Against the Tide. [David Weber's Out of the Dark, Waifu Catalog Fanfic]

Imperator Pax · Sep 28, 2021

The Shongairi Invasion
Part 1

For whatever reason the Shongairi had left what remained of the internet still up. Was it a trap? It certainly could have been, but at the same time it was a source of news that they otherwise wouldn't have had. Still it was for the best to take precautions. Hence meeting well away from any real electronics, and in the mounting humidity.

"My name is my name." Kane replied to the question he expected, going by the mononymic helped contend with the fact he now separate from the name he had been born with... and of course even though he couldn't order anything else from the catalog for year he had bought the MCV before being dropped into this other world... so Kane as a name worked surprisingly well... It was a wonder the other southerner hadn't tried to ask a few days earlier.

The other man decided not to push it turning back to look at the ranger green hard body cases. He had a granger's look. Worn, leathery skin, the beginning stoop of a life time farming, and the tell tale dirty nails, and the common receding hairline that might or might not have been from constantly wearing a hat too tight for his head. He had probably been a farmer of a few thousand acres before the Shongairi attack, he certainly had the look of many Kane had known in the life. His friends were more of an assortment, some shared the rural anglo/scotch-irish range of that was a near template standard across rural Georgians. Others though had the build, and complexions of urban, or sub urban participants.

Participants in the new struggle, the new holy war against the Shongairi. Given the vehicles the men had, one of their number had probably worked for a Uhaul franchise, and had appropriated the business's resources for the war effort. They no doubt made similar assumptions about the source of the AT 4 single shot disposable rocket launchers he was distributing to them. That he had raided some national guard armory quickly and early. It was the logical assumption, not that he had the ability to manufacture them new. Kane idly considered what things might have been like if he had purchased the MCV expansion option for the Generals Universe, but that opportunity was beyond him for the time being. Not that it was all that hard to retrofit an M16 with more modern fixtures if it came to that.

As it happened Shongairi body armor wasn't especially good at stopping 5.56, or for that matter the puppy's own intermediary caliber round, "Fair enough," The farmer coughed slightly, "What about the road people?"

He wondered if the man had actually read Stirling's Dies the Fire, or if he had picked the term up from somewhere else, or coined it himself. "I don't follow."

"A lot of people are leaving the cities. Atlanta got hit," The initial talks had been somewhat strained by the argument over whether or not what had happened to Atlanta had been a nuke or not, but they were beyond that. He glanced around the 'camp ground' of FDR State park., "We're kind of pushing it meeting like this, even if right now there are a bunch of people leaving the cities."

Ernest coughed slightly, and stepped forward. The Uhauls hadn't come from him... he had probably been a dentist in the days before the Shongairi... or at least that had been the impression from all the teeth related knick knacks the man had, "What Paul is saying is that, we're going through what medicines, and perishable goods we have, but if there is anything left in the cities that are being abandoned. Shouldn't we do something about that?"

"I'll leave that to your best judgment gentlemen." He thought about the British list of occupations who had been exempted from military service during the world wars. Occupations too necessary to the broader war effort and society as a whole to be risked fighting on the fronts. Should they be trying something like that? Maybe, but that wouldn't be today. "I don't know if its worth the risk to go back in the cities," He wasn't even completely sure why Atlanta had been hit, save maybe because of Hartsfield Jackson. The airport might have maybe explained the first wave kinetic strike of Georgia's state capital. The Shongairi had not struck all of the State's cities, technically Columbus had avoided a direct strike... and might possibly still have had power. LaGrange still had electricity and running water last he heard.

When they were finished talking both groups departed presumably the farmer and his friends would split up at some point, hopefully they weren't all taking the same route back... and that just left Kane, and a brooding Ana to retreat back underground. That was the wonder of the MCV, and the Brotherhood of Nod's tech base the subterranean tunnel took them all the way from FDR state park to Blood Mountain... well under Blood Mountain in Chattahoochee National Forest in the north of the state at the speed of a Japanese bullet train with no one on the surface being the wiser.

"So we did that."

He was surprised Ana wasn't outright describing it as a waste of time. "We did." He agreed, pausing to look at the display, and wonder what exactly Charlotte had done to warrant a half dozen kinetic strikes from orbit. The prevailing theory on the web was human resistance. He wasn't sure why Columbia in South Carolina had warranted a kinetic strikes it had either, but South Carolina was even worse off than North Carolina because of it. Mobile, in Alabama, had suffered strikes in the second major wave of KEWs which at least made sense, but Montgomery didn't seem to have been hit... nor had Birmingham or Huntsville which he certainly would have expected to warrant strikes.

The news overall though wasn't really anything detailed. Sporadic postings, and youtube videos were being taken notice of but there were gaps in the communication net... holes punched in the frame work of the internet where major hubs no longer existed.

"Those apes are probably going to go straight to their pick up trucks and start pillaging the cities people are fleeing from." Ana pointed out.

He shrugged, and then with a raised eyebrow retorted, "Should I ask them to start looting on your behalf. Alcohol and other 'trade goods' are something we could start stocking." He thought back to it, the initial meeting of Paul and then later the farmer's friends.

Apes, or angry rednecks depending on how charitable Ana was feeling at any given moment aside it was a characterization that might have had some merit. To that extent he was basically giving them the weapons without getting anything in return. It was gift giving in a sense. The rednecks handed over perishable supplies for storage as well on the basis of understanding that he had the electricity for refrigeration. He hadn't specified 'how', and they hadn't asked. All that mattered was they brought goods to be stored, got guns, and also gifted other goods as a separate group. That was the simple sum of the equation.

Ana glanced at him, and Marduk's daughter threw back her head and laughed at the absurdity of it all, "we're not even a month into the end of the world as we know it, and we've already been reduced to primitive gift giving basics of exchange. Forget bartering or even the gold standard, we're even beyond that."

Kane smiled, "Yes, well its a great shame Amazon's hq was within spitting distance of the KEW that hit Seattle." He wondered if the mail had run anywhere the day after the first Shongairi kinetic strikes had hit... it was a perverse thought... but he wondered all the same. Regardless he looked around at the growing cavernous expanse that was their underground 'dungeon'... their 'underdark'... or whatever they were going to call the space beneath Blood Mountain.
--
Commentary: Regarding the build I like Nanoha, and I liked Hulu's Helstrom. As for the MVC, that comes from the Catch a Ride feature, section of the catalog (Or did at the time, I'd have to check the rules), but in any event, its purchase gives a Red Alert 1 database, and then you can upgrade it by purchasing an additional database, which I did in my build, getting TW3 tech.

It was explained to me that it includes all preceding Tiberium database, which makes sense, I don't know if that should be the case for RA2 and RA3 given how different their tech bases, but just so thats clear. There is an RA1 tech base as well as the Tiberium wars database through the Kane's Wrath part of the timeline.

Imperator Pax · Oct 7, 2021

The Shongairi Invasion Part 2

It was literally of course no skin off his neck to have the MCV build the machines to make the tools to produce what he was asking of it. It was no trouble at all to ask it to produce M16s and AT4s. They were simple cold war era equipment. Standard infantry equipment, and more than anything easy to put in crates and move around.

The MCV could have set up a war factory which could have then been used to make tanks in a mostly automated way... but then there was the matter of not just fueling them but getting them to people to use them... and that would almost certainly have attracted much greater Shongairi attention... even if the factory itself was deep inside the safety of the mountain they would be stupid not to notice something was up.

No, AT4 were quite frankly just fine for the work. Not because the Shongairi couldn't have built things to withstand them. The Shongairi very well could have built tanks... probably had a few tanks somewhere, but their APCs really weren't that different from the Bradley or BMP. Hitting a Bradley with a fifty generally did bad things to the aluminum hull, and the Shongairi equivalent was a little more robust, but it still didn't take being hit by a couple hundred grams of HEAT all that well. That was the puppies fault though, they had come here not expecting to fight anyone with the ability to throw rockets at them.

Kane didn't feel any sympathy for their coming unprepared. The bigger issue was Shongairi air power really. Then again, as the F 22 sortie had demonstrated, their aluminum composite, and ceramic plating weren't magic and did offer substantially better protection against AIM 9X did... and most likely any Russian or Europe Peer missile system in that category of air to air or next bracket would have had similar terminal performance... and that was good. So staring at the dust strewn city scape, and lamenting his decision to not purchase something a BOLO before stepping out the bleak void through the portal that had lead him to this Earth, he directed the MCV's construction efforts.

To tell the truth though he was surprised that northern Atlanta was as ... semi intact as the metropolitan area was. The airport seemed to have been the principle target... volume of traffic perhaps? It didn't matter. The bigger matter was the shopping center... or to be more correct the distribution center rather than the main store fronts. Ernest and his friends had gone down to the mall of Georgia and already made an initial go of looting... and that was what it was no point pretending otherwise. He hadn't asked if they or if they knew of anyone else had hit anywhere else.

The reality of just in time shipping and stocking designed to cut down on waste of course meant that even the warehouses of amazon and Walmart those great edifices of consumerism would have so much in stock... and most of it was unlikely to be all that useful. Thankfully this world wasn't ravaged by the horrific double edged monstrosity that was tiberium. GDI and Nod both had developed their interior and protected cultivation systems for food, to grow plants, and of course in nod's case cultivate fisheries ... though how much of that was the Brotherhood's religious dogma and trappings verus well practicality was up for debate... whatever the case it was the first item on their list... and they'd need stock for that.

What they would not be able to produce were luxury goods. The MCV wasn't an STC, or ACU, or some similar system of production though it was still quite amazing in its own right. "When are we leaving?" Marduk's daughter questioned looking at the hologram.

Thankfully they weren't going to have to go very far overland. He'd sunk a substantial chunk of harvested resources into creating a Montauk Subterranean Command Vehicle and while slower at burrowing through the earth safely than Nod's mole like APC it was a small price to pay for safety, and volume of transport. "Soon. I know your not keen on the geofront proposal," A part of him was glad they weren't in the north east corridor. Boston and New York had both not been targeted by KEW strikes, which didn't make any sense to him if Hartsfield Jackson had been the reason for southern ATL getting smashed up. Truthfully he'd been hoping Robinson would make another YouTube video, or some other streaming freedom broadcast about the things. "But its the best solution we have to countering KEW strikes." Until they could expand power generation and bring GDI derived ASAT systems online, but that would take time, and would only cover their little corner of the planet... they needed to be able to fabricate and launch ions cannons and that would take time and one Ion Cannon wouldn't fire fast enough for what they needed.

She ignored the comment and turned glittering stone cold eyes towards the former battle site. The Shongairi APCs weren't something that could be salvaged, and even if they could it would have probably attracted more Shongairi attention. It would be less of an issue here, but wondered if the Taliban in Afghanistan would resort to looting the bodies of Shongairi weapons and ammunition as the conflict dragged on. He didn't think they would be pushed into that position... they wouldn't, but perhaps people resisting the alien invaders else where might be....

Satana had been Marduk's favorite daughter, but her education had been cut short by other factors and while a terrifying combatant and sorceress in her own right... she was not a general. Her strategies involved violence of action and the more aggressive the better. Hit the enemy, before they could hit you, which was a problem when an enemy had orbital and air dominance of the battle space. "What do you see, Ana?"

"The apes are going to want more rockets," Besides that, that really went without saying. "I don't like this that damned furball," She meant the Shongairi Fleet Commander, "said he wouldn't hesitate to use 'additional kinetic strikes wherever necessary'." That was an exact quote, and unfortunately Ana had no idea where he was so she couldn't just teleport them up there and roast the puppy leader.

"All the more reason to create our own food base sooner rather than later," Once they had stocks the machines could handle cultivation and care for fisheries, and greenhouses already being built under blood mountain would provide food with the necessary vitamins just in case the Shongairi did start slagging farms... which he doubted they would on the necessary scale but even with just the current volume of damage the Shongairi had done he couldn't wrap his head around how much spoiled food must have been created... or medicine.

When... not if... this was over humanity was surely going to be harrowed down significantly... especially of those vulnerable populations that required medicine... and not just medicine like insulin that required refrigeration to remain viable, or optimally effective.

She snorted, and kept looking at it. The acrid ting of hellfire staining her fingers, "We're going to run into Shongairi patrols. They're crawling over the city center, and spreading out from there."

"Destroying them is not our priority. Not right now, but soon." He promised. "We will deal with these invaders once we are in a position to do so, and yes I am sure Ernest and his friends will want more rockets, and that's fine, we will see to that when we get back."

--
Commentary: So I'm working on some Pathfinder ideas, will probably dig through the books, but since I'm replaying through Kingmaker (probably going to buy WotR on Black Friday if I can hold out) I've got some content I'm working on there, but I'm also probably going to end up posting an alternate version of this prompt with a different build, its the Necron tech + Ammanet (Mummy) idea since its somewhat nagging me, but we will see.

Imperator Pax · Oct 14, 2021

Shongairi Invasion Part 3

There was a lot of dust, not all of which could be ascribed to have used a subterranean burrowing machine to evade observation from the sky. It wasn't from having been abandoned though... it was from the dust.. the wave, the great tsunami of dust kicked outward from the Kinetic Impactors that had struck southern Atlanta. It had probably painted the outside more thoroughly, but the rains had caused some to wash off in places leaving great streaks disfiguring the building. The broken glass had let in plenty of dust, and caused in some cases pools of standing water... but for the most part the building was quite intact.

The power didn't work, but that wasn't really a surprise. He didn't even want to contemplate opening one of the large industrial freezers... hopefully no one after them would be so foolish, or desperate... he could imagine the stench from the spoiling would be horrendous... and the bugs was probably going to be another factor. The flies and the roaches would have a smorgasbord... if when they ever got a round to rebuilding it might very be a better idea in terms of sensibility to just burn the whole structure down for filth alone never mind whatever might be wrong with the structure due to the KEW strikes, and neglect.

This was their second day, second trip, of this kind of looting the remains of a great example of American consumerism. There was no point to masses of large flat screen tvs sitting in bays waiting for shelves that would never be restocked... not that apparently in the cases of local Walmart people hadn't looted them for whatever reason... but in their case in particular Kane knew he didn't need them to serve as giant monitors or such. The MCV would be able to produce complex electronics that could function as screens for security and command and control apparatus of various electronics. They weren't quite to the point where they needed a battle lab or such built yet inside Blood Mountain, but eventually they would get there.

The Shongairi allegedly had actual proper tanks. Vehicles that were armored and equipped with a 'large caliber main weapon', but most of their vehicles were an aluminum composite ceramic material of much thinner construction that was why Ernest and his friends were able to hit them with something as cheap as an AT 4 and achieve results. There were however reports of Shongairi tanks operating in Atlanta's area... and he didn't want to risk running into one. He wanted time to see from a distance what they could do... and preferably have a war factory up and running before June... something like say a Nod Ezekiel Stealth tank perhaps rather than something designed to stand up and slug it out... and thus presumably be targeted by a KEW. If he started killing Shongairi tanks it was going to attract attention that he most certainly didn't want.

"That fire has been burning since yesterday."

"Trash underneath the highway," He replied, one more problem that they didn't need either. Probably homeless people who for whatever reason hadn't fled the city. Or people made homeless who hadn't fled the city. The hazard it produced to a city that already had shit traffic on good days before the invasion was one more reason not to get caught in a firefight here. "I just want to hurry this up." Chances were the fires would spread and cause structural buckling to the highways and ... well eventually to collapse them... which might or might not slow the Shongairi down...

... or maybe the Shongairi might actually fix the road. He wasn't sure how much resistance was operating inside the former state capital of Georgia and truthfully they weren't here to find out. The Shongairi Invasion came off as something written by the Air Force of the nineties, he mused. 'What do you mean having full air dominance isn't enough for the bad guys to surrender?' Not that he actually guessed the ground troops were Shongairi Security Forces equivalent... no they had apcs and tanks apparently... it was just that they didn't seem to have any kind of hard kill intercept systems or even explosive reactive armor deployed... they... the invaders didn't seem to have come prepared for urban warfare.

Their vehicles were faster than their human equivalents, and perhaps that was it. They were designed to capitalize on move quickly and hit fast sacrificing protection for speed and firepower... but if that were the case why not more advanced sensor suites? Too many questions remained and no immediate answers seemed forthcoming.
--
He turned away from the swimming fish, and back to the map. Satellite was patchy at best, and he wanted to be careful about just what he connected, but truthfully Kane was having a hard time finding a national capital that was intact. OECD, G20, whatever other big trade or cultural block like OAS it seemed like the Shongairi had gotten around to hitting every national capital by this point.

The puppies didn't understand that their first wave of strikes all but insured that there was no one who would be recognized to give an order to stand down to resistance forces. Each follow on kinetic strike against pockets only eroded the chances of someone with the authority further... and each strike made it harder to figure out what was going on around the world. He was at this point comfortable calling it as the Shongairi had hit every national capital or certainly near enough, but it was hard to figure out was going on in Latin or South America never mind in Asia. He knew Beijing, and Moscow had been hit.

He felt a hand, and glanced to Ana's tall figure next to him. "Tehran seems to be gone," Admiral Robinson had posted an update of sorts talking about the Shongairi invaders staging a large scale offload of ground forces inside the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"What for?"

"Who knows." He replied. He had no reason to question the NAVSPACECOM Commander's claim, but there also wasn't anything he could do about it. Well... about Iran. Dahlgren Virginia though... that might be another story. He would have to see what Ernest and his friends knew about the rest of what was going on up the blue ridge and through Appalachia, but even with that Dahlgren was into Northern Virginia sitting right on the Potomac... he might have to make other arrangements. He wondered if an MCV constructed a submarine pen if the Shongairi would notice. The better option would be some version of Nod Stealth Aircraft.

That assumed the admiral managed to stay alive that long, because at the moment something started to happen. The jury rigged ping system, piecing together information from patches of surviving satellite networks was among other sources relying on weather observation as well as commercial gps or gps equivalents. The only reason they would have even noticed this was that he tweaked enough of them to be watching Iran.

They weren't at the right angle to really see what was going only to to recognize via pattern recognition that the Shongairi were shelling the shit out of somewhere in Central Asia. Afghanistan as it turned out. Though that wouldn't become apparent until Robinson's propaganda broadcast relayed the news and the details that the attack in western Afghanistan had been in response to attacks on Shongairi forces in the region. "What do you make of that?" She asked regarding the screen shift, the white noise of sorts.

"I have to wonder what the Muj did." He replied. Kane shook his head, "Do you fancy dinner?" It wasn't as if they could do anything else right this minute, and they needed to eat. The MCV was busily working to produce more weapons for the next resupply drop after all.

"Salmon," She replied.

It wasn't like he was going to object.
--
Commentary: Harshair (who is the Shongairi equivalent to a colonel, though he might be a single star) complains in canon that the Shongairi army gets far less of the research budget (and presumably the budget overall) that the navy does. Of course he also observes that he's glad to be actually getting hands on experience since most Regimental CO's are administrators, never mind Brigade commanders. He also complains about cost saving measures by bean cutters back home reducing the effectiveness of army equipment by going with cheaper gear. Of course up until fighting on Earth none of Harshair's command has ever fought anything more advanced than spear chuckers so... yeah. He just got exploded in case anyone hasn't read the book.

Imperator Pax · Nov 11, 2021

Hells Bells
Part 1

They had gotten sloppy. There was no excuse. It wasn't that they couldn't fight the Shongairi patrol it was that they had gotten into a firefight with it in the first place. They were, especially as obtuse as the Shongairi were in doctrine, as much of an OCP for the Puppies as the puppies were to Earth in terms of Kinetic warfare, or cyberspace, or just space..

He doubted from the erratic burst of automatic fire that the Shongairi patrol had even been looking for them per se but the bigger question was whether or not they had managed to radio in that contact... assuming that that needed to be done in a directly manual fashion rather than being handled automatically by their systems.

Ana's bestial roar reverberated around the burned out steel framed shopping center. The strange composite crystalline plastic... whatever it was air frame of the hover vehicle deformed under the abrupt snarling mass of hellfire. Her dark hair pushed back from the way it framed her face, and the Shongairi shuddered.

That he supposed answered a question he hadn't really given much thought to.

The Shongairi had souls.

Not that he cared.

The bodies of dozens of Shongairi began to drop. The closest ones having begun to hemorrhage from their various orifices. Blood vessels rupturing underneath their skin, and eyes too.

He put a hand around her waist, "Enough Ana. We need to leave." That was probably an understatement. Even if the Shongairi hadn't radioed in contact directly the Puppies would notice the loss of a squad. He wished that they'd had had time to test the effectiveness of the Allied Mobile Gap Generator though. It might have helped here... but they needed to go before the Shongairi decided to drop a kinetic strike on the area out of principle "Ana, come on." He repeated glancing out at the massacre of a Shongairi platoon." The Shongairi squad equivalent was twelve puppies a little large by the standards of most modern earth militaries... which the exception of the USMC, and there were a lot of dead bodies around them.

He must have finally gotten through to her. Ana gave a noisy exhalation of breath, but let him lead her down the stairs in the back and away from the charnel house. The truth was that there was an equally good chance the burned out ruins they'd just been fighting in had been quite likely the product of humans fighting among each other as it had been a result of humans versus aliens as they passed the pock marked walls. They could have easily been from human small arms as Shongairi ones. No easy way to tell.... and that the way things were turning.

The Shongairi probably didn't have the numbers to truly occupy the planet. There were collaborators... word of that had started cropping up... but most of the fighting between humans had escalted from just groups of looters... handfuls of people really... turning into much larger gangs of looters. They stepped back into the dark of the underground and the red hull lights of the Montauk showed them where to go. An armored hatch in the mole like vehicle opened as they approached admitting them.

The human on human violence complicated the idea of playing 'the mysterious arsenal against the oppressors'. It was easy to say 'the oppressors must die' or kill the alien invaders, or anything else pithy, but the reality was getting complicated. Being a source of weapons mostly to various rag tag freedom fighters was still in the cards. Not that all of that aid was free of course. Some of it was paid in trade goods, and sometimes groups would make actual donations. A sort of community bank of supplies. It was ironic actually that they were the adventurer's bank in many respect. The Templars on the mountain collecting receipts to insure people could collect their goods at a safe location, but even as the Montauk burrowed into the earth there was a rumbling too faint to be a KEW though.

"Air strike?" Ana asked seeming to have shook off the adrenaline enough to use her words.

"Yes most likely," He agreed settling onto the couch. The Shongairi were probably just blindingly hitting the area up top because they didn't have any eyes. "We can't go out and do this again." He remarked, lamenting as they travelled underground the loss of the Aquarium, and for that matter the hospital university. He wondered if the CDC had taken a kinetic strike directly. There had been a great exodus out of the cities within the first week of the Shongairi invading, and then people going back into the cities to loot, but now gas was starting to get scarce.

Not that hoarding gasoline would work all that well. Give it six months ... right in time for winter... and unless you added fuel stabilizer most gasoline would start to break down. Synthetic gasoline, even biofuels could be made but they'd have been terrible for modern engines... probably would still happen but bio fuels would require having crops like corn to turn into... and that ran into the food shortages he really expected to start hitting as winter approached.

"We can just sit under the mountain, and wait." She pointed out. As far as Ana's mental calculus went the Shongair, their collaborators, or any would be human warlords were all fair game.

He understood that, and didn't disagree... but maybe it was living underground... the fact that they were all functioning insomniacs having their circadian rhythms fucked with by living underground and reality of what was going on he had a hard time not trying to get involved... even if they really were only handing out LAWs and M16s really. and AKs. He had enough AKMs for everyone. At least that was how it seemed, but they were cheap and easy to produce... not that the M16s weren't. Production for small arms was basically entirely automated. So too was ammo.

He didn't immediately reply to her statement as the Montauk rumbled back down the tunnel to the growing subterranean complex sprawling out from beneath blood mount. Then finally, "You think that, but we don't have a choice. There is an ongoing demographic shift, crash." Crash was a better word. Pretty much anyone who needed insulin or prescription drugs to live or to stave off a worsening condition, or even potentially maintain equilibrium was probably going to die. The elderly were probably going to undergo a sharp die off. The very young might survive the invasion but how many of them would suffer from nutritional deficiencies that would have an impact later in life. "Say we sit it out. Build up enough that in a year we can launch a massive counter strike from underground," Either because that would be how long it would take to have enough MCVs up and running to churn out the necessary ion cannons and ASAT weapons to be damn sure all the Shongairi ships were dead or because by then the catalog would be open to spend the credits he had banked it didn't matter. "Half the planet will probably be dead."

She looked at him, and then away brushing her hair over her ear. Marduk stood and pace. "They're going to die any way." She muttered darkly. "We'll kill the aliens, but you're at best only going to able to save what a few hundred thousand people, a million two?" She shook her head. "Or do you want to build a whole city underground, and think that they'll adapt to it better than us. I'm the daughter of the devil, you're a sorcerer, and Zwei is a sentient magical book spirit, and think a bunch of normal humans are going to just get over living underneath millions of tons of rock?"

"No, but they'd be alive."

"Up until one of them goes postal." She snarked back. "How many psychopaths have we heard about, how many wannabe serial killers have we heard about who have decided that the alien invasion is a good reason to try and play manson cult or whatever because the world is over?"

Too many, too many and maybe the postings on the internet were wrong. Maybe here down to Florida, and up to Canada it was all exaggerated rumors about the mess... but what about out west... Mexico, California? "Maybe instead of one city we make individual hab blocks then. Small towns of people." It would be safer that way, just in case the Shongairi did happen to find one of them.
Ana shrugged, and then somewhat annoyed worked one of the shongairi bullets out from under her collar bone and flicked it irritably onto the metal decking of the Montauk, "Hell," She swore, "That was itching."

He laughed. "One more thing to punish the puppies for, dear. One more thing."

--
This is somewhat short, because Hells Bells (basically Chapter 2) will be introducing some of the other North American Factions in post invasion politics, which are inspired/expies of other media and their introduction (the expies) will be done as a separate section. The canon people Dave Dvorak and co, as well as the Governor will also be introduced in this chapter as well. Though Vlad will not be introduced for a couple of months in the appropriately titled Lords of the Night chapter.

Its also about two months into the invasion. Canonically you've started to get the first semblance of various resistance groups getting more organized, moving from individual fighters and simple groups to actual networks. Two months in the Shongairi have KEW-ed most of the original military infrastructure leaderships. BCTs are gone after launching their attacks, or if not destroyed lost much of their heavy equipment and been scattered to form or integrate with other local groups. That shit will be important down the road, but its also shit that got basically ignored in the sequel book.

Imperator Pax · Dec 21, 2021

Hells Bells
Part 2

The Shongairi could have used actual nuclear munitions, and probably even used EMP weapons... it was almost surely in their technological base but kinetic strike weapons... rods from god ... were in many ways cleaner and less likely to screw with the Shongairi.

Mostly. The Shongairi had been quick to appropriate the use of human built infrastructure where possible... asi t had made their jobs much easier.... in no small part because they had apparently been expecting to fight barely literate medieval peasants and paved roads would have been something they would have to build themselves.

Thus the Shongairi bolt from the blue had shocked the humans with the speed and devastation... but the Shongairi had failed to account for the knock on effects. If you destroyed a dam even by accident the breached reservoir tended to cause a flood down river and water could move very very quickly when it wanted to. It had probably been a simple miscalculation. After the puppies probably hadn't considered throwing one of their rocks would cause that kind of failure... never mind that the result dam bursting and deluge would do more damage than anything the local humans of the state of North Carolina had managed thus far.

The Ground Commander back east had apparently been howling mad at the Navy up in the sky... it gave them a little bit of breathing room.

'Colonel' Matherson put the beer aside and smacked his lips. "Its not bad." The man's accent still was stained by his yankee birth, New Jersey or New York but his children spoke a much more purely southern upper class english, and whatever time he had done in the Army had polished his english further to not quite be so hard on Kane's ears.

"Yes, its been some time since I've actually brewed beer." He replied.

"Its really not bad." The Colonel repeated. Kane considered the on the wall behind him there was some George Dickel aged thirteen years that had been part of the case of liquor that Fripp had liberated on one of his outings. It wasn't going to get drank by him but it had been the thought that counted. "Eh, I used to think I lived in a Norman Rockwell painting..." Maybe he was in one of the GWOT parody art pieces now, but the comment went unsaid. Ana was willing to tolerate a great deal but the Picasso picture with the drone strike incoming had been a bridge too far for her to consider. Kane drained the last of the too hopp-y beer, and then waved to the paperwork. "You have my military file." It wasn't a question.

