by Rosone,James
“General, we are going to have your entire army rotate back to the US as a whole unit, at least what’s left of it after you detail off the occupation force. You, and portions of your force are going to be conducting victory parades all throughout the country. Following the parades, your army will then be given a full thirty-days of leave before we reconstitute your force in the Pacific Northwest. We are also going to outfit your infantry forces with the new Raptor combat suits and the new Wolverine IFVs. When your forces do enter the war in Alaska, your army will be fielding the newest in military equipment. You are also going to be facing several million Chinese soldiers and we are expecting you to not just defeat them, but drive them back into the sea. Once in place, we will begin a phased withdraw of General Black’s Second Army so his group can go through the same refit.”
General Gardner was going to object, but held his tongue for a minute thinking about the global situation. He took a moment to look at the map before returning back to face General Branson and the SecDef. “I understand the situation is not looking good in Alaska. It is not looking good in Europe either. My entire army could be the difference in defeating the Russians quickly or dragging the war out for a lot longer.”
The SecDef knew Gardner would have objections, but it was his job to make him see the bigger picture. “Gary, the war with Russia is going to have to continue without your army. Your air units will make a tremendous difference, but the situation at home is far more serious. We cannot allow the Chinese to land millions upon millions of soldiers in North America. If they are able to do that, then we are in serious trouble. Your army is the most battle tested army we have right now, and once outfitted with the newest equipment, it will be our most lethal. We are going to leave most of your equipment here with the Israelis while the armored units are moved to Europe. Your entire army will be completely refitted with the newest equipment. We also have the Central and South American Multi-National Force that is starting to complete their training. We are going to slice off half of them to Europe, while the other half will be integrated with your army. This is a huge manpower increase, nearly 550,000 soldiers in addition to the 750,000 US soldiers that your army will be increased to. You will be commanding the largest single American army in its history.”
Very few people ever called General Gardner by his first name, Gary, but the SecDef did so in an attempt to break through the military man’s defense. They needed him on board with this plan, and more importantly, they desperately needed him to help work some sort of miracle and defeat the Chinese, just as he had defeated the IR twice in Israel.
General Gardner knew that ultimately the SecDef was right; he just did not want to leave Europe to the backburner. But if Alaska fell, then the situation back home would get significantly worse. “I understand the situation now. Are things really that bad in Alaska?”
The SecDef held his hand up to stop General Branson from speaking, and looked directly at General Gardner as he replied, “The situation is much worse, General.” He sighed and sat back for a second before continuing, “If the Russians break out of Alaska, we are essentially destroyed in the Pacific Northwest. The President placed all of our eggs in one basket in Alaska--not that he had much of a choice. Right now, if they break out, the entire Yukon, British Columbia, and the rest of the Canadian States are completely open. We have virtually no military forces in those areas that could slow down the Chinese juggernaut. We have roughly 35,000 troops in Washington State, which has no hope of stopping the Chinese.”
General Branson jumped in at this point. “We are graduating 30,000 new troops every week, but they are green--very little in the way of NCO or officer experience. We are forming new divisions as fast as we can, but we can only train so many troops at a time, let alone equip them with modern weapons and equipment. Bringing your army home gives us 360,000 combat-hardened veterans and a backstop in case the Chinese do break through Alaska before your army is ready. You are going to receive an immediate 550,000 troops from the Multi-National Force (or MNF as we call them) and 30,000 new troops a week from training. We want to hold your army back until you reach a troop strength of 1,250,000 soldiers, and then unleash you on the Chinese.”
The SecDef continued, “Intelligence is showing a massive Chinese Task Force heading for the Hawaiian Island. We’ve evacuated the civilian population and left behind a nasty guerrilla force for them to deal with, compliments of the Marines and Special Forces. But we anticipate them securing the port facilities and airport (or what’s left of them from that nuclear torpedo they hit us with during the first days of the war). They are reconstituting the PLAN infantry force, which led the invasion of Alaska. We are leaving you with a lot of footage and reports of the naval infantry for your people to study. Our intelligence shows that the PLAN is moving forward with expanding its force to 600,000, and is currently training that force right now. We anticipate them being ready for combat by the end of the year, maybe sooner.”
Colonel Richter, General Gardner’s aide, asked, “Do they have the sealift capability to support such a force?”
“That is a good question Colonel; as of right now no. They can only support about 160,000 troopers at a time. Everyone accuses China of being a cut-and-copy nation-- and frankly they are. They took our designs for our Marine Expeditionary Force, our amphibious assault ships and vehicles, and replicated them. They virtually hit us with our own equipment. They are expanding the capability rapidly. We just learned the other day that China and India have officially signed a non-aggression-pact, freeing up hundreds of thousands of soldiers and equipment they had been holding back in case they needed them against the Indians. To further complicate things, the Indians are going to start producing ships and other materials that the PLA needs for their war.”
General Wade snorted. “Why would the Indians support the Chinese and not the Allies? The Grain Consortium is selling them tens of millions of tons of food stocks a week.”
