Chapter Eighteen
Navarro
Well-known member
RE: NEW TACTICAL FORCE STRUCTURE
FROM: Secretary of War Sebastian G. McCain
TO: Secretary of the Army Edward H. Devers, Secretary of the Navy Charles Gruenther
DATE: 12/19/31
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Peace can only be secured through strength.
The past tactical force structure of the US Army, US Marine Corps and Secret Service, while functional, can always be improved. As a result I can now say that looking back on the cross-force trials held at Adams AFB last year in the late Travis Administration, they have been a general success. We can now look to the new force tactical and equipment structure which retains the firepower of the previous system while giving a new degree of tactical flexibility as a basis for the power-armoured armed services. The new model also eliminates the confusion of the old system, which boiled down to two heavy weapons troopers and kept it unclear how specifically they were to be equipped.
In summary, our new squad structure will be:
*Squad Leader (SGT or SSGT) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
**Team Leader 1 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-SAW Trooper [Power Armour, rapid-fire heavy weapon such as Gatling Laser, PM-108 Plasma Repeater]
**Team Leader 2 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-AT Trooper [Power Armour, anti-armour weapon such as Tesla-Beaton Cannon, LM-280 Portable Laser Cannon, M-78 Gauss Rifle]
**Team Leader 3 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-EX Trooper [Power Armour, explosive weapon such as M202 Missile Launcher, M45 Enola, M85 Automatic Grenade Launcher]
==*==
GENERAL ORDER 12823
TO: All officers and NCOs involved in Operation Kodiak (Full List Appended)
FROM: General (5-star) Lance Edmund Martin Robertson
DATE: 12-18-31, Two-Hundred Hours
Enclave artillery have countered our own with exceptional ease and in general fired with uncanny accuracy in the field. Veterans of First and Second Houston, as well as Dallas, have repeatedly reported anomalous behaviour by local birds before these barrages. In response, I am giving a standing order that all birds that move within three hundred meters of NCR troops or otherwise behave strangely in the vicinity of combat operations are to be shot immediately by small arms. This order is to be adhered to until the final defeat of the Enclave.
==*==
7:45 CST, December 18 2331
Near AFB O’Hare, Illinois
The light of late dawn was all but completely hidden behind the thick winter clouds as Ranger Brandon McGrath looked to the east from the security of his team’s hide-out. It was a pre-War office building overrun with vines and ivy, overlooking the approach to the Enclave air base General Robertson was moving on. Somebody in recent times had cleared out the lower walls and floors, but then abandoned their work. To the east lay various small villages and homesteads, islands of habitation in the sea of overgrown old suburbia.
Then there was the base, and finally the monotony of the flat horizon broken far in the distance by the gleaming skyscrapers of Chicago.
The base – that was the most important thing. Brandon had scouted out it over the past few days under stealth along with his team, several other groups of Rangers, and men from the Circle of Steel. To call it well-defended was an understatement. The most visible defence was a long trench-and-berm setup surrounding the base entirely, lined with concrete on the inside and with various dugouts and pill-boxes along its length, guarded also by various forcefield emitters. Some of the field defences were emplacements for anti-air or light artillery – yet others had gatling lasers or even turrets taken from Enclave battle tanks, obviously salvaged from ones of theirs that had been seriously damaged at Rockford.
If they’re that desperate, we’re going to win no doubt, he mused. But the trench-line and the six strongpoints attached to it, roughly circling the base, were only the tip of the iceberg. For about half a klick extending from the trench, the ring of abandoned buildings – many of which bore mute testimony to its past as a bustling international airport – around the facility had been cleared to provide open lines of fire for the defenders. In that area there were long rows of dragon’s-teeth anti-tank positions, along with areas that were obviously mined and others where he could see a glint too reflective to be snow.
Compared to this, Navarro had been child’s play. But then, the terrain had been worse at Navarro – the now-ruined Enclave base crowned a flat-topped hill which was only accessible via either climbing its steep slopes under fire from the base or taking a winding, slightly less steep path, also while under fire. But Navarro had ultimately fallen – though Ranger Chief Elise had died in the recon mission that ultimately helped bring about its end.
McGrath would have liked to say that the Rangers had taken Navarro – but he couldn’t. No NCR military unit had ironclad evidence of having breached the gate and stormed what had been the Enclave’s last redoubt. Neither could the Brotherhood of Steel furnish any proof that its members had won the victory there. Perhaps the answer to the mystery was found in several papers and photos last held by Gen. Drummond, commander of the NCR forces present there, who in his will had ordered them to be kept in a safe held by his family, for the next two hundred years going on from his death in 2285.
But anyway, the approach. There was a loud roar like thunder as dozens of guns far behind the line opened up at the designated time – eight-hundred hours. Manifold beams of brilliant blue light shot out from the vicinity of the airbase, and every shell exploded in mid-air over the course of five or so seconds. The smoke of the roiling explosions hung in the air a moment, then was blasted away by the withering winds of winter.
Here in his armour McGrath was safe from their bitter chill. The other five Rangers with him also were, and so was the Brotherhood man, Knight-Commander Norton McNamara.
“Makes you miss the Mojave,” he muttered, clutching tight his odd weapon, a holo-rifle – an odd weapon specific to the Mojave Brotherhood, who had found a prototype while searching the old workshop of “Father” Elijah some thirty-five to forty years ago. McGrath had to admit, the men from the Mojave bunker were a lot easier to work with than those from the midwest.
