James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Feb 15, 2020 20:37:53 GMT
Flight 14
From RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, a pair of Typhoon multi-role fighters got airborne in haste. They were undertaking a QRA – Quick Reaction Alert – mission and were on standby to fly. Aircrews and ground personnel had sprung into action when the scramble message had come. The lift-off this morning was completed just a few seconds short of the yearly record for a QRA flight to get into the sky. Under orders to do so, the pilots from No. 3 Squadron went supersonic. Afterburners were lit as the Typhoons flashed across the late morning sky. There were sonic booms and a lot of confused people across the Midlands. The Command & Reporting Centre at RAF Scampton (also back in Lincolnshire) guided the Typhoons towards the contact in the sky which they had been sent up to intercept. It was a passenger jet, an Airbus on a trans-Atlantic journey, and there had been an ‘incident’ aboard not long after take-off from London’s Heathrow Airport. From the pilot of Flight 14, civilian air traffic controllers had been told of an underway cockpit intrusion. There had been an alert sent to their military counterparts before radio contact was lost. Flight 14 had then been observed on radar turning back around in a tight circle. It was soon heading back towards the British capital. The Airbus was met by those Typhoons when over Warwickshire.
The Prime Minister was informed. In recent years, QRA missions had been undertaken to intercept foreign military aircraft (always Russian) heading towards Britain and there had been passenger jets met with Typhoons too when radio contact had been lost. On a few occasions, the head of government had been told at the time but mostly this was done after the fact. Today was different though. He was in Downing Street and meeting with the Chief Whip when the news was broken that there was a possibly hi-jacked airliner coming towards London. In such a situation like this, the PM followed the advice of his civil servants. There were procedures to be adhered to. Exercises had been run for what to do in such a scenario. The script was thus stuck to. Discreetly, there was an interruption to proceedings in Parliament with PMQs – meant to happen in about an hour – delayed due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. A check was made on where senior members of the Monarchy were so, if necessary, they could be taken elsewhere. The RAF was putting another pair of fighters up from Coningsby and these headed towards London rather than to meet Flight 14 directly. A few other top-level government ministers joined with the PM below the Cabinet Office in one of the COBRA meeting rooms. Military staffers and civil servants outnumbered the politicians and it was they who were directing matters. From the nation’s senior-most military officer, the Chief of the Defence Staff, at eleven o’clock the PM and others were told that Flight 14 was now over Buckinghamshire. It was still on course for London, Central London in fact. Those Typhoons were alongside it and there still had been no response to radio messages. Visual examination hadn’t given anything of value: there were people in the cockpit but neither RAF pilot could be sure if those were on whether or not the aircrew were there. It was recommended that the Airbus be shot down.
In all the years since September 11th, when terrorists had used airliners as manned missiles in kamikaze attacks, no passenger jet had ever been shot down. There had been times when things had looked that they might have gone that way but those had been misunderstandings soon sorted out when radio contact with silent aircraft had been re-established and everything was confirmed to be okay. Shooting one down had been war-gammed though. A detailed passenger list was unavailable at this time but it was known that there would be a couple of hundred people aboard. This was an Airbus-340: a double-decked airliner full of holiday makers on their way to Florida. There would be men, women and children who would die. Every second that there was a delay brought Flight 14 closer to London where there would be thousands of deaths should it strike the capital. The PM, his deputy and the Home Secretary were the top politicians in the belowground room and the three of them agreed that there was nothing else that could be done: he quietly told his colleagues that he would resign after this. The Chief of the Defence Staff sent the orders out to those Typhoons. They were instructed to bring the airliner down and do so in a manner to avoid civilian casualties on the ground.
Those Typhoons were into the sky from Coningsby carrying a substantial war-load of missiles and cannon shells. The pilots had been trained in how to shoot down an airliner. They received orders to do so today. Neither man wanted to, aware of the human cost involved, but they had legitimate instructions on this: each was aware too of the consequences of what could happen if this clearly hi-jacked aircraft carried on towards London and was used to make an attack there. Missiles were shot at the engines after a final unanswered radio call. The guns were then used with many shells carefully put into the cockpit. There was some deviation from the flight path taken by Flight 14 at this late stage but by then it was too late. More shells were afterwards put into the tail section of the Airbus in an effort to make sure it went down where the RAF wanted it to. The Typhoons circled low in the sky when Flight 14 crashed nose first into the ground. Into the Chiltern Hills in rural Buckinghamshire the airliner went. There was a massive explosion on the ground where its jet fuel exploded. Casualties occurred down there with a trio of people killed… alongside the three hundred and forty-nine people aboard. This was going to change the world.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,817
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Post by James G on Feb 15, 2020 20:38:34 GMT
Hostage crisis at the Russian Embassy
The Embassy of the Russian Federation in the United Kingdom is located on a road known as Kensington Palace Gardens. This isn’t a private road though had many of the hallmarks of one due to security checkpoints by armed police officers at each end. Kensington Palace itself wasn’t on this half mile long road but there were embassies and ambassadorial residences here. A few houses were owned by billionaires who had security like the diplomatic compounds did. Specialist Met. Police officers were here to stop a terrorist attack with the primary concern being the Israeli Embassy midway down. Those at the northern end of Kensington Palace Gardens, at the junction with the busy Bayswater Road, were taken under fire by a team of armed men and women who emerged from a van which stopped in the midst of traffic and also came out of a boarded-up shopfront too. Civilians ran for cover yet some were caught in the exchange of gunfire. There were fourteen attackers with two of them being killed by the policemen. However, three of those officers lost their own lives with another pair gravely wounded. Towards the Russian Embassy compound the now dozen attackers went. They were taken under fire by Russian state security officers reacting to the gunfire and lockdown procedures were underway at the embassy itself. The terrorist assault team, these men and women from the Caucasus, lost some more of their number but carried onwards. They had the layout of the compound in their heads and had been informed of security procedures. Four more of their number were killed but the other eight would eventually get inside. They’d failed to get the ambassador – who’d been hurriedly evacuated – but there were dozens of hostages soon under their control like the embassy building was.
Firstly policemen and then soon enough soldiers from Britain’s SAS would surround the embassy in which there were those terrorists with their hostages. Part of Bayswater Road itself would be closed off leading to traffic problems across West London come rush hour later that day. Contact was attempted to be made with those inside the embassy. What were their demands? Would they release the hostages? How could this situation be resolved? This went on for some time and got nowhere before, finally, there was contact with a spokesman of them in the early hours. He gave his demands. He would only release hostages when those were met. Resolution to this all would only come from the actions of the Kremlin. The official reaction from the British Government was that this was a terrorist incident on UK soil and that they would deal with it. Russia claimed sovereignty over its embassy and wanted to send a ‘special anti-terrorist team’ to London to put an end to it all. This was refused by the British and there was also the detention of a suspected Russian undercover agent at Heathrow Airport who flew in on a flight from Moscow: he was put back on a plane to the Russian capital and watch was made for others like him attempting to slip into the country. The ambassador had a residence – a fine building – down the road from the embassy and proved himself to be quite the pain in seeking to control events in the absence of men from Moscow. It was suggested to him by Britain’s Foreign Secretary that he de-camp to the Defence Attaché’s Office up in Highgate (another sovereign compound) for the time being because of the security issue just up the road but he scoffed at that. The media, kept back from the embassy but roaming around elsewhere, were here in Kensington Palace Gardens and he gave many interviews where he decried the ‘lacklustre’ British response to the terrorists and spoke of the infringement of Russian sovereignty… blah blah.
