by Adam Yoshida
From the corner of the table, Major General Daniel LeFluer, the deputy Chief of the Defense Staff, spoke up.
"I intend no disrespect to General Corrie, or to anyone else within the Armed Forces in speaking," he began, "but I think that some elements of our professional military have not yet fully adjusted themselves to the situation that they face today. General Corrie's function, of course, is in part to speak for the military leadership as a whole and I can tell you, having had countless discussions with them, that the views expressed by General Corrie are those shared by a consensus among the leadership and among most of the officers of the Forces. They are not, however, my views. May I be permitted to explain?"
"Go on, General," the Prime Minister said carefully.
"The Western Army is a force organized along very conventional lines and, to a certain extent, it reflects the ambition of its founders – one obvious sign of this is the strange system of unit designations that we've explained. They have Brigade-sized Divisions and Division-sized Corps because they intend to scale up their forces in the immediate future and they wanted to send a sign to that effect from the outset. They also are made up of people who very much, based on their writings and what they've done during the course of the war to date, intend to fight traditional battles.
"The Army that we are organizing might, eventually, grow to the level that it will defeat them on a conventional basis. But General Corrie is right, that will take months, perhaps years to get ourselves to that point and who knows whether or not the external factors necessary to field such an army – both economic and political – will be in place when the time comes.
"What we need to do – and have wargamed out – is to begin a series of attacks upon the infrastructure that supports the Western Army, both military and economic. If the actions of the West have deprived us of the ability to airlift large formations into their rear areas, we still have the ability to scatter smaller teams, who will be able to attack supply convoys and the like. On the other side, we can begin a systematic process of dismantling the sources of economic power of the West through a targeted campaign launched against their petroleum infrastructure."
"Hold on, hold on," General Corrie interjected, "the question that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet asked was not whether the Army could fight, but whether the army was as prepared as we would hope it to be. Of course, if ordered, we can move a substantial force to the frontier to confront the Western Army with a very high probability of success. I would prefer a certainty to a probability, but it is what it is."
"Ok then," said the Prime Minister, "very good, General. Let's talk about what success might look like."
The so-called "sack of Winnipeg" had not been popular with many people, aside from those who got to enjoy it and for those on the political right in the Western Republic who felt a frisson of joy at the somewhat-gratuitous destruction. Well, I thought it was fun, thought Bill Jackson was the First Armored Division continued to press forward.
Now the question before the Western Army was a simple one: what next? They could press forward further still, but where would that come to an end? Would they have to fight for Toronto or Ottawa? Would the fight, should it carry them across Ontario, be carried on into Quebec and the Maritimes? Would that not ultimately result not in Western Independence but the simple re-establishment of the old federation under a new government? Communications bounced forth between Vancouver and the front. The Army was not to cross the Ontario frontier. Then it was authorized to do so if it appeared to be under threat. The instructions could change from one hour to a next. The government that they lived under might have changed but the nature of politicians had not.
"If we delay much longer, Henry Warren is going to survive impeachment and then, the politics of it be damned, he will send his army this way and it will all be over. A number of our volunteers simply won't fight the U.S. Army, as much as they believe in the cause and hate Mr. Warren. They know that it would be futile and they have no desire to kill fellow Americans," General Wayne announced pessimistically.
"If there is to be a fight, what better time than now, and what better place than here?" Jackson asked himself softly. Wayne nodded.
The First Armored Division was racing down Ontario Highway 17 as quickly as fuel supplies would allow. With the arrival of an extra tank battalion fresh from the depots in BC, the force now had nearly two hundred tanks available to it, along with plenty of supporting vehicles. The Paratroopers of the First Airborne Brigade protected the flanks of the advance, riding along on up-armored Humvees that had been brought in from overseas, guns at the ready to strike anything that stood in their way. There was no time for subtlety – and not many options open for it at any rate.
"Speed is the key, Goddamnit!" General Jackson declared from the side of the road as he watched the vehicles race by the wreckage that had been hastily cleared from the road.
Already that morning the first engagement of the invasion of Ontario had been fought as the Merkavas of the Second Battalion of the Third Brigade had encountered a Federal patrol attempting to bar the path of the Western Army just outside of Kenora. The Eastern force, consisting of two companies of light infantry, had been ordered to block the highway for as long as possible while a larger force was assembled further behind the lines to meet and blunt the Western attack.
Captain Evan Dunford had, after Second Vancouver, been promoted to command one of the Companies of the division when it was expanded for the march to the East. Since then he and his men had seen action in every action of the Western Army: the crossing of the Rockies, the liberation of Calgary, the trans-Prairie campaign, the Battle of Winnipeg, and now the drive into Ontario. Post-Vancouver the Federal resistance had been largely perfunctory, a mix of fighting by stay-behind units of the old Army and attacks by local guerrillas and special forces. Outside of Kenora, however, for the first time the fully-organized Western Army had run into determined resistance by a professional Federal force.