He considered the purloined unredacted file not that there was really all that much that black ink in it. Scarcely any truthfully, the gulf stuff was almost farcical that it was.

The Shongairi probably had copies or at least digital ones... prevailing on their penetration of US systems... but he didn't know that for sure, and he wasn't sure that the Shongairi would have the resources to comb through them. "I had a friend destroy all remaining military records." Kane replied... though he had no intention of having Zwei present or doing any explaining. "I've been assured that the work was thorough." The Shongairi had destroyed the District of Columbia of course, and without human inhabitation or maintenance rather and the summer storm season starting early anything that had survived would likely unrecoverable. "You did most of time in the army as an academic." He fixed his green gaze on the man, "That isn't a criticism, in truth I think I would have preferred that. Some of the time anyway. Truthfully there is a need for staff officers and organization."

"So this is a job interview." The yankee accent was stronger more pronounced, but he didn't seem offended at least.

"In a since, you could look at it like that." Despite being derided occasionally as 'southern virginia' North Carolina was still a part of the south and her firearms laws were far less draconian than New York... "The shongairi are just as vulnerable as individuals to small arms as we arm. They use aluminum skin hulls in most of their vehicles, and are thus vulnerable to fairly conventional weapons." the ones that weren't... well a sufficiently big bomb would work. Or a top attack munition if they could get Javellins... or at least that was the report out of the middle east. Iraq, and Afghanistan had both reported that in their videos.

Those were the same videos they went over next. The Global War on Terror had not been Matherson's conflict. He had gone through the end of the cold war, and the first gulf war... and had eventually mustered out before his first star for family reasons ... before the towers had fallen. Truthfully Kane was a little shocked the man had not returned to colors, or not been recalled to them in the lead up to the invasion. That wasn't... it wasn't relevant to their present crisis.

DC was gone. There was no longer a United States. He wasn't going to pretend that it was a united earth against the aliens either. "You come with excellent character references," He continued after yet another small screen explosion. "Enough that I'm comfortable shipping you the equipment in question. They're full size M16 Rifles. AT 4. Grenades, Claymore mines. M60s if you think you'll need them."

"You've got pigs?" He sounded impressed.

He would have preferred FN Mags truthfully. He explained that they were not the latest iteration of the M60, but yes the 'pig'. "Obviously with the way your neck of the woods is, you'll need to create your own caches and hideaways. I doubt the Shongairi would waste a kinetic strike on the town, but it not impossible."

"We've got our share of preppers who had places set up before everything went crazy."

Kane decided not to contest the point. "Weapons, and ammunition at least for these is practical to resupply." He wasn't going to say easy. "If you have the option to replace the stanag mags with magpuls or something else aftermarket it would probably be a good idea. Is there anything I need to be aware of that you need."

"Medicine. We have some nurses and doctors but the power failure,"

He nodded, and cut him off. "We might be able to get power back on line, and stable."

"Biofuels we've already talked about. They'll dirty up the engines." The colonel's interjection had come quickly as if this was a conversation recently.

"Yes, that is an understandable concern. Filters for the fuel production, and cleaning for the engine should help that, but I was thinking something a bit more permanent. The amount of power we can generate without the Shongairi noticing is, we're erring on the side of caution, but there are enough creeks and streams that we can build small power systems to minimize the use of fuel. You'll need the fuel most likely for winter. You'll need stabilizer."

The list went on.

--
Matherson had been the fifth... sixth local community leader of sorts he had interviewed now. A history professor, but apparently one even his local chief of police... not that the town's barney fife type had been much of a vouch had put forward in place of his own name.

Ana sipped her champagne, and looked out over the blue ridge. "Did you ask him about Raleigh?"

"No." The Shongairi had smashed Columbia, in South Carolina. For whatever reason they hadn't smashed the North Carolina state capital at the same time. Odd, especially as they had hit Charlotte. Thickair had dropped a dozen kew strikes on Charlotte after all... There were unpleasant rumors circulating that the governor was talking with the Shongairi leader. They weren't entirely sure that that was the case... but there were other concerning rumors starting to make the rounds about collaborators.

In being so fast and loose though with his kinetic strikes Thickair had thoroughly destroyed the chain of command... if he was expecting that there was someone out there who could give the order to surrender he was sorely mistaken. Of coures if there had been such a person then maybe just maybe they could have used the time to focus on the MCV and preparing for the retaliation... but there wasn't anyone who could give that order, and no one who could organize the necessary relief to try ... even for just the east coast.

"We really don't even know what is true." He didn't doubt that there were collaborators of course. That was probably unavoidable, "Ideally of course we could find Robinson, assuming the admiral is still alive." Which they couldn't be sure of, and even if he had survived then there was no telling if he'd been able to get away from Dahlgren with his data on the initial attack. Anything that he might not have dumped on the internet for one reason or another.

Which there might not have been.

... and a part of him did want to investigate the remains of the Shongairi 'Starlander' transport group... a group of something like thirty of them had been hit as they had come down and been littered over the Virginian countryside. Each of the starlanders was massive... and something useful might have survived the crash. Dahlgren was three hundred sixty miles north east of Asheville.

In theory. They had been theorizing exactly what was an effective radius they could operate in from blood mountain in North Georgia... but Asheville was probably pushing their luck as it was. The process by which the Montauk and other products of Nod technology needed time to excavate safe, and more importantly secure, in detection principles, tunnels.

"So now what?" She asked.

"We go back over the border." To south carolina. There were apparently elements of the Carolina guard still extent. He didn't know how many there were but enough that they seemed to think it was a good idea to still be wearing the desert camo that had been amongst the latest of the US army's 'good idea' acquisitions of the previous few years.

Given they were in the south east why they hadn't ditched those in favor of something more woodland... or even plain civilian clothes was a question for whenever it could be asked. He looked at the black looming shape of the state highway cutting through the mountains. What he could see, but none of the others was the specs of magic as his vision augmented. Kane was uncomfortable, despite his assumed name, with the prospect of using tiberium. It meant that despite having access to Scrin technology he might as well have not had it. The Ezekiel's Wheel stealth tanks though were current lurking along the ridge in active camouflage. They were screen, a disposable one since they were rmote controlled and intended to deal with any air to air units or Shongairi ground vehicles. That was why they weren't something that required fewer resources.

As much as he disliked admitting it Ana had been right after the matter in Atlanta trying to simply move thousands, or even hundreds of people underground was going to potentially cause a psychotic episode... there was probably already enough psychological trauma from the invasion. Underground though was really the only protection that could be feasibly offered to the Shongairi's orbital dominance...

"We didn't bring enough of them."

"We didn't bring them for a fight, dear." He replied to Ana's comment. "They are a contingency, and as we know from Colonel Sanders, and Admiral Robinson the shongairi did not build their aircraft expecting missiles." That might not have been entirely accurate of course. The Shongairi had a host of aircraft ranging from small drones to cargo birds that were larger than european frigates. They had stuff in between, but their drones went down to sidewinders and the big birds like those destroyed by the F22 flight didn't like AMRAAM's too well.

... or sidewinders that got close, or auto cannons, but then maybe they were just transports. The Shongairi might just have never intended to fly in contested skies. The shongairi hadn't intended a lot of things probably. They would return south, and distribute arms that really it wasn't the firearms... those improved morale but it was the AT 4 that were effective against shongairi vehicles especially as they were disposable, and easy to hide.

They wouldn't be enough though. Not to defeat the alien invaders. As for the Black Mountain Militia? They'd benefit from the AT 4s, and other small arms which was more than could be said for the other militias starting to assemble as the summer began in the southern United States. How well the Shongairi would deal with the heat and humidity was admittedly something Kane perversely wanted to see. After all they weren't but pricking the puppies for the time being.

Imperator Pax · Mar 10, 2022

Hells bells part 3

Kane glanced at the crate of Kalashnikov, provided by automatic machines produced by the MCV, waiting to be given away. It was such a simple thing, and a double edged sword. The stamped metal 7.62 x 39 Assault Rifles, and they were the select fire versions not civilian versions that were semi automatic only were easy to churn out... and there was no shortage of ammo. The Shongairi could easily have built better equipment, but since the puppies tended to be lighter, to weigh less than humans they were capable of the physical endurance necessary to use body armor, even though they had it. That and frankly the Shongairi hadn't come planning to fight anything other than maybe the most basic primitive hand cannons.

No guns worked in terms of lethality quite well. The AT4s worked quite well to kill lighter Shongairi vehicles, even if they were less effective against the Shongairi's proper tanks. Shongair GCV, and similar could be motive killed in theory, but since they were hover not tracked it actually was harder to do. They still weren't quite as armored as human tanks, but then they probably hadn't been designed for such.

The Shongairi had come expecting a knock out fight, that was very apparent. Any small unit engagement against the invaders tended to favor who got the first shot off... but the Shongairi could always call up bigger weapons... and they, the resistance, still had little answer to the orbital ortillery. That was what raised the question about distributing more small arms.

"We're against the tide," He muttered, "The planet rather is," Anna glanced up from a salvaged piece of art ... salvaged was a nice way of saying looted from the remains of some DC museum storage that had been thankfully far enough away to survive the kinetic strike that had deleted the White House, Pentagon, and Capitol Hill.

Marduk's daughter adjusted it so it was level, and turned to lean against the wall, "I thought you said the synthetic oil process was up and running."

It was, "There are production bottle necks, but the bigger issue isn't the fuel so much as farm productivity." The Shongairi might or might not have been turning a blind eye to the famine risk... but by this point probably at least half of pre invasion fuel stockpiles, if not more were used up, and even if they weren't the large agribusiness farms that had represented the bulk of production, and the networks that had handled distribution were all gone. The Shongairi could have, but weren't distributing electric replacement tractors, and now planting seasons had been distracted.

Less of a concern personally. As Anna had put it, she was the devil's daughter, Zwei was a book spirit... and he had magic... and they all access to an MCV which would have certainly attracted significant Shongairi attention if it weren't burrowed in under blood mountain. "Matherson is it?"

"I didn't expect a bunch of ROTC cadets," From a bloody bible college no less, "to be quite so... energetic." He rubbed his eyes, "Admittedly its not just him the situation in upstate carolina," The southern one, "is a headache, I didn't think about it, but the strike on Columbia like as not slagged the FN facility... or not."

Her eyes narrowed in contemplation, "What's that mean?"

"There are too many armed groups running around." It was turning into the second world war's issue in western Europe all over again... and he could understand why Eisenhower had decided to stop supply arms to the French Resistance. Between retaliation en masse by the Shongairi, and in fighting he had concerns for high summer if it kept up at this rate... especially once food became scarcer still.

Kane regarded the weapons crate, it wasn't going to deliver itself.
--
The dust particulate in the atmosphere made the waning afternoon sun an exotic almost tattoine evoking pink, even though much of the ground was overgrown with too tall grass. Ordinarily the county or even state would have been cutting the roads. The shongairi had invaded before the trimming would have ordinarily started, and since it hadn't started for the year nature was hastily overgrowing the banks, and it wasn't any different in the ordinarily manicured laws Homeowners associations tried to insist on.

"Its interesting that they've only just started to destroy the GPS network," Matherson remarked. "That made this place a bit hard to find."

"I admit it caught me somewhat by surprise," He replied, "It may simply be a response to the population disruption." The mass exodus from the cities, and then the partial return, and then another round of flights. It was an ebb and flow that accelerating the break down in civilization, "If I might ask why the request specifically for Kalashnikovs?"

"You don't think their more reliable?" Answering the question with a question.

"I think you still have to clean them, and ammunition shouldn't be an issue, is it size?" The AKM was about half a foot shorter, which could make a difference... but the M16A2 should have been easy to retrofit with collapsing stocks and short, even technically civilian non NFA barrels without much trouble.

"I mean fully automatic."

Kane raised an eyebrow, and then paused to reaxamine Matherson's position, "Oh of course," And remember the A2's manual instructions on advised rate of fire, and automatic rifle usage... in other words how many rounds you should shoot... "Fire doctrine needs to be taught, and if you're having problems with the M16 on full auto, the M60 is going to have similar issues."

"We need enough rifles for everyone," The yankee replied, which was fair enough, even if his inflection was irritating, "Its also hard to train. What about penetrating the puppy's internet?"

They weren't the only ones trying, but Thickair had been assured that all such attempts by various human interests had failed. That wasn't quite true. Zwei wasn't human of course, "We're working on it," He replied, "its easier to intercept their communications in the local, than the network as a whole." The conversation turned to Shongairi hunting parties aimed at other resistance groups, but they may well be preparing to turn inward... or not if the Shongairi were still trying to hunt down Robinson up north, or the destroyed armor regiment's survivors or the Mujahadeen, northern alliance, or anyone else in Afghanistan's mountains... as far as Kane was presently concerned it was best to let them.

"A third of the planet?"

"Given the hits on major cities, a third is a reasonable estimate." Given about four billion people give or take lived in officially urban areas, "I'm folding in the numbers who've since died of deprivation, lack of medicine food, and so forth, so the estimate is conservative."

"Did somebody really try and make a dirty bomb?"

"That's the rumor," It would explain the people who had gotten radiation sickness suddenly out of the blue... "I'm hoping to take precautions against that happening again." The last thing they needed was either shongairi retaliation for a failed nuclear attack, or a successful one, or nuclear material going into a major water source."

"Where did it come from?"

"Columbia we think, We don't know." He replied, "My bigger concern is the refugee crisis and the subsequent spate of violence."
--
It was precisely the latter subject that was worrying not just the Asheville communities, but those in the upstate, as well as northern Georgia. What none could agree on was the matter of who was in charge, and who'd be responsible for provisioning people.

The military police officer was a good example of that. For both good and bad. Mitchell had not taken his supplies and equipment up to North Carolina where more of the guard had survived. That was why his first objective had been destroying as much of the records as possible. Of course that had been before the MP realized he'd be able to resupply his AT4s so there was less concern about who got them.

Which was part of the problem.

It had really only been a matter of time before AT4s and other weapons would have been used against other groups... and that was without even accounting for accusations of collaborating with the Shongairi. Infighting among armed groups seemed a very good explanation for how an suv had ended up in a hotel pool, and the white and red façade of the building had ended up eating at least a couple of rockets. In a city which had more than taken its share of drummings of the Shongairi already.

"Any idea what started it?"

"Fight over who got to loot the hospital, maybe." Mitchell replied. He shook his head, "I wasn't here, at the time," There wasn't much reason to stick around Greenville really. "This wasn't even what I wanted to talk about, I was hoping to see if any of the 5.7x28 ammo had ended up with you?"

He'd been wondering where some of Mitchell's machine guns had been coming from, "No, I've had nothing to do with out that way as of yet," Smyrna and Columbus down in Georgia both had firearms manufacturing and presumably had if anything had survived become a key target for being picked over, given his 'exports' he expected most of those who 'banked' with him didn't expect he needed to trade for guns. Sam Mitchell's question about specialty ammunition wasn't exactly unreasonable. Not when their previous conversation had been geared towards plans to adapt to manufacturing the M4A1.

"And was our ambush successful?"

"Shongairi rifles and side arms, yeah we picked up some." The MP replied mood lightening before something in the distance exploded.

"Natural gas," Kane replied as his intelligent device fed sensor readings from a stealthed nod drone overhead, "and unfortunately that's going to become more common," and was a tremendous fire hazard besides... "We are going to have to deal with the infighting its only going to get worse."

The Guard MP cleared his throat, and highlighted the same problem the Shongairi had, "There isn't anyone whose got the bonafides to be accepted as leader by a majority of the groups." And if someone was selected on personal charisma then their death would likely just fracture the groups again, and potentially lead to more severe infighting than what was already occurring across the south east, "And there is the collaborator issue.

"And there is that." He agreed.

--
Commentary: On a read through, I think, and since time is hard to measure in the novels, Thikair makes a comment about being since Shairez had been 'a day twelfth or so' supervising GB7 on the black sea about two weeks since they had started their public broadcasts of surrender so give or take a month or two possibly into the invasion or at least post first strike I think.

Interestingly the Shongairi month appears to be about seventy five, seventy seven, days ish. Its supposed to be 2.5 months Earth time. I don't know how well Weber kept to that bit of detail.

Ok moving on, so its Thursday, and for at least the next week my standard updates schedule is going to be disrupted. I'll still post daily updates, just in a nonstandardized schedule. Luxen II Contract Side Story will probably come back at the end of the month, I don't want to being three BattleTech stories a week, that will cause me some mental fatigue and burnout to work with, and we will see in April what my update schedule goes to, but I do have another Battletech Story that is ongoing and I'd like to get through the first couple chapters of that.

Imperator Pax · Apr 19, 2022

Hells Bells
Part 4

Despite probably outweighing him by as much as forty pounds Kane's height, and longer arms afforded him the reach to keep the bigger man at bay... and of course the other man was merely human.

Emilio stumbled back into the ropes, and coughed, "You've got those stupid pterodactyl arms," The heavyweight boxer coughed again.

Ana laughed at the comment. Kane rolled his shoulders back, which only emphasized the reach his hieght afforded him. The dojo for lack of a better description had been temporarily roped off in to a boxing ring. He knew some people were using fight club esque chain link sections, but there was no need for that... there really were enough warehouses and sporting goods stores to loot to have 'authentic' spaces. They were underground, a meter plus of reinforced concrete and steel protecting them from any kinetic strike that managed to come over head... and of course any such strike would have to get through the dirt above the bunker's 'roof'.

This was probably going to be the future for the foreseeable future of humanity in terms of habitation. No one asked questions about how it had gotten built. It was living space, beds, electric lights, furniture, exercise ... all of it could either be produced or looted from stores no longer in operation. The habitation blocks were creating small safe communities.

... well assuming that Ana didn't end up being proven right. In terms of construction there were intended in much the same fashion of any hardened cold war era structure, they weren't being built with any truly complex electronic systems. That was both a time saving measure, and a security one... but it would also keep questions down. During the cold war the US Army corp of engineers had in conjunction with civilian firms established networks of installations in secrecy and quickly without attracting attention or needing significant time investments. This wasn't quite the same thing, but the principle of digging and setting concrete was similar even if it had as much, if not more in common with rail tunnel construction underground than that.

"Did uh," Emilio was gingerly tossing his wotter bottle between hands, testing his hand eye coordination, "The Indians and Pakistanis really nuke each other?"

"It certainly looks that way." Kane replied. They still weren't entirely clear on what had happened... and it was true, Ana had brought up how the invasion had given plenty of people just looking for an excuse to slip the leash and go full boogaloo on a world where there wasn't a civil law apparatus, but that wasn't what had happened between the two countries. Not that she had actually used 'boogaloo' as a term, but others had. "We're short on details.. the internet was patchy over there before they nuked each other, and now more so."

There was no telling what in some future history course the number of concurrent wars that 'Space War 1' would have going on alongside it. Did they consider what was going on in Mexico a part of the drug war, did they call it a Mexican Civil War... maybe they'd continue to just call it unrest. They being whoever ended up writing the textbook. US Forces Afghanistan, and Iraq both were known to have surviving, if significantly diminished troops in action, but western European countries simply lacked the geographic depth that most US facilities, most NATO facilities west of Germany had eaten either first or second wave Kinetic Strikes. There were surviving NATO forces in Germany, Poland, the Baltics. The Swedes, and Finns, Norway, and Denmark all allegedly had units in the field but it was less concrete at present... again due to degraded communications.

The Russian situation was who the fuck knew. Moscow had taken a first wave KEW, and then several subsequent hits. Lack of communication in the Russian Far East... no one knew what was going on. China simply hadn't been prepared... not that anyone else had, but given how significant their urban build up on their eastern seaboard had been catastrophic, but they didn't have a timeline for what had happened only broad strokes, snapshots of events.

"But that's why we do this?"

"China, yes. India, Pakistan? No, I don't know what caused that exchange," Or rather what had caused it to actually happen, the precursor grievances, well he could imagine some of it, but it didn't matter. It would be the sort of thing historians could talk about, and speculate, and pontificate on at length after the Shongairi were destroyed. "Given the Shongairi willingness to air strike, and use their KEWs this is the only way I can think of to minimize that." Even these warrens weren't perfect... the meters of dirt before you even got to the outermost reinforced concrete shell would stop KEW strikes, but what then?

Did the Shongairi have better weapons, probably. On the other hand if they had come expecting to fight knights on horseback, well they probably hadn't planned for defeating bunkers... and ultimately KEWs were cheap. The puppies used the cheapest thing in their arsenal to do the most damage,.

Kane shook his head. This was the best option available to them. The furnishings would be sparse, but he knew that would be only a matter of time as different enclaves looted, or otherwise acquired better furniture to make the place less 1950s chic. They could only be built so large, and part of that was secrecy. The simple reality was they couldn't relocate significant chunks of an urban population into any single habitation block. Eggs in one basket and all of that.

--
"We know the Shongairi don't understand human psychology. " He remarked, and the inverse was true. The Shongairi had been politically unified before they even developed nuclear technology, maybe even before they had had airpower. The puppies seemed to have come from a largely grassland dominated continental steppe... not desert arid but probably not the same expansive forest zones as in central or northern Europe either. Exactly what roll that geopolitics had played it still wasn't determinism. "I suspect given what we know of Shongairi history," Or at least fragments of official shongairi history they expected a quick victory based on fire support from orbit, but how much of that plan was based-"

"On expecting to fight knights in plate, longbows, and so on?" Ana snorted. "What's the expression how they can't reacquire and reassess the plan now that its been proven wrong."

"That does seem to be the case, yes." He replied, "The loop is broken, they keep repeating the same mistake." A failure that was useful... and yet did nothing to prevent the increasing conflicts with human scavengers as summer wore on The summer heat was almost certainly contributing to growing discussion of disease outbreaks.

... and that was only one more thing. Displacement from urban environs had reached a point where there were entirely new communities having to develop and it wasn't pretty. The disintegration of the old social order didn't appear to be encouraged by the Shongairi, it was just happening as a by product of the puppies' often wanton application of orbital strikes.

"The Shongairi have a base somewhere in the Carolinas," That was indisputable now... and it seemed on the face of it, it could be related to to North Carolina having a reduced but still largely coherent state government.

But the reality of not using Tiberium to to process ore first created a delay in what they could manufacture. Admittedly the Red Alert Techbases of both the Allies and Soviet Union didn't need tiberium... but they were largely confined to computer technology that was scarcely more advanced than the late cold war. Not using tiberium added time to the process of refining and ore purification which was delaying the eventual counter strike.

They needed more time for GDI ASAT systems, and strategic defense technologies, energy weapons, and so on. The GDI had never had the faintest plan for building an ion cannon network from scratch during a hostile invasion and without tiberium to bootstrap manufacturing... so instead of potentially taking months they were looking at possibly even years.

"The floppy eared freaks are going to notice someone," Them, "Are building nuclear reactors."

"We don't have a choice," GDI"s later second tib war, "Gas turbines isn't an option," Not the least of which was the volume of synthetic oil they would have had to produce would have meant investing more in that... it just wasn't feasible. No nuclear power was the much more practical and hands off solution. The only real danger was them being destroyed by direct action as well that was the advantage of modularity and replaceability.... "It will probably take them longer. The Shongairi don't seem to process outlier data sets well, they won't immediate jump to nuclear power plants coming on line regardless of what heat, and other indicators indicate especially from underground," But it was still a risk. "The shongair predictability is that they're basically a monoculture... the best comparison I can give is in recent history, that of Imperial Japan, not the least of which is that they emphasize a single standard dialect based off the one spoken in their capital district for Japan's Tokyo's dialect that emerged out of the Old Edo dialect, the Shongairi haven't had separate nation states... for who knows how long." That would be something for Zwei to dive into, "And hopefully by that point we'll have enough resource to sink into surface to air missile platforms." Which still did nothing to stop KEWs but they were banking on the reinforcement being enough... and not being detected in the first place as the first layer of the onion since they were fixed in place.

"So what then?"

"Regarding Ground Commander Terraik?" Ana nodded, "In all likelihood that depends on what we see develop over the next year... but..." he trailed off. The Shongairi response to nuclear attacks meant that any non crippling strike to orbital assets was pointless. The Shongairi may well have killed half the planet, and there was no telling what nature would do in the interim even without Shongairi actions, or human infighting. "He's in the way," The GB commander stradled eastern North Carolina from all reports. "And he'll have to be dealt with," But there were significant other problems from the destruction of the dam.

The thought merely reiterated to how scanty their information coverage was without orbital assets of their own. He wondered how well European dams, or China's massive three gorge megasite was holding up in the face of the invasion.

Marduk's daughter leaned back on one of the couch's in the living room. "Do you really think we have that long?" That was the question wasn't it.

"Zwei tells us that the Shongairi losses are unsustainable at their present rates, they don't have the trucks to support overland routes," And apparently didn't have the air wing either to bring landers in, not into contested airspace given that their thin skinned transport aircraft weren't designed to be shot at.
--
Notes: This is largely spacer material expanding other material as we move into dealing well the lead up to the Shongairi deciding fuck it bioweapon plan. By which time they had already estimated that half the pre invasion population was dead, and that half of that would be dead if they kept going like they were.

Unfortunately by deciding to go full mustache twirling idiot they picked a fight with Vlad who thus far had been largely content to be in stay off my lawn to transform into full on murder beast for the wolfmen. In any event Hell's Bells part 5 will resume, or conclud the chapter with a return look at the fighting of the invasion in a rather wolverine matter because who doesn't enjoy cult classics... but also to delve into side perspectives ahead of other chapters.

Imperator Pax · May 17, 2022

Hells Bells Part 5
(Conclusion)

--
The montauk was beginning to decelerate as they neared their destination. It'd be another hour, travel after the switchover boring through the mountains limited them to about 65 kilometers an hour... which was painfully slow driving through town speeds or it had been before all of this.

The Boog.

They were going into summer, and the term had made something of a resurgence in local conversation... and Kane could honestly say he hated it. It was admittedly probably more accurate than he wanted to admit, which itself an unpalatable recognition. Kane loathed that he needed to consider the human factor and the violence that was become standardized ... normalized in addition to the puppies' invasion force.

They were now over the three month mark, which meant nothing to Ana. "Three months of stockpiled food," He explained sitting back, "its a timeline planning delineation."

"So people with three months," She waved her hand from her couch.

"And then the people, 'more prepared' than them would be people who already had a farm, homestead," whatever, "already prepared to be self sufficient," When whatever happened happened... except he doubted that those people had really planned for an alien invasion. The shongairi were after all all down so many vehicles that they were stuck using impressed human vehicles, and that meant needing gas for them.... which if he were honest would probably mean that the Shongairi probably would if they hadn't already start managing human refineries, but they would have to see if that happened.

The other side of the three months, ninety days of food, was that ninety days of dry goods / long term food was that it could be spread out over a small community ... and that at three months surely wouldn't the situation be over and things be something approaching back to normal? The answer to that in their case was no really.... or rather for places the answer was no. The cases where the answer might be yes, meant cases where the answer was yes, but with the but being collaboration with the invaders. There were rumors of the Shongairi issuing scrip, but that was just another reiteration of how far things had changed. Paper money, never mind electronic cash reserves, had become worthless after the first wave of kinetic strikes. Not that looting had broken out immediately, but in the grand scheme of things that didn't matter... anyone who had planned for three months was now past that frame... and the anarchy boog whatever had the added factor of the aliens.

They weren't to assless chaps, but they were close enough. The Shongairi had figured out that their heavy lift aircraft were simply too thin skinned to survive contact with anti air weapons be that air launched or surface launched systems. 'Starlanders' just were not, apparently, intended to land in contested airspace, and even the smaller 'deathwings' were no more armored than conventional Terran rotary wing aircraft. Shongairi 'aircav' units at least had some ability to defend themselves unlike the larger starlanders, but the Shongairi weren't readily deploying those into the most anarchic area.

Which of course raised its own questions. The Shongairi had brought plenty of infantry, but had demonstrated significant risk aversion to their material, coupled with adopting human vehicles. Most Shongairi infantry might therefore have been pure leg infantry... which didn't make sense from a modern earth perspective... but whatever the case the Shongair's unwillingness to move into the bad country meant a power vacuum... and that meant petty warlords springing as a replacement to just banditry. That was what created their present problem.
--
If the Shongairi had invaded in the eighties the sporadic gunfire would have been a bit more diversified... or people would have just started cranking out submachine guns from bikeshops.... and of course that was apparently happening in other countries. Here though, now, the bulk of the gunfire were not hunting rifles in full power rifle cartridges but the allegedly poor performing 5.56x45 or its older civilian parent loadings. There were occassionally full power rifle rounds, and hunting rifles, but shotguns had largely replaced anything larger than 308.

