Chapter Twenty-Four
RE: REORGANIZATION OF THE US ARMY
FROM: Secretary of War Sebastian G. McCain
TO: Secretary of the Army Edward. H. Devers
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: No victory without sacrifice.
DATE: 1/25/2332
THE LARGE-SCALE TASK force structure has had its successes; however it also tends to be too fluid at times. The practice of territorial commands also is less useful for sustained offensive combat operations than long-term military policing of the type that was necessary to restore law and order for the first two decades of the Great American Anarchy (2077-2283). These flaws were not at first noticed, as the US largely engaged in minor military expeditions across Central and Western Europe since the fall of the “Ronto” regime in 2293. However, the invasion by the NCR has exposed them. We are not looking to wholly eliminate the flexibility of the old model, but in accordance with the Military Appropriations Act 2332 the US Army is to be reorganised under the following command structure:
- General (6-star) Alexander Autumn, General of the Armies and Supreme Allied Commander, will represent the top level of US Army operational command, answering directly to the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War.
- The Army of the Colorado, under General Franklin H. Granite. This force will have as its objective operations in the South-West, including northern areas of what was once Mexico. Its objective is to defeat all forces of the NCR and allies in that theatre and to bring about the capitulation of the NCR’s urban-industrial core – designated as the cities of Shady Sands, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Diego. 200,000 combat personnel.
- The Army of the Rockies, under General Victoria Cantrell. This force’s area of operation is the southern Great Plains and Rocky Mountains; its objective is to break through the Rocky Mountains, take control of the Interstate highway intersection at Salt Lake City, and advance along I-80 to Sacramento. 200,000 combat personnel.
- The Army of the Columbia, under General Julius Chase. This force’s area of operation is the northern Great Plains and the Montana/Idaho gap. The objective is to penetrate enemy defenses in the latter region and break through to take military control of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and Arroyo – which satellite intelligence has designated as a secondary industrial area to the NCR’s southern industrial centre. The latter city is also important for symbolic purposes in addition to its strategic role. 200,000 combat personnel.
- Allied expeditionary troops of the Kaiserliche Reichswehr under Feldmarschall (5-star equivalent) Frederick Augustus Hohenzollern, designated as “Armeekorps Amerika”. 100,000 soldiers will be present by mid-2332. Forces await designation to a combat zone.
- Allied expeditionary troops of the Royal British Army under Sir Charles Arthur Maudling, 4-star equivalent; designated British Expeditionary Force to America. 75,000 will be present by mid-2332, 100,000 by the end of the year. Forces await designation to a combat zone.
In addition, the combat size of US Army divisions has been increased to 10,000 and in accordance with this they have been restructured. Instead of a triangular (two maneuver elements and an artillery element) structure we will be switching to a new pentomic (five maneuver elements) model in which each division will consist of five Regiments of 2,000. An Armored Division will have three Armored Regiments, an Infantry Regiment and an Air Cavalry Regiment; an Infantry Division will be of three Infantry Regiments, an Air Cavalry Regiment, and an Armored Regiment; a Cavalry Division will be of two Infantry Regiments, two Air Cavalry Regiments, and an Armored Regiment. Each Regiment will incorporate four Battalions of approximately 500. In light of this a Corps – the basic unit of operational art – will now be 40,000 (three Infantry Divisions and an Armored Division), which will put each Army at 5 Corps formations. When the US Army Air Corps is ready its new airborne divisions will be added to this structure.
The roles of the USN, USMC and USAF are not discussed in this document; I have sent memoranda to the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force discussing their particular reorganisations under the Military Appropriations Act 2332.
God bless America.
==*==
10:00 EST, January 27 2332
Fort Raven Rock, Pennsylvania, United States of America
General Alexander Autumn sat back with ease into his chair. This underground facility was, in many ways, where the reclamation and restoration of the USA had really began. This office in fact had been his father’s, back when John Henry Eden – that paranoiac who refused to communicate except over the base PA system or radio – had been President. But he had not taken position here for mere nostalgic purposes. Not only was it far away enough from the Pentagon that no conceivable enemy attack that struck it could harm him, but this facility was equipped as a communications centre capable of covering the entire continent – there was even a ZAX series AI on site to help manage the comms system. Some memory issue during the Great War, it seemed, had wiped it completely, but the system had been restored to working order during Kirkpatrick’s administration and the artificial intelligence was always eager to help.
Before him on his desk stood two portraits only – his father, and his daughter’s graduation photo. He gladly took a cup of coffee and a mentats tablet proffered by a Mr. Handy robot he’d called up and began to muse on the strategic possibilities.
