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GWOT VII - Snippets of the Third American Civil War
"The sheer determination of the people surrounding me, every day. I would in another country say fanaticism. But in California, with Bear this and Governor that and the constant reminders of the horrors of the Firecracker and of Homeland, it all seemed so normal and so natural. Only when I returned to England did I realize how much I had internalized the unique state of being a Californian, a creature that barely even existed and now considered itself not merely endangered but in constant peril of sudden extinction."
- from the introduction to "A State of Desperation - Two Years In The California Republic"
The California freeways and highways were full. This was not actually unusual, for a weekday evening.
What was unusual was that every direction leading 'out' of town was jam packed with cars full of people. Not stuff, people.
The laws of evacuation were clear and rigidly and brutally enforced.
Seats are for people. The penalty for putting stuff in a seat was that the car would be confiscated for evacuation use and the driver and any other passenger(s) regardless of age could walk to the next evacuation pickup point to wait for their bus. Or seat. With what they could carry, of course, but only that.
One otherwise 'inbound' lane of every freeway was reserved for military and emergency traffic. With every nerve strained, people either looking for or determinedly _not_ looking for the flash that would warn of nuclear attack, they yet did not cross that innocent line of cones marking off that one reserved lane.
A blue tarp over a bullet-riddled car pushed off the shoulder by a dozer blade bore mute testimony to the method of enforcement. Red and black dripped from the lowest corner of the frame.
Most police were eligible to evacuate with their communities. State police however were obligated to protect their properties. As the California Highway Patrol protected the freeways, and the freeways were the method of evacuation for millions of people, it was the law that no CHP officer was eligible for evacuation under any conditions whatsoever. Even after evacuation was completed, they would continue patrolling - wearing their one eye patch so that the first nuclear flash would not completely blind them.
There had been dress rehearsals and staging. But exemptions had been granted for the old and feeble, the medically fragile and the very young.
There were no exemptions today.
Where were they going? That depended. Some were headed to suburbs and rural areas. Others, to report to training and duty stations. The age of military service was fifteen to fifty five, and those with no prior training would be issued one uniform, a rule book and if nothing else, a shovel.
Shovels are useful in nuclear war. Dig a trench and lie down in it. Even against a close strike, surprising protection.
Also good for burying friends.
###
The Nevada border guard had been explicitly warned, by a California officer, what was going to happen.
So he had discreetly gone to his car and unloaded and locked away his handgun, over an hour before the first armored column actually ground its way across the fifty meters of empty land between the last California checkpoint and his own.
He still put his hands up as the pair of scout vehicles raced past, then the tanks, then the lines and lines of armored fighting vehicles. Then trucks, many trucks, first all military but then more and more civilian mixed in.
Then buses. School buses, transit buses, private charter buses. Some that looked like they shouldn't even be running. But all full.
It was an invasion, but a peaceful one. It was a migration. The Americans might very well nuke California. But they might shy away from nuking Nevada. So send as many people as possible _there_ to keep them from being blown up _here_.
Finally, a CHP unit stopped by his guard shack.
"Go home," the trooper said tiredly. "I have to sit here as long as you're here, and I have a lot of other things that need doing."
It was good advice so he followed it.
###
California Air National Guard
Combat Operations Center South
Mammoth Lakes
The kinetics had taken everyone by surprise. If they had been used as intended, it would have been horrific. California's airspace would have been defensible only by a handful of already airborne fighters and a few mobile AAA systems and radars.
Airfields were vulnerable to cratering - explosives that made it impossible to use runways to take off - and to direct attacks on hangars and bunkers, which by their nature revealed the position of the aircraft they concealed or protected.
There had been plans to increase the number of mobile ground launchers, to spread out the disposition of rough-field capable aircraft that could take off from smaller runways and even empty highways... but one of the side effects of total evacuation was that there were no empty highways to take off from, and would not be for some time.