That there were no automatic reports from 7.62 by 39 was something Kane considered a positive sign, if anything about hte present situation could be considered positive. "When did this start?" He asked looking to the two locals with a vexed expression.

"Its been off and on," The deputy replied, Bill something or other, "But Robinson thinks, something opened up on I-240."

"Something opened up?"

"There was an explosion, alright."

It wasn't like Asheville hadn't been a problem within a week of shit kicking off anyway. Kane had missed most of that, but he'd heard enough of the rumors when the second, or maybe third, round of violence had broken out. The first story to come out had been across the different religious lines. Then it had been 'race war'... and then the somewhat more likely gang war. Even that had been the subject of ridiculous lurid embellishment if he were being honest.

"It was probably just a meth lab."

"A meth lab wouldn't have sank the whole road. Maybe it was some kind of alien vortext bomb." The deputy spluttered defensively

Kane exhaled and spared a glance to Ana who had raised a thin eyebrow. "That might explain the fighting." The explosion had probably been something completely mundane... or just human error... but the panic of some unknown alien attack had tipped the balance into... whatever was going on in the city... and it had just spilled out from there. "They don't know what it was either." ... and because they didn't know, and because the city had already had its share of internal fighting to begin with, and because...

"What about the power plant?"

"Which one?" Bill replied. Kane blinked; a long slow gesture, and the deputy cleared his throat, "Well there is the new plant its clean coal or whatever and the old plant is... dirty coal I guess."

"But they're working?"

"Yeah they got electricity still." came the drawled response. He waved to the city skyline in the distance, "You can even see the lights now that its starting to get dark,"

Kane nodded... which made Asheville better than most places. They had refrigeration... so long as the coal continued to hold out... which he wasn't sure how long that would be. Asheville had thus far been reasonably on top of things... compared to what had happened in Atlanta after the kinetic strikes... or Greenville... or what was alleged to be happening in Florida.

Another explosion rumbled in the distance.

"Hells bells,"

"That wasn't alien." Kane murmured looking at the rising white cloud of smoke, "Someone must have raided Bragg." ... and had the experience to rig artillery munitions up to go off. They'd been meaning to see if anything had survived the Shongairi bombardment, if the kinetic strike had failed to penetrate any of the munitions storage depots... and he supposed this answered his question. "Anything else we need to know?"

"We can't go down there."

"No, and if they keep this up I'm sure the Shongairi GB Commander will have noticed." They still hadn't come up with a solution for Terraik... but the latest was that he was making an effort to recruit human collaborators to better administrate eastern north carolina, citing sic. Humanitarian food concerns, starvation yada yada. That was what created the problem with Judson Howell, the governor of the state before the Shongairi had arrived, and why they wanted to see how Asheville, further west was faring.
--
Notes: So this gets us +3 months and change into the invasion, it is roughly ~july ish. The Shongairi are rapidly putting to the point where they in canon mount the ultimately bonehead maneuver that brings Mischa Baserab aka Vlad Dracula into the fight... which goes poorly for them, especially when he finds out he can just yoink their learning software and use it to learn all of their stuff. So there will be, starting in the next update, a new chapter, and then the one after that will be lords of the night which will introduce Vlad and his neonates and mark the 'Terran" counterattack.

The next chapter will contend with follow on, the issued underscored in this conclusion of the devolution of human society, collaborators, dealing with collaborators and stuff. Lords of Night will probably open with a Vlad centric part where he does friendly but not social space grasping vampire introductions.

Interestingly the implication in canon is that Vidraru dam, several months into the war, is intact and functional, even though Vlad's village is not wired into to it. Also of course Vlad's lines of communication are encountering both human (in canon) and Shongairi threats... which yeah since I'm ninety nine percent sure that probably means some moron thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with a vampire courier .... that probably ended well for them 'fended off' smells like an understatement.

One does not run 150 mile lines of communication without mechanization which Buchevsky might have cottoned on to, or he just assumed oh Vlad's guys must have vehicles stashed away. cue vampire on motor bike

So unlike what Weber did with the second book we're not going to skip directly from Year 1 of the Terran Empire to Year 15, once Vlad leaves we're going to start what I've tentatively called the 'Unification Wars' in the outline that will occupy part of that timeline. Because According to book 2 and this from Dracula (who left basically right after, effectively, eating the Shongairi leadership) the shongairi were responsible for killing 3/4s of the Human population in basically a year. Thats not counting however many people died after Vlad left for his revenge ride...

But anyway small update. Next week will be emberverse week after that the Drow CYOA and go from there.

For June I plan to actually stick to a defined update schedule, something I wasn't able to do this month due to other issues

Imperator Pax · Jun 14, 2022

Boog
Part 1

Ana's irritation more than anger was palatable, but then it wasn't as if Ana Helstrom had any great abundance of patience to spare... especially not months into this whole mess. With high summer upon them and temperatures pushing nearly a hundred degrees they had other problems. Not that Marduk's daughter was particularly bothered by the temperature, so much as the humidity, but even that was a secondary factor to her disdain for the situation. "Do we really care what this guy thinks?"

.... truthfully the prospect of actually caring what some city or county official up in Asheville thought was... a skeptical proposal. That the north Carolinian city had managed to get by this long at all was probably because they could keep their local power generation up and running... but whatever coal they were burning to fight the summer heat was coal they wouldn't have come winter.

There were other towns who had managed to keep some degree of power generation in the same grid up and running. There were still TVA dams and hydroelectric generators still producing power but Asheville was the only real large conventional city apparatus to speak of. "There are no Shongairi in the town." Western Carolina was rather shorn of the puppies presence, but that meant less than one might have liked with Thickair's lackey so close by. The Ground Base Commander could have easily invoked a kinetic strike on the city... probably the only reason the Shongairi hadn't was Asheville was relatively isolated with supplies of gas now limited, and also the Shongairi own experience of accidentally knocking out a dam causing them to hit their own troops. Whatever the case Asheville and its surviving government altered the regional strategic and geopolitical calculus.

He leaned back into the couch, "What do you think?"

"I think the Councilor is a collaborator just waiting to happen." She had crossed her arms over her pleated dress shirt. "And that he's looking to extract whatever he can with us."

And that was probably, painfully so an accurate read. Montreat's denizens on Black Mountain certainly seemed to have a similar opinion. The smaller neighboring community being closer was also close enough that it had been subject longer to Asheville's increasingly strident and ridiculous demands.

No attacks on the Shongairi from the county. Which r eally didn't mean no attacks launched from the county but rather no attacks on the Shongairi that might attract the puppies to pay attention to the county... well how the fuck, the New Jersian had asked, were they supposed to know what would or wouldn't do th?

Asheville had eventually turned from that to basically no attacks at all, and wanting all gasoline and diesel turned over to the county for collective use. They also wanted a stop in arms distribution, which at least that might have been potentially effecting Asheville's occasional flare ups in domestic violence.

Asheville also wanted surrounding communities to take and thus feed and provision county residents in what was probably an attempt to greatly reduce the consumption of the city's supplies while at the same time demanding more supplies be given to the city.

There were others. It was a lengthy and occasionally contradictory list. Asheville pointedly kept dodging around the issue of Judson Howell. They wouldn't take a position on the issue. As North Carolina's pre invasion governor he was the last tenuous link to the state's pre war government, but they neither were willing to recognize his leadership of the state nominally, nor were they willing to dismiss that on the grounds that he by some indications was a quisling.

The fact that with Charlotte gone Ashevill was one of the few, basically, direct routes on the old highway system intact so ignoring Howell didn't make a whole lot of sense. It smacked of ostrich-ism to Kane. "I need an answer Ana." There were practical limits to their capacity... to it just being the three of them. The MCVs, while being able to replicate, that was construct more of their own machinery, had limitations without access to expediency materials like tiberium which sped up mining and refinement on an industrial level To that end they had no problem producing small arms, but could realistically produce yet the weapons to make the Shongairi fleet no longer an issue. "The chance that they are collaborating doesn't change the fact that if Asheville collapses that's more than a hundred thousand people that will most likely disperse southward."

And they didn't have the habitation space for that. The ongoing struggle against the alien was increasingly being pushed to the sidelines as different human groups continued to fight, and it was clear that Asheville as having some of those same problems.
--

Ana looked at the hard concrete modernist interior, and then scoffed at the fake skylights with 'sunlight' color dimming LEDs. The idea of some enterprise college student who'd suggested they might help. "This is ridiculous."

It didn't actually hurt anything, it didn't even make construction of the bunkers any more difficult it was really a simple process of having an electrician wiring the LEDs and using what had had been off t he shelf components and setting up a time... they were even wifi compatible.

That was actually the biggest change as more and more of Greenville's surviving populace... now estimated to be something like eleven thousand people moved into small underground suburbs. Sam Mitchell and Emilio currently standing a few meter away having a discussion over exactly what that meant.

In the civilian side Mitchell had been city police.... which really should have probably meant nothing, because there was no one left in South Carolina it seemed government wise. For one reason or another. Columbia had gone in the initial wave taking the governor and lieutenant governor by all indications. A number of other strikes had caused safety shut downs in the nuclear reactors nearer the coast, and the loss of electrical power, and the break down of the national transport grid had created a perfect storm of rioting that Kane had sat out safely ensconced in the much more massive underground structure that had been growing underneath blood mountain.

"They're fighting again."

He nodded. She didn't mean Emilio and Sam, and given both men he'd be just as happy letting the two fight without getting involved. "A not unreasonable chance we're going to be blamed," Probably inaccurately, "By someone for the flow of weapons," They'd confirmed last week's explosion in Asheville had been as he'd expected someone rigging together a bunch of artillery shells, though why they had gone that route when something simpler would have worked just as well to rob a bank ... for whatever had been in the old building... Mitchell idled over with a sullen looking Emilio in tow, "A problem I take it."

"He says," He jerked a head to the other man, "That they've traded for a couple more of the Columbia guns, and for barrels."

"FN barrels?"

"That's what you suggested." Emilio replied, even though really the point of replacements were more fitting them with new hand guards and shorter barrels.

Kane had been relatively certain the FN plant had made it out intact, but they hadn't been able to get out there and play loot the ruins. It was probable that had they moved faster they could have sourced M4A1 receivers from the plant.... but it wasn't necessary. "And?"

"White guy, didn't really make much small talk, but I think he worked at the plant." The heavier set but shorter man shrugged and waved a hand, "We showed him what we wanted to do." Refit the M16s with shorter M4 profile barrels from FN and modern hand guards for sheer convenience. "I don't know what his stockpile is like, but he promised he could get us some more."

And that was useful. "And the Shongairi?"

"No body has seen the puppies. They're backing off."

"They're backing off," Mitchell agreed slouching slightly and crossing his arms over the desert camo combat top he was wearing. "But we're seeing them use a lot more of our own two and a half ton trucks, hell they're using eighteen wheelers. I think the reason we're not seeing them is because they're expecting that as it gets hotter outside and food gets shorter for most places," not here because well hydroponics and fish raising... "They are thinking we'll kill more of one another over the food.

"and starvation and disease will winnow away the numbers." Ana added.

Kane nodded and closed his eyes in thought, "and the band of the damned, do they factor in on this?"

"Directly probably not, they're just one more band of post apocalyptic cultists on a nihilistic death ride."

He blinked and glanced to Ana, but truthfully that there were more of the increasingly insane road people murder cultists made sense, especially as the temperature increased. "We can deal with them." Ana tone made Emilio step back, because deal in this case clearly signified she meant kill them all. In an attempt to reaffirm his masculine virtue he started to volunteer some of his own people to help, but Marduk's daughter simply waved him off.
--
Notes: Boog as a chapter principally cover the lead up into Lords of Night, and what I mean by that is the fallout from the invasion, and also the previously mentioned collaborators and then the crazies coming out of the wood work... and we'll get to that next time.

Imperator Pax · Aug 2, 2022

Boog Part 2

"It was pretty easy to notice them when they moved in," The former sheriff remarked. "The town lost power , if not right when the puppies attacked within the first couple of days..." Most everyone had packed up and left, fleeing into the countryside with no way to pump water up hill, even before the need for air conditioning had come into play.

The shongairi were pushing people away from their ground bases through the use of fortified enclaves.. the puppy FOB equivalent tended to spring up with the support of mechanized infantry supported by an increasing volume of human vehicles. That meant the puppies needed to 'requisition' fuel, which meant further weakening the mobility of resistance as gas became harder and harder to come by through ordinary means.

The fact they seem to have intentionally modified their vehicles to be as loud and obnoxious as possible was... something. They clearly didn't care if they were heard. Matherson, and his deputy, a retired Marine non com and police officer by the name of Washington didn't like it. They weren't the only ones. "They'd have to be might stupid to make all of that noise." Was Washington's opinion.

That would have probably been simpler. "No, I think they know exactly what they're doing. The Shongairi have decided to leave them alone, because they're just attacking other humans. They're the worst sort of scum." The yankee remarked picking at a shaving knick... apparently straight razors didn't agree with him.

His follow supposition didn't carry as much water. It was possible of course that the Shongairi might displace enough scum of earth types to push into surviving urban areas that were functioning... like Asheville but it seemed a stretch given their behaviors. It was a wonder Asheville was still on the map... but there was no telling how long the coal reserves would last. Unless Asheville did start digging or found coal stockpiled somewhere they weren't going to have enough to get through the winter even on the reduced load the stations were putting out.

The idea the Shongairi would extend some sort of feudal protection to the city like they seemed to b e doing for the survivors in and around the greater Raleigh metro. The map suggested that they'd follow Highway 40 to get to Asheville but that would take them right through Black Mountain. Kane spared a look towards Ana, who nodded.

--
Like they had been told it hadn't been had to find the band of marauders at all. This group of vulgar parasites had erected their cannibal carnival and charnel house in what had been before the invasion a picturesque carefully manicured tourist trap in one of the great smokey mountain towns.

They would have looked ridiculous, but for the fact that frankly dress codes had somewhat gone out the window in the insanity of the puppies' invasion. The Shongairi invasion had caused plenty of people to lose their mind, the break down of social order, even one with the clear external threat of an alien invader had lead to within days rioting and looting and within weeks full scale societal collapse of the strong taking from the week in vulnerable communities. It would have been worse if it had started in fall or winter as opposed to beginning in spring, but the season, and climate were a contributing factor to the rate not to the effect of itself.

To that end Ana, and he were dressed entirely par for the course of what passed for normal attire... even if before the invasion the idea of wearing long sleeves black duster, and all would have seemed ridiculous especially in the summer heat.

Marduk's daughter flicked a hand bouncing the larger, but still normal, human into the rainwater filled broken fountain dominated the town square. On average the Shongairi were not especially strong, a simple facet of their build, a reasonably in shape female human was better suited to physical confrontation than your average Shongairi were. On average the Shongairi soldiers were in general better shape, and now certainly better fed than your average humans, but that meant nothing to princess of Hell. Ana had no trouble manhandling bikers who had even three hundred pounds on her, bones crunched and broke, and the collection of looters back pedalled as she rolled her head to glance at them, hellfire burning from her finger tips. "Lets try this again, shall we?"

"What the hell?"

How poignant a statement. Kane had to wonder exactly how other human worlds... how well Ana native earth would have handled the Shongairi... but he doubted he would ever find out. The ground fight was irrelevant. The Shongairi held the orbital high ground and lacked the restraints, had never developed the western legal jurisprudence regarding the rules of war that emerged in the 19th century. The Shongairi may not have seen this as all or nothing, but they were certainly prepared to use starvation and unrestrained bombardment against population centers as valid instruments of conquest.

... and that was perhaps it. By the 1900 there were enough socially conscious people in western Europe whose affluence allowed them the self reflection to complain about wars of conquest, enough middle class people and working class to recognize that outsourcing to the colonies meant driving wages down... and so on. The Shongairi though? Apparently had never developed those political traditions never had the idea occur to them, they had just developed the technology, and proceeded forward... and hence the comparisons to Imperial Japan or Imperial Russia that he really felt were a bit out of line...

or not. Kane shrugged his reverie aside.

The raiders were just a consequence of the break down in social order. He pushed a hand against the graffiti sprawled column, the linker core transmuting mana into electricity and boiling away the band's nihilistic fuck the world spew used to justify their pillaging.... and of course the slaving. It was amazing how quickly it had turned into this. Not that the lord humongous types were all that much of a surprise he'd been hearing that this was ranging all the way into eastern canada.... and he was sure it was in parts further but that was as far as the news ran, even with limited internet. Cannibals, serial killers, slavers, collaborators and others.

All of them were hosti humanis generis.

"I think we have seen enough Ana." Kane's voice was dark, and cold. He looked over the teeming mass of humanity. A part of him had wanted to conceal... to participate in a masquerade of the supernatural, of magic of even high technology from another world... but they didn't have that luxury. Even if they could get the ion cannons into orbit and even if they had enough of them right now to break the Shongairi hold... this was still going to happen.

The charles manson looking motherfucker who'd been in charge probably only saw the flash as the sparks of hellfire igniting into a full on lash whipped through his head leaving only a greasy stain where he had been standing the heartbeat before.

The truth was this was what they were here for... not to talk, but to simply remove a problem. People would talk, but then they were past caring about that. Another body evaporated into a sulfurous flash that painted the remains of another leather clad face mask wearing raider across the bricks. The shallow outline of a recoiling human all that was left of one more post apocalyptic scavenger.
--
The carnage aside... and really it was becoming something that they were used, it was damage control, and clean up... processing the meat as one of the survivors of Greenville had called it that followed. That naturally involved other people. "Have to say scum of the earth or not, I'd almost wished you had spared their mechanic." Braxton commented covered in grease.

"I would have thought they would have let that to their new slave labor pool." Kane replied putting the drink aside.

There was no immediate response to his comment.

Beer had in the face of increasing difficulty to keeping water clean had become something of a staple. It was easy to brew, and relatively easy to transport... whether or not they would have to make the jump to ciders, or hard liquor applejacks or rye well... that remained to be seen but already even as fall approached the diet was changing and adapting to the disintegration of of international, or even just the national trade and transportation grid.

The Shongairi... or at least the ones in North Carolina were at least paying their collaborators. Labor chits or some other electronic currency to trade for goods. That was a problem since they were now clearly recruiting human laborers in addition to just political lackeys. The occupation was diversifying and they were going to have to find a response.

Whatever the garage monkey had been out to say was interrupted as the montreat colonel came in looking more than a bit picqued. "Am I hearing this right? You killed them all?"

Kane raised an eyebrow at the tone, the objection, "You'll excuse me, colonel, but your idea of taking prisoners just to give them trials and hang them afterwards strikes me as perverse." Stupidly idealistic, and being the 'Republic we want to be a part of' and what not came to mind. The history professor had wanted to bring Montreat's militia and participate, but he and Ana had left without them. In no small part due to wanting to avoid directly exposing them to the visual spectacle.

... ironically the idea of a masquerade would prove entirely silly... once Dracula made his arrival on scene, but that would be weeks from the here and now... and no one had been expecting the vampire, or his coterie ... and really if the Shongairi had not escalated they wouldn't even have known about him on an international level. Mischa Baserab would have continued to be an enigmatic freedom fighter in the fringes of Romania spoken of in eastern and central Europe as more myth than man.

The shongairi's invasion invited a host of changes to the earth, changes that the rest of the galaxy... the 'hegemony' the puppies belonged to. The earth had been subject to such a population loss, that global warming would never be a concern after. The lost industry would be replaced by newer cleaner systems by the end of reunification wars, but the sheer volume of human activity that ground to a halt meant an en to massive volumes of green house emissions.

Ironically those emissions might well have helped keep the earth warmer during the approaching winter, but that was merely speculation... for the people living on the earth at the moment, survival was the priority. That meant fighting other humans, in addition to the elements, and the Shongairi invaders.

Imperator Pax · Aug 31, 2022

Boog Part 3

They had retired for the evening within the underground structure taking shape within the blue ridge, and to the privacy of personal living quarters to a dinner of fish and gratin, a somewhat standard fare these days. The elimination of the band of the damned and their carnival freakshow was now center stage conversation for the habitat's population. No doubt ridiculous rumors were already spreading.

Ana had little interest in delving into the latest social developments of post invasion society that now permeated resistance culture, and gun culture, in the south. Part of it was because of Marduk's daughter had little interest in firearms given that she could shrug off automatic weapons with ease, and was capable of flight, and flinging blasts of hell fire... and also that bluntly speaking guns were messy and made it difficult to make her vigilante killing of serial killers look like they were accidents or suicides. That wasn't to say she wouldn't use them, but the truth was that Kane found himself closer to her position than those of local resistance fighters.

The provision of modern small arms were simply a means to an end. The guns were useful against the Shongairi as well as the unfortunate emergence of human predators. That they had gotten to the point of slaving cannibals ... or just one or the other in terms of raiders and it wasn't even winter yet was not a good sign. The sheer desperation, and short sightedness... never mind just the nihilist stupidity of the problem rubbed him the wrong way... they needed a solution and something that was least workable with their manpower limitations... but Ana was right living underground was risky business.

It could offer protection against the Shongairi but it was such a change over that there were probably going to be psych problems and given the prevalence of small arms, and now an increasing tendency of alcohol supplanting carbonated beverages ... well that was another problem. In short Kane was contending with a list of different problems as society to change. The exterior threats required his attention, but controlling the means of production for creating secure shelters created internal pressures.

The most basic supply of food could be guaranteed by hydroponics. Aquaculture of fish that grew quickly and could support a system of light vegetables and fruits like tomatoes, or lettuce alongside herbs wasn't necessarily the most hearty american food source. Cattle was out, it wasn't feasible... neither really were pig farms, those would have to remain on the surface if such farms were to survive, but in theory chicken was a viable option, and that meant eggs at least, which was a little more sustainable.

It was a massive dietary shift though, and one that would change even more as stockpiles of canned goods and dry goods were used up and not replaced.

"At least your getting some use out of them."

He sighed and reached for the tea. Another dietary shift. Tea leaves were going to have to be taken into account there were a handful of tea plantations in the south, and in the US more broadly but the massive population contraction meant stockpiles of instant tea bags like liptons meant that the southern addiction to sweet tea was likely to last a few more months until stocks of granulated sugar ran out, and before it could be replaced by sugar beats... not that beats would be able to meet anywhere close to pre invasion demand but that was simply another change.

Them. "We are in a position where we have a glut of labor, and a shortage all at the same time." At least pre invasion illicit cultivation of marijuana had ranged in Appalachia from eastern Alabama and western Georgia to the hills of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and with some increasingly complex grow houses. Rural cultivars had managed to survive the Shongairi invasion much better than suburban, never mind urban ones simply because they hadn't been close enough, usually, to anything to warrant a kinetic strike. As a result of such things the gradual mixing and melding of populations had yielded a specialist pool he hadn't exactly been expecting. "I suppose its just in this case a vagary of fate." Not that he was objecting. The war on drugs foolishness had largely ended with the first wave kinetic strikes... there were probably people still involved in the narcotics trade, but it wasn't as if it was a priority to contend with, and given the damage to done most of the cities responsible for the cornucopia of pharmacological products... that was to say most had eaten kinetic strikes before summer had gotten really under way... that was another change. "Its true we do need fighters, but we need so much more than that," Eventually they were going to need tailors, and shoemakers, summer was approaching its end, there were worries about hurricanes, and fall would eventually turn into winter. While that would mean less for Georgia, North Carolina wasn't prepared for snow in the present situation... and Asheville would run out of coal sooner rather than later... that was one more thing as the new economic, trade dynamics began to take shape.

Kane contemplated the ice cubes in his tea. There was a chime was the 'exterior' to the hallway that connected the 'habitation block' rang and signaled visitors. Not unusual the Shongairi pressure created awkward time frames as the puppies' biological clock was similar but not identical to the normal rhythm of human day night cycles.... and of course if not the invaders than the opportunists.

Sam Mitchell, who if Kane were honest the MP really needed to change out of the desert camo it really didn't work in the south, arrived. Kane lamented the destruction of Bragg, and Fayetteville of course... not as much as Benning's loss but he had enough reasons to begrudge the invaders, and to that end he had little objection to Mitchell going around and distributing penny packets of rocket launchers and machine guns that the MCV's machinery could turn out. Those provisions had quickly superseded the remaining depots and Guard armories scattered through the south given the utility of AT 4 launchers and M16s in any format were also ubiquitous.

Those two at least didn't seem to have attracted any attention. Most people seemed to have just assumed that like the M60s these must have been coming from army stocks that the Shongairi had missed, but Mitchell knew that wasn't the case. As a result Mitchell's supply runs were something of an increasing tempo.

That had been what had prompted the beginnings of using uparmored humvees. M60s replaced with rocket launchers or GAU, mini guns, as if this were Iraq didn't attract as much attention after all because they had already basically existed in such configurations. It gave added mobility to firepower even though it did devour ravenously their limited production of synthetic petroleum.

The limitations on fuel and the other limits on the M113 chassis had strangled any idea to use it in its APC configuration, but as an MLRS platform its chassis worked well enough to lob them at Shongairi staging grounds in a way that tube artillery like howitzers didnt' work. That was one of the changes. Shells for conventional howitzers were increasingly being used as IEDs against the invaders.

"Howell?" Kane questioned.

"Yeah. We were already suspicious, but, its making the rounds a lot more now." He nodded at the confirmation. It was no secret that things were getting harder and North Carolina's governor probably didn't have a choice but the indictment making the public rounds now could hardly be ignored either. "He's the governor, the Shongairi are probably going to move on Asheville using him as a puppet.. and.."

And most likely Asheville's city council would fold like wet paper and collaborate ... and that was a security risk. Asheville's residents didn't know everything, but they would give the aliens a leap off point in the west of the state to Black Mountain... and Montreat's denizens knew a hell of a lot more than Asheville's residents... and the truth was there were underground habitat blocks like this one growing in Black Mountain... and if the Shongairi moved they'd probably be able to find them.

"That's about the sum of it." Mitchell acknowledged, "And we wanted to put a couple more of these things in Vandry has a sight in a national park we've been scoping out, but if the puppies are about to make a move."

Kane shared a look with Ana, "No we can spare the resources at the moment to deploy a central block to where its needed. It won't be fancy," But then these things really weren't given their brutalist fifties aesthetic as they were basically thrown up. "Is there anything else?"

"Nothing concrete, what about the Shongairi on your end?"

Kane paused, weighing how much he wanted to distribute, "There are some rumors about Shongairi technological ... experimentation going on we don't know enough right now," and certainly not enough to say if it was relayed. "There have been some questions about how the Shongairi do schools." He paused, "We managed to pull," Well Zwei had as the knowledge spirit probed through their database, "their academics and," again to make perhaps untoward comparisons to Imperial Japan, "Its mostly social orientation,"

"Excuse me?"

"Their curriculum, that we've seen isn't centered around math, or science. Its about loyalty to the empire, and the Shongairi nation state," Or whatever one wanted to call it. He raised a hand to stymie any further questions, "Its a preliminary finding, it may be nothing." And it probably wasn't a priority at the moment. "Any other band of the damned type problems?"

"Not yet, but if the situation with Howell is true and the Shongairi starting trying to roll out," Then there was a good chance more of the raiders would be pushed further south. There was no avoiding that, even just the Shongairi hardening Greensboro had started that trend, "Does Asheville know yet?"

"Probably..." they had been ignoring the Greensboro situation before this.. and they might continue it, "If the Shongairi do actually show up Asheville isn't likely to meaningfully resist."

"We know that." Ana replied sharpishly.

"Ultimately its going to depend on how quickly Thickair and lackeys move," Kane interjected, "And," Distasteful as it was to contemplate, "How much manpower we have to tie up fighting other humans."
--
Notes: So Covid more or less derailed the original plan to transition to a regular Wednesday 1632, Thursday Battletech, Friday Jumpchain, update pattern for August. We're here at the end of the month, and September is right around the corner and right now tomorrow and Friday's update will probably not been standard updates. Sometime in this coming month I'm going to try and post the completed DxD in another world chapter 'The city' with its revisions and its completed format at which point that will likely go on hiatus in favor of its alternate timeline versions. Drow cyoa story will hopefully get updated as we move into the Peace of Lloth there. Then of course on top of that Covid derailed update progress and set back actual outline and writing of chapters for other things.

