GWOT VI - God's Country
Dec. 9th, 2022 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - God's Country
Well, the good news is that we've created some separation between the refugees and their murderers.
That's it. That's the good news.
The rest of the news is all bad.
UN Intelligence in New York says I'm about to be crushed between two powerful enemy forces and we should run for our lives. They're right. Not gonna.
Army of God has their shit together. They were manuevering tanks in platoons. They are now running armor _companies_ and artillery _batteries_. That's bad.
The irregular Christian militias have united under the loose banner Word of God. The word is "Go kill those fucking Californians."
So we are digging in just south of North Fork, Iowa, in control of the major road in this area that is still kind of intact. I kind of broke the others. Sorry. War sucks.
Refugees have to put in a day of digging, if able bodied, before they get a ticket for the bus that will take them to one of the sprawling Refuge camps.
Some are being inducted to the Refuge military. Some are volunteering for Red Lion. Both have powerful incentives - if you go Red Lion, you get to have someone evacuated in your place. If you carry a stick or a gun for Refuge, they'll evacuate two someones.
We are licking our wounds. At this point over one hundred California soldiers have lost their lives. I brought two Graves Registration folks as trainers to show refugees how to, in the words of the song, "count our dead." They are now tagging and bagging the people I ate buffet with at Camp Snoopy, so very long and also six weeks ago.
My troops are furious.
I am calmer. I saw this coming. I've taken fewer casualties than I feared. I've lost more equipment - three of five gun trucks, and the helicopter.
As ratios go, losing 100 soldiers to save over 100,000 refugees is not bad.
But it's still a war with a million people at risk, not counting Army of God or Word of God. The former are combatants. The latter are best seen through a sight picture.
We're starting to shut down Red Ball Express. It's served its purpose.
We have a bunch of shit we didn't fly to Iowa with. The kind of stuff we need to fight a very different kind of fight.
We're digging in. I'm sacrificing mobility for power, and strike capabiity for resilience.
There's purposes and purposes to our deployment. Save a million lives, sure, if we can that would be great.
Teach the valuable life lesson, don't fuck with California. That's worth losing the other five hundred Californians I haven't managed to sacrifice yet.
We also have the Other Other mission. That's why I need two gun trucks.
###
"See the sight picture. Notice how it doesn't move even though the turret moves. You get used to it.
"Now lay the target pipper on the top half of the dot.
"Good. Mode select, one.
"Read me the range."
"Four thousand two hundred seventy three."
"Cool. Confirm mode select one?"
"One."
"Touch the trigger."
A muffled POP as the gyrostabilized heavy gun fired one shot from the turret assembly.
The dots were scrambling in all directions, and starting to disappear. Taking cover. Except the one. It just lay there.
###
Muffled oars. This was the last run. Sneaking across the river with rolls of cord. Network cable for kinetic explanations.
They started to drag the boats up the muddy river bank.
Stopped.
Unscrewed the drains and knifed the air compartments, then pushed the boats away to drift and sink, or not.
Didn't matter. They wouldn't be using them again.
They would leave Iowa victorious. Or not at all.
###
"Sitrep. Numbers three artillery pieces, towable. Prime movers are heavy pickup trucks, white, no markings. Numbers thirty irregulars with medium weapons. Moving north on Highway 10."
"Copy sitrep. Hunt and peck."
Like a chicken. Fire a couple rounds, withdraw several hundred feet, or yards as needed. Force them to deploy. Wait for them to get bored and remount. Engage again.
Peck. Peck.
###
"The ten thousand genders of the Californias descend upon you!" the soldier cried. "Our pronouns shall blot out the sun! And we will fuck you all in the shade!"
There were many reasons to put public address systems on California's run and gun vehicles. Taunting the enemy was certainly one of them.
###
Evening meeting was somber. Sanchez with Red Lion. My department heads. The Refuge liasion, there to listen but not to talk. And a carefully anonymous person in the un-uniform of the Bear Force cadre.
"They're forming up nicely. We're looking at a division of irregular infantry and another division of light mech."
Twenty thousand troops. But that wasn't the bad news. We could bloody them beyond their ability to bear.
"The Indian primary tubes were destroyed in the fire. But they had a shipment on the way, and Word of God has it. Fourteen howitzers, seventeen mortars."
It felt like a giant grabbed my heart and squeezed.
That was death. For me, for my troops, for the scratch battalion of Refuge militia, and for the million refugees we were trying to protect.
"Ammo," I managed to pretend to say calmly while doing box breathing.
"Four units of fire."
Oh Jesus God. That was more ammunition than the Indians had initially brought. That was more ammo than I thought was extant in Iowa.
"How?"
My intel squirrel with a shake of the head.