Could the Rio Grande situation (along with the general need for southward expansion) be exploited to open an additional crack in the NCR’s armour? Was Sonora the key? Or was swinging through the north via Canada the trick? A naval stratagem, a landing at San Diego or Point Arena or Santa Barbara, to cut the NCR’s industrial centres from its breadbasket at a stroke? Other possibilities remained. Lincoln had been forced to attack the Confederate rebels from every possible angle to defeat them. He sighed. In mid-February the first German and British regiments would arrive via Hampton Roads along with the commanders of the forces in question. He would be glad to meet Friedrich again, and Maudling … well, he’d proven himself capable during the French war some 15 years ago, at Agincourt, Amiens and Beauvais.
==*==
13:00 PST, January 28 2332
Redmond, NCR State of Sea-Tac
General Matthew Banks, NCR Army Air Corps Chief of Staff, felt the chill of the cold wind on his face as he got out of his staff car. It was a chill that reminded him, sometimes, of the way Romanowski made him feel.
The Army Air Corps, at times nicknamed the “Bear Force”, was never really appreciated by the main NCR Army. But with the increase in funding as part of the general reconfiguration and re-armament certain projects had gotten revived. Not ones the OSI was involved with – these were being paid for out of the Army’s own pockets. But still, money was money. Part of him was worried that all these schemes and plans would seriously eat into the treasury – there was not only a mass ‘Cougar’ conversion underway of the old ‘Coyote’ MBTs, but an all-new, all-plasma main battle tank – the Deathclaw MBT – was now in the prototype phase to eventually replace that.
But still … he entered the hangar and took an elevator to the viewing platform, a smile coming over his face as what was before him came into view. In front of him, on the hangar floor, stood a long-range Vulture fusionjet-bomber. Intended for strategic strikes on enemy targets, it was a curved delta-wing shape, with no tail or cockpit extending out from the main craft. Designed not just for speed, but also for stealth. The representative for the design company, Olympic Aircraft, rattled off various technical specifics but Banks waved him off. This would do what Lance Robertson hadn’t been able to.
The major industrial centres of the Enclave were too heavily guarded by laser air defence to be viable targets, but Banks wasn’t interested in them specifically. He was after the smaller industrial areas, the slave-cities that fed the big slave-metropoli. A factory whose supply chain was crippled was as good as a factory destroyed. He had a team already busy at work selecting targets across the south-east, north-east and mid-west of the American continent. When the time was right – that is, once the factories pumping out bombers and the new long-range Condor Mk. 2s that would escort them were sufficiently up to speed, which should be in a few months – he’d begin the air campaign in earnest. With the range of these craft and their new escorts, he’d have no need for Brotherhood support in deploying them – which was another benefit given the decisions that’d been made at the top.
==*==
0:00 EST, February 2 2332
Sigsbee Naval Base, Cuba, United States of America
Admiral James Howland got off from the Navy vertibird onto the landing pad of USS
Columbia, giving the lights of Havana across the bay to the south a long look. The Cuban people were a decent sort, who’d suffered under bad governance – the Spaniards, a spree of looting despots, the Communists, the pirate warlords of the post-war era – for far too long before the USA finally bit the bullet and put them under its own administration. It had taken decades, but the investment the USA had put into restoring and improving Cuba had paid off. She was an exporter of sugar, chocolate, fish, fruit, pharmaceuticals, alcohol and cigars, among various other goods, all of which made her prosperous. The state had especially close ties with Florida, which had almost caused it to join the Gulf Coast Commonwealth.
The island state was regularly promoted in Southern Europe – along with her sister Hispaniola – as a land of opportunity, and that was still quite true even if there had been a slight downturn in recent years.
But though Cuba now considered itself part of the USA after decades of integration work, a wave of immigrants from Europe, and multiple generations who had known nothing but being part of the United States, some things had not much changed. The nightlife and gambling was still a major attraction, the populace still went more to Catholic services than UAC ones, and for every sign in English there was another in Spanish.
At any rate, the romance of the Caribbean Commonwealth was not what he was primarily thinking of right now. What he was concerned about was the enemy fleet and where to confront it. They were moving due north in formation at a good speed and were currently some 120 miles from Grand Cayman. Presuming they stuck to their current trajectory they were going to try to break through the strait between Cuba and Yucatan to menace the Gulf Coast. Whether they intended to force a landing somewhere, he didn’t know – he could only presume that was part of their intended goals. The enemy could potentially swing round Jamaica to try and cross between Cuba and Hispaniola, but that trajectory would be foolish for any force – they could easily be boxed in completely between the three islands.