Imperator Pax · Sep 7, 2022

Boog Part 4

The mechanical clacking of the razor keyboard was audible in the reinforced communications bunker. "I do kind of miss youtube." Matherson remarked from the couch. There were only so many times someone should watch Robinson's guided in F 22 trap shoot of the Shongairi over Virginia... and really one of Matherson's kids or their friends should have just downloaded it for him.

The Shongairi had finally started... attempting to cut the internet. It wasn't going very well. If Kane were to guess the two most likely explanations were Shongairi commanders were doing it piecemeal on their own limited initiatives not intending to try and demolish the internet infrastructure as a whole... or if that was was the goal they didn't understand how the system worked. Of course the world wide web had been declining in functionality in months, but there were hundred of thousands of miles of criss crossing cables in North America that could facilitate digital signals. It was true there were satellite based digital communications including radio signals, GPS and other utilities that the Shongairi had a much easier time retarding, but the biggest damage to the net had been incidental... a by product of the first wave kinetic strikes.

Simply put fiber optic or whatever wasn't the issue for the most part. It was the loss of electrical power, of server farms and other easy mass use communications. Email worked as a concept. Forum boards worked... and indeed that was what they were moving back to a kind of modernized BBS system for posting that was largely bereft of image post capabilities simply because they didn't have the server farms needed to host and transmit, handle requests and so on.

There was no way to effectively run some of the pre war services. Things like weather forecasts were strictly limited to local... and Doppler radar was the sort of thing they weren't entirely sure how the Shongairi would respond to any given Sunday. The puppies had throttled back air strikes on every radar signature towards the beginning of spring probably on the realization that no, those weren't actual SAM sites... but in the broader sense the lack of convenient weather forecasting created hazards for travel... and Hurricane season was now at its peak.

"Florida?"

Kane shook his head to Matherson's question, the truth was the situation down there had already been deteriorating as summer had started, "The breaks in the highway system just made communication harder. What few messages coming out is that the situation is worsening," Miami had spilled over its borders... or rather the broader county area had spread out, Jacksonville, Orlando. The gulf of Mexico side had turned into a fracas as power failed, and the Shongairi strikes had broken the interstate highway system which made it harder to traverse up into the south proper... which probably slowed the diaspora from the state, but Kane didn't care to speculate on the contained effects would be on the populace.

"Are we getting more messages, I thought those had petered out back in June?"

"There are other sites running now, and its a little more discrete than radio," Though there were some people still broadcasting plain radio.... which didn't strike him as smart, but it was what it was... the reports of significant rain though was a concern. If the storm did manage to get this far north it did... if it burned out... well it would might still cause problems elsewhere. "But that's only part of the problem." The puppies were adjusting strategy and tactics... "In addition to the southern problem, the Shongairi seem to be deliberately destroying food stocks in the ruins of cities. They hadn't seen that specifically here, but then again the truth was he wasn't sure how many distribution centers in South Carolina's upstate, or north Georgia hadn't already been stripped by organized search parties. They were having to go further and further afield to look.

That was what made Asheville important. It still had, never lost, pre invasion power generation. They hadn't lost power, so they hadn't lost refrigeration, which meant no meat spoilage, or medicine losses due to temperature. Asheville had managed to maintain something approximating its pre invasion standard of living... which made it a security vulnerability now. "Where?"

"Massachusetts is the closest that has been reported, fighting near the ruins of Boston, I believe." He replied. Matherson's native New Jersey... there simply wasn't any news from... there were patches from Northern New York state, but nothing near Manhattan after NYC's fire, and after the pumps had failed. There were probably some people still in the metropolis of the city, but realistically he doubted even a fraction of the tri state area had survived. There wasn't much out of Connecticut either come to think of it. "Mexico," Northern Mexico, "New Generation Jalisco has been collaborating with the puppies, and from the sound of it anything they can't steal gets burned as well." and of course that was spill over into California and across to Texas.

"The cartels?"

He shrugged, "There isn't anything we can do about that," They didn't have the manpower, and it seemed as if the Cartels were actually infighting more with one another in the face of the invasion and the complete disintegration of national governments than they had been before. "They're not our problem, but there are other groups," ... and the days were getting shorter.

"So if you're right, and those band of the damned lunatics were going to come through Montreat to get at Asheville... you think the next ones will do the same?"

They didn't have google maps anymore, but GIS worked still... "That's the general thinking, but as a precaution I want to see what we can do north of Asheville." The idea was to block any thing from spooking the town before they could figure out what they were actually going to do... which was really a question of manpower. Of course that more immediately, going just straight north actually took you into Tennessee but ... that was really more a line on an old map and didn't mean as much now. "I think that will be our priority, truthfully... the Shongairi destroying food that's still left in the cities just strikes me as an expansion of what they were doing to begin with." They had just presumably decided to start scorching the earth to drive scavengers out of the city ruins and perhaps to drive the scavengers away from Shongairi positions and into the hinterlands "Tomorrow I'll be about thirty miles west," So about twenty miles west of Asheville."

He didn't need to say more than that, the simple fact was that they had gotten in such a policy of these things that Matherson could read a map, and guess, "Cold Mountain." Shongairi kinetic strikes were not effective against hardened targets. They had a hard time busting US munitions bunkers at Fayetteville with anything other than direct hits, and those were much less hardened against attack than the habitation blocks reinforced specifically against top attack kinetic actions... but that was also because they were designed to withstand GDI Ion Cannon strikes from orbit.... which were somewhat bigger sticks than the Shongairi rod from god style attacks thus far.
--
Dave Dvorak's first impression of the visitors his friend Sam Mitchell had brought was decidedly mixed. He'd been hearing plenty about the hockey mask raiders all summer, and was glad that no one had tried coming into the national forest to where his family cabin... and its somewhat developing 'compound' for the extended clan was. They were a good looking pair but well as the joke went the female is often the more deadly of the species, the woman seemed to practically radiate a frigid malice. She wasn't visibly armed, but Dave wasn't stupid most likely she was concealed carrying, probably easy to conceal even a full size automatic in formal attire given that she was about his height, which meant she veritably towered over his wife Sharon. Kane's aura for lack of a b etter description was a little warmer and carried himself with an almost aristrocratic grace... but he lacked the sort of general friendliness and jovial nature of General Norman Swarzkopf seeming to have been cut from a still older cloth. The sharp lines of his cheek bones, and somewhat long face were predominated by the green eyes that seemed to devour details. Dave's brother in law Rob Wilson had seen him taking in the surround, and had put up that Kane had the look of a man who'd probably spent his entirely life at war... which given given he had a certain timeless quality in his appearance, and that Rob had spent twenty years in the USMC, was a little concerning.

"Its a nice place." The shadowy mystery man remarked having given the cabin a perfunctory once over to emphasize his statement.

"Yeah, it was sort of project before all of this." Dave waved his hand around. "Sam said you had some earth moving equipment?"

The green eyes almost winkled in amusement, "Yes. That is accurate." He enunciated sparing a look at the uniformed guardsman.

"I didn't tell 'em." Sam had gotten here a couple of days ago. "Dennis is pretty sure it would work up here."

"It will. Seismographic sensors are already taking measurements." He replied craning his head towards the other man. Kane's height was accentuated by a lean figure. He was tall with extraordinarily long arms, and of course that was emphasized by the great black coat he wore... which if Dave were going to guess probably had armor plates in it. It obscured some kind of tactical style pistol rig of kydex, holstering a Navy roll marked HK 45C with threaded barrel.

Dave hadn't seen his friend from the National Park Service, and Rob's third cousin, in a couple of days, but was a little more shocked at the introduction to what the green eyed man called the Montauk. "That was about my reaction." Sam replied as his brother in law swore at the machine that had apparently driven up under the ground... Dave wasn't sure how to describe the colossal machine... it was like a train engine of sorts, but one packed full of complex machinery, and covered in armor plates that would have made a battleship blush in his opinion.

Dave Dvorak didn't know what to say.

"Indeed." Kane replied the southern accent slightly diminished in the one word response as he moved over to a fancy computer console... that proceeded to project an honest to god hologram. "This is the mountain's structure." The prime earth move was capable of excavating incrementally specialized blocks, that could be then expanded upon. Living space. Workshops. Access to the surface that divert off hand completely away from others. Communications spaces to link to radio, or the internet. Food production, hydroponics and stuff. It was a ridiculous grandiose cold war answer to surviving nuclear war with an enemy who might be throwing ten or twenty thousand warheads at you, and it was amazing.

This was survival in the face of the alien invasion, on a degree beyond just a couple of families living in wilderness with fish ponds, and small gardens... they hadn't done much more than that.

Sam Mitchell nodded, "The living spaces are probably comparable to what you have in the cabin Dave, but they'll be more protected, and more than that the access tunnels will make it a lot easier to store, and distribute what we've been dropping." The Guardsman paused, "In all honesty we should have done this back at the start of summer..." and that segued into why they were here. "Asheville is probably about to get worse, this is something we need to before anything else happens... either because of the raiders... or the puppies start a big push."

There had been rumors from Asheville of course, and that was where their own internet line hubbed into running to a junction to the city north east of them.

--
Notes: Part 5 will follow this, we start Lords of Night after this, that should be a little longer than this, at about ten thousand words and will get us to October. The chapter following that will probably open with Halloween and be about the same size.

Lords of Night will among other things introduce Dracula / Mischa, it will contend with human groups starting to use Shongairi gear, just as the Shongairi are starting to use human vehicles. Shongairi guns are still guns, they're still intermediary cartridges, basic mechanical principles, shongairi energy weapons are fairly direct, in that its point and zap. Hegemony tech in general is designed to be user friendly, because the Hegemony hasn't fought a war in ages... I'd have to look at the second book again to see when the last time the grass eaters had a fight supposedly. (I'm not counting the Shongairi, or anyone elses other annexations, I'm counting, what the Hegemony classes as Tier 2 and and Tier 1 civilizations actually making both forces in being hurt.)

As for other updates, speaking generally for the month of September, I am probably, for Battletech just going to be updating on Sundays. Thursday for the duration of the month will most likely be miscellaneous updates for the month. I really need to actually get a backlog of chapters done and in the pipe there has been other stuff I need to catch up on. I have plans for my DxD in general, but that will probably be in the second half of the month.

Imperator Pax · Sep 16, 2022

Boog Part 5

Kane watched the progress bar as it filled. Habitation blocks weren't cheap, they were closer to the expense of command posts than to barracks in terms of resources, but that was a small price to pay... though it was true that that there were limitations in the material they had available since he wasn't going to risk using Tiberium... if he had been... well then the whole Scrin database would be available... but the risk was to great. Humanity on this earth already had enough on its plate without that... and truthfully he wasn't confident that seeding Tiberium would have been worth it... that the process would be fast enough starting from an initial seeding.

He needed to build more resource collectors to process raw material to make up for the inefficiencies incurred without mature tiberium veins to harvest. That was simply part of things as they were. The process was largely automated in terms of deployment, and extraction once Zwei had everything she needed.

"And that's it?" Dvorak sounded surprised. "I mean..."

"The earth moving and making sure the frame can bear the weight is what takes the most time." He replied, "After that, the block is yours to do with as you like. You can wire it for whatever lighting you want, move in appliances, beds," Or cots, or whatever other amenities the individual habitation blocks were capable of housing more than just the Dvorak-Wilson clan needed to contend with this wasn't like sheltering the surviving population of Greenville, or, the population of Montreat.

"What's the next step?"

"Replacing your existing communications link in, or supplementing it with a hardened communications bunker. You'll be able to run fiber optic, or wi fi into the hab block. Then in your case actual storage for weapons and ammunition." Those were the basic three 'blocks'. Survival against the Shongairi...

Dvorak looked at the projected lines of the structure. "So raiders?"

"and Polio, and black death, and leprosy." Sam Mitchell added, "But its depressing to say, but in the last month we've spent more time fighting humans than the Shongairi," And most of those weren't even obviously collaborators. The guardsman was right it was something of a depressing situation.

"Leprosy?"

"Armadillos," Probably.

"The plague?"

"Ground squirrels out west." Probably.

"Polio."

"We are less certain how that one began." He replied. It was true of course that the the undersea cables between the US and Europe meant the internet was more steady from the eastern seaboard to England. The English in turn connected to the continent, and to the Scandinavian countries, and in turn the network spread out. That created, or was creating in the face of diminishing orbital infrastructure, bottlenecks in communication even without factoring in language barriers. "There have been other reports internationally, but the most likely explanation is simply that without modern medical infrastructure ," And pest control, "wildlife samples are transmitting into vulnerable previously urban populations who have been weakened by malnutrition."

Dave Dvorak nodded. "So we don't think its the Shongairi?"

"It doesn't appear to be intentional." Kane found himself replying, but, "Certainly without the kinetic strikes or the invasion we wouldn't be in this situation."
--
There were certain things they had been considering. Tiberium had been one of those eliminated early. It was perhaps ironic given his adopted nom du guerre. Zwei favored an adoption of solutions from Ancient Belka, the state which had given her existence. Humanity would have had a manpower problem even without the increasing sectarian violence, and Belkan solutions might provide the answer to that... but that would take time and resources that just weren't available yet... and so really it was a matter of collecting resources.

Scavenging from ruined cities, or building ore collectors.

As resources were depleted from ruined cities conflict became more inevitable, and that was the situation. Maybe it was the dust in the atmosphere but the temperature was starting to turn... was it early... maybe, maybe it was natural... it didn't matter. Atlanta as a city had been sitting at under a half mill before the strikes had come in. There were structures that survived. The rocks from orbit hadn't immediately killed off the city, but people hadn't immediately fled either. The Shongairi had attempted to carve out a foothold in Georgia's capital, but eventually abandoned that in favor of first, more air strikes and then more kinetic strikes as it became increasingly untenable given the difficulty in securing a foothold.

That was simply a facet of how Atlanta had sprawled over the county borders. The whole point of the highway bypass had been to avoid atlanta's urban center. Instead Atlanta had grown and grown over the decades to encompass it... and thus while the idea of sitting on the city and controlling those roadways made sense. The Shongairi simply hadn't had the space to bring in their large transports... not without exposing them to ground to air fire, or VBIEDs... and well

... it had been that which had destroyed the state capital ultimately. If Shongairi hadn't been able to hold the city they hadn't been willing to let humanity keep it either. That had been what had cut north Georgia largely off from the south of the state and from Florida before the summer had began... and it had forced them to pivot their efforts more into the Carolinas, and Tennesse. That had pushed them into western north carolina, and thus had ultimately created their present involvement.

"If we're seeing the temperature shifts here then its likely that its effecting the north east." If things were getting colder then that was more pressure pushing scavengers to migrate. That could be neatly summarized as so it will get worse, which was accurate, but he supposed it was one thing at a time as the Montauk rumbled along under the earth.

They had already selected targets for night time attacks, to break up, or even eliminate raider leadership. That would make things easier for other resistance bands... the ones who didn't have the more complex network of habitation blocks to work out of yet to fight back. Matherson, and Mitchell's respective militias would have an easier time too, but they had the advantage of both larger numbers and greater experience with heavier weapons... that it was coming to that.

The GAU equipped humvees were simply a growing reality, and there was tow, and other weapons as well. The anti armor weapons worked well against the aluminum alloy hulls the Shongairi used, there were reported better protected Shongairi armor but those were limitted... and were probably actual MBT equivalents than ... what Kane had come to term 1128, or Stryker MGS, equivalents, but even those with their complex ceramic armors didn't do so well when you were throwing several at once. Their contra gravity systems were harder to mobility kill than a tank, no treads to throw, but the Shongairi didn't weather rocket attacks well.

The hologram though was... amusing because it showed the puppies in what was clearly a NC-ANG humvee, of recent enough vintage, that had only been refit, so far as Kane could tell over the medium, with the Shongairi's issued machine gun. That wasn't what really stood out to him. Mitchell had done as requested and rounded up Shongairi captured weapons... but he'd scarcely believed it.

The puppies were using slick top rifles. No optics beyond iron sights, which admittedly the Shongairi were adequate shots especially with close range and there was no questioning that the puppies would charge in, front sight press their rifles inside of twenty thirty meters accurately enough, but... the lack of any optics at all, was ... well...

Kane unbuckled his dropleg harness and let the compartment open with a penumatic hiss. He replaced the purely conventional german made 45 caliber automatic with a weapon with a slimmer pistol grip. His barrier jacket disappeared leaving him in the black tunic shirt underneath. Not that he'd demonstrated the laser pistol yet. They hadn't gotten that far yet... there was a reason GDI had opted to remain with conventional kinetic weaponry for their leg infantry. Energy weapons were expensive. No, if Kane found himself in a position... the next step would be to attempting to introduce optics... at least at some degree of standardization. NVGs at least. Too much night fighting was already happening, and they were going to be losing daylight as the night came earlier and earlier.

"I noticed you didn't bring up the other problem." Ana remarked.

Mitchell hadn't either, was his considered rebuttal. There were rumors. Just as the Shongairi were having to appropriate human technology, there were reported sightings of humans with Shongairi equipment. "The most likely explanation is that they're collaborators with access to Shongairi technology, we're not sure what even is being observed." and of course captured, battlefield pick ups was always possible.

Dave Dvorak had been queasy enough about the band of the damned reports of slavery and cannibalism such that the man hadn't wanted to ask for more details.

Kane glanced to the map indicating their approximate position relative to various known objects... most of that was based off pre contact map data, but others were deployed way stations of sort built by the Montauk to facilitate the network they were travelling through.

He hadn't asked a whole lot of questions about Asheville either... and that was good. The situation was tenuous there at best... and going to potentially get worse as coal supplies continued to dwindle... or rather as Kane suspected that Asheville's government was probably excavating coal but not at a rate to break even for consumption. Well, one thing at a time. Zwei appeared on the monitor to apprise them of ore collection status right as the clock reached the hour.

Imperator Pax · Sep 21, 2022

Lords of the Night
Part 1

It had dropped into the low fifties some time after midnight. Of course, with barrier jackets being effectively full length greatcoats in styling that meant nothing to him, but in a world that was increasingly shy on fuel, it meant that their quarry had little no end of fires.

That was what roving bands of human survivors, or raiders in this case, had been reduced to. Driving looking for plunder, and trying to fight the dark back by stuffing trash cans and dump bins full of combustibles to burn.

Kane bracing one foot on the bannister of the rooftop doubted that was going to work. Either this was just a cold snap, or it was going to be a very cold winter this year... and he these trash fires weren't going to cut it. He flexed a hand extending his consciousness through the array of drones as his linker core spun up a connection to the machines.

The gap generators were... working... or at least they were relatively sure they were. The stealth characteristics were effective, but there were concerns that Shongairi smart systems might notice anomalies, and flag them to investigate ... which of course assumed the Shongairi would spare the airpower, but it might raise suspicions of the invader... which was undesirable.

That was part of the reason they were resorting to using such a brazen frontal assault with magic. They wanted to be in and out quickly... even if it was going to potentially raise questions. He blinked the augmented display of ancient Belkan characters away.

There was no point in delaying. Marduk's daughter flexed long fingers and turned towards what had at one point been the community Walmart... now it was an entirely different attempt at a shrine to excess and absurdity.

He was going to have to be careful. They were going to have to b e careful. The fuel trucks were valuable of course, but it was a problem when people decided to play warlord and start raiding for slaves. A problem apparently particularly common, as it seemed to have begun appearing up north, in the midwest and apparently in the pacific northwest. There were chatterings on the web now of so called 'protective associations'.

... well after tonight there would be one less wannabe lord humungus to contend with. Ana had something of an advantage her for lack of a better description empathic radar would allow her to parse through and find the leader... which most likely meant he was going to very quickly end up having his soul ripped out... which generally caused extensive hemorrhaging and occasionally other physical symptoms that might to some people look like say a chemical weapons attack.

"That might collapse on its own without any help."

"If it does it does." Kane admitted that the Walmart super center had clearly seen better days, but he wasn't sure what exactly had done... of course it was possible these idiots had been running grills inside the building, or done something else to cause a problem with the roof but there was a noticeable sag in one side that wasn't going to survive the winter snows... of course it was possible that there had been some preexisting structural fault that had worsened over the years.

Ana's 'radar' worked for other things too, and she accelerated forward as if she were just taking a step, crossing hundreds of yards of parking lot, and roadway hellfire ringing her hand and forming a coherent beam that incinerated one of the slapdash raider 'technicals' that had started out life as a chevy pick up truck.

Kane didn't question it. He wrote it off as not everyone having had access to uparmored humvees and M2 brownings but he had gotten used to those. He followed suit barrier jacket flaring around him as he joined her side before the first sporadic bursts of fire erupted. He wasn't surprised they had some automatic weapons...

He zoomed forward mana surging through, and reinforcing his limbs grabbing the man and checking him against the prison transport bus outfitted with scrap metal plating that looked more than actually did anything. Kane glanced at the weapon even as he tightened his grip, though the DC police department roll marked G36s were a little interesting. He hadn't expected this collection to have made it this far from that distance.

Not that most had them, he stared at the gurgling raider and squeezed until C6-C4 vertebrae cracked under his grip, and then tossed the rag dolled body sideway nearly into an idiot in a hockey mask. The raider scrambled for his dropped machete scooping it up and taking what he must have assumed was a fighting stance... or looked intimidating. "What in god's name?"

"God?"

Ana laughed fire lancing out to strike another 'war machine'.

"No, not god." He replied. Fire boiled from his finger tips as the mana reaction occured giving his hand a black appearance accentuated with vibrant red veins. The mass of flame melted the alloy car body along with the machete wielding raider in front of it.

A spate of automatic fire interrupted him as another clown in a mask jumped out of a camper wielding a bullpup. If his linker core hadn't been in scan mode he might not have immediately identified as the shongairi service rifle. Not that its small diameter cartridge was effective at defeating a belkan barrier jacket even the lighter version that his wanderer's garb was presently configured for.

Kane ignored the cracks of the sound barrier, and instead focused directing his linker core through his hand and brought it forward triggering a similar burst of acceleration the flaming lance was comparable in length to the ancient sarissa and the plasma bunched through both sides of the recreational vehicle and then retracted back having bisected the man.

He turned his aqualine features towards a man working the bolt on what was some strip of hunting magnum. The bearded man wasn't wearing a mask and sweat covered his brow, and at about two fifty his diversion to his side arm of choice looked normal in his hands. The customized striped desert eagle boomed twice before Kane wraped a flame sheathed hand around the large semi automatic and it exploded.

"Fuck you man!"

Kane had already pulled the long bladed dagger at his side and icepicked it down burying it into the big biker's eye before he could find another weapon. He ignored the body, and rolling in a languid motion around to face where Ana was toying with a platoons worth of thieves, rapists and slavers.

They might as well have been rats faced with a lioness. Bodies flew through the air. This was, he assured himself, no different than fighting the Shongairi. No, these people were worse than the invaders. He had read enough of the invader's domestic media, and their education... the puppies barring a handful of complete psychos were fighting a war as a soldiers. There were shongairi atrocities being committed by individuals, and of course the Shongairi's use of collective punishment and mass bombing of civilian population centers broke with human norms of war but those kinetic strikes were being authorized and carried out by naval officers not grunts. They didn't need help, the Shongairi warships were apparently highly automated from what Reinforce could decipher even as few as one or two officers could order and launch rods from god at a target due to that automation.

Kane walked towards the carnage, and through the debris littering the parking lot underneath the hunter's moon as it sat full over head. They were likely going to have to kill every single shongairi officer to be sure that one of them couldn't order a fail safe strike... even though the Shongairi had thus far given no indication of having such foreward planning in their weapons. Even if it wasn't the case, he was certain that every Shongairi naval officer needed to die.

The problem was that they weren't there yet.

They weren't ready. They needed more time to be sure they could negate the Shongairi orbital advantage in a single counter attack. A time frame that required them to focus on preserving the human race, and building shelters for survivors underground until a true counter attack could be mounted. Saving humans who could be saved was the priority.
--
Matherson didn't bother asking directly as the Black Mountain Militia processed, and helped the freed prisoners, The liberated. "Should I worry some of your guys are going to maybe want flame throwers?" The yankee asked.

It was funny how Emilio, and presumably some of the others were 'his guys', but it was probably the heavy black nomex gear they had managed to dig up somewhere. He really needed to find some good woodland camo... marpat shouldn't have been that hard to turn up, he'd have to ask Fripp and see if the man couldn't find anything in the stores. "I wouldn't worry overly much."

The walmart had collapsed in on itself. Heat damage he was pretty sure had finally weakened the structural supports enough to cause the roof to come down... not that it mattered they weren't going to stay here.

He checked his wristwatch "Captain Mitchell is late."

"He's on the way," Kane replied. It hadn't escaped him that Matherson was increasingly leaning into the ranks... which of course Kane did not object to... but he wasn't the only one doing it. There were apparently though surviving guard generals, at least one or two up north, and that was assuming no active duty or reserves like admiral Robinson had survived.

"What goodies was he delivering this time?"

"Surface to air missiles."

"Stingers? Do those have really enough bang?" He asked a little more enthused with the conversation as he put his back to the parking lot.

"For Shongairi drones. For larger things though I find auto cannons to be more reliable," Matherson grimaced. "Yes, the use of technicals in that capacity makes us look like our past enemies. I am working on an alternative, but for now its what we have." The situation was for the most part simply a matter of using an existing vehicle chassis the war factory could produce and ... sticking an existing design. In case the five ton truck that was so ubiquitous to the US army no one would pat an eye to shoving anti air artillery in the bed of it and radar guidance system. "The autocannons can also depress further," ... the plan was to do the same with the truck using surface to air missiles... the reason he hadn't ... the problem was that it was logistics. Feeding SAM batteries wasn't practical and required more upkeep especially for a platform that was almost assuredly going to provoke Shongari retaliation if it it did shoot something important down. The auto cannons were able to engage ground targets and for the transparent aluminum hulls of Shongari APCs well they were sufficient.

Matherson nodded he sounded almost disappointed when he spoke. "So we're not getting bigger missiles?"

"Not yet. Mortars are much easier to make, but for the most part the Stingers are what are available."

"What are we gonna tell Asheville about this?"

"The truth," He replied to the sudden surly inquiry, "We dealt with some raiders, you're already looking after the survivors. You have the resources of a psychology department."

"You know there is a difference between psychology and psychiatry?"

"The latter requires an MD," He replied, "I am aware, but you are the available brain trust." The Montauk was already preparing to dig further into Black Mountain and deploy further habitation blocks anyway. The reality was that with fall here they needed the space for schools... that had been something Montreat's denizens had been concerned about... college town and all. "With any luck Asheville wont ask more questions."

"The council is getting antsy, especially with the cold snap."

"Coal supplies. I'm aware and if an answer presents itself I will provide it." He didn't have the leverage to force the city council into line. It was simply that North Carolina had a good number of surviving settlements, and letting Asheville fall into Shongairi hands was completely undesirable... but he couldn't allocate the resources yet to fix their power grid with a nuclear solution until he was sure that the Shongairi wouldn't notice, and that... the population could be sheltered underground, "I am working on the resources necessary to start the shelters, a few more weeks , but realistically my options for construction are limited," Due to the way Asheville had sprawled out from the confluence of the rivers." But Matherson was right, the cold snap, and power shortage needed to be addressed. "Has there been an indication of Shongairi collaborators?"

"I don't know. Its one thing for us to watch people coming through our necks of the woods, but they could come through Mars Hill," In the north, down -19, "Why don't you use Mount Mitchell its sure big enough."

It was the fall back option. "It is, but its too far from the center of town." Twenty miles of tunnel was one thing for travel, but evacuating the town quickly would be nearly impossible... and Asheville's citizens had largely maintained a normal day to day above ground life. "The shelters probably will need to be closer."
--
Notes: On Nanoha magic, I am technically using linker core improperly I know, in some cases i'd be referring to a 'device', as well as in Belkan system its 'knights clothes'. I'm aware of this, but we needed to go ahead and highlight the magic stuff here, and Lords of Night opens on a fight scene/raid in early August. [Hunters moon is the full moon in august]

Secondly I'm not positive on Mitchell's exact rank in the SC-ANG. The sequel implies that one of the surviving carolina guard lieutenants was taking orders from him, but we never hear to the best of my recollection his rank. From the sequel though it does seem he was an officer. Hence he is a captain here. Major is a possibility but I frankly doubt it. So here he is a captain, of course here there are other surviving guard and federal troops.