“I never thought I would,” McGrath replied, and kept on observing the situation. They had received no order to advance, withdraw or redeploy, so here they stayed and watched the unfolding attack. At eight-hundred-thirty they were passed by NCR troops – a mix of power-armoured and light infantry, held in APCs. The soldiers were ants from this height, and the vehicles a child’s toys. They darted to-and-fro across the abandoned streets, using the barren shells of pre-War warehouses and big-box stores as cover, climbing the snow-covered heaps of rubble that were recently-demolished ruins for firing positions.
At nine-hundred-hours they reached within a klick of the Enclave positions, and then the assault began.
--*--
Sergeant Royez sprinted his utmost as the Enclave bombardment tore through the light-infantry squad to his left, even though the shell detonated too soon and they were in cover in the husk of an abandoned hardware store. A vivid green flash appeared safely above their heads, followed by a rain of white-hot metal fragments on them from above at high speeds, courtesy of the shell’s coating of heat resistant metal. What survivors there were could expect-
He rushed into the open ground before the Enclave defence lines, expecting mines. No such luck. From some kind of unseen mechanism energy pulsed continuously through his armour’s systems, sending it haywire. The servos failed. Moving at a run, their momentum and the armour’s own weight combined to send the NCR powered soldiers sprawling helplessly on the ground.
To try and lift it with merely human strength was hopeless. As error messages flashed red on his HUD, he pulled himself with all his might through the snow to find cover, all the while watching helplessly as his men were taken out one-by-one as they similarly tried to save themselves. Eventually a team of unpowered infantry found him and dragged him out of that awful zone of death, but only two of his squad had made it. His company had lost a third of its strength just in that brief engagement.
--*--
The newly-promoted Sergeant James Fields gritted his teeth, firing a Laser RCW he had taken from a dead power-trooper as the Enclave launched a counter-attack. Even the least-well-equipped of them had plasma rifles and the best of pre-War combat armour, while the majority of them had either power armour ranging from the Navarro-style to the new ‘modern’ type, or what seemed to be the Enclave’s answer to ranger combat armour.
The enemy, clad in the long-eared armour the Brotherhood nicknamed ‘Black Devil’ – though it was in a winter camo colour scheme – had several holes burnt in his chest armour by 30 seconds of continuous suppressive fire – long enough for Castillo to grab a fallen grenade rifle and take him out of action with a shot that blew off his arm to the elbow. He was quickly recovered by Enclave medics – they have those?, but he should be out of action at the least for months.
He took a breath and panted behind cover before throwing off a round of suppressive fire at no-one in particular. Fighting in these winter conditions was especially hard, the cold seeping into his bones and drain the life from him.
He saw a convoy of engineers approach from the north-east – they had been sent to reduce the enemy tank traps there, evidently to no success. Many of the casualties from there, he would learn later, were injuries – victims of land-mines laid between the tank traps to secure them. Even with Vault City’s techniques, it would take weeks for them to be combat-capable again.
--*--
Ranger McGrath watched from his high perch as the NCR assault was met with a vicious Enclave counter-attack that drove it backwards. The NCR force – about twenty thousand men – broke off at twelve-hundred hours, having taken two thousand casualties.
--*--
At his command post, Lance Robertson ascertained the situation. The enemy defences had proven to be slightly stronger than he anticipated – he had never expected to win O’Hare in one battle. In two weeks the 60,000 men from Davenport should arrive and he would have enough for a decisive push – in the meantime he would continue to probe for weaknesses. 28,000 men would be dedicated to the five nearest enemy strongpoints – the two northeastern ones, the northwest, the southeast and the southwest – with the aim of reducing and isolating them in preparation for the big push. Be that as it may, he would also appreciate an early breakthrough.
The eastern one at Rosemont would not be invested – assailing it would overly divide his forces, and allowing the enemy a line of retreat would dampen their fighting spirit.
But time was also his enemy as much as it was the Enclave’s. If he could not force O’Hare in three weeks … that was it. Every hour, every minute, needed to be devoted right now to victory.
He had talked to Lyons about drawing back the 10,000 Brotherhood soldiers committed to anti-partisan activities, but they were not actually under his command but of one of his fellow Paladin-Commanders, who had wholeheartedly refused when he offered it to him. Until the Elders of Vault Zero concluded the internecine political games (that were doubtless happening) involved in appointing a member of the Brotherhood to the rank of Sentinel, it was unlikely he would get them back.
But the strategic picture, beyond the overall operation, was bitter. He could take the Midwest if he could take O’Hare, but holding it long-term was less likely. Holding it for the short term would be just as likely if he continued advancing, as he would have to then march on the Eastern seaboard without the fantasised mass revolt within the Enclave’s ranks and facing severe partisan activity in his rear. A more reasonable option would be to hold position in the Midwest, to use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations to force the Enclave government to acknowledge the NCR as a sovereign nation, but Shady Sands’ orders were quite clear that total victory was the only thing they would accept. A peace that put the borders of the Enclave’s territory at the Appalachians or even the boundary of their capital city was unacceptable to them.
And after the victory … some form of amnesty was necessary for the former Enclave individuals. He might well be able to win the war, but he could not win the peace by slaughtering and imprisoning every soldier, every businessman and everybody involved in government. Again, that was politically unacceptable to Shady Sands, at least right now. They seemed to not simply grasp the scale of the mass killings and incarcerations that would be required – even if the New Enclave was everything they said it was, some degree of clemency would be needed simply to keep civil society functioning in the liberated areas. They had never had to deal with such practical issues in their lives, and it showed.