The Naval Militia had gotten priority on the missiles that were available. That was only reasonable - it being far harder to blow up a submarine than a truck, and their task a far harder one - but it left the AIr National Guard to stop a heavily armed modern air armada with tin cans and peashooters.
The whole state - the whole world - was following the threats and posturing, the blows and counter-blows, of California's Ambassador laying down the harshness and the terms demanded of America's surrender.
But so far at least, the threat was not materializing. There were clots of tanker aircraft, fighter aircraft and so-called dual role aircraft accumulating over Texas, New Mexico and Denver. But they didn't seem to have the obvious orders - finish fueling up, fly towards California and nuke the piss out of it.
What was even more interesting was _where_ the aircraft over Texas were accumulating. Not over El Paso headed west. One clot over San Antonio. Another clot over the Pantax mega-facility, where so many of America's nuclear weapons had been born. But not any more.
"Sir, incoming message."
She looked at it and she automatically decoded the acronyms, to the US military forces, courtesy copies to the rebel air forces.
To: USAF, USA, USN, USMC, USSF
CC: NANG, UANG, CA-ANG, HANG
The airspace of the sovereign state of Texas is closed to all parties to the Third American Civil War. Armed aircraft of the Texas Air National Guard and aircraft and weapons systems of other Texas military and civil agencies and allied foreign powers shall be used to enforce this restriction. Under no circumstances shall any aircraft, civilian or combatant, enter Texas controlled airspace under pain of 1) immediate destruction 2) an immediate state of unlimited nuclear war with the trespassing state or nation.
This includes the abolishment of the former "no fly zone" over the Pantax facility. This includes any private, commercial, civilian, cargo, emergency medical or other aircraft, manned or unmanned. This particularly and especially includes ballistic missiles...
Apparently Texas had taken a side. Her own.
Orders went out. California forces, stay out of the Great State of Texas at literally any cost.
She looked at the plot position indicators, of the air forces now massing over Texas.
The forces over Pantax and near Dallas, were Texan, of known composition.
The forces over San Antonio, however...
"Intelligence indicates that most of the aircraft over Southern Texas are Mexican Air Force. They are using third generation IFF systems and are in communication with Texas air combat controllers."
What?!?
"What is the nature of the communications?"
"Standing up joint Combat Air Patrols over the Rio Grande and over populated areas on both sides of the border. Refueling of Mexican aircraft from Texas tankers and ... also vice versa. A well planned joint effort."
Texas and Mexico.
Allied in mutual self defense.
Not incidentally, forcing any American attackers of California to favor the northern route.
For all intents and purposes, American bases in Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida and even the Carolinas were out of the war. It would be over before their aircraft could become a factor.
Unless they wanted to mess with Texas.
###
The dead-eyed Strategic Defense Forces sentry waited with the American news crew, as they drove and filmed - and broadcast - the empty streets of Sacramento.
They had a shortwave receiver tuned to the BBC. So they heard the news, the ultimatum.
A general low moan, at the confirmed news that California had in fact used a nuclear weapon. The destruction of the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Hawaii, and half the island it was on with it.
Yet there were no flashes of an American counter attack here.
A second report, not confirmed, of bombardments and explosions. Then a third, a fourth, and confirmations pouring in. From Maine to the Florida Keys, small explosions but many of them.
Kinetic bombardment system. American owned. California employed.
Still no retaliation. The only motion had been a single helicopter swooping down to the State Capitol building and then taking off only a minute later. Evacuating some last minute VIP, most likely.
The BBC reporting another nuclear explosion in America. The North Dakotas. Silo or aircraft, it was not clear.
Then the radio stopped.
The engines of the news media vehicles still worked. So did the street lights. But the BBC stopped transmitting.
###
"Capitan," the electronic warfare operator said calmly as he pressed a button and a timer started counting upward from zero. From the moment the English radio voice had stopped in his headset.
In a certain number of seconds. Two digits. Not three digits.