Imperator Pax · Sep 28, 2022

Lords of the Night

Kane rested his hand on the stainless steel modernist fixtures. It was salvage from Greenville's ruins. The commercial range was one more amenity to make the habitation block more comforting and less brutal minimalist to the people who lived here underground. This was merely a stop over as they prepared to return to Blood Mountain in north Georgia which remained the growing nexus, the beating heart of the resistance forces permeating through the south east.

A portion of it. Geographical limitations including among other restrictions had created zone boundaries. There was ... no Shongairi presence in Florida, but there also wasn't any real human government it seemed either there beyond basic community level. A problem from the panhandle extended up into both southern Georgia, and coastal Alabama. Coastal florida, and Louisana further west had it the worst though... simple facet of the break down of higher level governance and organization, and geography... and now the storms... demography didn't help either. The preponderance of age related illness, flu season, diabetes, heart disease, and others were winnowing the population. There was little that could be done even without the violence between different groups of humans running rampant.

Mitchell, and to a lesser extent Matherson were having to deal with occasional Shongairi patrols, but that had faded to a limited number as the Shongairi positions had consolidated their position further north. There were Shongairi 'forward operating bases' in the coastal regions of South Carolina, but even those were increasingly having to deal with human fighting... and the hurricane season.

Kane suspected Charleston might well become uninhabitable due to the combination of kinetic strikes, and the resulting storm damage... but he supposed the city didn't matter. If it wasn't picked clean already it probably wouldn't matter by winter, except for scraps. .. and the truth was he wasn't sure there was population to repopulate and rebuild the city.

Further inland from Charleston were the wastes left behind by the apparent dirty bomb incident early in the invasion... that mess still raised questions , and had created a problematic hazard in the state. What he suspected had happened was someone who'd watched too many idiot hollywood movies had been charismatic enough, and grief stricken enough to talk some other grief-stricken survivors with just enough intelligence to strike back against the invaders, ... and well perhaps 'failed to check a decimal place or carry a one' in the math for their vengeance weapon.

All speculation, of course. They were questions for things they would likely never have answers for... someone had tried though... and probably died horribly but it didn't seem as if it had made it to the internet... an internet that they were now forced to contend with breaking down. It wasn't completely a result of direct Shongairi attacks... power failures were increasingly common outside of places with reasonable hydroelectric power... dams that had avoided direct or accidental KEW strikes... there were reports from the mideast of the failure of dams built during the cold war that had been hit... it wasn't pretty. It formed the effective boundaries of operations though. South, and east before they could really reach the seas.

Zwei's report sat projected and was a morose reading to be sure. "Are the Shongairi really using soviet vehicles?"

"They apparently fit better in the smaller crew spaces." Was the reply.

He marveled softly... then again given the shongairi logistical failings it wasn't as if beggers couldn't be choosy .. the truth was that scavengers were bringing in civilian vehicles to be recycled for material in no small part to deny them to the Shongairi looking to impress human made vehicles.... but the truth was there were simply too many cars on earth to really prevent the Shongairi from finding vehicles to use. The Shongairi had no interest in boats, and largely ignored riverine craft but those were the last approaching surface units at the present.
Going up river though would allow them to make contact with groups further north potentially, and thus facilitate some kind of opening of a western theater... if only by the supply of small arms, and anti armor launchers.... it was probably the highlight of the report.
--
Deep within the earth, far removed from the surface, and the warm light of the afternoon sun toiled the labors of machines that provided the tools of resistance. It was only a matter of time until simple volume established that the weapons being delivered to fighters, and the vehicles that were gradually replacing the cobbled together 'frontline' units were of recent manufacture.

Crates of AKMs, M16s, M60s, M136, Dragon, and TOW, were merely a short list of the small arms waiting to be loaded into the Montauk's transport cars for distribution. War factories within the mountain produced jeep rangers, humvees, and five ton trucks stamping them out using robotic arms and assembly. The true bottleneck there were the limitations of of synthetic petroleum products that could be synthetized... but that was a problem that would be addressable in time.

War materiel was not what occupied Kane's focus. Zwei was going to need addition MCVs and additional forward bases to construct additional facilities away from their central hub. He half turned as Ana questioned the reclamation of Atlanta.

"Slow going." He replied. It was a wonder the Shongairi hadn't noticed it all the same." They were slowly collapsing buildings and pulling material out to feed into hubs as they turned the underground beneath into something more in line with one of Nod's subterranean cities. Not that there were inhabitants yet. The truth was the 'Atlanta Temple' was intended to give them a southern launch point to put things into orbit when the time came... but that was also slow going.

He flexed his hands and looked at the progress indicator on the side of the projection. There was the chance that a year would be over... a year. If they could survive to spring then the points he hadn't spent would be available... reinforcements against the invaders. The actual possible option of purchasing space assets once the funds were available.

"Asheville."

"I don't like the idea of uprooting Asheville's population all the way to Atlanta," or whatever percentage of the North Carolinian city survived a Shongairi kinetic strike... that was the problem they had so little was so little warning to KEWs on launch that the civilian damage to Asheville would be likely massive.

Ana gave him a flat look reading the situation for its other problem. Atlanta had no surviving leadership. Georgia's capital had been hit initially, and the urban area dispersed. A problem Asheville hadn't contended with... and as problematic as local leadership had proven to the war effort Kane did not want them in proximity to his space center while it was under construction... or after for that matter.

"The Shongairi reasoning for prioritizing north america is its apparent... similarities to their environment, and the fact that at the time of Agincourt most of the population of the continent," North of the rio grande, "were hunter gatherers, and subsistence farmers without metal working. It should have been ideal to land and assume control." Similarly Europe had probably been chosen because of it climate, and that it had apparently been the primary survey site of the 'Hegemony'"

That was the other problem. The war wouldn't end after the Shongairi were driven off. Which was the other matter Zwei had orders to address besides just the growing number of sub level hubs with manufacturing. They needed to rebuild and arm earth.

They needed manpower for that. Manpower that Kane wasn't sure Earth could supply. The Shongairi had after all taken many of Earth's major cities off the board. Prosthetics for injured fighters while helpful was not going to be sufficient... even if it did help.

"The shongairi are conducting human experimentation," He finally broached the subject, "I'm not sure on what but I don't like it, and we are going to need to address it." The strike in Akron had stood out because it was clear before hand that the Shongairi had been active in Eastern Ohio, they had at least some posts about the Shongairi rounding up human children through collaborators... and that was already out in the wild.

Worse still were the videos of at least one shongairi infantry officer eating dead humans ... the Shongairi cultural explanation suggested it wasn't malicious but well given the invasion few people were willing to truck such an explanation right now. Kane wanted to be able to send weapons up river just to make life more miserable for the invaders for as long as possible... but certain things required a more personal touch.

"Are we going to kill Howell?"

"No." There was clear indication he was collaborating. The Shongairi in their usual demonstration of complete PR ineptitude seemed to think a quisling was a positive thing. 'Honorable submission'. Collaboration was a problem but the bigger one was of people feeding information back to the invaders, not so much Howell... not right this moment anyway. "While he's not the only collaborator to the north of us, there are groups that are reporting similar patterns to what Ohio reported."

The Ezekiel's wheel stealth system and mobile gap generator represented different solutions to the answer of obfuscation. Since they weren't actually going to be attacking as long as they avoided contact with Shongairi units, or human ones he supposed they should have been able to send a convoy to drop off arms to facilitate a raid in the north on Shongairi convoys.

Matherson should be able to hold the situation in the west for the time being. Mitchell should be able to continue what he was doing in the east... and they would make a brief stop to visit the Cold Mountain residents to the west of Montreat and Asheville.

--
Notes On a glance through my notes in the outline for this chapter, I do note that its clear Vlad's coterie use guns, and grenades. I'm not sure if in the book it specifies Vlad using rifles, though I assume that to be the case, his collection of vampires in Romania all apparently have access to modern weapons despite the note that they do seem to prefer blades.

Imperator Pax · Oct 5, 2022

Lords of the Night 3

He had arrived relatively early in the morning but that of course was made possible by travelling subterraneanly. The reality was that it was becoming hazardous to drive at night for simple environmental factors. Everything was having to slow down in terms of overland travel, even the Shongairi seemed to be having fuel problems as stockpiles dwindled and synthetic production simply couldn't keep up with demand. The Cold Mountain habitation was gradually expanding.

Dennis Vardry had of course seen habitation blocks before. It shouldn't have been any sort of surprise to him... maybe it was the scale or at least the speed with which the Dvorak-Wilson home had grown from the surface cabin, and the cave behind the waterfall, to the rapidly expanded facility that had convinced him that it was time for him and his wife to move in with his cousins' extended clan.

It didn't matter to Kane. He certainly didn't care that the Dvorak-Wilson clan had elected to 'bug out' as it were from Greenville, really there was nothing to criticize there. Nor was there any criticism for those who had done similar in the outer county or the surrounding farms of the neighboring ones. Dvorak had withdrawn into the rural back country, and taken stock of the situation, and proven useful for the logistical backend and storage of material for more active participation in the resistance.

Those farmers in the upstate had had some speculation that they would be able to farm, but those grand ideas greatly overestimated fuel availability for modern mechanization, even for the ones who managed to avoid Shongairi attention before the puppies had fallen back north, and towards the coast, and then from human predation. Simply put with the invasion under way it wasn't readily feasible to run modern combines, and harvesters.

Labor intensive farming was much harder to manage with aliens, and human marauders running around. Montreat was slightly better off than Greenville county because of geography, but the area around black mountain just was not as good farmland. "Asheville is using the Biltmore to grow food." Wilson, Dvorak's brother in law, stated.

"Yes, I had heard that." And that made sense, even if it approached putting all one's eggs in one basket a single kinetic strike on the estate ... well then again if the Shongairi were going to strike Asheville it wasn't going to be just one. "I am somewhat surprised that given the situation that more of the town leadership hasn't relocated to there." Kane remarked. He was a little disappointed actually, if it looked as if the council was going to switch sides having them at the estate and relatively isolated from town would have made them much easier to deal with quietly in the middle of the night.

The conversation turned as Dave Dvorak returned from racking his long arm, which quickly turned the conversation to guns. Dennis Vardry's move in had included his relocation of what Kane would have termed quaint at one point, but at the present 30-30 and the Mini 14 still managed to shoot lead at the enemy invaders, and that was enough. It was merely unfortunate that Wilson seemed obsessed with the larger caliber side of the argument.

"I admit that I was in your position at one point," as he wound around and through the finer points of a 175 gr sierra match king, and its terminal performance, "But the Shongairi did not come expecting smokeless gunpowder, and didn't bring effective body armor."

"But its just a souped up 22." The retired marine almost whined at the notion.

"And if we were routinely engaging passed four hundred yards I would concur," Kane's preferred 77gr 223 Wylde from the compact HK 416A5 was sufficient at most ranges... but the reality was he wore it more to give cover. It had come out of his gunsafe, the safe salvaged from a trip to Fayetteville about two hundred miles to the south east, solely because it was expected he had a rifle... the truth was he had pulled the trigger perhaps a dozen times in anger, and probably had fired less than two hundred rounds from a rifle over the course of the invasion... but Kane knew that in no small part to magic... and Ana's distaste for firearms. Marduk's daughter had grimacing accepted the Sig P226, and he doubted she would bother to use it if a firefight broke out... more likely immediately resorting to ... distinctly supernatural means... but he supposed that was going to be a matter to contend with later, "But we are not, this is not Afghanistan, and we are predominantly having to contend with mechanized infantry in close quarters." The Shongairi orbital advantage was only part of that.

Wilson put aside his discussion of the M1A National Match rifle as Mitchell returned with a plate of fish that he had slathered with some kind of bourbon glaze. "Any idea when we can start rolling out the M4s to the troops?" Mitchell questioned.

"The computers are already evaluating the cutting process now." It was mostly quality assurance. The M16A2 was optimized for SS109 ball and thus had a 1-7 twist. "In terms of roll out we save time by using as many pre invasion off the shelf parts as possible." Particularly commercial polymer parts, like stocks, and pistol grips, but not having to manufacture hand guards was also a plus. "It would be faster if we'd recovered the Columbia machinery intact, but again realistically, anything that slung lead.

Mitchell filled them in that the situation the coast was getting hairy, "We think that we can push the puppies out of the coast, but we also don't want a power vacuum where any two legged assholes come to try and take advantage of."

Kane nodded, throwing a look to Ana. "With the food situation desperation is going to increase. As much as an immediate counter attack would be warranted against a peer foe to keep them off balance that isn't the case." Mitchell wanted to rearm with M4s because that had been US doctrine, the human resistance groups in the carolinas had a wide range of weapons, but given the close quarters, and vehicle dependent contact with the enemy it wasn't the worst idea. They were small and less bulky than the A2. Unlike Matherson's Black Mountain based militia Mitchell was a little more institutionally loath to adopt AKMs, despite the robustness of computer controlled milled guns.

The truth was of course that the resupply of AT4s, and supply of anti aircraft weapons really was the greater benefit. That and of course synthgas, and vehicle spare parts. Kane broke a piece of corn bread and ate.

"That'll be good," Mitchell remarked as the conversation continued to wind towards the western theater, and the supply of weapons. "We're getting some contact with groups in Ohio,"

Akron might actually be ideal given its present condition. The Shongairi were unlikely to look too hard at it after their recent strike. Now might be an ideal time to build a habitation block there, but it was, "Too far north for the moment, the river network certainly is useful, and over crossing Lake Eyrie would be possible," With drone transports, though he wasn't going to specify or emphasize the robotic nature of the machines, "I am still looking for a sufficiently adequate staging ground in the Cumberland mountains."

"I thought you were going to use pigeon forge?"

"Thats not going to be large enough, I'm afraid. That's well and good for the survivors in Tennesse especially with a winter potentially colder than we expected," And so many people not used to the loss of long term electrical power Zwei had had to retask more assets there. "Our more immediate concern is the situation nearer to hand."

"But the refugees?" Dave Dvorak spoke up drawing the subject back to the original topic of food and the habitation blocks, and away from the concern of ... rumors of Shongairi experimentation.

"These can be built fairly quickly," As he had seen, "Concrete, steel, wiring can be run through, but as you can imagine the build process is automated for military conveniences, not human comfort.," And that wasn't good for civilian psychology already battered by the invasion. "Our objective with these is insure that as much of the remaining human population makes through the winter. That takes priority over much of the manufacture of new warheads and rockets, even though we will need those."

Small arms were all well and good, AT4s were great as fire and forget but they could not forget winter was coming and most urban dwellers had no idea how to deal with that, even the ones that had made it this far.

--
Kane felt the autumn wind tip around, pushing, and driving broken, and weathered tree branches. The desolation the Shongairi had inflicted was having effects on local ecology. Without government there was no maintenance to cut back on grass, and trees... with the Shongairi holing up in their enclaves their presence was limited and that meant roads were falling into disrepair... or rather further disrepair. The lack of brush clearing, and other factors had lead to fires, and that tended to weaken highway bypass and overhangs and that broke up roadways.

That let Mitchell disappear into the underground travel paths cut by the montauk after hitting Shongairi patrols that did leave the safety of their FOBs seemingly like ghosts and reduced the ability to pursue.

That was precisely what Mitchell was doing now. Ana leaned against the snapped cypress, coolly surveying the storm tossed damage left uncleared by state or federal government. The Shongairi certainly didn't seem to care. He looked at the single, "Mitchell is away, its just us now." He looked at the waxing moon and the starlifter. An expansion of mental will sent the telepathic command to an unmanned surface to air missile battery that was wholly disposable if it were destroyed... the Shongairi strategic transport aircraft was much much more expensive for the aliens to replace.

To that end, he had no worries as the battery quickly salvoed off its several missiles towards the descending transport aircraft. The first missile slammed just forward of the nose, and the other five hit the massive frigate sized flying machine across its body. Kane had no idea what the thing was carrying, but the Shongairi had been flying them in and out was entirely too supsicious. At its altitude the so called 'Medium' SAM Missiles insured it went into an uncontrolled free fall and that much of the aircraft body became shooting stars cratering across the landing strip the Shongairi field crews had laid out meticulously months earlier.

Fleet Commander Thickair was not immediately inclined to view the sudden SAM attack as an escalation, or as a sign to come. If anything Shongairi Ground Commanders were quick to insist that given that an entire launch had been expended, even if they could not identify the actual launch system, or that the specific missile best corresponded to a soviet launch system, was an indicator of human desperation rather than escalation or signs of a counter attack.

Of course it was 'just bad luck' the assembly of Shongairi leaders reporting to the fleet commander agreed that their existing program of zones that were only a few hundred kilometers across simply needed to continue, so that they could better prevent future attacks. The Shongairi traditions of consensus Ground and Squadron commanders who disagreed were largely ignored without repercussion. Thickair listened to them, and the reports ended up in a file ... files that would inevitably be recovered after the human victory... still the loss of such large strategic lift transport spacecraft in supposedly safe space over north america represented a problem... but it would be quickly overshadowed by the losses on the ground at the end of the human month of 'October' around what the humans called 'halloween'...

The Shongairi ironically had a relatively similar holiday at least so far as ghost and ghouls went, as it happened, something that one Vladislav Dracula found bitterly amusing when he learned of it.

As for the here and now, Kane smiled at the burning debris as it showered the Shongairi base.

"Lets hope they were bringing expensive stuff in, instead of out," Ana sourly remarked even as they waited and watched the Shongairi response start to come in over the radio. GB Commander Terraik... probably equivalent at least a brigadier general, had not been expecting such an event tonight and he was now presently in an argument with the navy puppies.

The Shongairi in Greensboro had shut the internet down.... mostly. Cell phones were still a thing so it could hardly be called successful and of course it wasn't as if Zwei was merely human in terms of plugging into their data nets...

Unfortunately that penetration of the data network confirmed that Howell was providing Shongairi convoys with security inside of North Carolina... Kane flexed a hand until the knuckles popped at the scroll of data. There was another problem to contend with as well. A shongairi Company sized MechInfantry unit was due to start patrolling western North Carolina, and would be within a patrol radius of Black Mountain. So they would be going back west after this.

Imperator Pax · Oct 14, 2022

Lords of the Night Part 4

The senior squad commander had not considered himself particularly superstitious. Still there were certain cultural traits that had come to the fore when everything had started going wrong. Not that the invasion hadn't been going wrong since the beginning... but there had been bad and the sort of thing den mothers would tell younglings.

He couldn't tear his eyes from the images though, the images that were made all the worse by how largely stable they were, save for when the the cameras were shaken by the impossible going on around them becoming all the more unfathomable.

Watching as the light pulled out of the falling bodies, and eyes bled. There was blood everywhere from the squad on the video screen. An emotionally disconnected part of his brain, the rational part of his brain knew that ... observed that it seemed to be limited in area effectiveness some troopers were able to try an effect fire... but that just annoyed...

... 'the human'.

Human at least in the same general physiological characteristics of the inhabitants of KU 197 20... and while human armor was good... humans did not walk off squad automatic weapons fire. The Shongairi version of an autocannon... or perhaps more accurately the Dushka or Ma Deuce had no discernible effect. Bullet impacts that should have tearing chunks from the body, volumes of fire from heavy weapon equipped soldiers should have been reducing them to bloody paste the same as any other native or Shongairi soldier hit with that caliber of weapons.

Instead the monster kept coming more irritated than harmed by the occasional scratches the injuries seemed to leave... the bodies of the distant base accumulated as they fell.

The demon, the senior squad commander amended, waved a hand at the cannon manning team, and they all but evaporated in what must have been a wave of heat. Their bodies simply dissolving in line with the gesture. Severed limbs fell as the Shongairi troops behind collapsed.

They simply, the defending troops, had no more frame of reference than the Shongairi who were safely watching the video. The chaos, the bloodshed it was all grotesque as the carnage escalated.

At the end of it the interior, a vehicle storage bay shielded from the elements for maintenance and on load off load was pockmarked, and covered in viscera, pools of blood.

"Is that the end?" He asked, watching the monster override the door control with contemptible ease.

Ground Base Commander Shairez started to answer her hands moving towards the control.

"How interesting." A strange voice remarked.

The voice should not have been there. It belonged to a human, even if the Shongairi it spoke was immaculate if strangle accented. One of his fellow squad commanders managed to draw his mandated side arm but to no avail.

The green eyed monster easily disarmed the smaller Shongairi ending with a thud and a whimper. The demon from cainharn's hall smiled showing sharp edged teeth. The squad commander froze his mind drawing comparison's between the skeletal structure of his own species and the monster. The invader of the base was a predator and while it was not the monster from the video it didn't matter.

The monster monster's smile broadened, showing more of the teeth.

Mischa Baserab glanced at the only one of the invaders quick witted enough to even think to try and present a weapon against him. Not that it mattered. The weapon would have been useless. Mischa had founding something far far more interesting at least for the moment. "What have you found?" He asked in the alien's language... a language he had really only been speaking for a few hours now... but they had such wondrous toys he really couldn't help himself

The Ground Base Commander, easily identified because the Shongairi were so hierarchical and didn't think to conceal their officers, and certainly not within the purported safety of one of their own facilities. That presumed safety had made it ridiculously easy for him to penetrate their defenses. Take had been right of course... he should have moved sooner... expelled and destroyed the invaders throughout Wallachia... no Romania. Had the invaders left his human subjects be it would have been different... but this Ground Base Commander had singled out the children under his protection... and he was not happy to have made the mistake. "Tell me Ground Commander Shairez, what was your thinking of this recording?" He asked playfully dragging the sharp fingernails across the lightweight composite material of the table.

The aliens watched as the Vampire's claws almost cut entirely through the thin top layer of the table, the ground base commander flattened her ears. "The... attacking force are highly resistant to all demonstrated weapons."

"Yes, I saw that for myself." He smiled... and that was true of himself. "Your various guards, and then the others of your kind would have told you the same about my own personage." He remarked still conversationally. "But you know nothing of the strangers themselves? You certainly know nothing of my kind."

Shairez had been experimenting with the hegemony standard neural educators. Humans interfaced exceptionally well with them. The system settings for education for Shongairi minds were fine for educating humans, and thus could have been used as it was... that would violated hegemony protocols for such things, but for scientific experimentation ... in their present conditions she hadn't been particularly concerned.

The monster that had invaded her facility though had clearly found one of the neural educators and used it. It was the only logical explanation especially given that the alien was clearly carrying one of the devices from her laboratory facilities.

The green eyed creature followed her view, "Ah yes, your toys, most entertaining I admit some of your weapons are not quite a fit for me, but well your library has taught me so much, and your computer minds very useful, so helpful." Vladislav Dracula remarked amused, "So tell me what were you planning to contemplate against the strangers, after all I have reviewed your reports. You're already having so much trouble with mortal resistance."

It was true. Human resistance after the initial shock was beginning to effectively codify into effective hit and run tactics that were proving devestating to Shongairi forces who hadn't been prepared to face effective organized resistance groups in the slightest. They had hoped to let natural causes winnow down the numbers, but it simply wasn't fast enough.

Shairez blinked in alarm as the computer system failed to obey her attempt to trigger an alarm.

Vlad's smile widened. "As I said, Ground Commander your computers are so very helpful." The vampire looked at the still image from North America, and then with deceptive ease launched the damaged table forward. The 'double six' of Shongairi on the right side all crunched against the wall as it pinned them against the far wall. "You attacked those under my protection., and now I find your miserable vermin have become so frustrated with your own self created problem, you wish to go beyond that." He tsked ignoring the yelps of pain, and whines from the pinned invaders on the other side of the office.

At least Shairez had the decency not to try and lie about it. The Shongairi ground commander would of course eventually tell him everything that he wanted to know. There were simply somethings you just couldn't google after all.

--

Notes: This is the abridged Dracula intro, Buchevsky is absent from this, its just Vlad casually ninjaing into Shairez's base as they're dealing with video footage from across the pond.

Imperator Pax · Oct 21, 2022

Lords of Night Conclusion

Stephen Buchevsky, USMC, stared at the footage. He didn't ask how Mircea had gotten it. The Romanian ... partisan certainly resistance leader had only been gone a couple of days before the shit had hit the fan. When he'd come back to bail them out he'd then turned around and taken Take along with him, but had left most of them behind without really any kind of notice... just stormed out in response to the Shongairi incursion that by dumb luck Buchevsky supposed he'd been close enough to notice. He didn't want to guess how much fuel that had burned.

The confirmation that the Shongairi were preforming human experimentation confirmed a long standing rumor in the internet but it didn't tell them much. The footage though. Mircea, and his friends were in hindsight ... well if aliens well why not vampires. Not that he would have made that jump without proof... but Mircea was a whole lot of convincing when it came to such things... being well the Dracula.

"They seem to have made the invaders, quite uncomfortable." The Vampire remarked leaning back, his fingers steeped in contemplation.

"So can you do that?"

"Fire," Mircea pursed his lips in a thin line, "I have never actually tried... I probably could do. I have called lightning before..." He paused contemplatively at the notion... and the marine wondered if he'd just given him a new idea to test on the invading aliens.

Testing clearly wasn't what had been going. Mircea had launched his attack in revenge, and Stephen had to wonder if that was the same case... with the ones in North Carolina... it was odd to think of some monster of the 'old world' being so close to home... but he quickly discarded that notion.

If anything given what Mircea could do, and the others besides him and Take, the success of their own with limited resources probably was magnified. Take might not have liked 'modern' Assault Rifles but the vampire did use them, and his hunting jacket was liberally festooned with magazines, as well as extra grenades in addition to the knives he carried. Take would have been the knife nut of any marine rifle platoon for sure.

Right now the knife nut was leaning over the bar of the taphouse that they'd appropriated for this 'briefing', and was carrying on a conversation in Romanian that Stephen was only grasping snippets of. "Problem?" He asked.

"No, Take merely observes that perhaps we should have considered this possibility earlier." Mircea responded wistfully. His narrow fox like features flickered in the dim lighting, these were old style bulbs not more modern LEDs or the like. "Additionally that we might have perhaps taken a cue from the Albanians and their fields of mushrooms."

"Excuse me?"

"The bunkers, and networks of anti invasion defenses built by the communists, that we should have tried to expand more into the mountains themselves."

"That would have drawn attention." Stephen pointed out.

"This is most likely true, but it would have been something wouldn't it my Stephen."

... and fighting a vampire in cave was probably worse than fighting one out in the open.
--
They didn't have sufficient winter gear, Kane had known that objectively speaking going into the cold season. The upstate, not even in the mountains proper, was already sustaining below freezing temperatures until midday for much of the past week. They were lucky that there wasn't snow, as there had been little precipitation, but that probably wasn't going to hold as moisture seemed to be moving in from the gulf, as it moved further north and the year grew colder it was going to be an elevated risk.

He did have to wonder how the Shongairi was would deal with the change from high heat high humidity to the cold... but that was an academic curiosity. He watched the various militia fighters in a mix of solids, and camo, mostly hunting, jackets practice. There was a degree of standardization made possible there by the MCV's weapon manufacturing tooling... that meant that it wouldn't matter when the stocks of pre invasion anti armor weapons was depleted. AT4 production was now sufficient he could nearly see that every militia in the region could field entire squads of rocket equipped troops, if not more.

The problem of course as the at the Shongairi had been adapting, and had been even before he and Ana had gone into Central North Carolina to poke at the Shongairi facility. Dave Dvorak walked through the steel reinforced bulkhead and to the massive transparent aluminum window that overlooked the subterranean training complex. 'The Battle Lab' as it had been dubbed wasn't a typical attachment to a hab block... but they were probably going to need to become one.

The NOD SAM base defenses which were built in reinforced concrete bunker lift units that were only vulnerable to fire really when active were another feature that would need to proliferate. The SAMs came in a variety of ranges from large soviet style systems that were akin to Grumble, or Gadfly missiles, nato reporting names, down to much smaller rapid firing medium and short range systems.

The missiles were cheap. The growing number of refineries might have had a hard time producing the volume of synthetic petrol without readily available industrial precursor materials, or tiberium to side step it, but SAMs only consumed that fuel in the 'one use' variety.

"Is there something you need Dave?" The former gun store owner was insulated from the sound of automatic weapons fire from the range, but he was probably imagining the sounds because he sort of half jumped at the sudden question.

"uh, yeah. Mitchell is here..." He trailed off. That wasn't really news, the MP officer now serving basically serving de facto as an infantry 'brigade' commander was only one of several various resistance commands expected to arrive at Black Mountain as they prepared to contemplate how they should address winter, and Asheville's potential issues to the north. It was also going to be the meeting where he disclosed confirmation of the Shongairi human experimentation. "He's brought somebody with him."