“Because their economy is still a wreck, and the orders the Chinese are able to place are going to be a huge economic boon to the Indian government. We are actively working with them right now to see if they will sever that activity and support the Allies instead, but we doubt they will,” said the SecDef angrily. “The loss of the Fifth and Seventh Fleets mean we have virtually no naval force in the Pacific or Indian Oceans, so they view China now as the dominant power in the region and want to stay on their good side.”
“As long as they do not actively join the war on the Axis side, I think we can handle it; there are ways for us to slow down their economy if need be (such as cyber-attacks). The main thing is, we cannot afford a war with two nations whose population is above two billion people. China is bad enough,” said General Wade.
Looking at his watch, the SecDef interjected, “Generals, I have to meet with the Israelis, and I need to prepare for that conference. I am going to leave you all to your tasks and new orders; please implement them immediately. General Gardner, I look forward to seeing you back in Washington, D.C. soon. You’ll be bouncing back and forth between your Command HQ in Washington State and DC for a bit, so you may want to invest in some airplane pillows.” The SecDef chuckled as he got up.
With that, the various commanders left for their commands to begin implementing the President’s orders and directives. General Gardner began the immediate task of identifying the units that would stay behind.
Raptor Rapture
30 July 2041
Tel Aviv, Israel
3rd Marine HQ
The 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force (3rd MEF), were finally relieved of their position in Damascus following the IR surrender. The entire 3rd Marines had been selected to stay with General Gardner’s Army and rotate back to the US for a rest and refit before moving north to attack the Chinese and drive them back to the sea. For the men of the 3rd Marines, this decision could not have come at a better time. They were tired, dirty, beat up and downright ready for a long-overdue break. They had been fighting for nearly a year, first i
n Mexico and then rapidly deployed to the Middle East for an incredibly fast and intense war, resulting in several million people killed in direct combat.
1st Lieutenant Thornton had started the war as an E5 Sergeant; he was given a battlefield promotion to E7 Gunnery Sergeant, and then given a battlefield commission to 1st Lieutenant as the leadership in his battalion had been nearly wiped out. He had just gotten done with a staff call with Major Lee, the battalion commander (well, technically, he was now Lieutenant Colonel Lee, since he had just recently been promoted).
“Thornton, I know that you are getting ready to have some time off, and it is well-deserved, but we are going to need for you to complete an officer familiarization course after your leave. Lest you think we are singling you out, all of the battlefield-promoted officers and NCOs will be attending one of these courses. Even though the 3rd MEF may only be returning home for a short time, now we need to normalize some of our more traditional training.”
“Also, congratulations are in order. You are being promoted again, this time to Captain; your new rank will be more befitting of your position as Company Commander. With the Corps still dangerously short on officers and senior NCOs, you are also going to be functioning as the battalion executive officer (XO) in case something happens to me or I need to be taken offline.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” replied Captain Thornton. He had made the mistake of making a less-than-grateful response to a promotion once before; he wouldn’t make that error again.
Once he digested his own promotion, Captain Thornton had to pass along some news to the rest of the company.
“Listen up ladies and gentlemen. You all know that we are going to be headed out of this hole and headed home for some R & R.”
Whoops filled the room.
Thornton signaled for the room to quiet down. “Well, we are all getting 30 days at our homes of record. Following the R & R, we will reform up and start attending two weeks of various professional development training courses. Then we have four weeks of intensive training on the new Raptor combat suit, and finally a two-week field training exercise (FTX) in the new suits. From there, the 3rd MEF will continue to train at our home station for another month before deploying forward to California to await further orders.”
The men of the Company were excited; they had just survived a horrific year. Many of their friends and comrades had not been so lucky, and now it was time to return home, rest and recuperate before preparing for a new fight. This fight would be different from the others; it was a fight to defend the actual homeland on U.S. soil. Many of the Marines were ready to go fight the Chinese now; the adrenaline junkies inside them were chomping at the bit to get back into the fight.
Most of the longer combat veterans, however, knew the war would still be there waiting for them after their leave, so they were more focused on enjoying the downtime before the killing began again in earnest.
DARPA
15 September 2041
Operation Pegasus
Once the Chinese main army reached the American defensive positions at Cooper Landing in the south of Alaska, and Susitna in the north, they established their own lines of defense and began to settle in while the rest of their army and equipment was offloaded. The PLAAF continued to establish more manned and fighter drone airbases across the captured portions of Alaska, while the Russians continued to fight for control of northern and central Alaska. Because the U.S. Marines had established a wide network of firebases all throughout key strategic areas of central and northern Alaska, it was forcing the Russians to have to take them out one at a time if they wanted to continue to advance further into the interior of Alaska.
The reprieve from the continuous Chinese assaults was both a blessing and a curse. It provided US Forces the time needed to bring in additional reinforcements and refit General Gardner’s Third Army, but it also meant the Chinese had more time to offload hundreds of thousands of soldiers and armored equipment. The PLA forces in Alaska now stood at 950,000 soldiers, with more arriving each week.
