by Billy Roper
Although the Third fleet claimed the Alaskan waters as home station, Vice Admiral Robert Woods of the Seventh fleet had sagely begun onloading U.S. personnel from bases in South Korea and Japan as soon as it became obvious that the southwestern states were gone. In fact, his actions countermanded the last standing orders from the Joint Chiefs on May 24th that he lock down all bases and sort out his base personnel by race, then await further orders. He did the first part, all right. But when the USS Carl Vinson and one of its’ cruisers were lost through mutiny by black and Hispanic crew members working together, then fighting each other, the game changed. Similar rebellions were barely suppressed in carrier strike force Nine targeting the Ronald Reagan. Fraggings and confused firefights effected every base across the Pacific.
There had been a surprising number of under-the radar White Nationalists in the Seventh, and especially in the Marine units. They seemed to actually relish the sorting out process, more than others. The Seventh fleet had to abandon the Marianas and the Carl Vinson, but their withdrawal from the Japanese home islands was more orderly. In the end, the nonWhite military personnel who survived the staggered mutinies, who simply could not be trusted, were detained and marooned. The mutineers took over in Sasebo, Iwakuni, and Yokota, but were defeated in Yokosuka and Atsugi. There they were left behind to be turned over to the oncoming Chinese for internment, or worse.
The knowledge that their country back home was breaking up, and that many of their shipmates had turned on them, helped soothe the qualms felt by most of the White sailors and marines at leaving them behind. More than one ship was lost or abandoned due to desertions, but the massacre at Camp Humphreys by units from both sides of the DMZ was good motivation to get their families loaded if they had them, and try to get moving towards them, if they didn’t. The Chinese moved before the Woods could reconsolidate and reassign personnel to cover their losses, launching a missile attack on Taiwan to cover an amphibious assault with overwhelming air cover. With Seventh fleet out of action, elements of the Fifth fleet steamed south from the Indian Ocean, while trying to maintain unit cohesion between the diverse components of their crews. They were ordered by the Joint Chiefs to position between Malaysia and Australia to defend our ally there, and a few weeks later, had negotiated a joint command agreement with the Australian admiralty.
The Seventh fleet anchored in Subic Bay to lick its wounds while the Chinese Navy gobbled up the western Pacific. The world watched Chinese marines take revenge for the rape of Nanking on the streets of Osaka and Tokyo. It took a Herculean effort, and a week of constant crew transfers and reassignments, but by the first of August Vice Admiral Woods determined that they could fully man four of their five remaining carrier groups. The U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Nimitz, and Independence and their groups and air wings would continue their eastward withdrawal. The damaged Reagan was scuttled after the ships stores and ordinance were offloaded and redistributed between her four remaining sisters. As had happened in South Korea and then Japan, all American citizens- the White ones who were deemed low security risks- were fast-boated from shore to ship for relocation. None of them knew to where, exactly. China couldn’t really blame the U.S. on the world stage for racism against its own citizens in abandoning them, in the end, since once they moved in, none of them were ever heard from, again. So eastward they ran, towards Pearl.
By the time the Seventh fleet reached Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the Hawaiian Islands were under martial law with a militarily imposed dusk to dawn curfew and strict rationing. Cut off from the mainland, with no flights in or out for six weeks by then, they were in a world of hurt. Civilian authority from the mainland was impotent and unresponsive. As the Philippines dominoed down behind them, Honolulu felt that they were next.
In consultation with the Third fleet on station north of them, Woods considered making a stand at Pearl. None of the commanders wanted to be the one whom history would remember as abandoning a U.S. state to an enemy force. Technically, they had already left behind a U.S. Territory, Guam, and that was bad enough, it seemed. However, they all knew that the Hawaiian Islands were indefensible without resupply from the mainland. Vice Admiral Woods made the command decision to request the Third fleet negotiate with the Alaskan civilian government and the ElmendorfRichardson joint base near Anchorage to begin planning for and preparing housing accommodations for the Seventh fleet, should they need to withdraw there. The Chinese passed and occupied Midway before the Naval and Air Force personnel at Pearl-Hickam could be prepared for evacuation, anyway. The 15th air wing from Hickham and Nimitz’s carrier wing were ordered, along with the Pacific submarine fleet, to meet the vanguard of the Chinese fleet just north of the Johnston Atoll. While the other surface ships continued the evacuation, the Nimitz and her three destroyers and two guided missile cruisers were chosen to make the stand because all of the dependents and civilians had been offloaded from them onto the other three carrier groups’ vessels.