The terrorists started shooting hostages. The Kremlin had refused to do as they demanded and the deadline for that to happen ran out. Those demands were unrealistic politically as well as logistically. It was never going to be the case that they would get their way… leading to the suspicion among senior British officials that they knew that and this wasn’t about that at all. British negotiators failed to get more time to play with and so the killings begun. An embassy staffer was shot outside the building and an hour later another one was pushed out the door to be gunned down in the open too. Thankfully there was no media coverage of this, but the British Government was unable to stop the Russian ambassador telling the world that these murders had happened without the UK being able to stop them. The terrorist’s spokesman had said that another hostage was going to be killed every hour: he had another thirty-three to go through (Britons as well as Russians) before he ran out of those to shoot. Without telling Moscow – fearful of the ambassador blabbing it all over television –, authorisation was given for an assault on the embassy to commence. The SAS raided it. They went in using a good plan to retake control. Things went awry though despite all the effort put in to make it go as desired. There was gunfire and explosions. People were killed and hurt. Still, in the end, the British special forces soldiers overwhelmed the terrorists. They killed six of them – two wounded prisoners were taken – while having one of their own number killed with others badly hurt. A further five hostages lost their lives when one of the terrorists blew himself up using an explosive suicide vest. Further soldiers and then policemen came into the embassy afterwards. Hostages were searched and questioned unless there was a terrorist hiding among them before they were finally released. In Moscow, there was no gratitude for the resolution of the hostage crisis but public criticism instead. Secretly, among those at the very top in the Kremlin, there was woe. Their plan had gone wrong.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,817
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Post by James G on Feb 15, 2020 21:00:13 GMT
Dupes March 2019
The Ministry of Security was located in the Neave Building on New Whitehall. It was a fortress-like structure, constructed during the rebuilding of the much of the very centre of London in the late Nineties by the British Government. The Neave Building wasn’t one which ordinary members of the public normally walked into. They could and they did, it was just that was unusual unless there was a specific reason to do so.
Melissa Brown had a specific reason to do so.
The pair of posted security guards at the front door gave her a quick but complete look over as she passed through the metal detectors and towards the help desk, one helpfully highlighted with a sign alerting visitors to its purpose. They each carried a slung semi-automatic rifle yet everything about her gave no indication of a security risk. She wasn’t carrying a weapon nor a bomb. She was carrying something far more dangerous, though something small and thus seemingly harmless.
At the help desk, Melissa was asked her business. Did she have an appointment with someone at the Ministry? Nope, she didn’t. She would like to see someone though, Melissa told the woman she spoke to, because she had a ‘matter of security’ to discuss. There had been far stranger things said to those at the help desk before. This was unusual but not wholly surprising: sometimes people came into the Ministry of Security for a wide variety of reasons which they considered important. Could – oh sorry, can I have your name please; Melissa Brown it is – you supply more details, Miss Brown? What is it all about? We need to know so we can have you see the right person. We’ll then be able to make an appointment for you to come back at another time. Melissa wanted to see someone today, now in fact. What she was here for concerned Paul Whittaker. The woman at the help desk made out that that name meant nothing to her. Did Miss Brown have something more than that?
Welcome to Whitehall Officialdom!
She wanted to see someone in Department D. It was a matter concerning a former employee of the Ministry of Security who had something to give to his past employers, something entrusted to Melissa to bring here on his behalf. Well… if only Miss Brown had said that, been as forthcoming as she was now, at first. Things would have then moved much faster. She could wait over there in the seating area to the left. Someone would be along shortly.
Forty minutes later, Melissa was approached by Harriet and Tom. She was surfing the ’net on her phone, sitting cross-legged in one of the plastic chairs with her back to them and focused on the screen in front of her. Trained to as they were, Harriet and Tom each formed a judgement of Melissa when meeting her. This came from the examination of recorded surveillance footage since her arrival in the Neave Building, her conversation with the woman at the help desk and the first words spoken with her as they introduced themselves (with forenames only) to her. She wasn’t considered to be someone very bright nor with a serious persona. They’d watched her and had her wait. The two of them worked for Department D and were habitually very good at evaluating and correctly reading someone. With Melissa they were wrong though.
Harriet spoke first, asking Melissa if she had any identification. A driver’s license or a passport, maybe? Melissa had the latter with her. She told Harriet that she had just returned from holiday. The passport wasn’t fake. It was real and Melissa was who she said she was. Tom asked Melissa to come with them. He pointed to a room off to the side, one with a glass frontage which looked out over the waiting area. Melissa got up and Harriet gave her a nod and a smile with the intention to display that it was alright to come with them. Everything would be okay. Melissa picked up her handbag, dropped her phone inside it and followed Tom while Harriet trailed just slightly behind keeping all eyes on the young woman who’d walked in here talking about Paul Whittaker.
The interview room – it had no sign saying what it was – was covered with hidden cameras. The door could be locked at the push of a button and the glass darkened with another similar action. If it became necessary, Melissa wouldn’t be able to leave the room of her own free will nor would anyone come to save her if it was decided that was to be the way it would be. Tom invited her to take a seat and pointed to one on the nearest side of an empty desk. He sat down opposite her on the other side. Harriet stood by the door, leaning back against the glass and facing Melissa from the side. The cameras could see and hear plenty but there were two experienced sets of eyes and ears in this room too.
What had Whittaker asked her to bring here?
Melissa reached down and put a hand in her bag. She tutted and there was a rumble in there. Both of the intelligence officers she was with watched every movement and studied her face too. She didn’t look like she was play-acting. Her frustration as she continued to search for what she had, as she brought the handbag up to her lap and shook her head, came across as real.
“Ah, gotcha.” There was triumph in her voice. “I thought I’d lost the stick.”
It was a flash drive. It was bright red, post box red, and shaped like a lipstick applicant. Melissa used her thumb to open the USB connection and placed it on the desk between her and Tom.
“He gave you this himself?” Tom asked. “And told you, Melissa, to bring it here to someone in Department D?”
“Paul said you would have questions.” There was a grin which came with this remark from Melissa, one which Tom read as a strange delight while one which Harriet understood as their ‘guest’ finding amusing but still expected.
“How is Paul?”
Melissa turned her head to look across at Harriet before responding. “Do you know Paul?”
“Yes. We used to work together.”