"Définissez la première condition pour le lancement de missiles stratégiques," the captain replied.
Less calmly. But he could be forgiven for that.
###
A sudden fade in, the voice starting up mid word.
"tre of America, an extremely powerful thermonuclear explosion. Windows broken in Chicago and Kansas City. Heavy damage in Iowa. No word at all from Nebraska. BMEWS confirming no ballistic tracks consistent with the explosion. Preliminary reports from international monitoring agencies."
A short shocked pause.
"Estimated yield five hundred megatons."
###
"Arrêtez le décompte."
A general sigh of relief from all on board.
It would perhaps not be necessary to destroy America today.
###
Sacramento was peaceful. Eerie quiet. Not even a distant siren to break the dampening heavy sound of nothing.
The BBC rattled on, about explosion and devastation.
A new voice cut in.
"This is. The President of the United States. In compliance with the terms, I announce the unconditional surrender of the United States of America to the California-led World Coalition. All US armed forces are ordered to hold their positions and take no offensive actions. US Naval Forces are ordered to surrender their ships at once."
A deep breath.
"My fellow Americans. Our conflicts, our fears, have brought us to the very brink of ruin and of devastation. We are afraid. Our enemies. Are afraid. We are all afraid.
"Out of that fear we must build peace. To have a future at all we must prove ourselves worthy of participating in that future. There has been far too much death already. I have received assurances that our way of life will not change, that no foreign troops will invade our soil, that our nation's borders will remain secure.
"Yet we must be accountable for that which we have done, and for what my predecessors attempted to do, in your name without your permission."
###
It would not be necessary to destroy America today.
The French submarine captain looked at the target package folder one more time.
War Plan Blue.
The thermonuclear destruction of the American Eastern seaboard. No city to be spared, maximum destruction of population centers.
He put the folder in his safe and slammed it with perhaps unnecessary force.
The thin walls of the cabin shook, the sentry stuck his head in, then retreated.
Not today, Satan.
Not today.
"The sheer determination of the people surrounding me, every day. I would in another country say fanaticism. But in California, with Bear this and Governor that and the constant reminders of the horrors of the Firecracker and of Homeland, it all seemed so normal and so natural. Only when I returned to England did I realize how much I had internalized the unique state of being a Californian, a creature that barely even existed and now considered itself not merely endangered but in constant peril of sudden extinction."
- from the introduction to "A State of Desperation - Two Years In The California Republic"
The California freeways and highways were full. This was not actually unusual, for a weekday evening.
What was unusual was that every direction leading 'out' of town was jam packed with cars full of people. Not stuff, people.
The laws of evacuation were clear and rigidly and brutally enforced.
Seats are for people. The penalty for putting stuff in a seat was that the car would be confiscated for evacuation use and the driver and any other passenger(s) regardless of age could walk to the next evacuation pickup point to wait for their bus. Or seat. With what they could carry, of course, but only that.
One otherwise 'inbound' lane of every freeway was reserved for military and emergency traffic. With every nerve strained, people either looking for or determinedly _not_ looking for the flash that would warn of nuclear attack, they yet did not cross that innocent line of cones marking off that one reserved lane.
A blue tarp over a bullet-riddled car pushed off the shoulder by a dozer blade bore mute testimony to the method of enforcement. Red and black dripped from the lowest corner of the frame.
Most police were eligible to evacuate with their communities. State police however were obligated to protect their properties. As the California Highway Patrol protected the freeways, and the freeways were the method of evacuation for millions of people, it was the law that no CHP officer was eligible for evacuation under any conditions whatsoever. Even after evacuation was completed, they would continue patrolling - wearing their one eye patch so that the first nuclear flash would not completely blind them.
There had been dress rehearsals and staging. But exemptions had been granted for the old and feeble, the medically fragile and the very young.
There were no exemptions today.