The enemy had refused his offer of surrender at Rockford quite rationally, he’d now figured. If surrender meant certainty of death or lifelong imprisonment, they would not take it unless they were overwhelmed by shock and lost rational control of themselves. That meant every enemy army he faced would have to be fought to total destruction. Moral considerations, even if they were valid in the current context, paled in the face of that awful strategic reality
That’s another reason I have to take O’Hare – gotta be able to have the newspaper men document what Chicago is like as we enter. Without evidence, Shady Sands would have no reason to believe him when he gave his message – no reason to give the amnesty, no reason to seek a negotiated peace.
The damned war had seemed so simple before it had begun in earnest, to be just a repetition of all the others preceding it. A good New California Republic against an evil enemy – the Unity, the Old Enclave, the Legion. But as it proceeded, things had rapidly become more complicated, and not just in the mere logistical and strategic sense. If she did not realise that complexity, Lance knew the NCR faced far greater difficulties than this campaign.
==*==
14:30 CST, December 18 2331
O’Hare AFB, Illinois
General Julius Chase looked at the cryo-frozen creature. It was an aberrant form, covered with a jet-black exoskeleton – two legs holding up a stumpy torso that was almost all mouth, from which two long tentacles proceeded in the place of arms, slick with venom. Nature’s process of evolution had nothing to do with its design – only the needs of the pre-War US Army. The genetic codes of a dozen creatures – one not from this Earth – had been spliced together to create an ultimate predator. The entities had been recreated by the post-War US Army much later on, and had furthermore been intentionally been made sterile as their intended target was not Chinese territory this time.
He considered it a moment, then left the storage room and walked through the concrete-and-metal corridors that ran under O’Hare AFB. They would certainly not be unrecognisable to somebody who had been in any of the bases that were considered part of the ENCLAVE continuity protocols, which had ended only in 2283. The same alternating warm yellow and cool blue lights, the grated floors under which lay crawlspaces tended to by techs and cleaning robots, the dilating doors – though with the “E” symbol of the old days replaced with the USAF lightning-bolt.
The war had not gone as planned. The war-games and simulations – some of which he had taken part in himself – all indicated that an enemy invasion would be held back by the National Guard long enough for Midwestern Command’s forces, along with those of Central and Northeastern Commands, to reach the front and defeat the enemy force. The attack would have been defeated within a week, two at most. But it hadn’t gone that way – the movement of forces and aerial-orbital recon had been disrupted enough by the harsh weather conditions that the intended defensive strategy had not worked, while the enemy force itself was twice as large or more as what had been expected to have been deployed by them.
He walked through, and arrived at the base’s war-room. He pressed his thumb to a sensor – there was a prick as it took a blood sample and compared his genetic code to that recorded on the files. He ran his keycard through its reader as another system compared the geometry of his face to that on file. All matched, and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss as the forcefield immediately beyond it deactivated. He walked through, and it flickered back on as the door closed.
The room was large – in the centre was a three-dimensional holographic map of the base and its environs, working in tandem with radars, GPS, and IFF signals to display in real-time as best as possible the positions of friendly and enemy forces. Around it were sitting three men – Lt. General Horace Rosenthal, his second-in-command now that he was in the position of authority over Midwestern Command, Colonel Andrew Moretti from the Chemical Corps, General Kenneth Washington (not connected to the President’s family, but the Washingtons of the former settlement ‘Rivet City’, one of whom had been the first Librarian of the Library of Congress in two hundred years) of the Air Force, who usually commanded the day-to-day running of AFB O’Hare.
On the round walls were maps of the Chicago area, Illinois, the Midwest and the United States in general.
The various commanders of the National Guard forces in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit – the key industrial cities to be protected as long as possible – were available to sit in virtually via HoloComm – but their flickering sepia holographic images were not present. They had better things to deal with. General Blackwell’s, though, was.
“How is St. Louis?” Chase ordered grimly. “I want a full report.”
“We’re holding the airport, sir,” Blackwell said exasperatedly. “Between it, the river and the relay we have barely enough food and supplies. The NCR and Brotherhood forces don’t seem to be co-operating – it’s a certain case of different command structures, especially given the recent raids so far east.”
Chase nodded. The power-armoured raids had been limited in the level of material damage – nothing had been destroyed that could not be replaced in some months – and Quixotic as the enemy threw their men away on a raid into enemy territory that didn’t have half the numbers to fulfill its intended goals, but the survivors had withdrawn to their carrier airships. Some 2,000 or so, but still … it rankled him. And the damage to morale from strikes deep into US territory was real.
Perhaps that was the real intent of such an otherwise senseless gesture.
“They’re preparing for a full assault to storm the city, sir,” Blackwell continued. “In some days it’ll come – retreat is impossible. I think the Brotherhood will attack first to try and secure the river-crossings – I’ll blow them if need be. And of course, my boys and girls know what surrender or betrayal will bring them. If St. Louis must fall, I swear on my honour as a soldier that another such victory for the enemy ruins them.”
“Well, then,” he turned to Rosenthal. “How’s the situation after the enemy attack?”
“Several hundred casualties, no deaths, sir,” the man replied. “The worst will be able to fight again by two days after some cybernetic repairs.”