"Mexicans heard you were in charge of the California forces. Some sold, some smuggled. But one source says the Mexicans decertified old ammo and signed it over for disposal."
There's more than one punishment for doing a good job. There's long memories, and revenge. I'd secured El Campos Sector, cut into the Cartel's profits and smuggling, embarassed numerous Mexican Army officials ... so gift some old artillery shells as the present that keeps on giving.
Our Bear shook his head.
"Sorry, no can do."
Special operations troops have their uses. Also their limits. Skill doesn't triumph over numbers in a fixed fight.
I regained my composure.
"Just means we dig deeper," I lied.
We all knew it was a lie.
Yet it was hope.
I had nothing for and asked nothing from God.
His country was one of blood and death, destruction and suffering. His domain, a literal Hell on Earth.
Reminded me of a cry from one of our more pagan troops. She was dead now, blinded and tortured before killing her captors with grenades.
"It is not well that men should war!" she had preached, so long and also six weeks ago, at Camp Snoopy. "We are the Gods and the Gods are us! When we fight, we unleash the demons of the hosts and do great evil! As terrible as an army with banners, that walks and leaves Death and blood and shit in its footsteps!
"Make peace with your mortality! This horror of our mortal making, when we choose to fight, THIS IS THE GOD WE MAKE!"
Our psych techs had uploaded it to YouTube. The enemy had seen it. Spun it. But feared it too. And the heroic manner of her passing underlined the point for which she had given her own single life. For others, and for California.
Herself a demon in the country of the God of War.
There was only the one justification, in my eyes.
War, over there. Elsewhere.
Not where we live. Not at our doorsteps, or homes, or hearths.
Better that our bodies lie rotting and unburied in Iowa fields, than that Homeland return to the Golden State.
That was the plan. Also my duty.
Sanchez spoke up.
Red Lion.
Noncombatant, by policy and law. Red Lion Helpers had died for it, sometimes in the piles that Iowa was overfull to the brim with.
"We must withdraw now. I have therefore resigned my commission with Red Lion and turned over the Red Lion withdrawal to Helper III Nguyen."
She held a reserve commission in the Army of the Republic. Did she mean to... ? My God, she did.
"Lieutenant Sanchez, get yourself a uniform, take charge of our medical arrangements here. Review the duties of a parlimentarian, I may send you out."
To treat with an enemy that shot flags of truce, and tortured captives.
"And wear a pistol," I added.
The time for noncombatancy and for lawfare was over.
It was time for war. Red war, and ruin.
Well, the good news is that we've created some separation between the refugees and their murderers.
That's it. That's the good news.
The rest of the news is all bad.
UN Intelligence in New York says I'm about to be crushed between two powerful enemy forces and we should run for our lives. They're right. Not gonna.
Army of God has their shit together. They were manuevering tanks in platoons. They are now running armor _companies_ and artillery _batteries_. That's bad.
The irregular Christian militias have united under the loose banner Word of God. The word is "Go kill those fucking Californians."
So we are digging in just south of North Fork, Iowa, in control of the major road in this area that is still kind of intact. I kind of broke the others. Sorry. War sucks.
Refugees have to put in a day of digging, if able bodied, before they get a ticket for the bus that will take them to one of the sprawling Refuge camps.
Some are being inducted to the Refuge military. Some are volunteering for Red Lion. Both have powerful incentives - if you go Red Lion, you get to have someone evacuated in your place. If you carry a stick or a gun for Refuge, they'll evacuate two someones.
We are licking our wounds. At this point over one hundred California soldiers have lost their lives. I brought two Graves Registration folks as trainers to show refugees how to, in the words of the song, "count our dead." They are now tagging and bagging the people I ate buffet with at Camp Snoopy, so very long and also six weeks ago.
My troops are furious.
I am calmer. I saw this coming. I've taken fewer casualties than I feared. I've lost more equipment - three of five gun trucks, and the helicopter.
As ratios go, losing 100 soldiers to save over 100,000 refugees is not bad.
But it's still a war with a million people at risk, not counting Army of God or Word of God. The former are combatants. The latter are best seen through a sight picture.
We're starting to shut down Red Ball Express. It's served its purpose.
We have a bunch of shit we didn't fly to Iowa with. The kind of stuff we need to fight a very different kind of fight.
We're digging in. I'm sacrificing mobility for power, and strike capabiity for resilience.
There's purposes and purposes to our deployment. Save a million lives, sure, if we can that would be great.
Teach the valuable life lesson, don't fuck with California. That's worth losing the other five hundred Californians I haven't managed to sacrifice yet.
We also have the Other Other mission. That's why I need two gun trucks.
###
"See the sight picture. Notice how it doesn't move even though the turret moves. You get used to it.
"Now lay the target pipper on the top half of the dot.
"Good. Mode select, one.
"Read me the range."