It was partially for this very reason that the USA had incorporated the Caribbean islands. The archipelago created a series of natural choke-points through which any naval force approaching the Gulf or East Coast from the south had to go through, and making sure there were naval forces already in position to rapidly respond to any attempt to push past those choke-points was paramount. Ensuring the islands could not be used as a staging-point for attack as the Soviets had tried was another key goal. A puppet leader or ally reliant on his own military could be overthrown by any random gang of guerrillas – an elected American governor could not be without defeating the entire US military.
At any rate, he was of the mind to try and engage them in the strait. On the open ocean it would be too easy for them to maneuver.
All this ran through his head as he walked from the landing pad to the bridge of USS Columbia and took his place in the captain’s chair. Surrounded by consoles already manned by his ranking officers, the high-tech sterility of it brought some relief. He was in his element.
--*--
“We have the Enclave fleet on radar, heading from 3’o clock,” Lieutenant Commander McLaughlin stated, her voice clear as crystal. “Prepare to engage with missiles?”
“All anti-ship missiles, fire at will,” Admiral Fletcher ordered from his command chair. The bridge of NCS
Mojave was ready for action, though it was not yet light. He then spoke into the radio.
“NCS
Tandi, NCS
Cassandra Moore, NCS
Aaron Kimball and NCS
Lee Oliver, I want all fighter and attack wings ready to launch. Gunners, I want firing solutions on the enemy cruisers and battleships.”
The NCR ships’ missiles opened up, firing off into the distance. Radar returns quickly showed that the Enclave laser defences were handily taking them out – and the Enclave fleet was already retaliating. Scanners showed a wave of missiles followed by what seemed to be multiple aircraft wings heading for the NCR fleet.
“All fighter wings,” Fletcher ordered. “Lift off and prepare to engage. Attack wings on my mark. I want all our ships’ guns to be firing at the Enclave as soon as possible.”
--*--
Flight Lieutenant Marilyn Judy held her breath as her vertibird flew into the midst of the NCR fleet, along with its rapidly dwindling squadron. The USAF had comparatively neglected its naval aviation branch, even as it stubbornly held on to it in the Congressional budget fights year after year. Therefore, there were no designated attack planes beyond the vertibirds that had been used back when USS
Richardson had been the only USN ship.
This now seemed to have been a mistake.
Her air wing was taking heavy casualties; too ungainly and with too large a cross-section to avoid heavy laser AA fire, the vertibirds were going down like flies as they tried to launch an attack.
It’s a turkey shoot like me and the family had back home, and we’re the turkeys. That they’d managed to get into the enemy formation was a miracle, helped by the fighters holding away the NCR carriers’ own attempt to intercept. Judy frantically fired a series of her missiles at an enemy battleship, hitting its forward three-gun turret. The combination of micro-nuclear and plasma explosions knocked the turret off its casemate as a molten mess of slag, spewing white-hot molten steel over the deck. An orange laser lashed out from the vessel’s superstructure scant seconds later, blowing off her plane’s left rotor.
Flung around as her vehicle went into a tailspin, she had scant time to put on the floatation armbands round her wrists before another laser went straight into the cockpit and killed her instantly.
A few seconds later, semi-molten steel finished its trickle down the broken casemate of NCS
Dayglow State’s foremost turret right down the powder elevator straight into the ship’s forward magazine. The whole forward part of the vessel went up in an explosion that quickly caused a secondary detonation in the ship’s two fusion plants, briefly outshining the mid-morning sun. Every living soul in the central super-structure was instantly reduced to free-floating atoms as a giant plume of vaporised metal and rapidly cooling plasma shot skywards.
This inspired yet another blast in the ship’s aft magazine, sending the rear turret flying into the air like some giant toddler’s wayward toy. The scooped-out husk that had once been a naval vessel split in two and crashed like a stone to the bottom of the ocean.
--*--
“Heavy casualties among the attack wings,” Captain David Stevens of the USS
Kitty Hawk reported over vidscreen. “Almost total. Colonel Halley is pulling back what’s left.”
“Should have known this was coming,” Howland muttered under his breath. Letting the Air Force retain naval aviation at all had been a mistake, but a manageable one when fighting 19th-century rejects. Now? They would certainly be losing that task. He ended the call.