“Enemy situation?”
“They’re preparing for a siege – building field fortifications in parallel to our own. That works in our favour to an extent, but if Alex takes too long to reach us ...”
“How long can we make it without reinforcement?”
“Nineteen days. The enemy aren’t moving to totally cut us off, but they can easily disrupt the movement of supplies to the base from the city – and they can pincer us if we retreat.”
It was grim, but Chase could do with that.
“Washington, your own forces?”
“I’ve had the Auroras refitted with AGMs for close-air-support – the enemy would be mad to attack such a thick air defence network as we have here from the air. The Vertihawks and the Army’s vertibirds are in fine condition. The old Lightningbolts and Gryphons we have in storage are also being prepped for deployment – they’ll be ready in nine days. In addition, the Air Force Security Force elements at the base are ready for deployment as a last line of defence.”
8,000 men, with backup from a few hundred protectrons, a hundred or so assaultrons, and dozens of sentry bots. But they only have Grade C or even D equipment. Will it be enough in the worst-case scenario?
“Good.”
“Moretti, the chemical munitions?”
“All ready, sir. The nerve gas and the phosgene is prepped, as is the Lewisite. I wonder why we haven’t used them already now – enemy would hang us as war criminals no matter what we do or don’t use on them. They want to murder every last one of us, and we treat them with kid gloves.”
“I wouldn’t use a weapon so terrible unless it was truly necessary. Besides, asides from the ethics of the situation, the enemy would simply use NBC protection if we used them on the first attack. I would rather wait till a situation arises in which their use would really be effective. You will not fire your chemical artillery except on my order and on the targets I designate, do you understand?”
“Understood, Sir.”
That ended the substantive portion of the war council.
==*==
13:00 CST, December 19 2331
Southeast of Cleveland, Ohio
General Alexander Autumn was at ease in his command vehicle, a Constantine Superheavy Battle Tank named Invincible Eagle. His father had used a re-engineered crawler-transporter, the same one that had taken the soldiers of Navarro to Adams AFB – but it was no longer in military service. The cost of maintaining it, coupled with it presenting a large target and its general uselessness for anything more than being a glorified command post, had ended up with the US Army selling it to a private investor, who had turned it into a museum of the journey across America that had led to the revival of American civilisation.
At times, he worried about his only daughter, who was stationed at O’Hare, and wondered if he should have asked her to stay at home in Alexandria, DC. An effort likely to fail – Arlene was impossible to get around once she made her mind up. At any rate, he was moving as fast as could be managed towards O’Hare – to split his forces to target the army threatening Indianapolis would only bring his forces to a defeat-in-detail. O’Hare was the axis of the Midwest, the key point that the enemy had rightly identified as critical to taking control of the region. So long as it and St. Louis held, the army at Indianapolis could be cut off and destroyed.
But that itself went against his orders – he was to drive them out of US-controlled territory, but not to destroy them wholesale. Given the fanaticism with which the enemy treated their war on America as a holy crusade against absolute evil, he could start to see – he thought – what the Acting President’s idea was.
He wasn’t sure himself, though, if it was a good idea.
==*==
15:00 CST, December 20 2231
Indianapolis, Indiana
National Guard Lt. General Colin Lagrange looked bitterly at his desk. 12,000 of his men had just left the city, to intercept the approaching enemy army at Crawfordsville. A doomed assault, but it would delay them for at least one day. Long enough to finish evacuating the last of the city’s military industry, blow the rail lines, and demolish the control tower of its airport. Of the remainder, 10,000 would put in a token fight just outside the city and retreat in the direction of Fort Wayne – hoping to lead them on a hopeless pursuit to overstretch their supply lines. Finally, the most mobile 8,000 had already left and were going on a long drive through the Indiana backcountry with the intention of retaking the three Illinois towns through which their supply lines stretched.
The situation was grim, but Lagrange reminded himself that there had been worse times, and the US had always pulled through in the end. Furthermore, he had received special orders from the Acting President that Indianapolis was to be undamaged by violence and war as possible, and that its capture by NCR forces was permissible given this priority provided he continued to act against NCR forces after they took the city and made as much effort as possible to ensure that it provided neither transport nor military industry for their armies.
He had no clue what the man was thinking, but he had to have a reason.
==*==
20:00 CST, December 21 2331
Southern Missouri
“As the shadows dance on the tented walls,
And the camp with melody rings,
‘Tis the grand old song of the Stars and Stripes
That the fireside circle sings,
Of the Stars and Stripes, the Stars and Stripes.
For love of which we roam,
But the final song and the sweetest song
Is the song of the girls at home.”
Sergeant Walker listened to Ray’s singing, to the accompaniment of a well-played guitar tune, and smiled. It was the only amusement he could find right now in the bitter chill of his current circumstance. They were driving at a ferocious pace – 48 hours of movement, followed by six of making camp, four of eating and recreation, eight of sleep, and six of packing up and preparing to move full-tilt for another forty-eight hours. The airborne troops were not present – they were at their bases, preparing to strike three days before the ground-pounders made contact with the enemy.
Occasionally they had encountered Gran Colombian troops, but those units had either surrendered immediately or surrendered after brief firefights. He sighed, and silently prayed for Rita and Ray and Tyler and all the others in his squad, in his platoon, in his company, and for the city of St. Louis, and for Arlene. He had a feeling they’d all need it.