"Four thousand two hundred seventy three."
"Cool. Confirm mode select one?"
"One."
"Touch the trigger."
A muffled POP as the gyrostabilized heavy gun fired one shot from the turret assembly.
The dots were scrambling in all directions, and starting to disappear. Taking cover. Except the one. It just lay there.
###
Muffled oars. This was the last run. Sneaking across the river with rolls of cord. Network cable for kinetic explanations.
They started to drag the boats up the muddy river bank.
Stopped.
Unscrewed the drains and knifed the air compartments, then pushed the boats away to drift and sink, or not.
Didn't matter. They wouldn't be using them again.
They would leave Iowa victorious. Or not at all.
###
"Sitrep. Numbers three artillery pieces, towable. Prime movers are heavy pickup trucks, white, no markings. Numbers thirty irregulars with medium weapons. Moving north on Highway 10."
"Copy sitrep. Hunt and peck."
Like a chicken. Fire a couple rounds, withdraw several hundred feet, or yards as needed. Force them to deploy. Wait for them to get bored and remount. Engage again.
Peck. Peck.
###
"The ten thousand genders of the Californias descend upon you!" the soldier cried. "Our pronouns shall blot out the sun! And we will fuck you all in the shade!"
There were many reasons to put public address systems on California's run and gun vehicles. Taunting the enemy was certainly one of them.
###
Evening meeting was somber. Sanchez with Red Lion. My department heads. The Refuge liasion, there to listen but not to talk. And a carefully anonymous person in the un-uniform of the Bear Force cadre.
"They're forming up nicely. We're looking at a division of irregular infantry and another division of light mech."
Twenty thousand troops. But that wasn't the bad news. We could bloody them beyond their ability to bear.
"The Indian primary tubes were destroyed in the fire. But they had a shipment on the way, and Word of God has it. Fourteen howitzers, seventeen mortars."
It felt like a giant grabbed my heart and squeezed.
That was death. For me, for my troops, for the scratch battalion of Refuge militia, and for the million refugees we were trying to protect.
"Ammo," I managed to pretend to say calmly while doing box breathing.
"Four units of fire."
Oh Jesus God. That was more ammunition than the Indians had initially brought. That was more ammo than I thought was extant in Iowa.
"How?"
My intel squirrel with a shake of the head.
"Mexicans heard you were in charge of the California forces. Some sold, some smuggled. But one source says the Mexicans decertified old ammo and signed it over for disposal."
There's more than one punishment for doing a good job. There's long memories, and revenge. I'd secured El Campos Sector, cut into the Cartel's profits and smuggling, embarassed numerous Mexican Army officials ... so gift some old artillery shells as the present that keeps on giving.
Our Bear shook his head.
"Sorry, no can do."
Special operations troops have their uses. Also their limits. Skill doesn't triumph over numbers in a fixed fight.
I regained my composure.
"Just means we dig deeper," I lied.
We all knew it was a lie.
Yet it was hope.
I had nothing for and asked nothing from God.
His country was one of blood and death, destruction and suffering. His domain, a literal Hell on Earth.
Reminded me of a cry from one of our more pagan troops. She was dead now, blinded and tortured before killing her captors with grenades.
"It is not well that men should war!" she had preached, so long and also six weeks ago, at Camp Snoopy. "We are the Gods and the Gods are us! When we fight, we unleash the demons of the hosts and do great evil! As terrible as an army with banners, that walks and leaves Death and blood and shit in its footsteps!
"Make peace with your mortality! This horror of our mortal making, when we choose to fight, THIS IS THE GOD WE MAKE!"
Our psych techs had uploaded it to YouTube. The enemy had seen it. Spun it. But feared it too. And the heroic manner of her passing underlined the point for which she had given her own single life. For others, and for California.
Herself a demon in the country of the God of War.
There was only the one justification, in my eyes.
War, over there. Elsewhere.
Not where we live. Not at our doorsteps, or homes, or hearths.
Better that our bodies lie rotting and unburied in Iowa fields, than that Homeland return to the Golden State.
That was the plan. Also my duty.
Sanchez spoke up.
Red Lion.
Noncombatant, by policy and law. Red Lion Helpers had died for it, sometimes in the piles that Iowa was overfull to the brim with.
"We must withdraw now. I have therefore resigned my commission with Red Lion and turned over the Red Lion withdrawal to Helper III Nguyen."
She held a reserve commission in the Army of the Republic. Did she mean to... ? My God, she did.
"Lieutenant Sanchez, get yourself a uniform, take charge of our medical arrangements here. Review the duties of a parlimentarian, I may send you out."
To treat with an enemy that shot flags of truce, and tortured captives.
"And wear a pistol," I added.
The time for noncombatancy and for lawfare was over.
It was time for war. Red war, and ruin.
