FDR in a world which started to diverge from ours a century and a half before, in which slavery is not dead but a flourishing and expanding institution, where the United States encompasses a far bigger territory etc. Stirling already sinned against the basic convention of alternate history, also by the assumption that while the Draka are busy conquering Africa and the Middle East and enslaving Blacks and Arabs, the rest of the world goes on in pretty much the same way as in our timeline, fighting the same wars, having much the same leaders doing much the same good or bad things, until the moment when the Draka burst in on them and force their attention in the most brutal way imaginable.
You timeline compounds this by several orders of magnitude. Another fifty years pass in which the Draka enslave much of Europe and Asia while the rest fall to the Soviet Union, earth-shaking events by any criteria which would have very much implications on who lives and who dies and certainly on which man gets to have sex with which woman and conceive which children - and still you have a George W. Bush, and a Colin Powel, and a Dick Chaney, and a Bill Clinton, and a Michael Moore, and a Fidel Castro, and a Hugo Cahves, and an Arnold Swartenger, and a Vladimir Putin, and... All of them take in this so different world the same positions which they have in our reality, or as close as possible, which so improbable as to pass beyond the ridiculous.
(If the Soviet Union survived into the 2000's, Putin would have likely ended as head of the KGB, but very unlikely as the boss of everything - the Soviet system just did not let the security people climb that high. And Castro's grandparents came from Spain to Cuba at a time when in our timeline it was still a Spanish colony but in the Draka timelines was already part of the US. And our Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in 1947 in Austria, the son of Gustav and Aurelia Schwarzenegger - who in the Draka timeline would be either serfs, refugees or dead and in any of the three cases unlikely to produce exactly that son. And if the very existence of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in this world is doubtful. How much more so the possibility that they would follow one upon the other in the white House in exactly the same manner, and that the American political scene and the attitudes of liberals and conservatives would be so much the same in a world with such totally different issues. (You obviously dislike Michael Moore very much, but do you seriously think that he would take the same attitude to war with the Draka as to Bush's adventure in Iraq?). And the possiblity that the same presidents get elected in the same way with a totally different electorate, with Hispanics coming close to being the majority of the voter body or already past this treshold, and Blacks as a smaller ethnic group possibly coming to be considered a buffer holding the balance between Whites and Hispanics which would increase the chance of a Black president as a compromise candidate, not to mention these pesky French-speakers in Quebec who had been a chronic United States problem for two centuries and more?
In fact, I think you just can't throw in all these improbabilities without giving any logical explanation and expect us to "suspend our disbelief". Since you didn't let me offer you one.
Suppose that all the different Draka timelines are not a spontaneous development of the objective continuum in the multiverse, but rather the result of a deliberate interference by some nefarious people try or beings, who are displeased with our timeline and want for a sinister purpose of their own to have a Draka-dominated world in its place. Suppose that the structure of space-time is such that the there is "A Law of Reality Conservation", i.e. that the waves radiating from the moment when a historical change was made do not freely propagate, but rather the shape of the continuum (like some physical materials) all the time tends to bend back into its original form? Making that assumption, which is legitimate since it all speculation anyhow, would make sense of much that is otherwise ridiculous in your timeline (and to an only slightly lesser degree, in Striling's original one as well). What do you think?
"Even behind the highest peak of hopelessness the sun will still rise" (Henri Levy, member of the French Resistance who was tortured to death by the Gestapo, 1943)
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NecronLord
- Harbinger of Doom
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I think the fact that it uses people from this board as characters makes it quite clear that the intent is not to construct a plausible alternate history, but to provide an amusing take on a 'final war' scenario with some bad guys everyone loathes. As i'm able to suspend my disbelief for a universe with FTL or a God, I can easily manage it with this.
As for the idea. Weeelll... I blame Janeway. (Cookie if you get that reference)
As for the idea. Weeelll... I blame Janeway. (Cookie if you get that reference)
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
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darthdavid
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LordShaithis
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Thor: Paragraphs! Use them!
If Religion and Politics were characters on a soap opera, Religion would be the one that goes insane with jealousy over Politics' intimate relationship with Reality, and secretly murder Politics in the night, skin the corpse, and run around its apartment wearing the skin like a cape shouting "My votes now! All votes for me! Wheeee!" -- Lagmonster