Turning back to Tom, Melissa began the story which she wasn’t asked to give. It didn’t seem rehearsed to neither him nor Harriet. It was very honest too, it was one which they believed. Melissa was telling them the truth. She spoke of her unplanned trip to Russia over the summer when she was travelling through Eastern Europe and how once there in Red Square, all alone away from any organised tour, she ran into someone else from the UK like her. Paul had chatted her up and romanced her. He’d then saved her life when someone tried to kill her, a mugger who’d she was certain had been ready to knife her because she wouldn’t hand over her phone to him. Paul had saved her though. She’d stayed with him afterwards, living for more than a month with him outside of Moscow. Paul had asked her to help him. Melissa had been concerned about what he had asked her to do but he had told her that she would be fine. Therefore, after arriving back in Britain yesterday, she’d come straight to the Ministry of Security today and done as he asked. He wanted her to hand over the flash drive: nothing more. Their holiday romance was over with but she was doing this for him. Paul had told her that the people he used to work for – spies like Harriet and Tom she said – would have questions yet he had urged her to tell them everything and be honest about it all.
Tom had a question at the end of the uninterrupted story given by Melissa: “Have you put the stick into your laptop and opened what is in there?”
Harriet had a question of her own, one asked just as Melissa went to reply to Tom’s, and one to throw her off balance and witness her reaction to see if she really was being honest or whether this was all a deception: “Melissa, was Paul any good in bed?”
That reaction was watched later on across several television screens. Harriet and Tom were joined by others who worked with them in examining how Melissa reacted to such a remark. She had physically left, gone to her home where there was a watch being set up upon her starting tonight there, but she had left behind quite an ongoing drama. Melissa had meant it when she had told Harriet to ‘fuck off’. There was a thumbs-up for Harriet from Tom for her timing with that question. The way she turned her head as well as positioned herself in her chair ready to jump out of it and go for Harriet was decided by those who watched the playback to be very real. Melissa had clearly felt something for the man she had been with in Russia, something more than just sex, but Harriet had brought it all down to just that. She’d made that sound cheap. Melissa had not been best pleased.
Department D officers watched Melissa’s earlier physical movements in comparison. When she’d spoken of her near-death experience, talking about the man who’d held a knife to her throat, she stared down at her nails when her hands were placed face down on the table. She’d kept those hands still and examined each polished and manicured nail, one after the other. Her whole body had tensed up and she’d clearly been uncomfortable. When speaking of Paul, that tension had disappeared from Melissa. Tom told his colleagues that she’d smiled and her eyes were bright. The others watched her sit up and Melissa casually, nonchalantly sweeping her hair from out of her face every time it fell there.
Harriet and Tom’s line manager, Mike, was with them as they and two others watched the footage again. He had assigned them to Melissa when she had come into the building saying what she did and also afterwards green-lit the priority surveillance tasking of Melissa after she had left here. Like Harriet, he knew Paul from back when he too worked for the Ministry of Security… before he committed treason and ran off to Russia.
“Paul used a young lass like this before.” There was hatred in him. Hatred for someone who he took as betraying not just their organisation and their country, but him personally too. “He had that about him. He could just work the girls he’d meet. He said he’d like to have been in the field, doing that for his country.”
Harriet shook her head and pulled a face at that. “He wanted to be James Bond.”
Tom had never met the missing traitor. He knew all that he had done though and how also he was hated here for that. The shadow of Paul’s treason wasn’t something that would go away for some time despite him leaving the Ministry almost three years ago now. That was because he’d legged it and carried on poking Britain in the eye from afar, from inside the home of the country’s most implacable enemy.
“He’s done a number on this girl.” Mike froze the image of Melissa on the screen, smiling and still in thrall when it came to Paul. “So, now that that is out of the way, let’s look again at what he has sent us, shall we?”
There had been a video on the flash drive along with some documents. The latter were not known to be among the stolen files that Paul had taken with him when he left. He’d put others onto the internet for the whole world to see. Those hadn’t been these though. They were top secret Ministry of Security files dating back to 1984. Neither Harriet nor Tom was aware of the subject matter they covered and had no idea whether they were true or fantasy. Mike had confirmed that they were authentic. He hadn’t needed to remind them of their responsibility to forget what they had read. The Official Secrets Act had been broken by Paul yet they weren’t about to join him in doing such a thing. Nonetheless, what they had read had opened their eyes to many things from the past.
None of the three of them had been here thirty-five years ago. Harriet wasn’t even born, Tom was still in nappies and even Mike – ‘old Mike’ he was sometimes called in jest – was a schoolboy then. They had all heard the unofficial rumours and read the official history though. 1984 had been quite the year for the Ministry of Security (then the previous several independent government agencies) and Britain too.
Then there was the video which Paul had recorded. He’d sent the Ministry of Security a message from Moscow where he hid behind the organs of the Russian state. Paul had fled after stealing and leaking files from his workplace and now he was threatening to release more. Those which he had sent using Melissa were just a taste of what he claimed he had. Paul boasted that he’d taken far more than his former colleagues thought he did. He laughed at them in thinking they knew all that he had done. Once again, he would post what he had on the internet for the world to see and cause Britain much international embarrassment. He said he had documents stretching all the way back to 1980 but also some very recent ones too.
However, he declared that he wouldn’t do this if something was done for him. What he asked for was certainly not a small thing.
After watching that video, Mike took Harriet and Tom with him to see their Department head. It was the two of them who had met with Melissa. They were asked for facts but also opinions from that meeting as well. Why use the girl, their superior asked, when Paul could have just emailed or posted his threat and demand? He could have made another one of his video broadcasts on the internet – he’d done so before, when the British state was hunting for him – alluding to all of this and warning he would release what he had in that manner. It was all very odd and no firm answers could be given.
It was known that Paul like to use and dupe young women though. He was thirty-eight and preferred woman ten to fifteen years younger, especially those who (to put it politely) weren’t very bright. Melissa fitted that bill, so too did the further two young women in the computer and archives departments at the Ministry whom he had made use of beforehand. As to Melissa, the Department head wanted to know all about her. Harriet filled him in. The girl was twenty-four and a PHD student, seemingly taking her time about that too. She was born in the East Midlands to respectable middle-class parents and had been schooled well. She lived now in Birmingham (Britain’s student hub) where she studied and did some part time work in the service sector from time to time. Her parents sent her money, plenty of that. They had paid for her trip through Eastern Europe though didn’t seem to have been aware at the time that she would go to Russia as part of that. Melissa’s politics weren’t that well known yet – the whole infodump on her was taking time; the Ministry of Security didn’t have all the powers detractors said it did – but she appealed to be the typical soft-liberal, semi-progressive of her age and background when it came to social views. She had no criminal record nor had before attracted the attention of the nation’s security service. Visa and flight confirmation of the dates she had given for her travels were confirmed. The personal viewpoint of the officers who had spoken to her, and the surveillance footage captured on camera, said that she and her story were real.
Surveillance on Melissa to see if Paul got in touch again – in person (telephone or email) or using someone else – began as she arrived back in Birmingham on the train. Security officers picked her up at the station and followed her home where physical and electronic surveillance was fast in-place. In the meantime, the minister himself was briefed that evening on what Britain’s most-wanted man had been up to now. That was because the self-declared whistle-blower and ‘a warrior for freedom’ (yes, Paul had an almighty ego) had made the demand that the newly-elected British Prime Minister herself, a Social Democrat elected in May 1984, stand up in the House of Commons and say what he wanted her to say. She wasn’t yet told: a decision on that was yet to come from the Minister for Security.
