GWOT VII - Because
Oct. 12th, 2021 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Because
I had to wait for the Vice President, now the President, to call me back. But it was a short, short clock and we had a lot of balls in the air.
Dropping one meant we were all dead, and maybe the human race with us.
I had a very complex project battle management graphic on one of the laptops in front of me. It was being updated, in real time, by Collections, Air National Guard and California Naval personnel.
This wasn't just about America. This was about the Big Five. China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia.
The UK and France were allied with us. Russia was affirmatively hostile. China was a new partner but we didn't want to push it.
That said, we were all people with loaded guns pointed at each other in a tiny room. And we had just shot America in the leg, so to speak, and dared her to open fire.
We had our contingency plans in case France or the UK went off script. They were properly horrific and remain deeply classified, to this day.
You may suppose correctly that the same was true with respect to China. I officially have no idea.
It would be reasonable and prudent if California had contingency plans to cut itself off at the knees. If, say Echo 18 discovered his new lust for power and decided to use the tools at my disposal to take over the world. One or more of the armed diplomats in the room would undoubtedly end me in that event.
We weren't the only nuclear powers in this game. I may never know the details, but the others were bought off, read in or fucked up so that they would not interfere in this most essential operation.
THere is a particularly chilling computer game named DEFCON, written before the Firecracker, that perhaps captures the feelings of what I saw on the battle management graphic. WIthout the soundtrack.
We had no particular quarrel with American fighters, air defense artillery or missile defense systems. So long as they were used defensively.
I meant what I had said about silo doors and thermal bloom. Barring a secret US Navy construction program (or programme, if you're a UK battle analyst), we had everything that could float or sink more than once accounted for.
We thought we had all the land bases, concrete containers for rockets called 'silos', accounted for.
Ever since the middle of the Resistance, someone had been carefully running a count of ever single American aircraft, as well as captured aircraft under US control. Of special interest, Stealth aircraft - down to the number of engines and airframes. Prototypes and all.
California's aerospace industry had prototypes too. And all our stuff was locked and loaded and live. Our factory workers carried Geneva cards and were combatants.
We'd caught the Hammer. Thank God. If we hadn't, we'd have been the ones obliterated by kinetic fractional orbital bombardment ordinance.
What remained was the temptation to cheat - to use commando forces to carry small weapons of mass destruction. SADMs, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions. Suitcases too heavy to lift. Soda machines that dispensed kilotons of fury. Fire extinguishers that would extinguish city blocks. Backpacks carried by two men with a timer that said one minute but really meant BOOM.
Then there were the doomsday weapons. France had never built one. Neither had the United Kingdom. Too poor, too much democracy to hide such horrible things.
The Russians had three. Dead Hand - technically a communciations rocket, but in fact a way of shouting "Kill 'Em All And Let St. Peter Sort Them Out" across a continent. They had the deep silos, the unkillable untouchable ones that a pre-Firecracker America would have had trouble digging out the hard way, one at a time.
And they had Strangelove.
Strangelove was the American code name for a fission-fusion-fission-fusion weapon. Superbomb. The Tsar Bomba had been a scale prototype. Detonated in the Ural mountains, it would crack the mantle, whisk the atmosphere off the planet, and perhaps deep installations in Siberia might survive.
I glanced at my graphic. Colorado Springs was no more. Sorry folks, you were in the way of thoroughly killing the deep bunker after America had rebuilt it. We wanted Hammer to go away; the Americans could after all steal it back, and the safest thing to do was use it up. So over a hundred kinetic weapons had smacked what Heinlein had correctly called the "Gibraltar of Earth's space defenses" until it was no more.
You couldn't do that to Strangelove. It was the kind of insurance policy only a Russian could love. Like a ten million dollar insurance policy with a nine million dollar deductible.
Fortunately we didn't want to take over Russia. We just wanted the offensive power, the one that had actually used so many nukes, off the board.
I checked the clock again.
"Hotline message, the President needs to speak to us in the next minute."
"Copy."
###
"Mr. President, the national sovereignty of your aircraft will be respected if you land in Canada. However, we respectfully request that you do not land in any populated area."
###
"California, this is the President."
"Mr. President. We will now discuss the terms of America's surrender," I replied.
"No. A cease fire, to pre whatever this was levels."