FROM: Secretary of War Sebastian G. McCain
TO: Secretary of the Army Edward H. Devers, Secretary of the Navy Charles Gruenther
DATE: 12/19/31
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Peace can only be secured through strength.
The past tactical force structure of the US Army, US Marine Corps and Secret Service, while functional, can always be improved. As a result I can now say that looking back on the cross-force trials held at Adams AFB last year in the late Travis Administration, they have been a general success. We can now look to the new force tactical and equipment structure which retains the firepower of the previous system while giving a new degree of tactical flexibility as a basis for the power-armoured armed services. The new model also eliminates the confusion of the old system, which boiled down to two heavy weapons troopers and kept it unclear how specifically they were to be equipped.
In summary, our new squad structure will be:
*Squad Leader (SGT or SSGT) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
**Team Leader 1 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-SAW Trooper [Power Armour, rapid-fire heavy weapon such as Gatling Laser, PM-108 Plasma Repeater]
**Team Leader 2 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-AT Trooper [Power Armour, anti-armour weapon such as Tesla-Beaton Cannon, LM-280 Portable Laser Cannon, M-78 Gauss Rifle]
**Team Leader 3 (CPL) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/grenade-launcher]
***3 PA Troopers (PVTs) [Power armour, laser/plasma rifle w/bayonet or elmag shotgun attachment]
***1 PA-EX Trooper [Power Armour, explosive weapon such as M202 Missile Launcher, M45 Enola, M85 Automatic Grenade Launcher]
==*==
GENERAL ORDER 12823
TO: All officers and NCOs involved in Operation Kodiak (Full List Appended)
FROM: General (5-star) Lance Edmund Martin Robertson
DATE: 12-18-31, Two-Hundred Hours
Enclave artillery have countered our own with exceptional ease and in general fired with uncanny accuracy in the field. Veterans of First and Second Houston, as well as Dallas, have repeatedly reported anomalous behaviour by local birds before these barrages. In response, I am giving a standing order that all birds that move within three hundred meters of NCR troops or otherwise behave strangely in the vicinity of combat operations are to be shot immediately by small arms. This order is to be adhered to until the final defeat of the Enclave.
==*==
7:45 CST, December 18 2331
Near AFB O’Hare, Illinois
The light of late dawn was all but completely hidden behind the thick winter clouds as Ranger Brandon McGrath looked to the east from the security of his team’s hide-out. It was a pre-War office building overrun with vines and ivy, overlooking the approach to the Enclave air base General Robertson was moving on. Somebody in recent times had cleared out the lower walls and floors, but then abandoned their work. To the east lay various small villages and homesteads, islands of habitation in the sea of overgrown old suburbia.
Then there was the base, and finally the monotony of the flat horizon broken far in the distance by the gleaming skyscrapers of Chicago.
The base – that was the most important thing. Brandon had scouted out it over the past few days under stealth along with his team, several other groups of Rangers, and men from the Circle of Steel. To call it well-defended was an understatement. The most visible defence was a long trench-and-berm setup surrounding the base entirely, lined with concrete on the inside and with various dugouts and pill-boxes along its length, guarded also by various forcefield emitters. Some of the field defences were emplacements for anti-air or light artillery – yet others had gatling lasers or even turrets taken from Enclave battle tanks, obviously salvaged from ones of theirs that had been seriously damaged at Rockford.
If they’re that desperate, we’re going to win no doubt, he mused. But the trench-line and the six strongpoints attached to it, roughly circling the base, were only the tip of the iceberg. For about half a klick extending from the trench, the ring of abandoned buildings – many of which bore mute testimony to its past as a bustling international airport – around the facility had been cleared to provide open lines of fire for the defenders. In that area there were long rows of dragon’s-teeth anti-tank positions, along with areas that were obviously mined and others where he could see a glint too reflective to be snow.
Compared to this, Navarro had been child’s play. But then, the terrain had been worse at Navarro – the now-ruined Enclave base crowned a flat-topped hill which was only accessible via either climbing its steep slopes under fire from the base or taking a winding, slightly less steep path, also while under fire. But Navarro had ultimately fallen – though Ranger Chief Elise had died in the recon mission that ultimately helped bring about its end.
McGrath would have liked to say that the Rangers had taken Navarro – but he couldn’t. No NCR military unit had ironclad evidence of having breached the gate and stormed what had been the Enclave’s last redoubt. Neither could the Brotherhood of Steel furnish any proof that its members had won the victory there. Perhaps the answer to the mystery was found in several papers and photos last held by Gen. Drummond, commander of the NCR forces present there, who in his will had ordered them to be kept in a safe held by his family, for the next two hundred years going on from his death in 2285.
But anyway, the approach. There was a loud roar like thunder as dozens of guns far behind the line opened up at the designated time – eight-hundred hours. Manifold beams of brilliant blue light shot out from the vicinity of the airbase, and every shell exploded in mid-air over the course of five or so seconds. The smoke of the roiling explosions hung in the air a moment, then was blasted away by the withering winds of winter.
Here in his armour McGrath was safe from their bitter chill. The other five Rangers with him also were, and so was the Brotherhood man, Knight-Commander Norton McNamara.
“Makes you miss the Mojave,” he muttered, clutching tight his odd weapon, a holo-rifle – an odd weapon specific to the Mojave Brotherhood, who had found a prototype while searching the old workshop of “Father” Elijah some thirty-five to forty years ago. McGrath had to admit, the men from the Mojave bunker were a lot easier to work with than those from the midwest.