As to Melissa, a shallow and self-centred dupe according to those who had met her and formed that low opinion of her, she that night slipped those watching her and did a vanishing act from her home. It would appear that those at the Neave Building might have been the dupes, not her. Harriet and Tom, also Mike, had been taken in by her and her fine acting. With her disappearance, the shadow of 1984 and the Clockwork Orange events was going to come back to haunt Britain.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,817
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Post by James G on Feb 15, 2020 21:03:38 GMT
Cherry Pie – The Fall of the United States of America
Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford. Nelson Rockefeller. Jerry Brown. George Bush. These men were the last five presidents of the United States before the nation’s collapse two hundred and ten years after its founding. Only Nixon was alive to see the nation fall apart: the others were dead, by natural causes or most-certainly not.
What replaced the United States was civil war and then the Republic of Gilead.
Nixon had served as vice president through 1953 to ’61 and unsuccessfully ran for president in ’60. He returned in ’68 though, winning that year’s presidential election. Nixon was in the White House for five years and during that time he oversaw the end of the United States’ involvement in the divisive Vietnam War. Scandal erupted following his second term victory in ’72. Nixon covered up what was done in his name and the revelations of Watergate caused his downfall. Rather than be impeached, Nixon resigned in ’74. He was bitter and eager for vengeance. Such an opportunity would never come though.
Ford had been named as vice president to Nixon late the year before when the previous office holder had resigned in a scandal separate to Watergate. Nine months later, Ford took over from Nixon. He pardoned his predecessor in an act which quickly soured opinions of him nationwide. The aim of his presidency was to heel the country following Watergate yet Ford struggled to do this. There were claims throughout his short presidency that he lacked legitimacy too, having never been elected to either the office of the presidency nor the vice presidency neither. Ford tried to do his best regardless. In September 1975, thirteen months in, Ford was in California. A demented young woman, a follower of Charles Manson, shot him while in Sacramento. Ford was rushed away and then to hospital. The bullet wound in his chest became infected and Ford suffered a painful six days post-shooting before he finally passed away.
Rockefeller – Rocky – hadn’t been elected to the office of the vice presidency either; Ford had appointed him with Senate approval. Once Ford died, Rocky took the oath of office as president because it was his duty. At once, he found himself unpopular with the American people. He was out of touch with ordinary Americans, he was out of touch with the mood of the country. Rocky was an old school New England Republican past his prime. He soon favoured spending less time on any extra presidential duties than was necessary and there was no intention of him running for election in 1976. Leadership was what the country needed at a time when the economy was a mess and there were incidents of domestic terrorism aplenty but Rocky was unable to do attend to them effectively. His efforts to do so met extraordinary criticism and so he backed away. Increasingly, his new vice president, George Bush, dealt with many of those as he was running for the presidency in ’76. Rocky himself preferred the company of a plethora of young ladies who attended upon him at the White House in a series of dalliances which would have made JFK jealous.
Brown defeated Bush and took office in January 1977. The then sitting governor of California had won the presidential election campaigning for fixing the economy and using many environmental initiatives to do so. They were controversial. So was Brown too, in particular his lifestyle. He was a bachelor with a string of high-profile former girlfriends. He had no intention of getting married just for the sake of appearances. This had set him at odds with a mid-Seventies upswing of social conservative values that had come when Rocky was in office and something that Bush had been unable to tap into. Extremists had acted with violence to push back against the forces of progressivism which Brown was seem to espouse: moral decay they called it. Brown himself was accused by those on the other side as attempting to use proto-fascist measures to enact his economic and environmental measures. He was as fast as unpopular as Ford and Rocky had been before him. As to Rocky, the former president died of a heart attack a few months into Brown’s presidency when in the company of yet another young lady. That had nothing to do with Brown but he and the ‘culture of moral decay’ he was accused of presiding over nationwide was blamed. Bombings of abortion clinics, armed attacks on the growing porn industry and gun battles between an increasing number of far-right & then far-left groups with each other and federal authorities occurred. Brown led the legislative effort to crack down hard upon the increasing violence despite countless other disputes with Congress. This incurred the wrath of those against him and led to two failed assassination attempts on him. The economy wouldn’t recover against this backdrop of tit-for-tat political violence. Brown’s unpopularity reached new lows as he ran for re-election in ’80. He was challenged in the primary season by Ted Kennedy… before Kennedy was murdered (like his two brothers before him) by a religious nut opposed to Kennedy’s public position on a multitude of internal domestic issues. Brown went on to contest the election in November and subsequently lost to the man he had defeated four years before.
Bush’s success the second time around saw him win in 1980. He’d managed to tap into the social conservative bloc this time to get their votes though it fast became apparent that he didn’t intend to honour his campaign rhetoric. Foreign affairs came second to the economy; concerns over violence and massive polarisation on social matters nationwide were a distant third. He was regarded as betraying those whose votes he had won when it came to dodging promises in getting a grip on this. Unproved allegations were made that there was a sympathy, maybe even a conspiracy of support, among many in the lower rungs of the Bush Administration when it came to those committing violent acts on the religious right. Yet, at the same time, little was done to combat the extreme left either who took up the mantle of opposing them when the government seemed inactive. Bush’s foreign policy successes were important and won him much praise: it looked like he was ending the Cold War. Economic recovery didn’t come though there was a little improvement, improvement overblown by the White House. It didn’t stop the political violence and that was what the public was concerned about. It drove supporters and opponents of these acts further apart with Bush caught in the middle and unable to fully address it. The high-profile killings continued. Brown, running for the Senate with an open seat in California, was slain and the former president’s Secret Service bodyguards were unable to stop that. Well-known figures for women’s and gay rights, plus those fighting for full racial equality too, were murdered. In contrast, there were killings as well of several leading lights of the growing religious right movement (which had subsumed much of the social conservative movement) to add to these. Bush ran again in ’84 and won. It was far closer than in ’80. This time he abandoned trying to woo the religious right and fought for the middle ground. His weak opponent, Senator Garry Hart, found little support when there should have been so much. Bush won because it was said that there was ‘no one else to vote for’ in terms of whom was presidential material (Hart and his sex scandal had erupted during the late stages of the election) and he was able to point to hyped-up economic numbers. The turnout was miserable though. The American people were not behind a man who’d just won election.
The second term for Bush appeared to promise more of the same. He took office in January 1985 as a re-elected president yet extremely unpopular nationwide. Some of his early appointments in his administration were seen as very strange too because they were outsiders. This wasn’t the usual patronage which could be expected by a president. Newspapers fast dug into the backgrounds of many of them and started to see a connection appearing: there were connections to the religious right popping up everywhere. It appeared that Bush’s campaign had brought off active opposition in the election by promises of participation in shaping the domestic policy of the president’s second term. Could this be true? Put off-the-record to the president’s top aides by journalists working the story before it was ready to be published, this was denied furiously. A trio of those journalists were murdered within days, their killings on Valentine’s Day investigated by the FBI as being the work of a previously unknown group from the religious right named ‘Sons of Jacob’. The investigation was forestalled over the following weekend by internal disputes within the FBI including the new deputy director of that organisation putting a halt on it. Unknown to those who didn’t need to know, he was one of the Sons of Jacobs’ – an extremely secretive, fundamentalist group who kept a low profile and had followers in many positions of influence – coordinating council. Bush had appointed him on the advice of his own chief-of-staff, yet another one of these Sons of Jacob (this man a stooge, not a leading member) who had a very different take on Biblical teachings than anyone else. The coming Monday was President’s Day, a federal nationwide holiday. That would be Bush’s last day as president.