On August 29th, the first wave of the Chinese navy’s full -on charge across the Pacific was blunted by the loss of both of their aircraft carriers, and their escorts, to coordinated U.S. submarine attacks and barrages from the big guns of the Nimitz’s group. In a running battle, the Shi-Ling and her sister ship each took several torpedo and missile hits before going down. Both ships were hit by multiple sorties of F/A-18s from the Nimitz, as well. There were no survivors. The loss was mooted, though, because the skies had been swept clean of Chinese J15 aircraft the day before by the 15th air wing’s F-22s. This meant that the People’s Army troops who landed in Hawaii, and for the initial phase, in California, for that matter, would be very short on air cover or resupply. The three U.S. submarines of the Pacific fleet which survived the day continued to shadow Chinese convoys, sinking troop transports until their munitions stores were depleted, then heading south to rearm with the Fifth fleet in Australia. Their mission continued.
The victory came at a high cost. One of the Nimitz’s destroyers and two cruisers, along with the U.S.S. Kentucky Ohio class nuclear submarine, joined the total of eleven Chinese ships at the bottom of the Pacific. The Nimitz herself was badly stricken, and limped back into Pearl, there to be abandoned. Most of her air assets which survived the battle had enough fuel left to catch the U.S.S. Constellation as it swung north to join the Third fleet. Nimitz’s crew were evacuated by her two remaining destroyers, which followed the Constellation. Hawaii’s fall was postponed for three weeks by the rear guard action of the Nimitz, but in the end the islands’ fate was sealed. The Pacific fleet could not feed them, could not evacuate them, and over the long view, could not defend them. The Jester Sang For The King And Queen
After drinks, Hu’s dining companions drifted away one by one, leaving him alone to wrestle with resource allocation algorithms in his head. He had forgotten to broach the subject of enlisting Chinese-Americans as armed auxiliaries for real to General Jiang after dinner, to fill the eroding holes widening in the peacekeeping force’s ranks. Harry Lee and Jiang would both have to support the idea, but even a few thousand would help. It was either that, or withdraw their areas of control back into the major port cities, and Beijing would not ignore that.
His head pounded. Hu had begun to unravel mentally, and play with so many problems balled up tightly in his mind that he had isolated himself. Over time he had become, by Asian standards, reclusive. It helped him to think, to solve problems. Problems too big for one man, for one brain. That was his problem. Well, not just his, and that was problematic. Probably the problems were his own problem. Hu felt like he was having a panic attack. There was a small chest filled with powdered problem solver packets upstairs for that. What had Harry Lee told him, the joke? About the new girl who had served them tonight? Ah, yes. “Hu knows”. He thought about that a while as it rained again outside the glass walls of his prison.
Later, as the world slowed and dimmed, he let the syringe drop from his arm and made another fist. Now that was hitting below the belt, Hu thought. Americanisms
were so amusing. That Harry Lee, he was a funny guy, for a traitor from a family of traitors. Was he his friend? Did he have any friends? Where were they? Who were they? Hu could not think of any friends. He did not trust anyone, he couldn’t. He didn’t really try to. He didn’t really lie to. He didn’t really like anyone. Outside of the hive, a worker bee lost and alone, flying and spinning off into space, Hu closed his eyes and lay back to enjoy his headache fading.