“I never thought I would,” McGrath replied, and kept on observing the situation. They had received no order to advance, withdraw or redeploy, so here they stayed and watched the unfolding attack. At eight-hundred-thirty they were passed by NCR troops – a mix of power-armoured and light infantry, held in APCs. The soldiers were ants from this height, and the vehicles a child’s toys. They darted to-and-fro across the abandoned streets, using the barren shells of pre-War warehouses and big-box stores as cover, climbing the snow-covered heaps of rubble that were recently-demolished ruins for firing positions.
At nine-hundred-hours they reached within a klick of the Enclave positions, and then the assault began.
--*--
Sergeant Royez sprinted his utmost as the Enclave bombardment tore through the light-infantry squad to his left, even though the shell detonated too soon and they were in cover in the husk of an abandoned hardware store. A vivid green flash appeared safely above their heads, followed by a rain of white-hot metal fragments on them from above at high speeds, courtesy of the shell’s coating of heat resistant metal. What survivors there were could expect-
He rushed into the open ground before the Enclave defence lines, expecting mines. No such luck. From some kind of unseen mechanism energy pulsed continuously through his armour’s systems, sending it haywire. The servos failed. Moving at a run, their momentum and the armour’s own weight combined to send the NCR powered soldiers sprawling helplessly on the ground.
To try and lift it with merely human strength was hopeless. As error messages flashed red on his HUD, he pulled himself with all his might through the snow to find cover, all the while watching helplessly as his men were taken out one-by-one as they similarly tried to save themselves. Eventually a team of unpowered infantry found him and dragged him out of that awful zone of death, but only two of his squad had made it. His company had lost a third of its strength just in that brief engagement.
--*--
The newly-promoted Sergeant James Fields gritted his teeth, firing a Laser RCW he had taken from a dead power-trooper as the Enclave launched a counter-attack. Even the least-well-equipped of them had plasma rifles and the best of pre-War combat armour, while the majority of them had either power armour ranging from the Navarro-style to the new ‘modern’ type, or what seemed to be the Enclave’s answer to ranger combat armour.
The enemy, clad in the long-eared armour the Brotherhood nicknamed ‘Black Devil’ – though it was in a winter camo colour scheme – had several holes burnt in his chest armour by 30 seconds of continuous suppressive fire – long enough for Castillo to grab a fallen grenade rifle and take him out of action with a shot that blew off his arm to the elbow. He was quickly recovered by Enclave medics – they have those?, but he should be out of action at the least for months.
He took a breath and panted behind cover before throwing off a round of suppressive fire at no-one in particular. Fighting in these winter conditions was especially hard, the cold seeping into his bones and drain the life from him.
He saw a convoy of engineers approach from the north-east – they had been sent to reduce the enemy tank traps there, evidently to no success. Many of the casualties from there, he would learn later, were injuries – victims of land-mines laid between the tank traps to secure them. Even with Vault City’s techniques, it would take weeks for them to be combat-capable again.
--*--
Ranger McGrath watched from his high perch as the NCR assault was met with a vicious Enclave counter-attack that drove it backwards. The NCR force – about twenty thousand men – broke off at twelve-hundred hours, having taken two thousand casualties.
--*--
At his command post, Lance Robertson ascertained the situation. The enemy defences had proven to be slightly stronger than he anticipated – he had never expected to win O’Hare in one battle. In two weeks the 60,000 men from Davenport should arrive and he would have enough for a decisive push – in the meantime he would continue to probe for weaknesses. 28,000 men would be dedicated to the five nearest enemy strongpoints – the two northeastern ones, the northwest, the southeast and the southwest – with the aim of reducing and isolating them in preparation for the big push. Be that as it may, he would also appreciate an early breakthrough.
The eastern one at Rosemont would not be invested – assailing it would overly divide his forces, and allowing the enemy a line of retreat would dampen their fighting spirit.
But time was also his enemy as much as it was the Enclave’s. If he could not force O’Hare in three weeks … that was it. Every hour, every minute, needed to be devoted right now to victory.
He had talked to Lyons about drawing back the 10,000 Brotherhood soldiers committed to anti-partisan activities, but they were not actually under his command but of one of his fellow Paladin-Commanders, who had wholeheartedly refused when he offered it to him. Until the Elders of Vault Zero concluded the internecine political games (that were doubtless happening) involved in appointing a member of the Brotherhood to the rank of Sentinel, it was unlikely he would get them back.
But the strategic picture, beyond the overall operation, was bitter. He could take the Midwest if he could take O’Hare, but holding it long-term was less likely. Holding it for the short term would be just as likely if he continued advancing, as he would have to then march on the Eastern seaboard without the fantasised mass revolt within the Enclave’s ranks and facing severe partisan activity in his rear. A more reasonable option would be to hold position in the Midwest, to use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations to force the Enclave government to acknowledge the NCR as a sovereign nation, but Shady Sands’ orders were quite clear that total victory was the only thing they would accept. A peace that put the borders of the Enclave’s territory at the Appalachians or even the boundary of their capital city was unacceptable to them.
And after the victory … some form of amnesty was necessary for the former Enclave individuals. He might well be able to win the war, but he could not win the peace by slaughtering and imprisoning every soldier, every businessman and everybody involved in government. Again, that was politically unacceptable to Shady Sands, at least right now. They seemed to not simply grasp the scale of the mass killings and incarcerations that would be required – even if the New Enclave was everything they said it was, some degree of clemency would be needed simply to keep civil society functioning in the liberated areas. They had never had to deal with such practical issues in their lives, and it showed.