February 18th 1985 saw Operation Cherry Pie commence. Cherry pie was often eaten as a symbolic food of that holiday and the organisers of the coup d’état chose that name in an ironic gesture. It was a rare example of humour shown by the Sons of Jacob and not something to be repeated. They had been planning what they did for a while though had a timetable for August, not February. Things changed though when the Washington Post was on that story and killing journalists wouldn’t stop it breaking eventually. They had yet to have the influence that they planned to and had to move forward with their murderous campaign with haste. They had killed before – Jerry Brown being their biggest target, an act of pure revenge rather than any ideological move – and had used proxies and stooges to do their dirty work. Their ideology came from the Bible, an interpretation of it taken to extremes. Nationwide, they had no real public support even among those who believed what they did (not too many) because they stayed in the shadows. The Sons of Jacobs were men who didn’t want the limelight nor openly tried to woo voters. They had disdain for the secular democratic system and saw the United States as a sinful nation ran in a corrupt manner and crying out for the voice of God. Bush, like so many others, were what was wrong with the country and no democratic means could change the rot of decay that had come in the previous decades. They had a plan to change all that. That plan began when senior military officers who shared their line of thinking – again stooges though, not insiders no matter what they might think – launched Cherry Pie.
Bush was holding a press conference in the White House. The Sons of Jacob had a non-military proxy get a bomb in there. It went off just after midday, killing dozens there including many (hated) journalists too. The forty-first and last president was among the dead.
Green Berets struck at Congress seconds later, in session despite the holiday as there were confirmation hearings taking place for new appointees in second-ranking government departments. These special forces men were sent there under orders to kill members of both Houses… and everyone else inside. The men chosen were the right men, from a team of selected members of the Green Berets put together to ‘defend the nation’ against a coup. They were used to launch a coup instead, manipulated into doing so. Hundreds of elected officials were machine gunned and then grenades were used on survivors before Capitol Hill went up in flames. The House Speaker and Senate president were among the dead.
The vice president was on an official trip to Florida. Air Force Two was shot down by a lone fighter jet and crashed into the ocean. Eight of the nine justices of the Supreme Court were killed by another team of gunmen; the ninth was on the run for several days before being slain too. The secretaries of state, treasury and defence were each murdered as well: Al Haig, Bush’s Secretary of Defence, was shot in the back of the head inside the Pentagon without any understanding of what was going on. The Chief of Staff of the US Army took over at the Pentagon when the rest of the Joint Chiefs were killed under his orders. This member of the Sons of Jacob then issued further orders for troops to start moving into Washington. There was a coup underway and it must be stopped! Those soldiers had no idea that they were undertaking that coup.
The elimination of the top level of the US Government was complete. Cherry Pie had worked. Military forces moved into secure Washington. A state of emergency was declared nationwide in response to what was said to have been attempt by ‘foreign operatives’ to topple the nation. No new president was named, the general who ordered the Pentagon killings spoke to the American people from there. He asked the people to pray for their fellow Americans. Have faith, he said, while the chaos is sorted out and God will watch over you. Justice will be swift for those who have done all of this too… it would be for him because the Sons of Jacob would purge him within weeks.
They stepped forward in that chaos. Members were appointed to government positions, without any Congressional nor presidential approval, from the Pentagon. They had the FBI subsumed and the military too. The nation’s nuclear forces were under control at once while military forces were told that lie about an attempted coup before forestalled by military action. The arrests began as those behind that coup were ‘exposed’. Surviving government officials were detained by the military, so too soon enough members of the press. Few arrests were announced and none of the quick extrajudicial killings were either. Across the nation, voices of opposition were silenced and blame pointed everywhere but where it belonged. The Sons of Jacob, still wary of public attention on them personally, controlled this but didn’t show their faces to the American people. They were busy dismantling the organs of state and they built a new one, all over the bodies of the increasing numbers of those killed.
The Republic of Gilead arose from out of the ashes – corpses even – of the deposed United States of America. Resistance began soon but the Sons of Jacob had the upper hand and weren’t about to give up what they had so forcefully taken. There would be a civil war though: those Americans who could resist, who saw through the lies, did so. Gilead would be opposed.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Feb 15, 2020 21:06:38 GMT
Succession crisis among the Ore Mountains Vampires
There has been a colony of Vampires in the Ore Mountains since the early Seventeenth Century. They arrived after a journey from Scandinavia where their leader, Erc, broke with the rulers in the cold north and led a party of followers southwards. During that trip, a wave of terror was unleashed through Middle Ages Europe. They fed and took converts with them before Erc discovered a new home. The Ore Mountains were nothing special in terms of geography but perfectly located inside the heart of Europe. Mankind lived on the slopes and had little interest in the highest peaks. The Vampires made their home here and have remained for the past four hundred years. Erc retains his leadership position and is worshiped by his followers. He is credited with providing food, shelter and safety. None of the other colonies throughout Europe have any dealings with those in the Ore Mountains. This is just the way that Erc wants it. Others may adapt and change to the modern world, but those here retain their old ways.
The Vampires aren’t what human popular culture imagines mythical vampiric creatures to be. Yes, they do drink blood and live extraordinary long lives but they have no connection to bats nor will sunlight kill them. Silver bullets, holy crosses, stakes through the heart, sleeping in coffins … that is all nonsense. Vampires can be killed despite their super-human ability to rapidly heal from injuries. They can fly too. Sight, hearing and smell capabilities are immense. Blood is drunk from human and animal meals but internal organs are also a treat that can be consumed alongside blood. Human female virgins aren’t sought out nor do the Vampires behave in the fashion found in Gothic fiction. They have humans with them, one which they do not kill for food. Erc personally converts followers and the ‘luckiest’ of them are bitten in a particular manner to become a Vampire. The majority die out though after their lives have been lived within the colony.
Life in the colony for the Vampires and their human worshippers is, to put it plainly, uneventful. They live underground with few ventures outside. The Vampires sleep a lot, which retains their strength. Human activity goes on around them. Water is supplied for the humans via underground springs; no Vampire needs to drink water. Food is brought in from the outside too. When in Scandinavia, humans within the colony had been tricked into being there and were killed when the Vampires were hungry. Erc would have none of that in his colony. He sends his followers out to gather food for themselves and the humans which live with the Vampires. Animals and humans both are taken though an increasing low number of the latter as the years have gone by. Keeping a peaceful colony is its leader’s wish and so humans brought back for food are dead beforehand. Blood from bodies can be consumed when the corpse has deceased. Human themselves cross the Ore Mountains but it is rare for any of them to be bothered. Erc believes that staying hidden where they are would only be threatened by such a thing.