The gunnery duel was going better – they’d taken out a number of enemy cruisers and escorts with a balance of casualties in their favour. Torpedo attacks were going well and the plasma railguns on the
John Paul Jones-class destroyers were proving effective. If he didn’t destroy the enemy fleet, he’d have damn well neutered it by the end of today.
“Enemy fighters moving in on our position! Multiple squadrons, sir!” Lieutenant Commander Daniels warned from his console.
“We got cover to intercept?” Howland asked.
“Our fighters are covering the retreating v-birds. What’s left of them, at this rate.”
“Pull them back! I won’t trust in our lasers alone!”
--*--
Flight Lieutenant Joseph Gutierrez prepared to swoop in for an attack, handling his Condor warplane with ease. The Enclave fighter jets weren’t as manoeuvrable, even with their wings in forward position, and the NCR planes didn’t have to dodge the lasers – that was impossible anyway – but just prevent them from getting a target lock. The enemy squadrons – he checked his radar – seemed to be looping back around from the direction of the NCR fleet, whether licking their wounds or heading back home in a panic to head off the NCR fighters that had slipped through their ships’ defences.
He dove down, skimming the surface of the sea, and raced toward his target, one of the large Enclave carriers. He saw the white capital letters on the hull and the hateful name they spelled out. RICHARDSON – the last name of the man who tried to kill the world with FEV, still a hero to the Enclave, who denied his crimes had ever been committed. That had only ever been a dim history-class memory to Gutierrez before now, but as he saw those letters the awful reality stoked a fire in his heart that pulsed through his blood with every beat. He released all his torpedoes in rapid succession.
They struck home, one after the other, right at the enemy ship’s bow. Some others struck from his wingmates at the vessel, but seemed to do little damage. Gutierrez’ ones though, did far more than superficial.
USS
Richardson’s bow had been painstakingly welded back to the main superstructure of the vessel, the seam held together with duraframe, but this repair job had left weakness behind. With an awful, ear-splitting scream of twisting and buckling metal the bow once more broke free of the ship it was attached to – and this time on the open waters, not on dry land. High-pressure streams of water overwhelmed the pre-War compartments, literally slicing through military-grade steel. On a newer ship the all-duraframe construction would have stood a fighting chance – but USS
Richardson was an old, brave vessel. Combined with the below-waterline damage from the other torpedoes (survivable on its own), her pumps were simply overwhelmed. She began taking on water; began slipping her way down to the seabed where the Caribbean met the Gulf. Once the process had started it could not be stopped.
She had fought in the Pacific Theatre of the Sino-American War, then sheltered thousands of civilians for centuries while beached, serving as a refuge from the brutality and primitiveness of the wasteland. She had been the keystone of the reclamation of Boston, fought against the French invasion of southern England that same year. For almost five decades she had a symbol of America’s military strength, engineering prowess, desire to restore what was lost two hundred years ago. And now her storied career of more than two and a half centuries was over just like that. She started to slip down uncontrollably, each wave licking higher and higher at her hull. Pilots took off for the air base near Havana; deck crew hurried into surviving vertibirds or descended in lifeboats; those within the ship ran to emergency teleport rooms which took them to the naval hospital in Miami. Those too far away to reach the teleport chambers in time had no real option but to put on life jackets and rebreather masks, make their way to the opening hangars, and hope for the best.
But even in her death throes the old, wounded lion could still lash out – Gutierrez watched in horror as two of his fellow pilots leapt into the air to chase a retreating vertibird and were taken out by the laser defences.
A good number of the sailors caught up in the wreck would be fished out of the water up to hours later by friendly vessels. More than expected were alive; but still, about half the crew were killed in the sinking of USS
Richardson, including almost all those in the broken-off bow of the mighty vessel. As he flew back towards NCS
Tandi, Gutierrez felt a feeling of elation at his blow against the Enclave only for his heart to sink as he saw her silhouetted against the setting sun. The NCR carrier’s main tower was melted and aflame, her hull twisted by intense heat. Two of her destroyer escorts were in a similar condition; one had sunk.
--*--
Admiral James Howland counted his losses. Half in total of his destroyer force; four of his cruisers, two battleships, and USS
Richardson. Almost all of the Caribbean fleet’s vessels had suffered some degree of damage. But most of what had been lost could be repaired and replaced. The Atlantic Fleet would give up one of its two carriers and two of its battleships until the shipyards at Mobile – constantly working as they were – could make up the losses. His enemy on the other hand … he’d taken losses just as bad. Estimates were eight destroyers, six cruisers, a battleship and two of his carriers destroyed or disabled. And while the enemy yards at San Diego and San Francisco were beyond the reach of US aerial or orbital attack for right now, they were also too far away to repair or reinforce.