Where were they going? That depended. Some were headed to suburbs and rural areas. Others, to report to training and duty stations. The age of military service was fifteen to fifty five, and those with no prior training would be issued one uniform, a rule book and if nothing else, a shovel.
Shovels are useful in nuclear war. Dig a trench and lie down in it. Even against a close strike, surprising protection.
Also good for burying friends.
###
The Nevada border guard had been explicitly warned, by a California officer, what was going to happen.
So he had discreetly gone to his car and unloaded and locked away his handgun, over an hour before the first armored column actually ground its way across the fifty meters of empty land between the last California checkpoint and his own.
He still put his hands up as the pair of scout vehicles raced past, then the tanks, then the lines and lines of armored fighting vehicles. Then trucks, many trucks, first all military but then more and more civilian mixed in.
Then buses. School buses, transit buses, private charter buses. Some that looked like they shouldn't even be running. But all full.
It was an invasion, but a peaceful one. It was a migration. The Americans might very well nuke California. But they might shy away from nuking Nevada. So send as many people as possible _there_ to keep them from being blown up _here_.
Finally, a CHP unit stopped by his guard shack.
"Go home," the trooper said tiredly. "I have to sit here as long as you're here, and I have a lot of other things that need doing."
It was good advice so he followed it.
###
California Air National Guard
Combat Operations Center South
Mammoth Lakes
The kinetics had taken everyone by surprise. If they had been used as intended, it would have been horrific. California's airspace would have been defensible only by a handful of already airborne fighters and a few mobile AAA systems and radars.
Airfields were vulnerable to cratering - explosives that made it impossible to use runways to take off - and to direct attacks on hangars and bunkers, which by their nature revealed the position of the aircraft they concealed or protected.
There had been plans to increase the number of mobile ground launchers, to spread out the disposition of rough-field capable aircraft that could take off from smaller runways and even empty highways... but one of the side effects of total evacuation was that there were no empty highways to take off from, and would not be for some time.
The Naval Militia had gotten priority on the missiles that were available. That was only reasonable - it being far harder to blow up a submarine than a truck, and their task a far harder one - but it left the AIr National Guard to stop a heavily armed modern air armada with tin cans and peashooters.
The whole state - the whole world - was following the threats and posturing, the blows and counter-blows, of California's Ambassador laying down the harshness and the terms demanded of America's surrender.
But so far at least, the threat was not materializing. There were clots of tanker aircraft, fighter aircraft and so-called dual role aircraft accumulating over Texas, New Mexico and Denver. But they didn't seem to have the obvious orders - finish fueling up, fly towards California and nuke the piss out of it.
What was even more interesting was _where_ the aircraft over Texas were accumulating. Not over El Paso headed west. One clot over San Antonio. Another clot over the Pantax mega-facility, where so many of America's nuclear weapons had been born. But not any more.
"Sir, incoming message."
She looked at it and she automatically decoded the acronyms, to the US military forces, courtesy copies to the rebel air forces.
To: USAF, USA, USN, USMC, USSF
CC: NANG, UANG, CA-ANG, HANG
The airspace of the sovereign state of Texas is closed to all parties to the Third American Civil War. Armed aircraft of the Texas Air National Guard and aircraft and weapons systems of other Texas military and civil agencies and allied foreign powers shall be used to enforce this restriction. Under no circumstances shall any aircraft, civilian or combatant, enter Texas controlled airspace under pain of 1) immediate destruction 2) an immediate state of unlimited nuclear war with the trespassing state or nation.
This includes the abolishment of the former "no fly zone" over the Pantax facility. This includes any private, commercial, civilian, cargo, emergency medical or other aircraft, manned or unmanned. This particularly and especially includes ballistic missiles...
Apparently Texas had taken a side. Her own.
Orders went out. California forces, stay out of the Great State of Texas at literally any cost.
She looked at the plot position indicators, of the air forces now massing over Texas.
The forces over Pantax and near Dallas, were Texan, of known composition.