They Caught The Last Train For The Coast Brenda set the broom, dustpan, and bucket down beside the door and knocked again, less hesitantly than before. This time, the door silently eased back open an inch. She had not seen the Administrator all morning, but that wasn’t unusual, lately. He rarely ate breakfast any more, or left his suite, before mid-afternoon. But now it was almost two in the afternoon, and even though she knew that her boss’s secretaries and guards had been ordered not to disturb him except in case of an emergency, she had to finish her cleaning rounds. There was still half the building to finish, and get home to her three kids the soup and roast leftovers from the fancy dinner the chinks had eaten last night. What she had done for that smelly, pimply busboy in the kitchen for those scraps was something she had already chosen to forget. Her kids hadn’t eaten in two days, and that counted as an emergency in Brenda’s world. She had no idea what they were getting from Santa Claus this year. It depended on what she could loot or barter for.
She pushed the door open instead of calling out, so she could back out unnoticed if he was still asleep. Sure enough, there he was, sprawled in bed. Brenda stopped short at something on the floor. A spilled baggie. In an instant, she took in the needle, the belt, the spoon and melted candle. She moved inside the bedroom for a better look, like a shark smelling blood. Hu’s face was more relaxed than she had ever seen it, even with the vomit on his chin. When her husband and brother had both disappeared within a few hours of each other three weeks ago, Brenda had ended up coming to this evil place for any kind of job she could find, against her will. The supposedly anonymous cans of food left on her doorstep by those skinheads from uptown had helped, but only so much. She thought of what would happen to her kids if she disappeared, too. She knew that a purge would follow this, that everyone on staff here was as good as dead. The Chinese would have to cover this up. It would be an embarrassment, a dishonor.
Her decision was as quick as instinct. Moving around the body, ignoring the smells of puke and voided bowels, she went from the chest to the nightstand to Hu’s closet. It helped that she knew where everything was, already. In less than eight minutes, the door to the Acting Governor’s suite shut and locked behind her. Brenda calmly passed the security detail down the hall chattering away in Mandarin about their previous night’s adventures, based on what she could tell from their animated hand motions. Neither of them bothered to look up at her as she leaned to the left to counterbalance the weight of the bucket in her right hand. She followed routine, dropping off her broom and dustpan in the downstairs closet. The packets of heroin, the ten one hundred gram silver bars, and the pistol and ammunition would pay a coyote to take her and her kids east, maybe all the way to Reno. She hoped they would be safe there, that it was far enough away. It was the nearest White held zone she knew of.
Brenda waddled awkwardly down the sidewalk towards her kids, forgetting the food, focused on the bullet in her back or the barked order to stop which never came. That night they ate very well, anyway. A week and a half later Brenda found her husband and her brother working to repair water distribution pipes from Lake Tahoe into the city. She never told them her full story, but their struggles were unspoken between them. Everyone had their demons, these days. Few of them were lucky enough to have the exorcism of a happy ending to go with them. Her family was safe.
To Light The Sacrificial Rite
As their reassignment briefing had told them, what the Navy needed now more than ever, more than anything, was to know what was going on. That was his job. Rick loved to play wingman to Tommy when they hit the bars, because the local girls might be scarce, but they loved to hear any news from the lower forty-eight. With almost all internet servers from the U.S. down for the count, not to mention satellite t.v. stations, most people in Alaska turned to the B.B.C. for English language news. Especially since all of the even part Indian or Eskimo or whatever girls had been relocated to enclosure communities outside of Anchorage as security risks, females were few and far between. But a guy like Tommy, who knew more about what was happening down below than the B.B.C., could always score. Sometimes that made him equally popular with the enlisted personnel from the fleet, over 25,000 sad sacks who were hungry for any news from or about home.
Rick held the door open and bowed grandly as Tommy stood up and buttoned his coat. “Your chariot awaits, Sir”, he announced, gesturing towards the Honda 4X4 with snow chains whose engine heat was melting a patch of slush outside. “Come on, Season’s Greetings and Yuletide Cheer and all that, my boy!” Tommy grinned and moved for the door. He could use some time off the clock. The world would continue to go to hell just as well without him listening. Let Admiral Woods’s ears ring for a few hours, instead of his.