Much like at Jutland, where the High Seas Fleet had given the Royal Navy a severe blow, his opposite number would not be able to risk battle again. On the other side of things, every man's heart had sunk with USS
Richardson. If the NCR navy was unable to keep fighting for material reasons, the USN was just as crippled emotionally right now.
The battle of the Cuban Strait was over, and as the sun finished dipping below the horizon Howland ordered the US Caribbean Fleet to retreat to its home port.
--*--
Admiral Fletcher looked at the reports. A battleship lost, seven cruisers sunk, one all but disabled, ten destroyers taken out and two of his carriers sunk or disabled. It was dismal. Worst was that he could not receive reinforcements or repair his damaged ships – the NCR naval campaign in the Caribbean had already
de facto ended. But it had achieved at least some of its goals. The enemy’s fleet in the Caribbean was bloodied, and the loss of such a large carrier had a strategic impact in its own right quite apart from the propaganda value. The TV stations would be showing clips from the sinking of the Enclave carrier
Richardson for months on end.
But more importantly, the engagement had allowed three of the NCR’s attack sub squadrons to get past the West Indies into the Atlantic while the Enclave fleet was engaged with the surface ships. Hopefully they’d be able to disrupt sea traffic round the East Coast, mid-Atlantic and Demerara Plain enough to prevent the Enclave’s auxiliaries and industrial raw materials from arriving in sufficient numbers to help them win.
==*==
CST 14:30, February 5 2332
Mexico City, Third Mexican Empire
John M. Halterman was glad to step out of the scorching heat of the Zocalo as he entered the Imperial Palace. As a US Special Envoy, he had been sent to the Third Mexican Empire for a specific task, and would otherwise have never entered it willingly. The Empire was a backwards mess, struggling to industrialise while maintaining its neo-feudal agricultural system - an impossibility, to be blunt. The Empire’s growth in population over the past few decades had been largely due to food exports through Texas and the Gulf from the American south-east and from the Californian central valley. The glut of labour had fuelled the factories of the Empire’s industrial corridor that ran from San Luis Potosi to Oaxaca, and created a large and restive urban underclass to add to the tensions introduced by its feudal system.
The invasion of the Rio Grande, Halterman knew, had not been for purely for its own sake, or for the benefit of reunifying Mexico (a goal he couldn’t blame these imperials for rallying behind) but also for the desperate purpose of acquiring new farmland. The disruption of trade through Texas by the Californian invasion and the concomitant closing of the Gulf of Mexico to civilian American traffic since mid-2330 had created a food crisis; and Emperor Manuelo had no other option to deal with the situation than to try and conquer new territory.
Chopping up the great estates into freeholdings owned by those who farmed the land in an effort to improve efficiency would result in the great lords turning against him; importing fertiliser from the Californian rebels would turn him into a puppet of Shady Sands; and the dregs of oil that still came up out of Petro-Chico’s old wells were sorely needed to fuel the few motorized and armoured vehicles that formed the elite of the Imperial Army, so mechanising agriculture was out of the question. But Rio’s farmland would not be enough to supply all the food he needed. Manuelo, like the various socialist governments – the ‘33 German and ‘49 Chinese foremost among them – which had blighted humanity from the early 20th century to the late 21st, needed to keep on conquering to keep himself afloat. Whether the NCR was involved or not – for all Halterman knew, they may well be – he would be moving his forces into Texas.
Which was in part why he was here, stepping in to the office of the Foreign Minister,
Don Miguel Montero de Tlaxcala. The nobles of the Third Empire were a variegated collection in terms of ancestry – a mix of gone-native US National Guard officers involved in the occupation, members of the pro-American regime, cartel bosses, etc. - but they claimed the names of ancient ruling families to try and lend themselves legitimacy. With the era of chaos and consequent destruction of records shortly after the bombs fell, no-one could prove otherwise.
“Your Excellency,” Halterman said, as he took out a piece of paper from his pocket, handing it to the noble. It was divided in two columns, printed in English and Spanish, with the signatures “Nathan Washington” and “Leonardo Alvarez” scrawled at the bottom.
“The Republic of the Rio Grande has formally decided to join the United States of America as an Organised Incorporated Territory. You may read the text of the treaty for yourself. That being understood as the situation, the government of the United States of America gives this ultimatum. All armed forces of the Third Mexican Empire are to leave the United States Rio Grande Territory within sixty days. Failing that, we will be forced to make sure you do so.”