Like all Vampires, Erc was immune to all known human diseases. He drank blood and sometimes ate a heart from human kills like animals too. However, the colony’s leader was suddenly taken ill and this came after he had feasted for the first time in almost a year. Quickly, he slipped into unconsciousness and couldn’t be revived. His followers were thrown into a panic. They got rid of the rest of the food brought in by the latest hunt, fearful that they too would fall victim to whatever their leader was suffering with. Erc’s condition got worse. He then breathed his last breath before, after a life of more than six hundred years, finally dying. The expectation was that he would have lived for another three hundred at least. There had never been consideration made of a successor due to his expected much longer life. In addition, Erc had left Scandinavia in the wake of a succession crisis there where he was supposed to be the frontrunner to replace a leader there before being shoved aside: he’d been left wary of naming a successor because of this past experience where things could go wrong and put off such a decision.
The Vampires were unable to choose a new leader. Three separate contenders emerged. There was an old timer, Tyin, who’d come from Scandinavia in the 1600s but his support was limited to only some of those who’d made that journey long ago. The two others were Hans and Niels. These men were two hundred plus and one hundred & fifty or so years old respectively. Each Vampire was one of those human converts, worshippers of Erc who’d worked in the colony and been bitten by him to turn them from a human into one of his own kind. They were able to curry the support of those like themselves yet also many of the old guard too who had concerns over the modern world and were willing to listen to the ideas of Hans & Niels. Verbal disputes led to violence. The humans within the colony were used as pawns within the conflict underground and suffered gravely. Few Vampires lost their lives in comparison: conflicts were won by shameful physical defeats. Yet, Tyin was killed. This was a remarkable act of strength by Hans. Alas, in his victory, he was hurt bad. Recovery was possible but Niels chose to strike then. Finally, the succession crisis was settled with Hans’ death alongside that of Tyin. Niels was now the leader of the colony. He bit several surviving humans to transform them into Vampires and assured their loyalty. The crisis was over. Everything was meant to carry on as before. That it wouldn’t though, not after all of this internal bloodletting and Niels’ new ideas for the future.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:30:55 GMT
First contact between the Royal Marines and the Cat-fish which could fly
A solar system far away, a long time in the future
Humanity travelled through the stars. There were worlds to be explored, mined and colonised. Independently or in alliances, nation states on Earth have staked their claims out in the previously unknown. Through none of their travels has Mankind encountered life… until now.
From the Royal Space Force’s combat vessel HMV Queen Elizabeth III, a British behemoth full of weaponry, two small assault landing vessels were sent to conduct an on-site investigation of an unidentified ghost vessel within Solar System Albion. This was internationally recognised British territory and there was a right to challenge vessels which refused to respond to requests asking of nationality and purpose. There were Royal Marines within those assault craft. Piracy had been rampant recently – not just the British having this issue but Russia and the combined Europeans too – and hostile reactions often came. The probe first sent out from the Queen Elizabeth III had gone silent and vanished as if destroyed by an unseen weapon. That was an unfriendly act, a violation of the laws of space too. As to the vessel which the detachment of Royal Marines went towards, its shape and composition was something unrecognisable. It was thought that it was a hijacked vessel modified by pirates to disguise what it once had been. The Royal Marines inbound believed that they were about to give those pirates a tough lesson about what Britain did to hi-jackers.
No hostile response was made when the assault craft converged from ahead and behind of the drifting vessel. Quickly and efficiently, the Royal Marines were aboard. They made a forced entry and took control. At once, it became clear that this was a Russian freighter that had indeed been modified in physical terms and with its electronic systems. The vessel was empty of life yet blood and gore was present. There were no living pirates for the Royal Marines to fight. Whatever weapon had been used to silence the probe sent, fired by whom, wasn’t discovered. Intelligence specialists with the Royal Marines went to work. Smaller probes – autonomous drones with brains – were unleashed inside the vessel checking ahead of the Royal Marines. An ambush was feared but it was one that these Britons sought to discover first and overcome. Two-thirds of the Royal Marines hadn’t been born in Britain. They were space babies with a large percentage of them never having stepped foot on Earth either. They served their King out here in space though. For them, this was almost usual. If it wasn’t countering pirates, then their missions would be assaults upon rebels in colonies where law-and-order had broken down. Britain wasn’t much of an imperial power compared to others yet there were often conflicts on the worlds out here to be fought with the Royal Marines going into battle to maintain the international system of stability. They thought they could handle anything on this vessel.
They were wrong.
The probes aboard went silent. The Royal Marines’ own external communications back with the Queen Elizabeth III went down. Then, a noise was heard among the Royal Marines. It wasn’t human, it wasn’t mechanical nor electrical. It was something else. The sound wasn’t just coming through their ears: the men and women in uniform here could feel it in a mental sense. There was something very strange and frightening happening. The Royal Marines prepared themselves for a fight while slowly falling back towards their entrance points. This was a retreat, a withdrawal, a tactical retrograde movement: whatever it was deemed in military terms, they were backing off. The physical noise and the unnerving sensation which came with it forced them towards where they came. It was less intense there. However, they weren’t about to run away. The detachment commander concentrated his force into two groups. His Royal Marines were no exposed when longer spread out. He believed something was coming at them and firepower was needed.
One of the Royal Marines, a young woman, one of those space babies (conceived in space, never stepped foot on Earth etc.) saw It first. She called It a Cat-fish, one that could fly. That was what It looked like to her. Towards her It came, with fang-like sort-of teeth and a menace in the three sort-of eyes It had. Her fellow Royal Marines saw It too. Their officer shouted an order to open fire and no one hesitated. Shooting It was clearly the best idea as It came across as hostile in every way when tearing through a passageway towards them: It was hunting for food by the look of It. The weaponry that the Royal Marines had stopped It. Yet, there was no death for It. It vanished, like It had never been there.
When back in the assault craft, the communications with the Queen Elizabeth III began working again. Signals broadcast from inside the ghost vessel were still not functioning but they were now from out of those assault craft that the Royal Marines went into. The commander knew that if he was an American or Russian, he’d be in trouble for backing out like this. The US Marines and Russian Space Infantry had reputations that the Royal Marines didn’t have… yet those came on the backs of a lot of dead marines. The Royal Marines did things differently and thus lived to tell the tale. They weapons had stopped It but not killed It. That Cat-fish which could fly, which could well have eaten those aboard it seemed, was yielding an unknown force cutting communications and downing probes back there.
The retreat notwithstanding, the assault craft stayed attached to the ghost vessel. These Royal Marines which had just met hostile alien life were soon to be joined by more of their number bringing the ‘big guns’. This encounter wasn’t over. Humanity had shot first but wanted to find out just what they had been engaging.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:32:14 GMT
Curbstomp War: Iran–vs.–America
The military forces of Iran and the United States clash in the Persian Gulf. Each side takes casualties in a shooting incident. Each side blame the other for attacking them first, denying the other’s claims of aggression. Each side shows no sign of backing down from this. War fears engulf the region but also the wider world too. The possibility of full-blown conflict brings forth proclamations of the beginning of a bigger, global conflict: World War Three is spoken of. Iranian military capabilities in such a war are spoken of – by those who should have known better but have a willing audience – as being capable of challenging the world’s one true hyperpower. Perhaps Iran buys into that foolishness itself yet so do many politicians in the West as well. In the Pentagon, they have no such doubts about the zero chance Iran has to oppose what is coming. The American president, in the midst of scandal and possible impeachment, feels she needs a foreign war to starve off seeing her presidency being brought down domestically. A foreign war would do her good, she reasons, as long as it is one won in the right way. An excuse is found when Iran makes threatening gestures. This is made use of to make war on Iran, one which is sold as justifiable and legitimate.