That was against protocol. If this had been the imaginatively named 'South Carolina State Guards Garrison', habitation block nearer to Greenville that would have been one thing... but Matherson probably wasn't going to be happy at the MP bringing in someone new... if it was the sort of thing that occasionally had to happen. "I see. Do you think I need-"

The former gunstore owner / prepper was already shaking his head. "I don't think Matherson had a problem with it... given who it is, but," He stopped, "thats its one of Robinson's fighter pilots, and his resistance group. They were coming in from the coast when you launched the SAM attack..."

As it happened Mitchell was the prevailing coastal contact, chain of communication with other resistance groups. His survival, plus time in service, had among other things given them a leg up in terms of having the man power people network to liase in the east... they simply didn't have anyone to do the same on the Tennesse side of the state line... lines. The Shongairi destruction of a TVA damn early in invasion also hadn't helped on that front.

'Longbow' Torino was waiting, but he was also watching as the intercept filtered in from their patch into the Shongairi network. "Did I hear that right?"

"The Shongairi just lost a major base near the black sea." He replied in acknowledgement even as he subconsciously directed his linker core to forward an email to Zwei to delve into and find out. "That included previous losses to a Shongairi regiment." Probably an understrength regiment... he could scarcely fathom that someone had managed to organize that kind of counter attack without inviting a rainstorm of KEWs... except that even now there were no incoming reports of KEW strikes being mounted. The Shongairi response loop was broke... and if "We have nothing further... what can we do for you major?" He inquired even as he briefly met Ana's gaze, her expression shifted left to some of the fighter jock's companions.

They had frankly standardized weapons, probably from raiding a guard or even regular army stockpile, but they could have been from a particularly apportioned police station, federal arms locker. Ethnically they were a motley assortment of men and women, and attracted no more attention on that front after months of resistance fighting... or at least they wouldn't have until introductions made circular.

Kane's lip narrowed. "Kane."

A surviving Harlemite, or at least from his ballcap, looked him up and down... the already tall boy was probably sixteen, "You like emininem ' something?"

"Or something." He replied. "Did Admiral Robinson survive?" Unfortunately Torino didn't believe that to be the case, he'd been keeping an eye out... that was, "Unfortunate. You managed to get into contact with Mitchell through the remains of the Massachusetts national guard you said?"

"I did, and I promised I'd also ask if you can help, with winter coming."

He nodded, "Yes. We're going to need to button up. The Shongairi have been experimenting on humans,"

Torino nodded, "I'd heard that... its not going well for them. There is a group up north that got loose from them after the Shongairi did something with them... I don't know what but they can use the invader's tech against them... but the downside is they're kind of crazy."
--
Notes:So I don't know how much of the sequel (Into the Light) I'm actually going to incorporate its very ponderous meandering, and you know some novels can pull off vampires as a result of nanomachines son... Out of the dark is not one of them. Like I could do a trinity blood crossover and I think it would work because trinity blood's lore is more fleshed outeven though the back story is vampires are a result of humans being exposed to alien tech... I digress.

Anyway, this puts Buschevsky on the page, introduces longbow, and obvious we have Dracula name dropped. It also highlights the move into Winter 2016/17 whenever out of the Dark is supposed to take place in

Imperator Pax · Oct 28, 2022

Turning

Kane mulled over the question. The arrival of 'Longbow' Torino and friends had come on the heels, a happy coincidence to be sure, of the 'black sea base' loss. The Shongairi weren't great at operational security, the invaders knew something had gone wrong and that had dispersed to their ground troops in part because of orders to be on alert, but only in part. From ground troops it had passed to second line personnel, and people. The transmission that something had happened, something big, making its way through the human population was the bigger matter.

Zwei deep within Blood Mountain in North Georgia had penetrated rather thoroughly the Shongairi communication, and data networks, but the situation remained opaque. What had happened? What had happened in Romania that had cost the Shongairi a significant combat element... and then a major ground installation to be lost. It wasn't a nuke. That much was obvious. There had been no seismic indications, no radiation detected, or EM generation that might indicate that, and of course the Shongairi knew the facility was intact. It had not been attacked by any kind of concentrated armor counter attack. The facilities in the vicinity of the Black Sea seemed alarmingly intact.

They had no explanation for it.

"We have until the Shongairi figure out what they're going to do about this to figure out what we are going to do."

"Evacuation."

"Yes." He replied. Kane considered the stockpiles of weapons inside underground structures... of discussions of making it through the winter months launching a handful of attritional attacks, maybe of focusing on trying to salvage whatever they could from city ruins, but mostly of focusing on trying to get through the winter and contemplating a spring offensive of some sort.

A hoped for spring offensive was what the public as a whole seemed to be looking for. Some future strike back against the Shongairi. Kane had not admitted that this was a more practical idea than it might have seemed on paper. Perhaps as early as march there would be enough components to assemble perhaps a dozen ion cannons and rail guns that would be able to be launched into space in such a way the Shongairi wouldn't figure out what they were until they were under fire... and by then it would be too late.

It was possible that the Shongairi warships if they could figure out what was going on would realize they were in space combat situation, but the first, the primary targets of those ion cannons would be ships like Sword of Empire the invasion's apparent flagship. The objective was to kill the Shongairi fleet commander, and as much of his staff and the invasion's senior leadership. Even if the ion cannons were then silenced there was a contingency to use surface to orbital nukes to try and break up the Shongairi forces... but those would have to be offset launched... probably from the oceans because of the distance from which a KKV could be fired.... and of course while there were potential counters to KKVs the angle of a defensive shot from a ground based system was limited.

The success of any counter in the spring time was contingent on breaking the Shongairi response loop... which was why it was contingent on leadership destruction. It was why Kane had considered simply waiting out the time they had left until his remaining extra dimensional currency unlocked and he could spend the credits he had to buy something to even the odds with the invaders.

"The puppies might have left Asheville alone but they're going to notice if the city just depopulates over night." A militia officer observed.

"The Shongairi were looking for human test subjects. Whatever deal Howell has worked out with the occupation is unlikely to hold " Or at least they couldn't depend on the puppies holding to that agreement, "And we're not in any position to launch a general uprising." The days were getting short it was getting harder to scavenge, for increasingly scarce goods and buildings weathered by the prevalence of air strikes, and of course kinetic strikes were going to be facing snow loads further north soon.

The problem was food. No one in the room was keen on leaving Asheville's arable land fallow... and they probably couldn't afford it... and the Shongairi could probably figure out, especially once winter came that they should be looking for livestock sources. Cows, pigs, sheep, goats all needed surface land... and raising chickens indoors presented its own challenges, but at least it was still practical.

"Do we have the resources?"

"For bare bones habitation blocks?" Kane replied to Matherson's question, "Yes, and frankly you may want to begin the evacuation of Montreat." Montreat, and black mountain were directly along the msr the Shongairi would probably take if they used the highway to head into Asheville. "The habitation blocks can probably be finished by January and let Asheville's residents finish them out," but he was talking about just living space, communications and food was going to be another matter... and in terms of resources, they'd probably need to cannibalize... recycle part of Asheville proper to fill out those buildings.

There was a throat clearing noise, and Dave Dvorakglanced to his brother in-law for support as the man looked sheepish at having drawn everyone's attention, "Uhm, the Shongairi... launched an attack.. but it wasn't a continuous battle."

"Yeah they clearly retreated," Rob Wilson nodded. Not that the puppies had called it that, "Somebody in Romania gave them a bloody nose, they broke contact..."

"And they must have expected a counter attack they ran readiness drills..."

Someone down the table muttered it did them a fat lot of good. The pre invasion lieutenant was one of the leaders of a coastal based resistance ground that reported to Mitchell as what remained of the SC-ANG. The lieutenant wasn't wrong.

"So did they misjudge whoever they attacked?"

"Why not just use kinetic strikes, then. Its completely against what we normally see. They launch an attack preemptively. No that doesn't make sense." Mitchell shook his head.

None of this made sense though. They didn't have details... and it wasn't as if KKVs had run out of ammo or something. They weren't smart munitions, throwing a rock from orbit was probably the cheapest thing in the Shongairi arsenal.

His private line gave a subdued notification rather than ringing his more public communication device. The communication through linker core was something he didn't advertise for plenty of reasons. The device was useful of course but more typical smart wear looked, blended better, even though he was sure raised questions.

It took a minute to cycle through what Ana was getting at, but her text message that it didn't add up pointed out the discrepancies.

It still took a minute to click.

The only obvious small arms damage in the base eerily reflected their own attack in the base to the north east of Black Mountain nearer to Greensboro, and Howell's government. As if... The Shongairi had been the only ones shooting. It hadn't clicked immediately, because the shongairi regiment that had been retreating had been mauled in a conventional stand up fight with all the accoutrements of modern war.

There was no indication of hellfire blasts as in their attack... but the Shongairi had in some cases been staked to the walls or cut to pieces... some was clearly post mortem... but peri mortem or around the time of death... some were the cause of death... that raised more questions. The only shots that had been fired were also entirely fewer. Whoever, whatever group had gone in, had suppressed most of the Shongairi before an alarm had been sounded, and then they had much as he and Ana had simply walked through the attempts to slow them down... and with significantly less obvious reply.

Swords? Knives?

"Its clear," Longbow was saying. "That the Shongairi don't know what to make of it. They're combing the area around the base looking for things. Leaving aside that obviously some of the Shongairi were killed unaware..."

"They prevented outgoing Shongairi communication for the duration of the attack. No alarm sounded, no attempt to raise outside, maybe even disrupted internal communications."

"Could it be the Russians?"

"No." Kane replied. "And I don't imagine it is a NATO reply... the Shongairi were experimenting on humans... I think they may have shown the wrong human how to use their technology... and that someone turned their own systems off." ... which only potentially answered one question, and frankly the least of the questions he had. "My bigger concern is what prompted this." He tapped the table console, and brought up the forest of stakes.

It wasn't all of the Shongairi, so far as he could tell the Shongairi had only identified the Shongairi troopers who had launched the attack into the mountains... but some group of partisans had gone through and taken the time to raise and stake, impale, Shongairi troops of significant number in the open.

"Holy shit." Was about the general consensus.

"Shongairi medical reports say this was largely post mortem."

"Largely?" Dave caught on.

"The Commanding officer of the Regiment was apparently alive when he was impaled, though already injured." Kane replied clinically bringing up the translated document stolen from the Shongairi data network. He wasn't sure what to make of the Shongairi coroner, medical examiner,'s remarks on the strength needed to impale 'Harah' on the piece of lumber, but it was another detail.

"So basically all we know for sure is that they pissed someone off."

... and now they were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

--
Notes: I mean he's Vlad the Impaler, Kazlike Bey, for a reason.

Imperator Pax · Nov 3, 2022

Turning
Part 2

Asheville was formed from a natural confluence of factors... much like most of the western Carolina reach shaped by river and rock. The same features which had shaped colonial settlement in the 1700s also impacted invasion parameters, though in different ways. Asheville's arable land was a valuable resource to use even if they were gambling on the Shongairi not striking a civilian population center that wasn't anywhere close to the Shongairi and not attacking.

That had held through the summer, and now fall months, but things had changed. The Shongairi had changed behaviors, had been changing behaviors even before ... whatever had happened in Romania... and if this had been Ana's native earth there were any number of threats that could have done this.

Demons, vampires, the lot of them. Ana had her suspicions on what it could be but that was impacted by her own nature... was she right? Kane wasn't sure. It seemed possible. This was the first time someone else had replicated a similar overall attack success to their own... which meant it stood out...
As he sat there and contemplated the situation, his gut feeling, his instinct was that Shongairi had to have been attacked by someone, or plural... and he wanted to trust Ana's instincts but they didn't have proof... so even if she was right they could hardly be expected to go to the resistance on it... not on a gut feeling.
and it come right after a major conventional bloody nose meant they still weren't sure how the Shongairi were were going to respond... and that put Asheville at the forefront of their attention. It was the nearest large urban city that was intact that wasn't under occupation. There were a few in the midwest including some along the great lakes, and further afield it sounded, through the grape vine, as if there were surving towns in flyover country that hadn't warranted KEWs... but the east coast states were a different story...
They would have to see what the internet could tell them... see if anything came out, but... there more local matters first.
"Are you sure this will work?" The question came from Dvorak's brother in law. The marine sounded skeptical.

"No we're not sure." someone snapped.

They hadn't even approached Asheville's municipal council with the plan yet... but said council was getting antsy about their dwindling coal stockpiles.... not helped by the early inch of snow. That was a lot for this time of year, and it come suddenly stealing from the night. It was a further indication of the possibility the winter could be significantly cooler, and longer than usual and that warranted the presence of the adjacent mountain habitation blocks, even if it was really the Montreat community potentially more on the hook. While the Dvorak-Wilson community had a few other families in Montreat had actually been a good size town, and one that largely weathered intact.

"The Shongair are going to notice either way."

The question really was what the Shongairi would notice. Asheville's coal stocks were dwindling... Asheville had two coal fired plants to begin with and while Kane was sure they were managing somehow to draw out their stocks by bringing in some coal it wasn't going to be enough.

The room turned into a twist of shouted arguments about whether or not the invaders would believe that Winter and the shut down of the coal plans once the coal ran out had forced the population to largely melt into the wilderness until nothing but a minor agricultural subsistence farming community on the surface remained.

... and that really was the question. Cold Mountain could be expanded with a larger nuclear power generator that in theory could supply a chain of habitation blocks to support what remained of West Asheville through the winter. Kane spared Ana a look, and and the two of them stepped outside as the Western North Carolina Militia staff argued amongst themselves. There were other things they could be doing while the staff debated how they were going to the tell the town, and explain the large subterranean housing arrangements being made. Torino followed them out, which prevented a discussion of whether or not there were people like them in eastern Europe... but the possibility of it certainly would have explained both engagements.

Was there someone else with an MCV did that explain the conventional battle? Had someone else dug into the mountains, just on a different continental landmass? It was in many ways an appealing thought, that maybe someone had covered at least a part of Europe, and then retaliated to an attack on their conventional assets much like he would have... but they didn't have proof. That was grating because he couldn't be sure Ana's supposition was right or wrong, merely that something had happened on the other side of the world that the Shongairi were surely going to respond to.

"Still working on a response?" Major Torino questioned. His Georgian accent was natural but polished and vocabulary shaped by the Air Force. The USAF vernacular English had a tendency that wasn't a hundred percent in line with the army... but it was just different enough that he expected that Kane was cognizant of how English was likely to shift in a generation or two.

Torino had a point though in that they did need to make a decision sooner rather than later. The recent disaster for the invaders while useful didn't change the fact Torino's original objective had been facilitating contact with more northerly American resistance groups... and if western North Carolina was getting snow at the beginning of November then he couldn't imagine what the situation was going to be further north.

"We will be heading further north," Further north really than they had been previously, "Soon." There were limits of course. They'd only be able to go so fast. "You said that the northern groups were trying to move further south."

That was complicated by not just Fuel limitations but also damage to the road network. Any kind of migration was being conducted in small convoys that were at risk.... and that showed in the idea that the nominal Massachusetts National Guard remnants the militias, and their dependents, formed from the pilgrim state were trying to move down to West Virginia... thankfully meeting them there was much more reasonable than trying to push through the ruins of DC or worrying about navigating around Greensboro. Meeting them in West Virginia could be done.

"Are you really going to send those things to hollow out old coal mines?"

"its not that simple." That had been one of the suggestions from one of the Black Mountain ROTC cadets ... now a militia lieutenant... "But the old coal mines will be useful, but not for habitation blocks. We can meet them in the Monongahela National Forest, or at Seneca," That was proving the best way to do things with resistance groups. The pre invasion state and national forests were far enough isolated from urban build up that they were useful to do things away from Shongairi presence. "I don't know how smart trying to move winter quarters would be otherwise..." The idea of marching south for the winter seemed like a poorly thought out one... as if someone had pulled it out of a history book without quite the idea of the logistical requirements for it... or that it was prompted by desperation, which was probably just as likely, whatever the case. "Maintaining the Massachusetts as a coherent fighting force is a priority," As was keeping their dependents alive, for the simple hope of insuring a surviving human species after.

Once Shongairi orbital dominance was broken... once the fleet in orbit was reduced to free floating expanding gasses and metal fragments they could focus on a ground campaign in order to take back the planet, even if that might take a decade, or a generation, or however long it took the Invaders would be defeated... and a response would be mounted... though Kane was sure that any retaliation against the Shongairi would require humanity building their own copies of extra dimensional technology.

First though they needed to get through winter.

--
Notes: Yes, to clarify Kane doesn't know the plot, but recognizes or hopes at least hey somebody fighting the aliens has supernatural powers to... this the same frame of mind, processing Buchevsky goes through where Vlad shows him the Shongairi footage and he zeroes in on 'oh they must be vampires too' because Buchevsky has just been told Vampires are a thing. Kane hasn't zeroed in on Vampires so much as someone with similar magic to him, or Ana, or out of the ordinary for most.

ANd indeed Vlad's response of impalement to the shongairi, doesn't work as well on the Shongairi as it does a turkish army of the 15th century, because the puppies are a professional army... but Vlad also does it because 'I'm damn well going to send these invading bastards a message'. ANd thickair's response is like 'Who could have done this, this isn't normal for the humans we've been fighting. They don't normally do this.'

Imperator Pax · Nov 10, 2022

Turning Part 3

They would have had more options if they had had greater access to the intercostal waterways, but they didn't. Simply put it was easier to simply burrow into the blue ridge mountains and just keep reinforcing... that was a much safer method of protecting against the Shongairi orbital advantage... and further inland there were other problems. The intercoastals were being buffeted by hurricanes potentially as many as three in the last month, but that rain was being pushed inland where it froze and came down sometimes just as frozen rain, sometimes as actual snow. Kane couldn't be sure but the long massive cloud banks of dark grey and no telling what it looked from orbit could very well have been obscuring Shongairi orbital surveillance, and as Shongairi Radio Communications drones became less and less common the Shongairi were forced to fight with less communication apparatus beyond local.

They had confirmed that the destroyed regiment in Romania had been relocated to Eastern Europe... apparently as rear line garrison duty after it had been savaged in fighting in Pennsylvania... the irony. It was darkly amusing news, and Kane hoped that the situation in Europe would continue to keep the Shongairi distracted. He wasn't clear on the details of what had happened in Pennsylvania, the developments beyond Virginia had been opaque since hte invasion had started. Even Torino could couldn't really make the situation much less opaque.

The Massachusetts Militia... a combination of mobilized citizens built around a surviving core of national guard and veterans had put together a collection of supposed regiments. It was painfully continental army highly reminiscent of the Revolutionary war... and indeed given the staff composition of the Massachusetts command that was probably intentional as a rallying effort for their civilian dependents.

In a display of probably the best sense they had gone so far as to nickname their brain trust, the Manhattan project. It was possible, though Kane was doubtful, the collection of surviving MIT and other scientists decision to pursue building a nuke had been inspired by the attempt in late spring, the supposed dirty bomb. The of course was that they would use the weapon against the Shongairi base in North Carolina it was from jump street a planned suicide attack. There had already been other attempts to use nuclear weapons against the Shongairi.

The Chinese. The French. India and Pakistan concurrently to the two deciding to also try and settle their preexisting grievances. The lack of a US, Russian, and Israeli response raised questions for Kane. He suspected that the lack of a US and Russian one might have had something to do with the actual chain of launch command authorization. Israel was an unknown. The UK by all indications had simply had the misfortune of having the kingdom's boomers knocked out before they could determine a strike.

... that brought them back to the matter of the brain trust and what they made of the situation. "Colonel Mason," Doctor Mason... it was absurd to Kane that someone who had separated out after Gulf 1 as first lieutenant missed the entirety of the war on terror, was now sitting at equal footing with a pre war on terror colonel, or also in this case outranked a war on terror air force officer in Torino's case... but he supposed that was desperation by the New Englanders. "Thinks from the data that ninety percent of the planet is dead."

... and on that the staff officer was probably correct. Kane wasn't going to object that Mason was probably brilliant. Statistics. Data. Ninety Percent was an abstract number. The entirety of the Chinese seaboard seemed to have been gone. The cities that hadn't been hit in the initial wave had in what had been a completely bone head maneuver by the CCP moved to a general uprising that had resulted in the rest eating KEWs. Not that the losses in the subcontinent he had already mused over hadn't been insanity at its finest. Brazil had been thoroughly saved. The alien invasion had completely devesasted world grain production, Russia, Ukraine, the United States, China, Kazakhstan, France and so on ... and even if the ion cannons had been ready tomorrow they were likely never going to know the extent of the dead in Africa.

Even the Shongairi didn't know... and frankly had stopped counting months ago after estimated between two thirds and three forths of 'KU 197 20' of the dominant life form had perished. Still staring at the skyline Kane knew that unlike in southern heat his barrier jacket in its broad great coat configuration attracted envious looks as the snow flurries came down.

"Then I trust the doctor understands the necessity of preserving what remains of mankind." The truth was with the MCVs and the facilities, "A single nuclear while tactically useful, is unlikely to operationally change the war."... but nuclear weapons were not by themselves going to change the strategic calculus.

That simply lead them down the rabbit whole of what had been stockpiled, squirreled away before they turned and retreated underground and away from the dark gray skies of west Virginia. Building an MCV was expensive, and time consuming, especially without Tiberium in terms of the raw materials. Reclaiming and tearing down ruins to reprocess provided those materials but it took time... and of course they hadn't operated on the opposite side of Greensboro. Virignia had no groundwork infrastructure so the productivity of an MCV deployed this far north would take time...

... it simply wasn't as simple as the memetic a commander builds a metal extractor... but he had recognized that when they had begun in north georgia... but even then, having arrived in this world with little information beyond that earth faced an alien invasion, and that this local, the contemporary earth ahd no answer to alien orbital supremacy he had had something of a plan... and now they were more than half way there to implementing it, even if they hadn't quite followed exactly the plan.

... the plan really had been more of an outline Kane supposed. A course of events, milestones they needed to reach before they could be sure they had the firepower to break the Shongairi hold on the orbitals and thus return control of Earth to humanity.

The underground passage was a much more straight elevator descent than the angular tram descent used further south, and the opening hab block to the first tram more closely resembled that of the originally hard surface 'fifties' aesthetic hab blocks before Carolinian residents had started making adjustments to livability and not being such a brutalism / modernist eye sore.

They weren't precisely the same. The Massachusetts diaspora had had months to work out hygeniec conditions for moving overland, both on roads and off. They weren't the throngs of people displaced from cities in the first few days and weeks of the invasion, but there was a pointed change in their appearance also. These were a population of several hundred or even low thousands depending on the total size of the movement who hadn't been moved quickly into underground shelters in the upstate. There was a greater volume of winter coats and heavier clothing. The shoes were different as well. Reflecting a roughly seven hundred mile trek from New England to Appalachia.

Given where they were it was unlikely, especially given the changing of the seasons, that these people were going to have the time to start swapping lights to LEDs or finding salvage from the ruins of cities to make the habitation blocks more at home feeling... one thing at a time though.

Torino was vastly less critical... but then the new arrival, the air force major had never been inside the vast depths that had been carved out within blood mountain and the perpetual red lights and hard black surfaces that had replaced the cold war esque decor. "This is amazing, I had heard that in the cold war there were plans to carve out protected hangars to launch interceptors from NORAD or out from Alaska," or Northern Japan, "But getting this done this fast."

Kane shook his head, "It is largely cold war reinforcements and material, the concrete setting takes the longest time, but its similar to how the second generation communication bunkers were built, though it is faster. Nuclear reactors are also modular now, and can be installed and run offsite or to capacitors to insure reliable power." they didn't have to worry about above ground transformers or power lines. They weren't to the point, or to where having protected hangars was an option, or at least not a smart diversion of resources. "With shelter from the elements taken care of, we'll seed the aquaponics with fish, and rudimentary coverage of ph management." Then they'd move on to making sure the mountain complex could take care of chickens, and other more complex greenhouse complexes. "That should coupled with food reserves," Canned beans mostly, "Insure there is a margin through the winter months, especially as underground it was easier to maintain a stable and warm temperature without sinking massive volumes of electricity into heating.

Imperator Pax · Nov 19, 2022

Turning 4

Ana had moved closer as a by product of the increasing volume of people the Massachusetts Guard was awah in people who had raided gram ma's couch camo, the ACU, from surplus store... then again most of the pre invasion guard still didn't the transfer over to the army's more recent brilliant idea of desert camo either. There were other people who had either raided the surplus stores first and had the good sense to grab the older woodland stuff or had grabbed it because it had been ignored... and then there were those who must have looted the REI or wherever and grabbed hunting camo instead.

It wasn't that much of a surprise. They had seen that and the usual mix of civilian clothes, tactical black nomex, and assorted other 'post apoc chic' over the summer but with the winter cold coming early it had forced a certain amount of practicality. Shirts designed with wearing plate carriers in mind particularly in hot urban environments like Iraq had not been designed with fighting in temperate or near alpine climates, and thus didn't work as well. Not that it seemed as if the Massachusetts Militia had a had an abundance of anything more modern than CIRAS or interceptors and those worked well enough with older style bdu tops of any coloring ... but it wasn't as if the older bulkier armor protection systems were common either.

That was something that could be feasibly addressed. Manufacture of nylon military goods from clothing, parachutes, load bearing webbing, vehicle harnesses and so forth was one thing... medicine production was larger bottleneck. It didn't escape him that they'd avoided discussing the native west Virginians.

This was far further north than Kane had been previously operating and he had to wonder how things were going in the country roads state. With less than two million people originally he wasn't sure how well the state had weathered the invasion... given the broader condition of the US poorly was his working assumption.

"Medical care was one of the thing the Shongairi promised. It was suspicious, but the aliens have a surprisingly good grasp on biology, well beyond what we were expecting. The end result was that they were looking for adolescents." Some of the doctor's information was merely repetition of things he had already been told by one person or another.

'Protein synthesizers' were not quite replicators, but the Shongairi weren't that far off from Star Trek Technology... or at least not quite to TNG level Trek from the sound of it. It raised questions of course, but the flow of information, and its dispersal into the human survivor population was useful.

Of course the Shongairi had FtL, but it was slow. Kane remained silent because of course they had already known that fact and frankly Faster than Light Travel was Faster than Light and not a relevant tactical concern on a terrestrial battlefield. It was obvious, and confirmed now that the Shongairi had not expected to need reinforcements and were not able to easily get reinforcements. It wasn't even clear exactly how useful Shongairi / Hegemony FtL communications were given they were subject to the same limitations as their ships' FtL drives.

'Limitations' that didn't account for much given the orbital advantage, and it was that reason, and really that reason alone that Kane opposed using nuclear suicide bombs. At least since they had better options if they simply waited, and avoided drawing attention. "I assume that you determined at some point the purpose of this interest?"

Their initial confusion on the topic had made sense. The apparent original research had been in how humans learned. The same general conclusions about Shongairi socialization, and learning, how Shongairi were taught, brought up had been made. There was little in the way of technical education in the Shongairi system, nothing that explained how Shongairi children grew up to be a functional part of a star faring civilization on the order that the puppies had.

That was because the Shongairi, and by implication the whole of the Hegemony didn't.

They learned by neural engrams. Neural learning technology, that apparently humans were quite capable of benefitting from with just the standard Shongairi settings. In other words any Shongairi learning package for their neural educators could be given to a human with no real modification, and bam you have a teenager that as long as they had the vocabularly in a human language could explain a working fusion reactor.

It was an intriguing proposition.

Kane's Scientific Talent allowed him to understand the principles behind any of the Nod or GDI technologies, in addition to the insight into Belka's magic, but the Shongairi neural technology was a different kind of thing.

It wasn't perfect of course the Shongairi knowledge didn't allow them to magically build thing that the invaders took for granted... or had taken for granted. Things like the air cushioned hover tanks required a level of ceramic manufacturing that the human survivors didn't have...

... or rather that Massachusetts didn't have. The light weight ceramic armor might not have been as good protection as the latest generation of Chobham or uranium lined wonder armor in Abrams but it was lighter and light enough for the protection that Shongairi tank could have been moved, put on a flat bed, and towed by the commonly available Ford 250 series, and larger, because the 'Shongairi's GEV' was weight comparable to a Stryker as a result of those lightweight composites and the engine technology the Shongairi used to push that chassis around.

Of course that meant that Shongairi GEV were vulnerable to copper formed explosive penetrators or any other fun IED combinations in a way that an Abrams wasn't but the puppies had come expecting to fight knights on horse back... but for under fifty thousand pounds the hover tank was still certainly plenty dangerous if it could shoot at you.