"No, Mr. President. There is no going back now. Your Joint Chiefs are telling you to buy time, that the offensive warmaking capacity of America is limited but there are still weapons they have, if you can buy them the time. There. Is. No. Time.
"Allow me to be specific. Any ballistic launch from American territory, including overseas bases, or missile launch from any American aircraft, ship or submarine, will be considered an act of war against the entire world. California's power projection capabilities are modest. The British and the French, not so much.
"I have a commitment from the French and the United Kingdom that each ballistic track you fire, to test us, will result in two weapons launched at a United States city. They may be launched at the same city. They may be launched at different cities.
"You are tempted to try us. Shall we dispense with Chicago? New York? Two million frantic people are trying to get out of Chicago as I speak. Three million out of Greater New York. Perhaps Philadelphia? Boston? Sorry, can't hit Detroit or Cleveland, the Chinese did that for us. Don't try us, Mr. President, I beg of you."
"And what of our other weapons of mass destruction?"
There it was.
"Your advisors are reminding you that CBRNE and B-NICE include other options. Chemical is too large, too slow. And if I destroyed an Iowa town's water supply for a chemical warfare attack, what do you think I would do to America for the same crime? Poison the Mississippi? Or the Ohio?
"Then there's bio. Bio is slow. Bio against people, our population is dispersed, living in tents and under tarps. We're going to lose one half of one percent of our population _per week_ already. But being outside in open weather is our best protection against bioweapons. Bio against crops is even slower, and very very obvious. And all we would need to do is retailate in turn. You have Rice Blast. We have Wheat Blight. Name the crop, name the weapon.
"Do you want to go down in history as the President who starved millions of people because you couldn't face the facts?"
"There are other biologicals."
"Yes. Fish. Oil. Plastic. Again, just a longer death on a slower fuse."
"EMP."
"Oh come now, Mr. President, you cannot believe we didn't think of that. We trashed NORAD and your Space Force was a joke even before we Hammered its bases, but the UK will provide you with an updated BMEWS track list. You can destroy our electronics, and we can assuredly destroy yours. Mutual Assured Destruction. A man made Carrington Event. And our grandchildren, if there are any, will curse our names and curse the sky as they eat each other over open fires. But they will live to do so - unlike the greater weapons.
"Einstein said, 'I know not what weapons World War Three will be fought, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.' Any more jokes?"
"This is not a joke. We don't have Dead Hand. But we do have a Doomsday Weapon."
I shrugged, knowing he could not see me.
"Utterly defensive. Unless you seriously are going to threaten to wreck the planet. You can discuss that with the Russians and their own Doomsday devices. Yes, plural."
"It's in Hawaii."
The tenor of the room shifted. Good one, Mr. President. But now it's a race, between my analysts and your ... nerve.
###
"Now hear this. Battle stations missile, spin up tubes sixty one through seventy two, red pills and MIRVs. Authorization Seven Rampart Two Five Viva Viva Viva. This is not a drill. Target package is Hawaii, details to follow."
###
Crusty motherfucker. I meant that literally. If you could drop a big enough fusion weapon into the planetary mantle, you could do with a smaller bomb what the Russians could do with a bigger one.
And he might not believe we would actually use nuclear arms, because we had not yet.
Bad call.
We'd taken care to protect the US Navy Aegis Ashore system. Against this moment.
I pressed a little button right there.
###
Horns honked throughout the submarine and it rocked as a single missile was ejected from it, rose on a plume of steam, and lit in a pillar of fire.
###
"Mr. President, as a purely precautionary measure, I have just ordered the thermonuclear destruction of the Pacific Missile Range Facility. Just, you know, to make you think about what you are doing. You have ninety seconds to surrender or over two thousand sailors and approximately ten thousand innocent Hawaiian civilians will be killed."
I had to wait for the Vice President, now the President, to call me back. But it was a short, short clock and we had a lot of balls in the air.
Dropping one meant we were all dead, and maybe the human race with us.
I had a very complex project battle management graphic on one of the laptops in front of me. It was being updated, in real time, by Collections, Air National Guard and California Naval personnel.
This wasn't just about America. This was about the Big Five. China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia.
The UK and France were allied with us. Russia was affirmatively hostile. China was a new partner but we didn't want to push it.
That said, we were all people with loaded guns pointed at each other in a tiny room. And we had just shot America in the leg, so to speak, and dared her to open fire.
We had our contingency plans in case France or the UK went off script. They were properly horrific and remain deeply classified, to this day.