That war is over with in less than forty-eight hours.
Iran gets curbstomped. It is mightily unfair. Yet when war is fair, then it really isn’t war.
Opening the attack with everything at its disposal, the United States launches a shock & awe strike on Iran. Bombs and missiles crash into Iran as well as Iranian forces deployed in neighbouring Iraq. Iran can do nothing to stop this. Its air defences are neutralised by Project Fairy Tales, a secret Pentagon doctrine long in the works. Into Iran’s air defence network, a ‘false sky’ picture is fed. Israel did this to Syria in 2007 but the Americans, as is their way, do this on a bigger scale. The air defence network is penetrated at ground level with a technician plugging a flash drive into a USB port. This takes place in an anonymous facility without any drama. The Iranian national involved knows what he is doing and escapes from the incident undetected. Iran’s air defence radars start to see all sorts of strange things when the Americans attack. They are all linked together with multiple redundant links to keep them working. They are fed lies, a fairy tale. There are empty skies, there are impossibly full skies. Their radar screens show obvious lies as well as subtle ones. Different operators at varied locations see images that aren’t the same as what others see. Hostiles are reported as friendlies and vice versa. The interlinked radar system has been fatally compromised. It is rebooted and when restarted, for a few minutes looks like it might work properly… before it all goes crazy again. The Iranians turn it off.
Individual Iranian military assets have their own radars. There were local air defence units with SAMs. Fighters climbing into the sky have their radars not compromised by the fairy tale directly. However, the damage is already done. When they meet the initial attack, before the false sky façade is revealed, the Iranians have exposed many of their SAM systems and sent their fighters into the direction that the Americans want to see them go. Now, the ambush is sprung. AWACS aircraft direct stealth interceptors towards airborne targets: F-22s wrack up immense kill rates. Iran has filled the sky with fighters and down towards the ground they now crash. SAM sites are targeted by inbound missiles fired from F-15Es and F-35. Some operators switch off their active systems in fear of attack but the missiles coming at them dive to the last reported position and strike home. Project Fairy Tales is a stunning success. Iran does have air defences left after this but they are few and far between without any trust in their systems remaining.
The Americans bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Buried and supposedly hidden, there is nothing that Iran can do to stop their destruction. B-2 bombers appear overhead and drop earth-penetrating munitions. These smash through the defences and blow apart what is inside. Two separate strikes are used on each target: no chance is taken on any surviving. Tehran is left without power and telecommunications. Bombs aren’t used to see Iran’s capital in darkness and without any internet connection. Instead, it is aluminium foil released from well-targeted canister dispersers. The work which would take to restore this would be longer and more difficult than if conventional explosives had been used. Drones criss-cross Iranian skies. These are attack models carrying deployable weapons. They start killing people. High-profile Iranian military and political figures lose their lives. It is a massacre and will leave a ‘brain drain’ afterwards. Iran’s ballistic missile force take hard kills. Clever the Iranians have long been with manufacturing and also making these systems mobile. Looking down onto Iran are many satellites though and there are stand-off reconnaissance aircraft monitoring the mobile missile force too. Furthermore, people on the ground have their eyes open too. Iran manages to get a couple of missiles off the ground and flying southwards but a whole load of others are destroyed before they can fly. Bombs and missiles from American aircraft in Iranian skies yet also firing from some distance away do much of this work. So too do a pair of submarines in the Indian Ocean. Several years past, a quartet of former strategic missile boats, those with Trident SLBMs, had been converted to carry more than one hundred and fifty cruise missiles each. The submarines in position unleash an immense barrage of almost all of their missiles at once to target Iran’s own missile force. The US Navy doesn’t want to be left out of what the US Air Force is doing to Iran.
Iran has no ballistic missile force left after this.
Iran’s military forces have been forward deployed into the Persian Gulf and Iraq with orders to lash out once the shooting starts. They are supposed to make the war costly for the United States and force the Americans to back off once world opinion comes into play. In launching this war, America’s president showed how much of a fig she gives for world opinion. Those forward forces come under attack. Ships and submarines are sunk at sea or in port. Airbases and coastal missile sites which threaten the Gulf were blasted to ruin. Over in Iraq, without the permission of the Iraqis to operate inside their country, the Americans attack Iranian troops and missile units there. There is a brigade of tanks & armoured vehicles on the move at the time of the opening attack. From above, F-16s and then F-18s come in on the attack dropping anti-armour cluster munitions. Each explosive bomblet is individually guided by its own millimetre-wave radar and crashes through the top of all of that armour. Those in the way of this don’t stand a chance. That brigade is now in ruin. Likewise, where tactical missile units are found, they are attacked with drones. A few get off some shots, attacking neighbouring countries in the American camp – ones which didn’t want this war either – but the effect is near negligible. The United States has missile defences which the Iranians could only dream of acquiring themselves.
The first night of the war dooms Iran. They will face attacks after this though the Americans have completed their shock & awe and what comes next is less intense. Bombs and missiles still hit Iran but it wasn’t almost everything thrown in at once now. The United States attacks signs of life from Iranian military units. The country is swamped with surveillance looking for aircraft preparing to take off from airbases, missiles moving into launch positions and armoured units leaving garrisons. When spotted, the attacks come in hard. The assassinations continue too. Those stepping up to fill dead men’s shoes are taken down. The Americans are listening to the Iranians trying to organise themselves and use that against them. The attacks move to Iran’s military industry. It is a thriving concern. Iran manufactures a lot of military gear which it doesn’t buy from aboard. Using brute force hacking where necessary, yet at the same time given ways in through openings exposed through many years of espionage, Iran’s own communications are used against them here. Pretend warnings from the state are given to factories to evacuate ahead of an attack. Workers flow out and in come bombs. There were civilian casualties in spite of attempts like this to stop that but this is considered collateral damage. What it brings with it is panic, uncontrollable panic that the Iranians can’t control. Their people are in quite the state of alarm. This serves American interests. Iran’s security forces attack civilians, bringing waves of internal outrage as well as supplying the United States with images that it can use for its propaganda war. That is one being waged at home. The American president had told the Pentagon to do all it must to take out Iran as a threat short of an invasion. That outcome isn’t desired but all the long-standing war plans apart from them have been put into play when it comes to attacking Iran. At home, the American people see a hostile nation, who has attacked them, getting the full treatment of all that their own country’s armed forces can muster while simultaneously being ravaged by internal conflict.