"What you are saying is that, the Shongairi conducted significant experiments that demonstrated that humans could be taught to use alien technology in ... a matter of hours?"

"The Shongairi began their experiments with children, adolescents, the first age cohort were puberty, but we know they began expanding up and down. The conclusion ultimately reached by the shongairi was that was no need to modify existing shongairi neural helmets beyond simple fitting for individuals," Which was so far as the Shongairi were concerned a simple, trivial even thing, "and moved on to confirm fully mature humans would have no issue integrated into working on Shongairi technology after Neural education was provided."

... surely the puppies hadn't been that stupid.. he didn't voice but he assumed someone had probably already brought it up. He wasn't sure how much the Massacusetts knew about the situation in eastern europe but that had been his working theory that someone knew enough about Shongairi systems to override their own equipment... but if the scale of the program was anything like it sounded like... given some of the systems the Shongairi had, "Is that how you planned to deliver the nuke?'

"No, we ultimately decided it wasn't necessary. The truth is that from our reconnaissance the ability to deliver a Hiroshima style device in the back of a truck against the aliens could be accomplished without needing to operate Shongairi technology. Deliver and drive up."

Kane nodded. "I am quite confident telling you that that isn't going to be necessary, and indeed in our present state would likely prove counter productive to our ends. There have as I have told Major Torino been previous attempts at the use of nuclear weapons, and while there has been limited tactical success," by some metrics, "Shongairi retaliation from orbit, which we do not currently have a response to, is extreme."

"The shongairi neural educators can be used to train pilots."

"I assumed as much." Kane replied. "I assume of course you planned to attempt some sort of hijacking... and then what place a nuke aboard Sword of Empire, and kill fleet commander Thickair in that manner?"

There was some shuffling.

"If we can survive the winter, in approximately four to six months that might not be necessary. It might be possible to deploy enough weapons that the entire Shongairi fleet is crippled and unable to mount any kind of retaliatory strike, but we need time, and resources to make that attack happen."
--
Notes: we conclude Turning with Vlad next, and then move into the first winter post invasion. This was originally going to carry a second scene focusing on just Kane and Ana relative to the moving in of the northern resistance group into their mountain hab blocks but thats been delayed.

Imperator Pax · Nov 25, 2022

Turning
Conclusion

Mischa, Dracula, looked like a placid lake surface, while the marine felt like a coiled spring just wanting for an outlet to burst. "The invaders have no explanation," The Vampire remarked finally. His eyebrows knitting in a vexed annoyed expression and then returned.

"I mean I wouldn't have been surprised if the government was lying about the volume of our stockpiles," Except that, that ... just didn't make sense, because it was no secret that US could rapidly forward deploy units and ready entire brigades in the span of weeks... the cold war era system had involved maintaining a truly massive fleet of constantly updated and overhauled tanks so ...

Mischa shook his head, "No, the invaders have considered this, and while they are willing to admit internally that they misjudged and indeed missed facilities," The Admiral and F 22s came to mind, "They couldn't have possibly missed such a depot,"

"Except they clearly did."

"Indeed my Stephen." He concurred, "Clearly it does not add up, the shongairi believe that part of the United States' snap readiness involved distributing materiel but this was limited to units at the company level and below, perhaps the battalion, but you cannot do such a thing for large units."

"And it wouldn't make sense if the president believed there was a nuclear attack or something imminent."

It was a different sort of response criteria... It wasn't like the Iranians were going to Red Dawn paradrop a bunch of people into upstate new York or something. "And ready access stockpiles would be gone by now."

"Yes." He looked to Take, "Besides Take has other concerns. We need to consider why we are seeing this... so close to a major Shongairi base... especially given what we know of the alien's plans, we must commit to decisive action, and deal with this threat."

The simple truth was that Vlad wasn't a modern person. He understood computers, and could talk about films at length, but it wasn't the same thing. His view of geopolitics was rooted in ideas that were if Stephen Buchevsky were honest centuries back. The kind of ideas of warfare that you only went on winter campaigns when you had to, and one where the ideas of 19th century nationalism and civic organization was a concept centuries down the road.

He understood biological warfare in the concept of someone who could actually remember things like plague being a daily occurrence, while still understanding the science behind epidemics spreading through poor hygiene, or tainted water. If Vlad hadn't laid waste toe the Songairi base then he probably wouldn't have recognized the attempt.... if it had gotten off the ground.

Buchvesky was career enlisted, and not in the CRBN career track or an associated briefing area, and then on top of that was that these were aliens. There was no way to be sure the Puppies couldn't still launch the attack, but it didn't change the massive 'conventional' superiority in firepower the Shongairi could send from orbit.

"I think, we should visit America."
--
It was easy for Mischa to say that, but well... he was the super vampire, and it didn't change the fact that there was still a sizable Shongairi threat in the ruins of Europe. Working from the Shongairi's own mathematical modelling the human population may have been reduced to between a quarter or, a half billion people as a result of ongoing secondary effects. The world had been majority urbanized, and major cities had been subject to orbital attacks, which had as first order effects destroyed major population centers, but then as a second order disrupted national transportation grids, power grids, as well as international trade. Buchevsky had remembered participating in a positively anachronistic harvest in the mountains of Romania, and of course trading with other villages for various fresh greens and other goods as they had slowly knitted together a community largely separate from the frontline until the Shongairi had brought the war to their doorstep in the mountains of Wallachia.

Mischa didn't appreciate that territorial incursion into his ancestral homeland, but more than that especially took offense at the direct targeting and attempted abduction of the children under his care... something about the Ottoman turks. That more than anything made it an extreme degree of personnel even though the 'original vampire' had clearly been moving towards more involvement in wider resistance activities before the attack on their collection of villages .

That was why they were looking at the tractors, earth movers, and trying to work out how they were going to do this. "This place is spooky top." One of his surviving marines remarked sweeping his M16 around the cave network. "I don't like it."

"Its a very unique system, a geologic curiosity." One of the local spelunking club, a university student before the war, stated. He was carrying an Arsenal, a Bulgarian manufactured, Kalashnikov type rifle with a folding stock built to approximate the Russian 101.

For Buchevsky he prospect of running out of Five Five Six nato standard ammunition had occurred to him before, but he'd expected that their periodic raids on the Shongairi being mounted on their terms would let them stretch it out, as Mischa had been able to trickle to them enough of soviet, and warsaw built equipment that he hadn't been that worried.

They had bullets for the guns they had, and that had been enough at the moment. It had been when the concern had been extending feelers to neighboring communities out of a concern of human on human violence of people fighting for food during the winter... and that was still a concern before the Shongairi had come a knocking.

"This cave network has been purported to be haunted since even when my father, and grand father were alive," Mischa remarked slipping out from the shadows, "in the stories one could find precious metals, but also the very horrors of hell within it, but I am assured that the air is quite safe, even if it does become quite warm."

Romania, Stephen was given to understand was the kind of place considered ninety five to be hot but nothing compared to Iraq or the high humidity and summer heat of the south with one hundred five days.

"Yes there are no signs of any poisonous gasses and while we haven't completely delved in the there is an underground river which provides clean water, and abundant space."

"Excellent, we should begin trying to take precautions anyway, to shore up the roof of the cave." The vampire replied, "I will make sure Take shows you around where we think is best to start." The other vampire also emerged from the shadows looking a little grumpy and the romanian exchange that followed mostly centered around telling the university student to be careful and not to wander off the marked trails.

They'd helped themselves to a series of road work lights, and then from some ski lodges in order to give them some light to work with down here but the process of running the lights was limited by electrical power and by their limited number of such lights.

"Mischa?"

"As much as I would like to liberate the south east of the country, and drive the invaders from the land, the snows may soon cut us off entirely, they are coming strong and quickly these. It would be lovely weather to ski which is very likely to be forced to do in the mountains, but that will create a problem for fighting." He nodded sagaciously t o the wall of the cave, "This is very important my stephen, but it must be done. And we must look at the neighbors, as well as to find out and carry word over the sea."

"We could try the internet," OpSec was a potential concern there of course and how reliable it was...

"Yes, the internet, no... I have another way... I am simply loath to leave so soon... We must stay here for a time, but maybe we find something worthwhile in all of this." Mischa Baserab looked at the cave wall, "The Shongairi claim their... Hegemony these 'grass eaters' found our world a century before my birth, I mean to make them regret finding our world. We have much to do."

Imperator Pax · Dec 16, 2022

Ash Like Snow
Part 1

The 'war room' was awash with data, papers, screens, projectors. Salvaged computers were mixed in with all manner of office supplies, filing cabinets, printers, copiers and staplers, along with other systems that made the entire room feel crowded without any people in it.

Now that they had a permanent place to set up a base it hadn't taken long for clutter to start to develop in the confines of the habitation block.

And no one wanted to be left out, even if it meant cramming into a narrow fifties esque room that at least in Kane's opinion looked like it had been organized by a hoarder of computer parts Thankfully none of the computers... regardless of how suspect some of the actual phones looked... were from before windows XP.

The Shongairi had never intended to fight a protracted conflict. The idea had been to simply show up pacify the natives, with presumably minimal force, drive around in some 'metal wagons' maybe possibly have to stop some armored charges with a little machine gun fire and that seeing how hopelessly outmatched they were the denizens of KU 197 20 would simply surrender, and submit to the empire.

... and then the empire would be able to have a nice omnivore client race that they could potential use to against the rest of the hegemony when inevitably the empire had to invade against the pesky grass eaters.

Kane wanted to snort. The Shongairi logic was absurd... but also painfully reminiscent of the logic of most high level strategic planners through out history who'd spent too much time drinking the Kool-Aid. Though he had been making comparisons to the Imperial Japanese, comparisons to other belligerent empire building phases could have easily been made.

The fact that the Shongairi were so convinced that the Hegemony were 'mistreating' them was ridiculous... or that the puppies felt if given just a little more time that they'd be able to build up and actually reshape the whole galactic order to their liking.

'To how things should have been'.

If not for not for how strongly in group consensus was Kane was legitimately concerned that the Shongairi might have some idiot junior officer pop off and start a war with one of the 'herbivore' species of the confederation before the puppies were ready... but unlike Imperial Japan the Shongairi had a very thorough system of political control of the army

... at least by all appearances. They simply didn't seem to consider striking out early... or at least that was the indication from the extensive data mining of Thickair's thoroughly penetrated computer systems.

If only they could have boarded sword of empire, and accessed the flag bridge, It would have been easy from there to override the weapons and make the Shongairi warships start shooting one another. Unfortunately that would have required physical presence, and that wasn't an option, regardless of any plans to infiltrate a suicide bomber with a nuke onto a shuttle that the Massachusetts had come up with from watching too many reruns of Independence day.

"What if we spoof their computer returns." The Air National Guard officer had been an AWACS flight engineer rather than actually involved in the computer systems but there were some systems you were just exposed to over the course of a tour that were absorbed. In this case it wasn't so much hitting the enemy with an actual physical threat emitter so much as getting into the Shongairi software and tripping up enough of their systems to make them think something was sitting out there at the edge of the solar system watching them.

... but the truth was as inventive of an idea was it was almost certainly a product of pre war US tech supremacy overthinking how to fuck with a peer opponent. More likely, given the Shongairi were getting better about responding to any new development with caution they might consider taking a look at their own computer systems looking for digital intrusion... even if it did play into Thickair's paranoia that the Hegemony had somehow set the Shongairi up for their present embarrassment, or were somehow helping to perpetuate the attacks now reported in eastern europe that were slowly depopulating Shongairi forward operating bases across the region, and would soon be potentially spreading into Germany, or central Europe more broadly, or possibly pushing down to open a southern European front, or further east still...

They just had no information, beyond that something was happening.

... whatever was happening it didn't seem to be slowing down. Every couple of nights a Shongairi installation would just go dark. They weren't seeing the same gruesome -ness as the initial response... there was no forest of stakes and impaled invaders and Shongairi after action reports occasionally reported evidence of gunfights that had erupted... but the general condition was the same.

Someone had the resources to cut down Shongairi facilities that should have been on high alert and wipe them out to a man without signals escaping to reach higher authority... and had the manpower to use those resources across an entire theater of operations without demonstrating the movement to orbital surveillance.

Kane might have been jealous, except that the capabilities were being used against a common enemy... and whoever it was was distracting the Shongairi away from the situation in North America. They had a lot to do before they could hunker down for the winter. "It is an interesting idea, but for the moment we need to focus on the situation in the Ohio valley." Torino had already told them plenty, and frankly even a few weeks out of date, it corroborated what they new from the new courier system of 'drivers' what was turning into nomads of people salvaging and piecing together vehicles to approximate ... technobarbarian trade caravans across the wastelands... convoys that could navigate the shattered cities, and broken highway system that had been interrupted when the Shongairi dropped KEWs by the dozen on a civilian population center.

He was a little doubtful of stories further west but once you hit the 'great grass sea' of Nebraska, and Kansas ... well the internet was almost nonexistent and there was no telling exactly what had happened in the former bread basket given the Shongairi had virtually no presence there south of the great lakes, the Shongairi had abandoned anything north of the texas panhandle settling in the warmer biomes south of there.

Why? The general reasoning from Shongairi documents of their own was strategic dismissal of the flyover states as irrelevant to the broader picture of the invasion... and they were probably right... on the other hand given the Shongairi abductions of people coupled with the word of mouth it was probably also convincing people to migrate west in serach of a false hope. There was no way to be sure... and frankly given the extent of the die off...

"I am aware that you're impatient to move against the invaders, but the weather is already starting to turn against us." Snow hitting in the south ... in October was unusual, having snow actually stick to the ground in November was alarming. It wasn't effecting the coastal counties, but they were at higher elevation burrowing into mountains in order to protect themselves from Shongairi orbital supremacy, "We're going to have to wait the cold months out."

There were some complaints that whoever in Europe didn't seem to be slowing down, and Kane knew that appeared to be true but he had no idea how they were doing what they were doing. He was actually sort of glad that there was a geographic separation between this Virginia enclave and Greensboro in North Carolina. The last thing he wanted to be accidentally party to was some kind of raid over the border in North Carolina ... at least until he was ready for it. The Shongairi desperation to solidify a foothold locally involved praising governor Howell which... wasn't making him many friends outside of his state

It was getting a little effusive, and it was hard to miss in their digital broadcasts, and while Howell wasn't the only one managing to keep a largely pre invasion political sub division together North Carolina was the only one close. There were reports out of Mexico, and parts further south. There was the mess that Canada had turned into.

Colonel Mason frowned as the conversation turned into Canada... and that the Shongairi collaboration authorities over on their side of the border were administering parts of the US side of the lakes in the former states of Wisconsin, and Michigan. Not that there weren't American collaborators, which was increasingly the broader area of political concern ahead of any counter attack... and that word of europe's events were spreading.

The advantage, if it could be called that, was that the United States had lost effectively its entire national leadership. All branches of the Federal Government basically gone in the opening attack on Washington. The Canadians hadn't been so lucky both the current, at the time of the Invasion, prime minister, and his predessecor had both been killed as a result of collaboration activity. The Shongairi had replaced one for the other only to find it didn't do anything in terms of making administration of Canada any easier when ninety percent of the country lived within driving distance of the now unguarded line on the map that was the US border.
--
Notes: As I'm sure was noticed, this has been delayed two weeks, and I'm still not happy with it. The winter chapter ahead of the counter attack lays out unfortunate details about collaboration and perceived collaboration in the invasion, and I ended up cutting some of that out. We are story wise gearing up for both Vlad's counter attack, as he embraces more vampires to get aboard the Shongairi ships, as well as defend in his absence as well as Kane's plan to launch multiple Ion Cannon satellites into orbit in the spring to take out those ships.

Imperator Pax · Dec 23, 2022

Ash like Snow
Part 2

Ana cut a stark contrast with the yankees. Then again the several months of change had created noticeable distinction in the surviving populace. The Dvoraks probably ate less healthy than most of the hab block denizens in the South Carolina upstate but that was because the Wilson-dvorak clan had taken quite extensive preparations for getting down on the mount in a 'sthf' scenario. For those survivors in Carolina who had moved into a habitation block even if it was less varied than pre invasion diet it was almost certainly healthier food... but perhaps more importantly still was its regularity.

How exactly Black Mountain would have fared as winter had set in, was debatable, but it didn't matter now with hydroponics, and coops for chickens providing fish and eggs. It was noticeable to that extent. The changes the invasions had left on people physically as privation had set in, and food shortages had come.

Ana showed none of these, which only further emphasized the sharp physical, unnatural grace of Marduk's daughter. It was probably also true to a less pronounced ascent between him and the others as well. Without the US logistics train to supply the much needed calories in fortified MREs it should have been hard to maintain the 'deployment bod'.

To that end it created an otherworldly characteristic between the two of them that created the gulf between even them and the Carolinians but it was more noticeable with the New Englanders who had just made a trek overland that had taken weeks when it should have been merely days.

They were now out of the increasingly cold and wet weather, and supplied with steady food, and clean water in addition to shelter. What had become amenities of sorts or at least luxuries on the road wouldn't magically fix physical ailments from privation, but they should keep them from getting worse.

Ana lifted her mug of tea, then scoffed, "They're quick to want to go start something with the Canadians."

... and with a motely assortment of weapons. He wasn't sure what in terms of hardware the collaborationists regime in the north had, but it was probably a little more standardized than the mishmash that the Massachusetts militia had come in with. "They don't have the fuel to sustain that." No if anything his bigger concern was not so much the northerners doing something so much as potentially stirring up trouble and getting any of the surviving cities in Ohio flattened . The truth was Kane was worried about potentially having those cities end up contracting typhus or any other disease that had largely left the western world behind after world war 2. "I'm banking on the fuel issue keeping them in winter quarters more than anything." He replied lifting the tea.

They'd come out of a warehouse in texas, shipped overland in tiny little tins that hey would have been sold in before the invasion. Those little tins were part of the reason, along with the plastic sealing that had kept the loose leaf from suffering. It was a finite resource though. Crossing the Mississippi to salvage a warehouse for tea alone would have been silly.

"And what happens when the spring comes?"

Fuel would still be short. Synthetic oil production was going to be limited up until they could actually operate surface farms. They didn't have the resources at this stage particularly in electricity generation to sustain going to hydrogen fueled vehicles.... and even if they did that would have still created a bottleneck.

The largely automated nature of MCV derived construction meant that computer controlled, and at least nominally commander directed production in the form of an itemized list of goods could produce a lot but it didn't mean they had the capacity yet to sustain fuel production ... certainly not at pre invasion levels. Each new MCV could be added to build up additional construction capacity, but required power, and it also required the base materials to manufacture products.... That meant that even if the Ion Cannon plan went off fine they'd still need to grow corn or another ethanol crop to provide the base for large volume synthetic oil.

... and it wouldn't be easier to restart production at oil fields. The winter was probably going to freeze most of the northern fields shut as a result of their inactivity, and that would mean ruptured or damaged pipelines. Of course if they were even messing with those it would most likely mean there was a large overland travel route established or they had enough hydrogen or nuclear powered space lift to deploy supplies to those facilities to keep them up and running... and that was a distant tertiary priority.

"Getting through the winter with no casualties is our priority." It was a statement of the obvious, as much of one as he could make, but it wasn't as if this was the oregon trail. The controlled environment of the habitation block ... and Ana was right, had been right that there was an adjustment period to living a sustained life underground especially for normal people. They were going to need psychologists to help manage a populace that was otherwise not just dealing with the invasion itself but any second or third order effects from having modern society break down. This would be the first winter, and with snowfall already approaching national records for a year, it compounded things. "Failing that-"

There was a chirp from the console. The Shongairi transmissions being monitored indicated that there was another shift in the European front. Kane would have really liked to get more information about the actual going ons, but there was enough traffic it provided insight into the Shongairi invasion leadership concerns that was useful.

The Shongairi were beginning to get concerned about other Hegemony members acting against the invasion. Nothing that they had observed confirmed that but these Kreptu potentially using the invasion against propaganda against the Shongairi to encourage a military build up against them... was interesting. In a couple of months one way or another either with the ion cannons or once he could expend credits to bring something like a Bolo in to secure the orbitals from attack they'd be able to stop worrying about force concentrations and losses.

The Shongairi ... the expansive hegemony that they belonged to rather ... database was filled with other alien member states. These Kreptu, the Garm and Howsanth were all on the short list of possible alien powers who might be moving to check the Shongairi's empire building.

"now what?" Ana was more annoyed by the distraction. The notice that someone was doing something like rooting out the invaders piecemeal. The pivot east wasn't unsurprising. The Shongairi had been trying to fight in the western Eurasian steppe that ran from the urals to the carpathians and now that there was a counter sweep of these... into their back end was now hitting their tail end logistical capacity. He doubted the Russian resistance was being actively coordinated with.

"Nothing we can act on," He replied standing up still holding his own mug of tea. The stainless steel modernist appliances shimmered as holographic overlays projected as his linker core began to spin up and projected data, "Zwei may be able to make something of it," but just as likely there still wasn't enough information.
He spared a look at the digital numbers counting down. Progress bars indicating the status of the ion cannon assemblies that were to be launched into space... and the number counting down until the app unlocked and he could simply purchase reinforcements... and if it came to that, after they'd survived a year of the invasion then they'd turn the Shongairi to ash that way.

Ana shifted eyes moving over the display. "Are they ignoring Turkey?"

"Well they haven't reached Greece either," The spread looked more east to west now, but that was hard to say for sure. It had started, they very sure with that thing in Romania. "What is interesting about the resistance in the old world is that they have named leadership the Shongairi are chasing."

The Shongairi didn't have that in the United States... unless one assumed Admiral Robinson was alive... which seemed doubtful... instead whatever Shongairi commander was active in the region of the former Russian Federation had proven effective at identifying and publishing by name resistance leaders and their lieutenants from the former Federation, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics. He didn't seem to be active in Kazakhstan or parts further into the Asiatic side of the steppe but he had a very thorough list of 'marked men'... and human collaborators who could sit on television and call them terrorists to a captive human audience ad nauseum day in and day out.

Kane wasn't sure if that indicated the eastern front commander was some kind of Shongairi genius ... whatever passed for smart with the invaders, or if it just was different over there. Either way give it a few months to build up their strength, they'd attack when they were ready, and if it came to that well they'd kill the bastard this summer.

"As long as we don't wait until the sixth of June."

He laughed and tapped the holographic display opening the channel. "No. This isn't anything like Overlord." And overlord had been launched when it had because of Stalin had insisted on something even if it wasn't perfect... so instead of a two pronged invasion of France north and south the Allies had crossed the channel and then launched the invasion of the south of france in late summer ...

...and the ion cannons were in a sort of way their answer to the strategic bombing if any kind of second world war comparison were to be drawn.

He frowned.

"What is it?"

"Shongairi orbital telemetry comes back." It wasn't news per se. They had known the Shongairi had the ability to track human migration at large scale, but prior to the Romanian incident it hadn't been a priority... or at least in that time frame. The Ground Commander on the other side of the Great Lakes had apparently flagged the traffic coming through Viriginia that Kane was ninety percent certain was the Massachusetts for his counterpart in North Carolina... specifically though, "He noticed they disappeared into the mountains and the national park." It had been almost a month since the Romanian catastrophe what the Shongairi had called the loss of their 7th major ground installation.

Imperator Pax · Jan 13, 2023

Ash like snow
Part 3

He looked at the projections as they waited.
A mix of heavy rain, and snow had turned the south east into a quagmiric bog. There were parts of the south that had the decency to actually freeze over enough that travel was possible overland, but that also created the problem of snowfall that the region simply had not been built with it in mind and there was no telling what the damage would be.

The plus side was it kept nearly everyone humans or invaders locked up in doors trying to stay warm as nature did a good job of trying to kill everyone equally. The Shongairi had not planned for the consequences of atypical weather. They had assumed of course, made plans on the basis that earth's development would mirror the heavily stagnated growth patterns of the rest of the hegemony or if failing that there would be a single world spanning polity in control of if not the whole planet than at least the 'world island' the continental landmass of Eurasia...

Something like a super mongol empire perhaps.

The Shongairi had not expected the breadth and width of human division or the rapid industrialization of the planet that had taken place after the mid 19thg century. They had therefor not considered what dropping all of those rocks from orbit would do to the local and continental weather patterns. It was cold here and snowing right now but apparently there were flash floods elsewhere.

The puppies hadn't been prepared for that, perhaps even less prepared than earth was to deal with an alien invasion... he looked at the screen. Then Kane quietly contemplated the math in his head. He wasn't going to complain of course. They needed time to work on the ion cannons, and the weather was slowing the Shongairi down which was buying them time. The truth was he was a little loath to rely on the nuclear contingency. Not that there was much risk of High Altitude EMP from the bombs going off doing much damage to humanity afterwards. Very, very little of the pre invasion power grid survived even less would survive the winter. The Shongairi had taken most of the major electrical consumers off the board in their first wave of strikes. The subsequent diaspora had removed most of the population who had survived, and by the time anyone had moved back into cities most of the long distance transmission systems had broken down.

He drummed his fingers on the hard metal of the desk, and shared a look with Ana, which was unpleasantly interrupted as Colonel Matherson sauntered down with Professor Mason. M&M had been talking since lunch... and of course it then occurred to Kane that both of these men had been professors and even had similar areas of historical interest before the invasion... Matherson, the garden state native turned to him for his opinion, "They can't really be that stupid can they?"

"I am afraid the Shongairi do appear intent on shoving meat into the sausage maker." He replied. At least that was certainly the impression. "But it is not our only concern. For the moment the Shongairi invaders are too concerned about the political fallout," And if he were being honest probably their own pride, "If they have to go to orbital bombardment." The projected firepower output from one of the Shongairi Dreadnought was awe inspiring... and Thickair didn't want another of the Hegemony's member races using that as political fodder for actions against the Shongairi.

"We need to hold on a little while longer though." Mason replied.

Mason's MIT compatriots had marveled at the compact nuclear reactors that provided the electrical power for the various MCV constructed habitation blocks and all the other facilities built in connection to them. It was the MCV's that made that possible, but the nuclear reactors themselves were not magic... nor really were the MCVs. It was perfectly believable to scientists and researchers who had survived the bombardment of New England to recognize that these were some secret program DARPA had been sitting on or maybe if it had come from the private sector something from some modern skunkworks of Lockmart or General whoever.

The Ion Cannons were a bit more of a stretch, but the US had been publically experimenting with surface to orbit energy weapons for anti ballistic missile work since the late seventies. That was why the bigger question was whether or not they would actually work.

"They'll work." Kane replied to Mason. "I understand your concern, but that is why we have contingencies. If necessary we will detonate a plethora of nuclear warheads in close proximity to any ships that survive." And keep doing that until they were free floating melted slag in space... if he had time for things like casaba howitzers or railguns in space that would have been a consideration but the ion cannon network represented their best hope... unless he needed to escalate further.

... which was something Kane was prepared to do as soon as his credits could be spent.. but something like a BOLO super heavy tank would be much much harder for people's imagination to sweep under the rug... never mind a fully functional starship.

Mason started to deflect that he'd just been asking, because people had been asking him.

He waved him off, "Of course there are questions, that isn't why I asked the two of you here for. The truth is our, European friends seem to have begun a pattern of deliberate provocation. Its psychological warfare." Whoever was conducting the attacks in Europe had changed tactics.

"They're baiting them," Matherson flipped the paper report that had been kicked out by the epson office printer in the corner, "They know enough about when watch check is in. At least they've watch this brigade's positions long enough to know when Caranth's call ins were." Enough to pick one perimeter and then poke it.

The question was why.

It seemed unnecessarily risky, especially given that the Shongairi had had brigade level artillery available to defend the base... and yet the infantry had fired and fired and didn't seemed to have done much. Mason grimaced, "He's right it doesn't make sense to be this brazen." The Bostonian paused, "Unless they're trying to provoke the Shongairi response... like say the Surge, in Iraq?"

But that didn't make sense because it was clear that the Shongairi had only limited troop numbers... they had invaded earth ... more comparable in troop weight to say how the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan than the US Gulf 1 or Gulf 2, and even in the latter as mentioned with the surge the US army had not readily had the numbers needed to sit on the country... and the Shongairi most certainly hadn't brought enough brigades to sit on the whole planet. "Whatever the case may be, these escalations are part of a developing pattern out of Europe. I expect that this, cloud." A nickname that came from the mathematical modelling of the actions in Europe's general shape, "will reach the ruins of Venice by the end of January."