“You
yanquis always looked down on us. You stole
Tejas and all of
Alta California, but that wasn’t enough for you. You invaded our land, got it burned in nuclear fire and poisoned by fallout, killed millions of our people by getting them involved in your war to swallow up the world. And still you presume to dictate to the Imperial crown of Mexico like we’re children!”
“The treaty has been signed. The Rio Grande is US soil. We Americans don’t like foreign armies on our territory. Leave or be made to leave. That is the only choice the Third Mexican Empire, your country, has.”
“We hold the land, you don’t. Do you mean to drive us out, as your armies struggle to hold off the
Californios? Your great ‘supercarrier’ got sunk off of Cuba, as they told me.”
Miguel ripped the copy of the Treaty of Reynosa in two with a single motion of his hand.
“Words on paper are cheap, especially those signed by a ruler in exile. We’ll see if you have the
cojones to make them mean anything.”
Halterman kept a stony expression on his face. That was part of the training programs they put out at State; to keep one’s cool and not to show emotion. To be easily rattled put you in a weaker position when negotiating or dictating terms.
“We defeated the largest empire in history when we were just starting out, and we defeated the largest army ever mustered in human history. Do you think we’re impressed by your attempts at tough talk?”
“It’s a matter of principle. Not everything in the world bends to your will, you should know. You agreed by treaty that the Rio Grande was the border.”
“We made that treaty with a country that ceased to exist in the nuclear war – even your own records acknowledge that, starting the line of your Emperors two hundred years ago. For your own people’s sake, you had better follow my words – if not as an order, then as advice.”
“We won’t.”
“As you wish,” Halterman said, and turned his back to leave the palace and this country behind, shaking the dust off his feet.
--*--
Some hours later, just outside the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, Emperor Manuelo de Iturbide and
Infante Enrique received the report from the south. The American ambassador had given his dictate, and had left after the Foreign Minister blew him off. He looked over the telegram message in his tent, considered the implications. The
Californios had promised the south Texan border strip; and it was an offer he had already decided to take. Not only did he need the farmland, he needed the technological riches that Texas had to offer. What weaponry and advanced equipment the
yanquis had taken with them to Mexico in the 2050s had been lost relatively quickly over time since the bombs had fallen; they didn’t need the infrastructure to make new gear or spare parts in Mexico when they could simply have it taken to them from their home country in hours via cargo plane.
Which meant the Empire was behind both the
yanquis and the
californios. With a technological gap that varied from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years, she stood no chance of making up that difference by herself before being consumed as she had swallowed up lesser statelets before her. The conquest of this new territory would mean an influx of new technology that could possibly be reverse-engineered, as well as the industrial and agricultural benefits. It was a long shot, but better that than no chance at all.
“You should lead the men!” Enrique said. “We can’t delay any longer. Besides, the Californios offered full support.”
“I don’t know,” Manuelo said. “We should wait until our allies are ready to join us in the attack.”
“I won’t let an insult to our house stand. They’ve taunted us from beyond the river enough. That they should have the gall to order an Emperor around as if he were their house-servant ... Have you no pride, father? No courage? No sense of shame?”
“Think, my son! You’re young – that means you’re rash, and that makes you foolish. The
yanquis … well, I hear all sorts of things about them, but I know they’re not fools. To try and get us to make a mistake … that’s the kind of trick they would try to pull.”
“If you won’t have the courage to lead our forces into battle against the
yanquis in answer to this insult, then I will do so in your stead, father. And what will the lords of the realm think of an Emperor who sends the heir out to do his own duties?”
The answer was unspoken, but both men, father and son knew it. By allowing himself to be upstaged as such, Manuelo’s display of weakness had the potential to lead to a lack of trust in the great lords that he had the ability to uphold the peace of the realm. The troubles Manuelo and his father had striven to end within the Empire; centralising reforms left half-finished, Imperial Ministries still not fully bureaucratised, etc., would return.
“Very well,” Emperor Manuelo said. “I’ll lead the First Corps beyond the river in two weeks. The Second Corps at Reynosa, Third Corps at Piedras Negras and Fourth Corps at Matamoros will join in the offensive.”
--*--
Approximately 180 miles away and two days later, Sergeant Samuel Pierce trudged through the coastal plain 12 miles south-east of Valle Hermoso, a fire-team of Secret Service agents following his team. His helmet was off, maglocked to the back of his armour – there was no real risk of an enemy NBC attack, and the risk of head injury by enemy bullet was in his opinion offset by the heat in this country, even just past midwinter. He had heard rumours in the mess-halls at Adams that captured enemy officers claimed there had been ten thousand US special operations of various kinds engaged in Texas before the invasion.