The enemy had refused his offer of surrender at Rockford quite rationally, he’d now figured. If surrender meant certainty of death or lifelong imprisonment, they would not take it unless they were overwhelmed by shock and lost rational control of themselves. That meant every enemy army he faced would have to be fought to total destruction. Moral considerations, even if they were valid in the current context, paled in the face of that awful strategic reality
That’s another reason I have to take O’Hare – gotta be able to have the newspaper men document what Chicago is like as we enter. Without evidence, Shady Sands would have no reason to believe him when he gave his message – no reason to give the amnesty, no reason to seek a negotiated peace.
The damned war had seemed so simple before it had begun in earnest, to be just a repetition of all the others preceding it. A good New California Republic against an evil enemy – the Unity, the Old Enclave, the Legion. But as it proceeded, things had rapidly become more complicated, and not just in the mere logistical and strategic sense. If she did not realise that complexity, Lance knew the NCR faced far greater difficulties than this campaign.
==*==
14:30 CST, December 18 2331
O’Hare AFB, Illinois
General Julius Chase looked at the cryo-frozen creature. It was an aberrant form, covered with a jet-black exoskeleton – two legs holding up a stumpy torso that was almost all mouth, from which two long tentacles proceeded in the place of arms, slick with venom. Nature’s process of evolution had nothing to do with its design – only the needs of the pre-War US Army. The genetic codes of a dozen creatures – one not from this Earth – had been spliced together to create an ultimate predator. The entities had been recreated by the post-War US Army much later on, and had furthermore been intentionally been made sterile as their intended target was not Chinese territory this time.
He considered it a moment, then left the storage room and walked through the concrete-and-metal corridors that ran under O’Hare AFB. They would certainly not be unrecognisable to somebody who had been in any of the bases that were considered part of the ENCLAVE continuity protocols, which had ended only in 2283. The same alternating warm yellow and cool blue lights, the grated floors under which lay crawlspaces tended to by techs and cleaning robots, the dilating doors – though with the “E” symbol of the old days replaced with the USAF lightning-bolt.
The war had not gone as planned. The war-games and simulations – some of which he had taken part in himself – all indicated that an enemy invasion would be held back by the National Guard long enough for Midwestern Command’s forces, along with those of Central and Northeastern Commands, to reach the front and defeat the enemy force. The attack would have been defeated within a week, two at most. But it hadn’t gone that way – the movement of forces and aerial-orbital recon had been disrupted enough by the harsh weather conditions that the intended defensive strategy had not worked, while the enemy force itself was twice as large or more as what had been expected to have been deployed by them.
He walked through, and arrived at the base’s war-room. He pressed his thumb to a sensor – there was a prick as it took a blood sample and compared his genetic code to that recorded on the files. He ran his keycard through its reader as another system compared the geometry of his face to that on file. All matched, and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss as the forcefield immediately beyond it deactivated. He walked through, and it flickered back on as the door closed.
The room was large – in the centre was a three-dimensional holographic map of the base and its environs, working in tandem with radars, GPS, and IFF signals to display in real-time as best as possible the positions of friendly and enemy forces. Around it were sitting three men – Lt. General Horace Rosenthal, his second-in-command now that he was in the position of authority over Midwestern Command, Colonel Andrew Moretti from the Chemical Corps, General Kenneth Washington (not connected to the President’s family, but the Washingtons of the former settlement ‘Rivet City’, one of whom had been the first Librarian of the Library of Congress in two hundred years) of the Air Force, who usually commanded the day-to-day running of AFB O’Hare.
On the round walls were maps of the Chicago area, Illinois, the Midwest and the United States in general.
The various commanders of the National Guard forces in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit – the key industrial cities to be protected as long as possible – were available to sit in virtually via HoloComm – but their flickering sepia holographic images were not present. They had better things to deal with. General Blackwell’s, though, was.
“How is St. Louis?” Chase ordered grimly. “I want a full report.”
“We’re holding the airport, sir,” Blackwell said exasperatedly. “Between it, the river and the relay we have barely enough food and supplies. The NCR and Brotherhood forces don’t seem to be co-operating – it’s a certain case of different command structures, especially given the recent raids so far east.”
Chase nodded. The power-armoured raids had been limited in the level of material damage – nothing had been destroyed that could not be replaced in some months – and Quixotic as the enemy threw their men away on a raid into enemy territory that didn’t have half the numbers to fulfill its intended goals, but the survivors had withdrawn to their carrier airships. Some 2,000 or so, but still … it rankled him. And the damage to morale from strikes deep into US territory was real.
Perhaps that was the real intent of such an otherwise senseless gesture.
“They’re preparing for a full assault to storm the city, sir,” Blackwell continued. “In some days it’ll come – retreat is impossible. I think the Brotherhood will attack first to try and secure the river-crossings – I’ll blow them if need be. And of course, my boys and girls know what surrender or betrayal will bring them. If St. Louis must fall, I swear on my honour as a soldier that another such victory for the enemy ruins them.”
“Well, then,” he turned to Rosenthal. “How’s the situation after the enemy attack?”
“Several hundred casualties, no deaths, sir,” the man replied. “The worst will be able to fight again by two days after some cybernetic repairs.”