You may suppose correctly that the same was true with respect to China. I officially have no idea.
It would be reasonable and prudent if California had contingency plans to cut itself off at the knees. If, say Echo 18 discovered his new lust for power and decided to use the tools at my disposal to take over the world. One or more of the armed diplomats in the room would undoubtedly end me in that event.
We weren't the only nuclear powers in this game. I may never know the details, but the others were bought off, read in or fucked up so that they would not interfere in this most essential operation.
THere is a particularly chilling computer game named DEFCON, written before the Firecracker, that perhaps captures the feelings of what I saw on the battle management graphic. WIthout the soundtrack.
We had no particular quarrel with American fighters, air defense artillery or missile defense systems. So long as they were used defensively.
I meant what I had said about silo doors and thermal bloom. Barring a secret US Navy construction program (or programme, if you're a UK battle analyst), we had everything that could float or sink more than once accounted for.
We thought we had all the land bases, concrete containers for rockets called 'silos', accounted for.
Ever since the middle of the Resistance, someone had been carefully running a count of ever single American aircraft, as well as captured aircraft under US control. Of special interest, Stealth aircraft - down to the number of engines and airframes. Prototypes and all.
California's aerospace industry had prototypes too. And all our stuff was locked and loaded and live. Our factory workers carried Geneva cards and were combatants.
We'd caught the Hammer. Thank God. If we hadn't, we'd have been the ones obliterated by kinetic fractional orbital bombardment ordinance.
What remained was the temptation to cheat - to use commando forces to carry small weapons of mass destruction. SADMs, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions. Suitcases too heavy to lift. Soda machines that dispensed kilotons of fury. Fire extinguishers that would extinguish city blocks. Backpacks carried by two men with a timer that said one minute but really meant BOOM.
Then there were the doomsday weapons. France had never built one. Neither had the United Kingdom. Too poor, too much democracy to hide such horrible things.
The Russians had three. Dead Hand - technically a communciations rocket, but in fact a way of shouting "Kill 'Em All And Let St. Peter Sort Them Out" across a continent. They had the deep silos, the unkillable untouchable ones that a pre-Firecracker America would have had trouble digging out the hard way, one at a time.
And they had Strangelove.
Strangelove was the American code name for a fission-fusion-fission-fusion weapon. Superbomb. The Tsar Bomba had been a scale prototype. Detonated in the Ural mountains, it would crack the mantle, whisk the atmosphere off the planet, and perhaps deep installations in Siberia might survive.
I glanced at my graphic. Colorado Springs was no more. Sorry folks, you were in the way of thoroughly killing the deep bunker after America had rebuilt it. We wanted Hammer to go away; the Americans could after all steal it back, and the safest thing to do was use it up. So over a hundred kinetic weapons had smacked what Heinlein had correctly called the "Gibraltar of Earth's space defenses" until it was no more.
You couldn't do that to Strangelove. It was the kind of insurance policy only a Russian could love. Like a ten million dollar insurance policy with a nine million dollar deductible.
Fortunately we didn't want to take over Russia. We just wanted the offensive power, the one that had actually used so many nukes, off the board.
I checked the clock again.
"Hotline message, the President needs to speak to us in the next minute."
"Copy."
###
"Mr. President, the national sovereignty of your aircraft will be respected if you land in Canada. However, we respectfully request that you do not land in any populated area."
###
"California, this is the President."
"Mr. President. We will now discuss the terms of America's surrender," I replied.
"No. A cease fire, to pre whatever this was levels."
"No, Mr. President. There is no going back now. Your Joint Chiefs are telling you to buy time, that the offensive warmaking capacity of America is limited but there are still weapons they have, if you can buy them the time. There. Is. No. Time.
"Allow me to be specific. Any ballistic launch from American territory, including overseas bases, or missile launch from any American aircraft, ship or submarine, will be considered an act of war against the entire world. California's power projection capabilities are modest. The British and the French, not so much.
"I have a commitment from the French and the United Kingdom that each ballistic track you fire, to test us, will result in two weapons launched at a United States city. They may be launched at the same city. They may be launched at different cities.
"You are tempted to try us. Shall we dispense with Chicago? New York? Two million frantic people are trying to get out of Chicago as I speak. Three million out of Greater New York. Perhaps Philadelphia? Boston? Sorry, can't hit Detroit or Cleveland, the Chinese did that for us. Don't try us, Mr. President, I beg of you."