Pure ridiculousness, of course. There had been mere hundreds of US Army Rangers, USMC Marauders, Secret Service personnel, USAF Special Tactics teams, et cetera, engaged in Texas. But mobility (through motorbikes and sometimes teleport extraction-insertions) and the presence of resistance fighters using airdropped US combat equipment had created a grand mirage of many thousands – one which had led them to spread their forces in the east of the former (now reintegrated) LSR too thin to react overwhelmingly to the initial pushes.
High Command had started working on this when the Treaty of Reynosa was signed. The recon planes had managed to get good estimates of the sizes and dispositions of the Imperial Mexican forces – 225,000 of them, situated into four 50,000 strong formations encamped around the RRG’s largest cities and 25,000 scattered across various smaller towns. The army was primarily supplied by two brand-new railways which went north across the Valley of Mexico from San Luis Potosi, one terminating at Monterrey and the other at Monclova. But there were also signs of military forces opposed to them on the coast, which his team, among many, had been sent to investigate and support.
They surmounted a small hill – on this flat grassland, from its height he could see for miles – and put on his helmet to make use of the HUD’s zoom function. To his northwest about a klick away he could see a white-walled, red-tiled ranch-style building, being approached at speed by a squadron of cavalry. Most of them were in khaki-coloured fatigues, but a minority of them were in bright red-and-green uniforms, with shining metal breastplates. They carried shortened R91s as weapons. Behind them on a road – nothing more really than a gravel footpath – marched a column of bolt-action armed infantry - about 500 – behind two almost comedic tall armoured vehicles armed with small, short cannon and machine guns. On closer inspection, their chassis were riveted together. Machine-gun teams were also firing at the building, acting to suppress any return fire through its windows as the horsemen closed in.
He ordered Simmons to use his M202 to take out the enemy armour, and moved the rest of the men – 3 in total – to engage the enemy. Ducking as they ran through the tall grass, they went almost undetected until at the 500-metre range, they leapt up and fired their plasma rifles at the enemy. Sapphire-blue bolts sliced through the air, scything down men and horses. The attack broke up, with an element of the enemy cavalry moving to try and attack Pierce’s team. Plasma fire brought them down.
Pierce heard the whistling sound of missiles hurtling through the air and two plasma explosions scant seconds later – Simmons confirmed the enemy armour was out over helmet radio. He then ordered the man use his incendiaries on the infantry behind them – it was confirmed. Less than a minute after that, screams of pain filled Pierce’s hearing as ethyl-aluminum compound, already flashing into fire as it was exposed to oxygen, rained down on the milling troops, burning at 3000 Farenheit.
The machine-gunners, with barely any understanding of what had so quickly turned a textbook assault into a slaughter, broke from their positions and ran, abandoning their equipment. Automatic fire then burst out from the windows of the old ranch on the attacking cavalry, hitting them by surprise. Pierce and his men took out the rest of them as they retreated with plasma fire.
The US men holstered their weapons and approached the old building – they were met by cautious, weary Rian fighters and directed to the commander of the facility in what had clearly been a living room before its owner had abandoned it. Pierce took off his helm so he could talk face-to-face.
“Captain Phillip Mariosa,” the tanned, brown-haired and dark-eyed soldier said, his uniform tattered and a bandolier of bullets over his chest. “In the Army of the Republic of the Rio Grande. And you
americanos are … ?”
“Sergeant Samuel Pierce, US Secret Service.”
“One of the American President’s bodyguards! Tell me, what’s he like?”
“The Lincoln Regiment guards him, the White House, his estate and his holiday home. I’m from the McKinley Regiment, so we, well our job is more proactive. But what I’ve heard from some of the reassigned people is that he’s a very serious guy. Very melancholic.”
“Is it true that he was alive two hundred years ago, before the War?”
“Yes. He knows all the pain of what was lost first-hand. Now, on to important issues. How many men do you have here?”
“An under-strength company,” Mariosa explained. “If you mean in general, the RRG Army has ten thousand men remaining out of 50,000, that we know of. All pushed against the coast. There may be another two to five thousand in the mountains, and several thousand scattered across the countryside in small groups.”
He gave a sorrowful sigh.
“We don’t know. All we know is that we’re low on supplies, low on food, we have no capability of launching an offensive operation, and our President and Congress fled across the river when they beat us at La Sierrita. Or tried to, I’ve heard, at least. What even happened to him?”