A Federal anti-tank missile had, seemingly out of nowhere, arced across the sky and disabled one of Dunford's tanks. Standard doctrine – which admittedly Dunford was largely familiar with from hastily-assembled packages of PDF files that someone had e-mailed him – would have called for the company to back off and let infantry and artillery engage the tank trap. That, however, would have taken up precious time: time that every man and woman in the Western Army knew was in terribly short supply.
"Company," he ordered, "advance."
With the Merkavas leading the way, blazing away with both their main guns and their secondary armament, the Company had managed to clear the trap with the loss of just another tank. Throughout the movement, Dunford and the rest of his men had frantically mapped out the locations of the enemy's blocking positions on their GPS-linked maps. Once they had pulled themselves clear of the enemy's engagement envelope, they turned to engage the defensive positions from the rear with direct fire from maximum range with their tanks.
120mm-high explosive shells struck one position after another from maximum range, as the Federal soldiers on the ground scrambled to turn and engage the enemy that had bypassed them. To the west of the Kenora, a second company was ordered to temporarily halt its transit.
Avi Stern and his fast-movers were coming into Kenora hot. The carefully-gathered targeting information passed on to him and his fellow pilots allowed them to plan their route with the utmost care. The Federal air force, after weeks of running battles between the seemingly-endless supply of Western MiGs and a dwindling force of CF-18s, was no longer capable of truly challenging the Western Air Force, except over vital cities and installations, but one could never been too careful in planning ahead for, at some point, it seemed inevitable that they would commit their carefully-hoarded reserve of aircraft and pilots to the fight. As well, though the foreign supporters of the Canadian government had not provided them with additional combat aircraft, they had managed to give them a substantial quantity of modern surface-to-air missiles.<
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The MiGs came in low and fast, creating vibrations that could be felt all across the despoiled Ontario farmland. With a thud followed by a crack of thunder, one bomb after another fell upon the Federal positions, shattering bodies, equipment, and ground and mixing them all together so thoroughly that when the government of Ontario later took over the scene they opted to simply, after making a decent effort to identify the dead, mechanically dig a large pit and simply bury everything. A second wave of tanks was happy to accept the surrendered of the physically-drained and emotionally-shattered survivors.
"Captain Dunford," General Jackson said to the Company Commander, whose company had been allowed to pass out of the line for refitting and repairs after the engagement, "thank you for your quick thinking. Thanks to you and your men, we were able to swiftly engage the enemy and prevent them from slowing our advance. You're a Major now, Dunford."
Jackson looked out into the distance, "our intelligence didn't think that any Federal forces had pushed out this far forward. Now we're redoubling our efforts to scout the road ahead. Thanks for keying us in to that as well."
Major General Price, the commander of the newly established Army of Northwestern Ontario, cursed violently as he read the first reports from Kenora.
"I should never have sent a force so far forward outside of our air cover," he admitted to his Chief of Staff.
"If we'd caught them unaware and been able to really dig in at the city, it would have been worth it," the Chief of Staff replied.
"If, if, if. I'm not going to take another risk like that. Send orders to the Battalion at Dryden to pull back to here. We'll dig them in within range of our air cover."
The 40,000 men and women of the Army of Northwestern Ontario were for the most part half-trained and under-equipped but, under the circumstances, they were the best that the Federal Government could field. The geography of the region dictated a certain logic: unless the Western Army decided to cut loose from major roads altogether, at which point the logistics of moving an army the size of the Western Expeditionary Force would become untenable, they would have to pass through Thunder Bay. His soldiers, therefore, might not have the skill or mobility that the Western ones did, but they would be able to take advantage of fighting from fixed defensive positions. He had enough trained men and mobile forces that, if the Western Army attempted to bypass him, he would be able to sally out from his fortress and to cut their supply lines. Additionally, at the direction of the Prime Minister himself, most of the nation's remaining fixed-wing air assets had been allocated to maintaining air supremacy over the Federal citadel.
The Western Army had held back some of their newest assets throughout the early fighting. But now, with the largest battle to be fought on North American soil in more than a century and a half at hand, was not a time to hold anything back. General Wayne and General Jackson both agreed to release all air assets to launch an all-out attack on the Federal forces arrayed around Thunder Bay. A force of nearly eighty MiG-29s were launched, many outfitted specifically for the purpose of engaging enemy air defenses. The RCAF launched every plane that it had left to meet them.
Colonel Stern watched the console in the cockpit of his MiG as the CF-18s drew progressively closer. The Federal planes were old and worn, but they had superior weapons as well as the advantage of an airborne radar transferred from ex-NATO stockpiles, one of the few pieces of new hardware to find its way into the hands of the Federal forces at Thunder Bay. A few of the MiGs carried air-to-ground attack packages, but most of them were assigned to the vital role of clearing the way for heavier ground attack assets to support the final advance. That left only his squadron armed for genuine air-to-air combat.
At a range of nearly sixty kilometers, the CF-18s launched AMRAAMs against Stern's fighters. His MiGs, as the leading edge of the attack wave, did not immediately break off or evade. Instead, they increased their speed and pressed forward, allowing their brethren behind them to gain precious seconds to close their own range with the defending aircraft. Finally, after an agonizing pause, when the MiGs had closed to within twenty-five kilometers of the Federal fighters, they launched salvos of their own AA-12 Adder missiles before moving to evade. The other MiGs, outfitted for ground attack and suppression of enemy air defense missions, accelerated and dove for cover near the ground.