"And what of our other weapons of mass destruction?"
There it was.
"Your advisors are reminding you that CBRNE and B-NICE include other options. Chemical is too large, too slow. And if I destroyed an Iowa town's water supply for a chemical warfare attack, what do you think I would do to America for the same crime? Poison the Mississippi? Or the Ohio?
"Then there's bio. Bio is slow. Bio against people, our population is dispersed, living in tents and under tarps. We're going to lose one half of one percent of our population _per week_ already. But being outside in open weather is our best protection against bioweapons. Bio against crops is even slower, and very very obvious. And all we would need to do is retailate in turn. You have Rice Blast. We have Wheat Blight. Name the crop, name the weapon.
"Do you want to go down in history as the President who starved millions of people because you couldn't face the facts?"
"There are other biologicals."
"Yes. Fish. Oil. Plastic. Again, just a longer death on a slower fuse."
"EMP."
"Oh come now, Mr. President, you cannot believe we didn't think of that. We trashed NORAD and your Space Force was a joke even before we Hammered its bases, but the UK will provide you with an updated BMEWS track list. You can destroy our electronics, and we can assuredly destroy yours. Mutual Assured Destruction. A man made Carrington Event. And our grandchildren, if there are any, will curse our names and curse the sky as they eat each other over open fires. But they will live to do so - unlike the greater weapons.
"Einstein said, 'I know not what weapons World War Three will be fought, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.' Any more jokes?"
"This is not a joke. We don't have Dead Hand. But we do have a Doomsday Weapon."
I shrugged, knowing he could not see me.
"Utterly defensive. Unless you seriously are going to threaten to wreck the planet. You can discuss that with the Russians and their own Doomsday devices. Yes, plural."
"It's in Hawaii."
The tenor of the room shifted. Good one, Mr. President. But now it's a race, between my analysts and your ... nerve.
###
"Now hear this. Battle stations missile, spin up tubes sixty one through seventy two, red pills and MIRVs. Authorization Seven Rampart Two Five Viva Viva Viva. This is not a drill. Target package is Hawaii, details to follow."
###
Crusty motherfucker. I meant that literally. If you could drop a big enough fusion weapon into the planetary mantle, you could do with a smaller bomb what the Russians could do with a bigger one.
And he might not believe we would actually use nuclear arms, because we had not yet.
Bad call.
We'd taken care to protect the US Navy Aegis Ashore system. Against this moment.
I pressed a little button right there.
###
Horns honked throughout the submarine and it rocked as a single missile was ejected from it, rose on a plume of steam, and lit in a pillar of fire.
###
"Mr. President, as a purely precautionary measure, I have just ordered the thermonuclear destruction of the Pacific Missile Range Facility. Just, you know, to make you think about what you are doing. You have ninety seconds to surrender or over two thousand sailors and approximately ten thousand innocent Hawaiian civilians will be killed."
no subject
Date: 2021-10-13 02:52 am (UTC)My hand hovered over the abort button, and lifted as I saw the thermal bloom on the repeater.
"So, what were you saying about a Doomsday weapon on Hawaii? Shall I airburst the entire state to prove my point? Duty captain, your authorization code for strategic launch is..."
"STOP! JUST FUCKING STOP!"
"Only you can do that, Mr. President."
The answer was choked.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Surrender. Order Omaha to take its orders directly from California. The first order is to stand the fuck down. Six multi role fighters just lifted from Minot with nuclear ordinance. Order the pilots to eject."
"What?"
"Now, Mr. President, I can monitor your comms to the JCS and theirs to SAC and SAC to the nuclear armed bombers that are heading towards my state. Tell them ... oh fuck it."
I pressed a little button right there.
"Oh, look, nuclear airburst over North Dakota, right where those six bombers were. How did we do that?"
I grinned.
"You may never know. Mr. President, two nukes in two minutes. Shall we go for three and three?"
He did not reply to me. But I could see the sudden thumbs up from the electronic warfare controller. I gestured in the universal 'let me hear' signal, a circle around my ear.
"I am the President. This is an order. Any airborne aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon will eject at once."
His voice shook. But he was doing it.
"Yes, that is an order. You are ordered and directed to eject! Acknowledge by ejecting!"
The American combat air controller sounded even worse despite his training.
Good.