Tommy and Rick drove through the icy, muddy snow over the newly laid gravel road. Between row after row, block after block of unpainted raw buildings, each puffing out blue wood smoke into the twilight, they crunched. Two more blocks and a left would have them back into the old town, where civilian bars hummed and strummed to their own eclectic tunes. Enlisted access to the motor pool had been severely restricted a couple of weeks ago after the fourth or fifth small group of fed up jarheads had commandeered a Humvee and deserted. Rick said that it was stupid to try to drive down the Alaska highway in winter. The road hadn’t been maintained all season. Tommy guessed that he had a point, but nobody knew exactly how many fixed wing and rotor aircrews had decided amongst themselves to pack it in and head for as close to home as their fuel payloads would get them. No more paychecks and no more country to fight for, plus being thousands of miles from home, left them feeling like a defeated, guilty army of broken men and women. Dealing with the series of retreats and abandonments and mutinies and infighting had demoralized them, especially the enlisted men who didn’t have their families along.
Alaska was a bleak place at best, in the wintertime. Plenty of wood to burn, plenty of space, plenty of oil, okay refining facilities, but not much for agriculture. Or nightlife. Tommy and Rick shouldered their way good-naturedly through a mixed bag of civilian and military folks to the bar. A drunk sailor murdered “ Blue Christmas” on the karaoke machine, on the tiny stage. Here, the clientele was all working class, there was no middle class left. Basic red and green construction paper cutouts and a forlorn Charlie Brown tree in the corner did their best to add some cheer to the joint. The drink choices were simple: home brewed beer, or locally distilled moonshine, cut with water to various potencies. One thing about Alaska, the beer was always cold. He bet that in Kansas they were drinking wheat beer, or soon would be. Iowa would have corn liquor. Idaho, potato vodka. Tommy joked that he wasn’t much for vegetables on his plate, he preferred them in liquid form.
The snubnosed redhead’s name was Becky. She was an actual Alaskan native, meaning born here, not Eskimo, she made clear. Her friend, sitting across from Rick, was prettier, but she also knew it too well. Poor Rick looked miserable as she yammered on about how her daddy said that the Navy and Marines should pull it together and go down there and knock those Chinese bastards out of California right now, before they dug in like a tick. “‘Get back in the ring’, he says!” More Americans were dying every day, and here the military was just sitting around, hiding out…
She got so loud with it that Tommy thought they were going to have to fight some Marines giving them the stink-eye just for sitting with her. When Becky took her friend to the lady’s room to calm her down, she apologized ruefully to Tommy…a good sign, he thought. So, instead of cutting their losses, he and Rick played the winners a game of eight bal
l at the pool table until the girls reappeared in time to watch him scratch on the eight, trying to show off. Nobody cared. The blonde, a Cathy or Callie or something, had calmed down, and retreated from discussing politics and military defeat to going on about her daddy’s ideas to build massive greenhouses to grow crops, with artificial lighting for the winter months. Rick wilted again, visibly. Tommy asked for the check, and calculated the bill. Based on mutual consent more than anything else, greenbacks were still accepted currency in most places. Their material scarcity onboard ship and in Alaska counterbalanced inflation. Many people preferred silver, or for large purchases, gold, but few people had enough of either to use as legal tender. Up here, barter was just as welcome as cash. In the end, ten rounds of 9mm paid for their drinks and the tip. Nothing was easy, these days.
The pickup cab was a bit cozy with all four of them jammed in it, but the girls didn’t seem to mind. Becky’s warmth pressed against him made him glad that the girls had ditched their ride at the bar. He drove to the waterfront park down the hill and parked a few minutes, watching the lights of ships in the distance. Many were U.S. Naval vessels, of course, at anchor or on patrol to keep loose. Others were foreign container ships and tankers, always coming and going throughout the day and night. The problem for Tommy was, there was no place to go. No quiet unfrozen places outside, no motel rooms empty anywhere in the city, nothing. Even the barracks abandoned by deserters had quickly been claimed by officers with families and the right paperwork. There was nothing for it. Tommy drove slowly to a not so crowded restaurant, where at least a booth would give them more room face to face than the truck.