"You think they're headed to Aviano, are there nukes their?" Matherson had gotten uncharactestically excited and started to stand to brace his arms on the table... which was he was the second shortest person in the room just taller than Mason, and Kane and Ana were noticeably taller... not either man was short.

"We have no way of knowing if any nuclear arms forward deployed to Italy would still be present, or if that these parties involved in actions against the invaders would be able to employ them against the aliens." There was a soft pause as the default legal not an answer passed between them... "But yes Aviano may or may not have nukes, and that may or may not be what they're going for... which suggests to me its possible that they have a plan similar to your original one."

Get a Shongairi DropShip fly it to the mother ship and cue Independence Day

... or at least attempt it.

"Then we need to get in contact. The ion cannons aren't ready yet."

Kane thought about the numbers in the back of his mind. The count down. The days weeks, months that they still needed to finish the ion cannons. Of course the New England plan of attack had made sense, of course they weren't the only ones to consider it. "Yes, you're correct Colonel." He said finally using Mason's official rank, "And if that were the only problem we must also contend with the projected incursion to Asheville and the Shongairi presence in Greensboro as well. Your Major Torino wants me to do something about Commander Teraik as well, which is why I am leaving these matters in your hands."

Objective one was to head off a Shongairi incursion into western Carolina. Objective two was an intelligence network within the occupation government in eastern carolina and an idea of any changes in the shongairi network. Ideally they would be able to find some way to get in contact with whoever was active in Europe... and potentially coordinate.

"Terraik is the one in... Chicago?"

"Yes. More broadly speaking his command is in Canada but... yes he has troops in Chicago acting even now." He glanced to Ana, "We will be restricting our actions to a fact finding mission. For the time being Terraik does seem to think he's clever, but it remains to be seen what he's actually do or if its worth targeting at this stage."

"Torino didn't think you wanted to move this early."

"We didn't, but Terraik does seem to know about your movements into Appalachia which has created something of a greater priority." It was also what made it important to generate information on what was going on in Greensboro and that might also provide them answers to Asheville .... but the truth was the Shongairi had been dithering on that. Shongairi frontal offenses after the mess in Romania had been suspended, which was the only reason that the puppies hadn't launched an attack sooner, and now the weather had turned against them so they might not until the temperatures warmed up.

... which potentially meant they might wait and wait planning for spring time only to then find that for some reason they no longer had orbital supremacy, it was an enticing idea

Imperator Pax · Jan 20, 2023

Ash like snow
Part 4

Kane had chosen the stealth tanks specifically for that stealth capacity.

That they were cheaper and easy to configure for AI control was of course a plus, but the benefit of the stealth tank was also its indirect fire capacity. The Shongairi had hit Detroit well Warren ... almost immediately following Colonel Alastair Sanders escapades with the recently reactivated 3rd Armor.

The battalion, those two companies of tanks, two mech infantry and their combat engineers were probably all dead now... but their actions had almost certainly contributed to an attack on US Army Materiel command, and other facilities working on the next generation of armor.

The next generation of US armor.

Why the Detroit Arsenal had been targeted well after Washington, Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, London and so could have been unrelated to Sanders actions, but they might never be sure. Shongairi fire control didn't exactly explicitly state why some targets had been hit. They hadn't ascertained if Lima had been hit or not, but truthfully it didn't matter. The War Factories underneath the south east's mountains were slowly turning out tanks but more importantly turning out standardized vehicles and spare parts to replace the hodge podge of salvaged and repurposed civilian vehicles which were more common as militia or raider vehicles in the mid west. THose same vehicles that Emilio and Longbows forces had deployed with.

More to the point deploying the Stealth Tanks also occluded any comparison to Emilio, or Longbow's respective militia cadres at the fringe of the Ohio valley operating area. He was farther afield than either man, or their collection of volunteers, specifically because of the chance of retaliation.

Detroit from the overflight actually looked better than he had expected it... given what had happened to Warren... Chicago did not. Chicago had been publicly hit. Thickair had been very clear that that was retaliation. To that end Kane wasn't particularly concerned about collateral for what he was about to do.

If Thickair had any brains at all then he would know this force was from outside the area, and if he didn't, it didn't matter. Torino was correct. The Ground Base Commander could not be permitted to round up live specimens for whatever experimentation was going on.

Of course to that end the Stealth Tanks were also here for their anti air capacity.

"nothing that flies lives." He ordered.

It took almost half a minute for the relay to start. Part of that was spinning up the active portion of the targeting radar on both shorelines. Chicago's city scape was marred by a deep furrow where Fulton market had been. It had opened a sinkhole up that reached the river and created a disgusting shallow pit flooded by the Chicago river back in the spring and was now a tar black filled icy mess.

Four hundred plus tails of flame started leaping skyward aimed at the Shongairi transports. Missiles were cheap. They would throw as many as they needed to to make sure that the Shongairi lost aircraft and wouldn't try to come around again. If he had to lose some AI controlled tanks... well that was fine.

He could afford to lose them more so than the Shongairi could afford to lose troops and flying machines if the intercepts were to be believed.
--
Chicago was the far end of the deployment area Across the lake, Lake Michigan, was a four hundred something miles to Toronto where the Shongairi occupation authority sat. They had hit Ottawa in the opening salvo of course but it hadn't prevented the collaboration of both the pre invasion PM, and his predecessor from collaborating, which would have to be addressed.

The US would not have that problem. US presidents were unlike parliamentary system where a PM was selected on the basis of the legislature, were on fixed terms... they also trended quite a bit older than their Canadian counterparts. The same was true for the US legislature which ad been steadily climbing since the height of the cold war. A median age of sixty. In comparison to say England, and the British parliament that was roughly a decade of difference... and it was that which the biggest reason besides the Shognairi having hit DC repeatedly with KEWs.

Simply put without US infrastructure much of the defacto gerontocracy of the United States was, Kane suspected, already dead from lack of resources. Howell's position as pre invasion Governor therefore positioned the man especially as governor of North Carolina.

... but that was for another time, Torino had just come through the door. The fighter jock turned, to his occasional discomfort, ground pounder team leader was only five eight in a few years under pre invasion trends he would have been considered behind the curve. Torino would likely only be considered tall because of the next generation's brush with malnutrition stunting their growth in such a major shocking fashion.

As it was he was short in comparison Ana or himself, and he was small compared to Emilio, which was compounded because Torino was wearing a combat shirt in contrast to the relatively bulky black fatigues and jumper Emilio wore. It wouldn't have been particularly noticeable pre invasion, but as the new year approached we one took note of who was doing well.

"Second line strikes?"

"There isn't really a point to hitting Shongairi air fields with this kind of attack." Kane replied to the question, unless one counted it as cathartic, he derived some pleasure to burning things after all. "Obviously if we could catch their ground crews out in the open it would be different," But Shongairi contra grav technology meant the air fields were more like helicopter pads... very large because of things 'lifters but the truth was that the Shongairi not only were reusing human airports they could easily repave them in a matter of hours at time.

"I was thinking about that actually." Torino stated at the explanation. "We could deploy the older cluster munitions that don't self detonate, or turn off the self detonate feature, scatter them on the runways and make the Shongairi waste time with IED."

"What stops the puppies from simply using humans for the task?" He replied, "IED use against the invaders has proven effective, and while we have employed mines," And explosively formed penetrators, and buried artillery among a long long list of all the nasty tricks sussed out by the G-WoT there were some things where they just didn't work. "Thickair might not do that I admit since he's been rounding up subjects, I would rather have the opportunity to shoot at more Shongairi planes since they don't have, or have a very limited ability to replace them. What can you tell me about the Canadian front?"

"Its claimed that JTF2 took out the last one, whether or not that's true," Longbow shrugged, "The internet footage looks like they hit the car with some kind of RPG. The propaganda video from this guy claiming to be a sergeant claims he took it from the Taliban." The video shorts made a lot of hard to prove claims like that but it wasn't unlikely there was resistance to invaders and the collaborationist government among surviving military force.

Kane nodded. The footage wasn't anything that hadn't made the rounds. Youtube still sort of existed in a spotty configuration. Now though most videos were hosted, and rehosted and shared around in small file request sites. There were very few where you could just click and play multi minute videos without buffering.

If the Shongairi had been smart they would have taken out internet infrastructure before humanity had started figuring out how to go back to locally hosted message boards and patching up the web with metaphorical duct tape. He wasn't precisely sure how effective the average 'dark web' user was against hiding their digital foot print against Shongairi counter measures but it didn't seem to really matter. Shongairi electronic counter action to the Internet had been ineffective. "There is no clear successor?"

"The current Prime Minister was the junior junior guy in the finance ministry or something. He sounds like he was a glorified secretary." And with the death of both of his predecessors by Canadian 'Rebels' it didn't seem like he was likely to have much prerogative.

"Terraik is going to be inflight to the Star of Empire to explain this failure." He replied, "I plan to destroy that aircraft, I trust that we are in agreement with that policy?" Emilio's heavier frame tilted slightly clearly wondering why he bothering to ask. He decided to elaborate. "The actual goal is not the aircraft's destruction, its the capture of the base commander himself. I need you to make a lot of noise as soon as the fireworks start. The goal is as much operation disturbing confusion as possible, I want the assumption Terraik died on the tarmac for as long as possible." He didn't miss Ana's smirk.

More so than simply removing a Shongairi general equivalent from the table it was that Terraik did seem to be one of their more intelligent commanders... and he wanted as much potential ascription to the attack to go to the Canadian military as possible, but more than that he wanted to know what Terraik had rattling around in his head that wasn't public knowledge to the Shongairi invasion forces at large.
--
Notes: SO I knew that Into the Light book 2 of the series had been in development hell for a while but apparently even in late 2018 (November) it was only a third of the way done.
Nominally speaking Ash Like Snow is supposed to conclude next update. Anyway what it coming first is obviously the forced rendition of Terraik and the second is Vlad embracing Torino into a vampire while visiting Canada. That sets up for other things including of course Vlad speculating on crashed space ships and alien experiments and his general rambling

Imperator Pax · Jan 27, 2023

Ash Like Snow
Conclusion

It wasn't particularly clear if the Shongairi used microphone or radio based sensors, but the puppies were hardly deaf either. The Shongairi had needed to clear a substantive amount of land to accommodate their starlifters. They didn't need the take off space but they did need room to actually load and offload, as a result the air port terminal was human construction, just appropriated for alien needs.

Ana didn't bother with the pistol. She might not have been able to fly particularly fast, to the point it was more practical for her to use a car, or would have been more practical to pay for an airplane ticket before the invasion, but she could to an extent fly under her own power, and that meant clearing the intervening space and then smashing the Shongairi sentry's larynx and upper spine into the wall to his back was quick and to the point.

Because of the comparative smallness and physical characteristics of the Shongairi they were... not especially durable. In a normal fist fight, that was to say between an average human and a shongairi a human had more mass, typically greater height, and thus something a biological edge in close quarters.

Ana simply broke his spine through moving the sentry hard into a reinforced pillar. Nothing complicated to it.

Kane moved past careful to avoid the warm corpse. He had little need for verbal communication or hand signs, they moved in unison through the conjured darkness expanding through the base. It was a threat that the Shongairi would have no response to. You could plan for power failures, you could plan for incoming mortars, or lone assholes with RPGs.

Magic though?

His linker core spun within, no magic wasn't something the Shongairi would have considered. He guideded the impermanence through hitting the electronic systems... it wasn't ideal. Belkan wasn't intended for this kind of veiled finesse. Zwei had suggested that another school would have provided a better basis.. but the truth was they couldn't be sure that the Ground Commander was going to be near enough to be close to the starlifter to grab and make it look like he'd gotten on the plane... spaceship...

... so the plan was simple they were going to wipe the whole base out when they went loud. He expected that the mlrs that would come down on the enemy staging position to wipe out any further evidence once they were gone... and the idea was that this would look like one more part of a very loud human offensive in the area of the great lakes.

But he wanted Terraik alive, and that meant coming in person... and that meant avoiding anything too flashy until they were in contact with the GB's general area, which was where Zwei was supposed to be guiding them to. He stole a glance to one of the massive glass panes overlooking the tarmac, and felt more than saw the hum of one of the starlifters starting its preflight checks. It wasn't going to get very far. It actually would have been better for them if the bird actually got off the ground before it started eating missiles. All the better that it blew up in the sky and rained back down... the shongairi's strategic lift platform were huge, enormous aircraft and made massive volumes of debris when they exploded.

The second sentry was dispatched similarly to the first, another took a simple neck crank, and his NCO was too busy screaming into a dead radio trying to figure out what was going on at a different checkpoint... a checkpoint currently under attack by stealth tanks to realize that Kane had advanced up to arms length... at least not before the tall man wrapped a large hand around one side of the alien's head and neck and smashed him hard against the chest height metal railing and then followed through tossing the alien head first into the interior fountain on the ground floor.

Kane idly wondered what the Shongairi would have done if they had invaded Medieval earth... or for that matter what were the Shongairi occupying jolly old england doing? Were they holed up in some Victorian era neo gothic castle? That was amusing to think, even if it was incongruous as the thought was given the current stream of rockets coming down on the airfield.

The Shongairi though were only focused outward, not inward. The GCVs were alighting towards the hills in the distance... into a pre mined roadside if they took the actual roads, and if not it didn't matter stealth tanks could hide.
--
He was pretty sure he'd blacked out for a minute when the truck sixty meters had exploded from a tank they hadn't been quick enough taking a shot at.

Breathing hurt.

He'd been too close to too many explosions in the last six months... no longer really. He would have considered any explosion that he could see too close, but it looked like his luck had run out. Torino wasn't even sluggish as his thoughts were coming, optimisitic about his condition.

'Longbow' was a fighter jock, not a ground pounder. A year ago he would have considered it ridiculous to be thinking about being dirt side fighting with an M4. How the fuck would that have happened? No one in the sandpit was going to shoot down an F 22, it was the best plane in the world. Thoughts turned to one of his mother's uncle's stories of remaining on station while Sandy came into a valley to downed pilot's aid.

There were no skyraiders anymore, and certainly not any coming.

Cold fingers reached for the rifle just beyond reach. Couldn't reach... not the receiver, he thumped helplessly flailing until his ringers managed to get around the cordura shoulder pad, and with a grunt pulled the weapon back to him. It took some effort to get his hand around the pistol grip and get back into the fight, shooting in the direction at least of the Shongairi.

From his loose sitting position, Torino wasn't surprised when he started hearing the sounds of foreign automatic weapons. AKM fire, what the news always just lumped AK 47. Some Canadian resistance had probably either been messaged and invited to the party or just decided to invite themselves. With the pain in his back, Torino wasn't concerned about it too much. The Shongairi were bunched up ... it looked like they had appropriated a deserted local mall and had moved a bunch of trunks into the parking lot, which had made it easy to corral them there.

Could the Shongairi break out? Sure.

They had known from the intelligence going into this to be wary of the puppies' armor, they had hit as many hovertanks as they could with M136, it had just been bad luck that one had gotten a shot off and hit their firing position.

He could still here his detachment's mortars coming in, and more importantly he could see them hitting the building they had identified as the Shongairi bivouac. Whether or not the Shongairi were still in their appropriated barracks? No way to know.

Even concussed he could still make out the loping figures of the invading aliens. They had clearly decided to stop playing defense, and switch to offense. He could count dozens of them bounding forward silhouetted against the burning vehicles and buildings ahead of them. Rushing past a couple of hteir ruined tanks with their block like bullpup rifles in the middle of the night.

Torino ejected the mag, and grunted as a fresh spike of pain worked through his lower back as he fished another pmag from his load bearing equipment. The Kalashnikov fire was getting closer. Canadians. Had to be Canadians. All of his people had been outfitted with M4s before they had set out.

His radio crackled... which was against SOP... they were supposed to avoid radio traffic wherever possible because the puppies did have them beat in terms of signals capability. Or at least they were working on that assumption. The voice was calling his name.

He couldn't answer. Too many silhouettes still forward. If he stopped shooting they'd keep coming. At least shooting at them made them use cover... but they were probably going to start shooting at him before long... but for the moment he was probably, Torino assured himself that, his fire was keeping their return fire from being accurate against the canucks.

The concusion was getting worse, he could could swear he could hear someone whistling a hunting we will go. One of the AKs was close now, really close. He heard the vernacular English clip... somewhere north ish... DC accent maybe, "Hey this ones alive."

A more southern voice acknowledged. A military cadence... not army, a marine... they were both firing AKs.

Torino finished reloading , his back screaming in pain again, and worse as the movement caused him to list to one side, far enough beyond the concealment of the wrecked vehicle to see a figure in a long back coat. At first he assumed it was Kane... maybe these guys backing him up were Black Mountaineers he knew Matherson had gotten AKs citing their shorter barrels at a time when theyd been mostly using M16s.

... and then something happened.

There was a flash that was painfully blinding and the Shongairi... disintegrated along with like the front half of the mall they'd been using. Then he blacked out as the flash from the lightning bolt faded.

Imperator Pax · Feb 3, 2023

Winterborn
Part 1

This was the hour of the wolf. Kane let the anti personnel charges do their work, sending razor sharp shrapnel to clear out the allocated command spaces. They simply didn't have time for proper SSE. Much as he might have liked that, they didn't have the personnel either. He and Ana needed to find Terraik and extract the enemy general... and then burn all of this to the ground to prevent the Shongairi from realizing the general wasn't dead... or at least not dead until after the invader had been interrogated.

There were certain insights you just couldn't get from a computer. People were people. The aliens looked at a set of data and drew completely different conclusions from it than he might have from the same data.

Though he was far enough away he couldn't hear it he hardly mistake the tongues of flame strafing into the night sky knocking down shongairi drones as they tried to get up. M134, Gau 17/A, Chain guns sending 7.62x51 tracers skyward at approximately 3500 rounds a minute. 7.62 ball was cheap, and so were the Gatling gun emplacements.

... and if they were firing it meant the Shongairi were taking the bait. He wanted the Shongairi to attack unmanned defense turrets. He wanted them to zero in and move in thinking they were doing something against the human resistance... when really the loss of those chain guns was irrelevant.

If they used a kinetic strike well all the more chance the puppies would pat themselves on the back and maybe not go after any real humans thinking they'd dealt with the problem. Besides he was just going to have them be disassemmbled when they left if they were still standing.

There was another thrum, and Kane smiled as the rear of a Shongairi star lifter started to rise and then the whole aircraft pushed and levelled out rising in vertical take off. It obscured his view through the otherwise clear night sky across the runway and road in the distance as it climbed several hundred feet in the air... that was as far as it got before missiles started to impact dorsal and ventral sides of the fore of the giant flying machine.

The Star lifters were not, had not been designed with taking enemy fire. He as sure the Shongairi could have built something with armor in the same mass package it would have been prohibitive to the movement of cargo, which was the lifter's primary role A lifter that the Shongairi could not feasibly replace.

The skin of the spacecraft ruptured and pealed from the front causing the from to wobble under the dozens of impacts now tearing into the aerodyne structure of the body. Zwei interrupted his view of the show with the unpleasant news that not everything was going as well elsewhere. Torino seemed to have gone incommunicado and they weren't sure what was going on.

Well, they would just need to expedite their work here. He shared a look with Ana, and extended the shroud of energy along a near imperceptible wave length... or at least the human eye. They knew the Shongairi had color vision so comparisons to dog people wasn't entirely accurate on that account, and frankly as skinny as they were he compared them more to coyotes but it was irrelevant so far as that they weren't color blind. They weren't sure how good Shongairi eyesight was but it didn't really matter he didn't care if they saw it what he was aiming for were their electronics.

Ana raised a hand conjured a mass of hellfire that took shape into a vaguely arrowhead formation and sheered through one of the structural supports for the expansive metal eaves that kept the rain off people entering or exiting the terminal building from that side, dropping almost a thousand pounds of painted aluminum siding onto another group of invaders who were probably about to go try and put the fires out or make a run for other planes... Kane called up the staging post the MCV they had brought with them had erected and started the call for artillery. The plan had been to make sure that little of this air base remained, they would have to start earlier than he expected.

The directive sent a message to begin positioning those pieces that had been brought with them. The thing that would hopefully cement erasure of any sign that they had been here as individuals.
--
Torino felt like his head was going to explode, which was only slightly more pressing than the fact his whole body felt like it was on fire. There were voices talking, but they were indistinct... the words didn't make sense so much as vaguely familiar sounds. Some of the people talking were Americans... maybe a brit... probably a Canadian. Older, Officer, Torino processed, probably higher ranked than his oak leaves.

Breathing wasn't that bad, it was easier than expected given his head was killing him, but that was probably the light... they must have fallen back while he'd been unconscious... they were they had to be underground now the light was so bright to be painful and the only place with that kind of electricity he'd been in in months was the underground structures built by those DARPA machines.

If this had been pre invasion Torino knew they would have had him strapped down. For his own safety to avoid further injury, but he assumed post invasion shortages were why he was unrestrained.

The northerner's accent was back. Urban... farther south than the Massachusetts militia he'd joined up with... probably a survivor from DC he assume. The black man was taller than Torino was, not by much, maybe five ten. He was skinny ish, distinguished by a thick scar that ran across his face. He had a commando style chest rig three and three magazine for the AKM on either side and a stainless 1911... not a government model. Torino wondered if he was squinting as he made out the wrap around grips and adjustable rear target sights. "Hey he up."

"How you feeling fly boy?" Another man asked, hispanic, and this one was wearing American Army desert camouflage.

"Give him space." The Englishman remarked sibilantly starting to make his way through the crowd like he was made out of smoke. "I do apologize Major Torino I believe you are the first celebrity we have met."

They were the absolute weirdest collection of Canadian Freedom Fighters Torino decided immediately, admittedly out of a sample size of one. "I don't suppose Kane sent you to pick us up?" He asked catching sight of some of the other members of his detachment.

There was a indeterminable noise from one of the men by the wall. "No,"

"What are we muscle for the league of extraordinary gentleman." One of the army specialists from the Massachusetts militia was asked with evident amusement from another man.

A marine sergeant stepped in behind the shorter Englishman. Who was about five nine or ten, but looked closer to Torino's height for the crayon eater being easily a head taller than both of them. The sharp features man with green eyes did sort of resemble Kane, they easily could have passed for any of those 19th century British poets Torino figured...

Not actually English, just with almost native grasp on English... which in hindsight if you had four hundred plus years of practice in a language it made sense. Though he preferred going by Mischa Baserab, this was Dracula.

Imperator Pax · Apr 1, 2023

Winterborn
Part 2

Emilio let out a breath, sucking in the frigid artic cold of the north as he pulled off his mask, but he felt alive. No wonder bears slept through the winter. He shook his head and then turned to look over the mass of thick bilious black ash clouds wafting over the Shongairi remains.

For the most part they were using good ole American Army M16s... some of the shorter M4s, but just to spice things up there was some kind of high tech flame thrower that allegedly used some kind of silver nitrate powered napalm like stuff that made the flamethrowers they carried capable of burning through steel, and boy howdy fast at that.

It sure gave the invaders a surprise. The dinky little bullet the armalites fired might not do much to a tank, but at close range Emilio had been able to bring his flamethrower in and burn through the back armor... the point that the hydrogen fuel had cooked off.

His black armor had been a little scorched but it had otherwise done its job and kept him in one piece. It was a prototype or something like that ... most likely because the boss didn't have some kind of special composite it wasn't as good as it 'should have' been, but fuck it was good enough... power armor like Master Chief would have been great, especially the energy shields but Emilio accepted that Halo was fiction and that Kane was still doing his best to equip people to fight the aliens.

He wondered what should have been would have been like... he knew that it was true that boss was playing a lot close to the chest... that he had something up his sleeve... a big grandiose sort of thing... and that was a lot of talk. Nukes were out. Nukes weren't going to cut it against the puppies... hell they'd known that for months even before the yankees had come down.

Now they were in Canada... or at least they were for the time being. Emilio through a look up at the sky and the lightening horizon, and confirmed the updated navigation packet re tasking his group to another navigation point... that was the problem with not having satellites or whatever, land navigation sucked.
--
Kane had to stop a lynching. It was part of the reason they had infiltrated without assistance to begin with... not that anyone in the assembly had had ever come up against the Shongairi Northern Force Commander... but he was still the enemy, and no one liked fighting smart enemies. There had been occasional sporadic reports of success with taking prisoners... but he wasn't clear on precisely how successful that was in the long term.

He doubted anyone had the resources to maintain POW camps, and thus holding shongairi prisoners was probably a very short term solution. That elicited complaints from people who still were concerned about the Geneva convention but Kane had no time for that... his priority was in actionable intelligence, and finding out as much about the Fleet Commander's grand strategy. He needed to know what precisely the Shongairi response to the developments in Eastern Europe were going to be, what they were going to do if this growing tide of lost Shongairi Forward Operating Bases would be if it continued into Russia, or westwards into Switzerland or indeed into Northern Italy... never mind if it reached into Germany, or south into Anatolia.

On the other hand... he also wasn't clear on what this mysterious force could sustain much further... this projection of theirs represented a manpower deployment made possible largely by the underground networks carved out by the montauk command vehicles burrowing, and construction capabilities.

"And we have no idea where Torino's strike group is?" He asked.

"They've completely disappeared from signals, if they're underground than, they're not responding to a line call."

Which didn't make sense. The Shongairi hadn't yet responded to the incursions with their usual degree of orbital strikes... give it a few hours that would probably change, but at the moment if they were aware of the incursion they were probably trying to work from the top down of their chain of command... which if Torino had done his job the Shongairi colonel equivalent should be a charred corpse.

The ideal outcome of course was to take out the Shongairi's canadian command with the impression that it was a general Canadian side revolt. That was cover for action, but also that hopefully the idea would take. That, among them this was the spark, and maybe the Canadians would actually break the shongairi hold over the center of their country, and that would cripple the puppies' ability to administer the northern midwest from over the great lakes... and of course the intention was that if this worked maybe in a few months they could do the same in the south west in the vicinity of northern Mexico.

Kane drummed his long fingers on the table, "We'll give him a few more hours and then see what the Shongairi are doing..." Then that would impact exactly what resources they could spend searching for the missing before they needed to pull back. He settled back, and decided to move along, without the complication of Torino's disappearance the truth was they would have disappeared into the 'underdark' as it was in the popular vernacular... well beyond Shongairi retaliation... and if the Shongairi didn't show evidence of having hit Torino's position... then that meant he could have found some other resistance group... and that went to the idea that they might be able to off load significant weapon stocks to the Candians if it meant opening a more active resistance.... but that was all theoretical.
--
Mischa Baserab gestured to the alien machine's interior, "I merely asked the machine to chart a flight path and to carry us from there."

He delivered the statement in a completely matter of fact tone. A simple statement, but even so the words seemed like a joke. Torino couldn't take the statement seriously.

that was ... insanity... That the Shongairi hadn't thought to not look at it. To not have safeguards on their machines... but then Torino realized if you knew how to fly an aircraft there weren't complex locks on them. The locks were on the hangars, on the gates. And the assumption that you'd follow procedure... that it wasn't a james bond movie where the dashing hero just absconds with the jet plane to make his escape.

Truthfully it made sense that the puppies wouldn't have considered grand theft starship to be a risk that they needed to take protections against... after all how would a human know how to fly one of their comparatively rare starlifters anyway... and the vampire had pointed out that Shongairi designed ergonomics were not exactly the most comfortable, especially for larger humans. Buchevsky looked like he was trying to sit in a kid sized chair trying to squeeze his gargantuan marine butt into shongairi sized seats.

The vampire's smile was infection though. Mischa Baserab strolled over the deck with a comfort and ease as if it was a sailing ship not an alien space craft. All the same the conversation turned to other matters, "Your implication was that Kane might have sent someone to pick you."

"I mean it wouldn't surprise me." The major found himself replying to the question reflexively.... and it was the truth. It certainly seemed like an operational contingency that might have been in place if... well things had gone bad... but it would have annoyed him not to be told that there was a back up plan like that before hand. Being realistic, the major admitted to himself if not to the others, that there might have been operational security details... if they'd been caught or something... but still... Torino would have been really annoyed to have been left out of the loop all the same.

"Regardless," The Vampire remarked, "I do think it would be best if introductions were arranged, so that we might better pool our collective resources against the invaders."
--
Notes: Alright I need sleep.

Against the Tide. [David Weber's Out of the Dark, Waifu Catalog Fanfic]

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