The outnumbered Federals were now faced with a choice: they could attempt to engage the ground attack package or they could continue to face off with the fighters who they had already exchanged fire with. Given their role in the operation, they opted for the former, placing themselves at further risk in an effort to defend the forces below.
Three of Stern's MiGs fell to the initial barrage, along with two MiGs from the other squadrons. The twelve survivors of Stern's squadron turned to pursue the CF-18s now attempting to follow the ground attack MiGs into Thunder Bay. After firing their remaining Adder missiles, the MiGs kicked in their afterburners and tried to close the range enough to allow them to use their short-range Archer missiles to attack the Federal force.
By this point the dance in the air had proceeded to such a point as to actually bring the fight over the city of Thunder Bay itself. The CF-18s were ordered to disengage with the remaining MiGs in order to allow the surface-to-air missile batteries that now dotted the city to open fire without fear of causing blue-on-blue losses.
When the SAM batteries lit up their radars, part of the Western MiG force immediately engaged them with anti-radiations missiles, while others were vectored to begin bomb attacks against the actual missile installations on the ground. One five hundred pound bomb after another dropped from the sky and tore into the defensive installations, while the anti-radiation missiles forced them to shut down their radars and move rapidly to avoid complete destruction.
Behind the first wave of Western aircraft came a second: four C-130 aircraft hastily converted into improvised gunships supported by a dozen Russian-made Hind attack helicopters came forward and began to engage the forward patrols of the Federal Army. Mini-gun rounds tore fist-sized holes in bodies as missile fire engaged every aircraft along the road into Thunder Bay. The Federal soldiers within the city hugged the earth as, coming behind the waves of attack aircraft, long-range artillery fire began to engage their positions.
The First Armored Division had done its best to protect its flanks as is moved down Highway 17 towards Thunder Bay itself. However, the area was rural, at places heavily wooded, and there simply was not time for a methodical advance. Federal forces engaged the Western Army in a series of running skirmishes up and down the road, firing anti-tank missiles from the woods only to be subjected to punishing gun and artillery fire.
General Price dared not to sally forth from his positions with any unit bigger than a platoon. Units caught in the open would be subjected to air, artillery, and ground attack and there was every reason to believe that many of his non-veteran soldiers would crack under that sort of pressure. Instead, he was left with no choice except to largely wait and hope that the enemy would, forced to move against its better military judgement for political reasons, dash itself to pieces against the rock that he hoped his army was
Still, despite this, he was a gambling man. The CF-18s that had been ceded to his operational control had, during the early fighting, shown themselves to be incapable of really contending for command of the skies. That did not mean, he reflected, that they were wholly useless. The remaining fighters would be annihilated in an extended battle of attrition, but they could be made to be useful nonetheless.
"Get me Major Sanders," he snapped to his aide.
Generals Wayne and Jackson had both moved to the Western Expeditionary Force's Forward Command Post as the final stages of the attack began. The forces in Thunder Bay were formidable, but both Generals believed that they were green and likely to suffer severely under real combat stress. With the political clock ticking, they had agreed that they could not wait out a prolonged siege. Nor could such a force be left to their rear. I
nstead, they had decided that they would take the position at a run.
"First Brigade is ahead of schedule," noted Jackson as he surveyed the array of electronic maps in front of him. He took another sip of his can of his Coke Zero - obtained from a looted Safeway in Winnipeg – and looked at the latest updates as they flashed across the screen.
"Yeah, we're making good time," replied Wayne, "the real challenge will come when we start to hit some of these prepared positions. That should begin happening in about an hour or so."
"That should be enough time for another round of air strikes... provided that the pilots are in shape for it," said Jackson.
"Today they'll fly around the fucking clock," replied the representative of the Air Force attached to the headquarters.
"Just this fight," said Wayne, "and I have to believe that the Federals will quit the war. Just this fight."
"I think that we're going to have to make plans to press beyond Thunder Bay," replied Jackson.
"I don't think so. I think that they'll quit if we whip them one more time," said Wayne.
Jackson looked back up at the big board. He had some time before more intense fighting began.
"I'll be right back," he declared, stepping out the door before anyone could react.
Jackson walked across a dirt road, heading towards a group of trees. As he walked he stopped to check his phone. Civil war or not, someone was keeping these things running – even if they avoided using them for the most sensitive of communications. He flipped through his e-mails. One, this one from back home, had a couple of attachments. He put the phone back into his pocket.
When he reached the clearing, Jackson unzipped his pants and quickly relieved himself against a tree. He then zipped up and turned around to head back into the cabin. However, after he had walked fifteen feet, he stopped and pulled the phone back out of his pocket. It was getting a signal, but only a low-quality one. It'd take forever, he realized, to download the pictures sent to him. After checking the time and confirming that he did, in fact, have a few minutes he turned around and began to walk up a nearby hill in search of better cellular service.