The forces over San Antonio, however...
"Intelligence indicates that most of the aircraft over Southern Texas are Mexican Air Force. They are using third generation IFF systems and are in communication with Texas air combat controllers."
What?!?
"What is the nature of the communications?"
"Standing up joint Combat Air Patrols over the Rio Grande and over populated areas on both sides of the border. Refueling of Mexican aircraft from Texas tankers and ... also vice versa. A well planned joint effort."
Texas and Mexico.
Allied in mutual self defense.
Not incidentally, forcing any American attackers of California to favor the northern route.
For all intents and purposes, American bases in Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida and even the Carolinas were out of the war. It would be over before their aircraft could become a factor.
Unless they wanted to mess with Texas.
###
The dead-eyed Strategic Defense Forces sentry waited with the American news crew, as they drove and filmed - and broadcast - the empty streets of Sacramento.
They had a shortwave receiver tuned to the BBC. So they heard the news, the ultimatum.
A general low moan, at the confirmed news that California had in fact used a nuclear weapon. The destruction of the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Hawaii, and half the island it was on with it.
Yet there were no flashes of an American counter attack here.
A second report, not confirmed, of bombardments and explosions. Then a third, a fourth, and confirmations pouring in. From Maine to the Florida Keys, small explosions but many of them.
Kinetic bombardment system. American owned. California employed.
Still no retaliation. The only motion had been a single helicopter swooping down to the State Capitol building and then taking off only a minute later. Evacuating some last minute VIP, most likely.
The BBC reporting another nuclear explosion in America. The North Dakotas. Silo or aircraft, it was not clear.
Then the radio stopped.
The engines of the news media vehicles still worked. So did the street lights. But the BBC stopped transmitting.
###
"Capitan," the electronic warfare operator said calmly as he pressed a button and a timer started counting upward from zero. From the moment the English radio voice had stopped in his headset.
In a certain number of seconds. Two digits. Not three digits.
"Définissez la première condition pour le lancement de missiles stratégiques," the captain replied.
Less calmly. But he could be forgiven for that.
###
A sudden fade in, the voice starting up mid word.
"tre of America, an extremely powerful thermonuclear explosion. Windows broken in Chicago and Kansas City. Heavy damage in Iowa. No word at all from Nebraska. BMEWS confirming no ballistic tracks consistent with the explosion. Preliminary reports from international monitoring agencies."
A short shocked pause.
"Estimated yield five hundred megatons."
###
"Arrêtez le décompte."
A general sigh of relief from all on board.
It would perhaps not be necessary to destroy America today.
###
Sacramento was peaceful. Eerie quiet. Not even a distant siren to break the dampening heavy sound of nothing.
The BBC rattled on, about explosion and devastation.
A new voice cut in.
"This is. The President of the United States. In compliance with the terms, I announce the unconditional surrender of the United States of America to the California-led World Coalition. All US armed forces are ordered to hold their positions and take no offensive actions. US Naval Forces are ordered to surrender their ships at once."
A deep breath.
"My fellow Americans. Our conflicts, our fears, have brought us to the very brink of ruin and of devastation. We are afraid. Our enemies. Are afraid. We are all afraid.
"Out of that fear we must build peace. To have a future at all we must prove ourselves worthy of participating in that future. There has been far too much death already. I have received assurances that our way of life will not change, that no foreign troops will invade our soil, that our nation's borders will remain secure.
"Yet we must be accountable for that which we have done, and for what my predecessors attempted to do, in your name without your permission."
###
It would not be necessary to destroy America today.
The French submarine captain looked at the target package folder one more time.
War Plan Blue.
The thermonuclear destruction of the American Eastern seaboard. No city to be spared, maximum destruction of population centers.
He put the folder in his safe and slammed it with perhaps unnecessary force.
The thin walls of the cabin shook, the sentry stuck his head in, then retreated.
Not today, Satan.
Not today.