Despite months of heavy fighting in the air, neither side had established full dominance of the skies. Just as the PLAAF and Russians were starting to secure the air war, the Americans began to introduce the newest and most advanced fighter ever seen. The Archangels (F41s) with their EmDrive propulsion and “angelic” power system. The U.S. had few of these aircraft in service; the material requirements to build one was immense, but so too was their impact on the war thus far. America had not lost a single F41, and had already shot down over 430 drones and 93 manned fighters with just ten of these aircraft in service.
Leveraging the new angelic power system, the F41 was the first aircraft to make use of an air-to-air laser. When enemy drones or fighters would fire a missile, the F41 would simply shoot the projectile down and then target the enemy fighters or drones, destroying them at ranges as far as 150 miles. Because the F41 did not run on a conventional fuel system, they could stay aloft for as long as the pilot and weapons systems could handle, making them a very unique weapon (particularly if they could be produced in greater quantities).
What American defense manufactures lacked were the rare earth elements needed in a host of advanced manufacturing. These rare elements were becoming harder and harder to come by, with China owning nearly 90% of all known rare earth element deposits. The need for America to be able to extract lunar minerals was becoming more and more apparent as the war continued. The Moon contained a host of these rare elements, along with a new mineral called Veldspar, which could be found in the asteroid rocks that impacted the Moon quite often. The Veldspar could be refined down to create Tritium4, which was a critically rare element that right now was being synthetically produced, albeit in small quantities.
With the advent of the angelic power system and the EmDrive propulsion system, the President directed DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to develop a prototype deep space mining starship that could leave and reenter Earth’s orbit and fly to the Moon with the specific intent of locating these rare elements and bringing them back. The angelic power source would provide the power needed to run the first continuous thrust propulsion system. Once in space, it would leverage an improved ion engine that could propel the craft from Earth to the Moon in 16-hours. Once on the Moon’s surface, the mining astronauts would immediately begin the process of establishing the first lunar base of operations and begin to identify, move and process the required materials and then arrange them for transport back to earth.
DARPA had been tinkering with the designs for such a ship for decades, and once the appropriate power source had finally been identified, they immediately set to work on building a craft around it. The ship was called the HULK, mostly because of its size. The ship would be 5,100 feet in length, 400 feet in width, and 600 feet in height, broken down into multiple cargo holds and an onboard smelter.
The ship would be run by a crew of six engineers, three communications specialists, two navigators and four other members to include the pilots. It would also carry twenty space miners from a company called Deep Space Industries, who would manage the smelter and actual mining operations. Because most of the ship would be automated, the large ship could get by with just fifteen full-time crew members to run the actual day-to-day operations. It also had a decent sized living and recreation area built in for the crew and miners to live in, and a set of laboratories, in which the scientists on board could conduct their space research and experiments. It could also be configured to carry any number of different types of cargos and equipment loads. A similar version for actual deep space exploration was also in development.
When the initial design had been shown to the President and his science team in July, he had immediately signed his approval to move Operation Pegasus forward. The construction of the HULK started immediately in Kentucky, and would take approximately nine months to complete. The location had been chosen because of its close proximity to a number of other manufacturing sites; plus, the Preside
nt had promised to bring additional manufacturing to Kentucky to augment the loss in coal jobs.
During the past four years of the Stein Administration, the President had stayed true to his word on revamping the American energy program by expediting the conversion of coal-fired plants to natural gas and increasing the use of solar, wind, geothermal and wave energy. Of course, this transformation also meant a lot of Americans in the coal industry had lost their jobs, and the President was determined to ensure every one of them was able to cross-train into another career field, paid for by the government.
In collaboration with Deep Space Industries, DARPA had developed, a rock crushing machine that could bust up rocks in the near zero-gravity found on the surface of the Moon. The plan was for several Moon excavators to gather the identified minerals and then bring them to be broken down; once crushed, the ground materials would move through a conveyor belt system into a specialized loading bay where the materials would be processed through an onboard smelter and then turned into an initial refined material ready for transport back to the U.S.
In collaboration with DARPA, SpaceX had built a smaller cargo ship, which would gather the refined material and transport it back to the US before returning back to the Moon for another pick up. The smaller cargo ship was 1,200 feet in length, 200 feet in width and 300 feet in height, and built purely for hauling cargo. It could transport up to 120 tons of refined material from the Moon to the earth. It would also be used to transport necessary supplies from Earth to the Moon on its trips up. Key scientists had estimated that once the mining operations were fully operational, and materials started to consistently arrive on Earth, the defense manufacturers would be able to produce upwards of 1,000 Pershings and 200 F41 fighters every month.
Of course, the U.S. would not be watching anything in the daily news cycle about all of these space missions for quite some time, because the hope was that by keeping the whole operation clandestine, America would finally have a true leg up on their adversaries. All of the scientists and astronauts that were directly involved in the project had been assigned Secret Service details, and had been required to sign nondisclosure forms longer than the Great Wall of China.