“Enemy situation?”
“They’re preparing for a siege – building field fortifications in parallel to our own. That works in our favour to an extent, but if Alex takes too long to reach us ...”
“How long can we make it without reinforcement?”
“Nineteen days. The enemy aren’t moving to totally cut us off, but they can easily disrupt the movement of supplies to the base from the city – and they can pincer us if we retreat.”
It was grim, but Chase could do with that.
“Washington, your own forces?”
“I’ve had the Auroras refitted with AGMs for close-air-support – the enemy would be mad to attack such a thick air defence network as we have here from the air. The Vertihawks and the Army’s vertibirds are in fine condition. The old Lightningbolts and Gryphons we have in storage are also being prepped for deployment – they’ll be ready in nine days. In addition, the Air Force Security Force elements at the base are ready for deployment as a last line of defence.”
8,000 men, with backup from a few hundred protectrons, a hundred or so assaultrons, and dozens of sentry bots. But they only have Grade C or even D equipment. Will it be enough in the worst-case scenario?
“Good.”
“Moretti, the chemical munitions?”
“All ready, sir. The nerve gas and the phosgene is prepped, as is the Lewisite. I wonder why we haven’t used them already now – enemy would hang us as war criminals no matter what we do or don’t use on them. They want to murder every last one of us, and we treat them with kid gloves.”
“I wouldn’t use a weapon so terrible unless it was truly necessary. Besides, asides from the ethics of the situation, the enemy would simply use NBC protection if we used them on the first attack. I would rather wait till a situation arises in which their use would really be effective. You will not fire your chemical artillery except on my order and on the targets I designate, do you understand?”
“Understood, Sir.”
That ended the substantive portion of the war council.
==*==
13:00 CST, December 19 2331
Southeast of Cleveland, Ohio
General Alexander Autumn was at ease in his command vehicle, a Constantine Superheavy Battle Tank named Invincible Eagle. His father had used a re-engineered crawler-transporter, the same one that had taken the soldiers of Navarro to Adams AFB – but it was no longer in military service. The cost of maintaining it, coupled with it presenting a large target and its general uselessness for anything more than being a glorified command post, had ended up with the US Army selling it to a private investor, who had turned it into a museum of the journey across America that had led to the revival of American civilisation.
At times, he worried about his only daughter, who was stationed at O’Hare, and wondered if he should have asked her to stay at home in Alexandria, DC. An effort likely to fail – Arlene was impossible to get around once she made her mind up. At any rate, he was moving as fast as could be managed towards O’Hare – to split his forces to target the army threatening Indianapolis would only bring his forces to a defeat-in-detail. O’Hare was the axis of the Midwest, the key point that the enemy had rightly identified as critical to taking control of the region. So long as it and St. Louis held, the army at Indianapolis could be cut off and destroyed.
But that itself went against his orders – he was to drive them out of US-controlled territory, but not to destroy them wholesale. Given the fanaticism with which the enemy treated their war on America as a holy crusade against absolute evil, he could start to see – he thought – what the Acting President’s idea was.
He wasn’t sure himself, though, if it was a good idea.
==*==
15:00 CST, December 20 2231
Indianapolis, Indiana
National Guard Lt. General Colin Lagrange looked bitterly at his desk. 12,000 of his men had just left the city, to intercept the approaching enemy army at Crawfordsville. A doomed assault, but it would delay them for at least one day. Long enough to finish evacuating the last of the city’s military industry, blow the rail lines, and demolish the control tower of its airport. Of the remainder, 10,000 would put in a token fight just outside the city and retreat in the direction of Fort Wayne – hoping to lead them on a hopeless pursuit to overstretch their supply lines. Finally, the most mobile 8,000 had already left and were going on a long drive through the Indiana backcountry with the intention of retaking the three Illinois towns through which their supply lines stretched.
The situation was grim, but Lagrange reminded himself that there had been worse times, and the US had always pulled through in the end. Furthermore, he had received special orders from the Acting President that Indianapolis was to be undamaged by violence and war as possible, and that its capture by NCR forces was permissible given this priority provided he continued to act against NCR forces after they took the city and made as much effort as possible to ensure that it provided neither transport nor military industry for their armies.
He had no clue what the man was thinking, but he had to have a reason.
==*==
20:00 CST, December 21 2331
Southern Missouri
“As the shadows dance on the tented walls,
And the camp with melody rings,
‘Tis the grand old song of the Stars and Stripes
That the fireside circle sings,
Of the Stars and Stripes, the Stars and Stripes.
For love of which we roam,
But the final song and the sweetest song
Is the song of the girls at home.”
Sergeant Walker listened to Ray’s singing, to the accompaniment of a well-played guitar tune, and smiled. It was the only amusement he could find right now in the bitter chill of his current circumstance. They were driving at a ferocious pace – 48 hours of movement, followed by six of making camp, four of eating and recreation, eight of sleep, and six of packing up and preparing to move full-tilt for another forty-eight hours. The airborne troops were not present – they were at their bases, preparing to strike three days before the ground-pounders made contact with the enemy.
Occasionally they had encountered Gran Colombian troops, but those units had either surrendered immediately or surrendered after brief firefights. He sighed, and silently prayed for Rita and Ray and Tyler and all the others in his squad, in his platoon, in his company, and for the city of St. Louis, and for Arlene. He had a feeling they’d all need it.
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