“He’s alive and well, but not your President any more.”
“What?!”
“In order to secure the US Government’s assistance – of which we’re the start – he signed a treaty in which the RRG would join the United States of America as a Territory, to receive Statehood shortly after the damned commiefornians are beaten.”
Wild emotions rose up in Mariosa’s face, and for a moment he looked like he was about to strike Pierce on the face, but he calmed just as quickly.
“That was your price for helping us?! I should have guessed there would be one … a sad thing, but this world was never a charity. Still, better to be governed from Washington than ruled by the Iturbide
maricons and their lackeys.”
“You’ll govern yourselves from Reynosa,” Pierce said. “Sharing your full sovereignty with whatever Commonwealth you end up in and the Federal Government.”
“But still … I love Rio. It feels shameful that she should … the c
alifornios and the Iturbides say you want to conquer the world. Or kill everybody on it, the
californios say that sometimes.”
“Look,” Pierce replied. “I’m a citizen of the State of Pennsylvania – born and bred –, the Atlantic Commonwealth, and the USA. They don’t contradict each other, and I love all three. As for world conquest? Ruling the world would never be worthwhile even for us. Can you imagine trying to keep a lid on all of Africa, Europe and Asia at once? Our biggest goal is to reunify our own country and make damned sure nobody else ever hurts us again like the ChiComs did.”
“I don’t know how to feel about this,” Mariosa replied, his face still showing a confused mix of emotions. “Part of me is angry, part of me is worried, part of me is said, part of me is relieved that at last we have help at all. And I don’t know how the higher ranks will take these claims. Where is President – I guess Governor – Alvarez right now?”
“In New Orleans, waiting for the right moment to come home.”
“Maybe with your help, we can give the bastard one,” Mariosa chuckled.
--*--
Meanwhile, in the ranching town of San Angelo close to the heart of Texas, General Joseph Maguire was preparing the next move. He had concentrated the forces under him so much as he could, to be ready to strike as soon as the Mexican invasion forced the Enclave’s corps at San Antonio to move out of its defensive positions and separate up. He’d then be in prime position to take not only San Antonio and Austin (
with that traitorous bitch Armstead) but move on to hit the sea at Corpus Christi. That done, he could destroy the enemy corps with ease and move on. Then he would only have to face the two corps of theirs remaining in Texas; and they could be dealt with piecemeal. He idly looked over the papers – the Republic of New Canaan had voted in a plebiscite to join the NCR as two states, Salt Lake and Zion.
Four Senators not tied to special interests, he mused.
That’ll be a boon to Kimball’s anti-corruption pushes.
The previous counter-offensive had been confused, divided and thrown together too quickly; Maguire would ensure that mistake wouldn’t be made again.
==*==
09:00 CST, February 8 2332
Tahlequah, Oklahoma
“Oh we’re the bully soldiers of the first of Arkansas,
We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the Law;
We can hit a rebel farther than the reg’lars ever saw,
As we go marching on! ...”
Colonel Peterson led the column of singing National Guard men, having recently decamped from their trucks and APCs, as the battalion marched into the town of Tahlequah. Through nominally occupied by the Brotherhood of Steel, they and the NCR forces previously present had withdrawn from it after their debacle at St. Louis – all that the 1st Arkansas Infantry had encountered thus far had been patrols of Brotherhood Militia, which weren’t worth much. Occasionally they’d encountered a power-armoured enemy soldier, but that was a job gauss rifles and tank rounds had made quick work of dealing with.
It was a civilised enough place – largely 19th-century brick boxes. The bombs that had fallen in the region had been largely around Tulsa and Oklahoma City; this place had been untouched and the rural communities of the State had been both well-armed and self-sufficient enough in food enough to survive decently until they joined the LSR fearing Brotherhood encroachment from the north.
The mayor asked if the United States would restore the benefits the Cherokee Tribe had been entitled to; Peterson was confused a moment until he clarified that the United States no longer recognised Native American tribes or reservations as distinct political units, that using the word 'tribe' to describe themselves had very negative connotations, and that he was not in a position of authority to make any kind of negotiation at any rate.
A garrison force of 200 was left in the small town to hold it against any surprise attack by remaining Brotherhood forces, and the National Guard units got in their IFVs and prepared to drive to Muskogee. Peterson wanted to beat the damned Kentuckers moving in the north to meet the US-aligned forces at Tulsa – the full-blown war for more than a year had hardened the attitudes of Carrera’s old supporters, such that even those who wouldn’t have accepted US military reintegration at the beginning would now do so.