Iran’s leader addresses his people in a broadcast from the city of Qom. Qom hasn’t been attacked like Tehran. He feels safe there, believing that the Americans just wouldn’t dare strike in Qom due to the religious status of it. He makes his last mistake here. Midway through his broadcast threats of an eternal holy war where vengeance against America will be tenfold etc., Qom is bombed with targeted strikes from unmolested aircraft. He is killed in this attack, assassinated in quite the dramatic fashion for all the world to see. From certain quarters of the world, there is outrage at this. They celebrate back in America. A man who was their enemy, who declared war on them, is killed by American military might. Iran’s remaining capable military forces take a final battering from above in the follow-up to this killing. Explosions are nationwide. There is nowhere for them to hide. The regular military as well as the Revolutionary Guard are being hit in a relentless fashion. Nothing Iran does can stop this. There are some surviving politicians who decide that now is the time to act. The madman who led them is dead and their enemy is someone who is showing she has no limits to the war she is waging. False intelligence has come that the United States will soon be invading. All that talk from foreign commenters and from out of the mouths of (now dead) Iranian political & military figures about Iran being able to stop this, or make it impossible for the casualty-averse United States to do, now looks utterly foolish. Iran can’t defend itself and the country is open to an invasion. A meeting takes place, one in a bunker among frightened men who fear a bomb coming down through the concrete above their heads. They give in. Iran requests a ceasefire.
The Curbstomp War is over.
Iran has been faked out in so many ways, tricked in how they attempted to fight and then into believing there would be American boots on the ground. The United States emerges victorious. Other foreign enemies are going to have many sleepless nights after witnessing this. No one else is going to raise their head above the parapet in the face of the world’s lone hyperpower prepared to do this to Iran and seemingly anyone else who wants to dare to challenge them.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:34:40 GMT
Fraternal assistance: WarPac in Afghanistan
The request for fraternal assistance was made in late 1983. By the following summer, as per the wishes of the Soviet Union, troops from their Warsaw Pact allies begun arriving in Afghanistan to join the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces. There was no real military need for those from Eastern Europe who arrived to be in Afghanistan. The Soviets had the manpower, the equipment and the capabilities to do what they asked their allies for. This was all about politics. Warsaw Pact countries would do their Internationalist Duty too, hopefully muting some of the criticism towards what was undesirably called the ‘Soviet-Afghan War’. For those men sent to Afghanistan from WarPac countries, their experiences of the war were unwelcome and unpleasant.
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland deployed forces to Afghanistan. The Soviet’s WarPac allies of Hungary and Romania did not. Mongolia, neither a WarPac member nor an Eastern European nation, at one point was preparing to send a detachment too but that decision was reversed – at Moscow’s direction – just ahead of the transfer of men.
Among the Bulgarian contingent were their Spetsnaz. Parachute-rolled special forces in Bulgarian service had a history going back to the Twenties with the 68th Parachute–Reconnaissance Regiment being formed in ’75. They were a fine unit, as good as Soviet Spetsnaz. Half of the regiment was sent to Afghanistan. They fought independent operations as well as ones alongside the Soviets and Afghan Government forces too. Given plentiful freedom to operate, these Bulgarians won platitudes and respect for their service. That was among their allies. To those on the receiving end of what they could do, there was only hatred. Afghan rebels and innocent civilians alike who had encounters with the Bulgarian Spetsnaz didn’t fare well. Bulgarian motor rifle troops – a battalion here, a battalion there – also saw service in the country and they suffered losses in physical terms as well as collapses in morale. Desertion rates were high… in a land where it wasn’t a good idea to run away. Unlike the special forces soldiers, it was all together an inglorious fight that the majority of Bulgarians had here.
The Czechoslovaks sent troops and aircraft to Afghanistan. Within the air contingent was a regiment of Sukhoi-25 attack-fighters. These Frogfoots joined with Soviet Su-25s. The mission was forward air support and the well-protected jets were involved in the thick of the fighting. Only a couple of aircraft were lost during the war due to enemy action when in flying – rebels launching missiles at them – yet a good few others were destroyed on the ground when their base was assaulted during the second year of the Czechoslovak Frogfoots being in-country. On one occasion, in early ’87, a pilot tried to defect and fly his jet to Pakistan. He was shot down by a Soviet MiG-23 in what Western intelligence experts would call a red-on-red engagement. Czechoslovak soldiers (less than a regiment, split up among Soviet forces) fought and died on the ground, mainly operating in the western portions of Afghanistan. More than a hundred of them wouldn’t return home alive.
The East German Army, the Nationale Volksarmee, made the biggest ground contribution from WarPac countries to Afghanistan. They formed and deployed a brand-new regiment, the 20th Motor Rifle, as part of their fraternal assistance. This was almost brigade-size and a complete combined arms unit capable of independent actions. However, the Soviets kept it under their overall control with the 20th Regiment moving from service within one of their divisions to another through the years in-country. Tanks, armoured personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery and even helicopters were operated by these East Germans far from home. Deployed in the early years through the north before moving to Afghanistan’s capital to be seen on the streets of Kabul, they faced less intensive fighting that they might well have should they had been elsewhere. Still, losses were taken with deaths and injuries recorded. There were many political officers from the PHV with the 20th Regiment while overt and covert Stasi operatives were also there. The scale of this presence was out of proportion to those of other WarPac contingents. Desertion rates were exceptionally low. Much effort was made to control what stories East German soldiers would tell when they got home at the end of their individual deployments too.
Polish forces sent to Afghanistan were small, far fewer than they could have sent. This was all about politics. The Soviets didn’t trust the Poles following events in the early Eighties. There was domestic trouble at home for the Poles too when it came to sending men off to fight in Afghanistan. Deployed were only single battalions of infantry – one at a time for just a year – whose soldiers were specifically chosen for their political reliability. There were also aviation detachments of squadron-size including Mil-24 Hind attack helicopters. The Hinds performed well. The Poles certainly knew how to fly them to the best of their capabilities. Some concerns were expressed about the non-conformist attitudes of the flight crews when in the air and when this was ‘corrected’ to meet politically defined ‘norms’, the success rate of the Hinds dipped spectacularly. Before, the Polish-crewed Hinds were reportedly feared by Afghan rebels yet afterwards they weren’t. In a military sense, this was an own goal of quite the proportion but it must be remembered that bringing WarPac forces to Afghanistan was never about military goals: it was all politics. Polish attack helicopters killing less rebels than before didn’t matter overall in the geo-politics of the war in Afghanistan.
In mid-’88, when the first Soviet withdraws began from Afghanistan, those forces of their allies began pulling out. The Poles then the Czechoslovaks left that year. Early the next year, the East Germans left and then, finally, only days before the Soviet’s General Gromov was officially the last man out, the Bulgarian Spetsnaz also departed too.
The fraternal assistance from Eastern European countries ended. Almost five hundred lives had been lost.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:35:30 GMT
Kings and Queens over the water
Self-declared exiles from Britain have established themselves in the United States. They say that their lives are at risk should they return home to the UK. According to them, and the governments of many other countries, Britain is a fascist dictatorship where political murders are commonplace. The official position of the United States is that this is not the case: Britain remains a democratic nation and a firm ally of America. There is some complication with that though. Requests for extradition with regard to many of these exiles who are accused of crimes (non-political ones such as murder, theft, fraud etc.) back in the UK have been refused. The exiles are free to say what they will to the media, organise themselves and lobby the US Government on behalf of their cause. The White House is at odds with Congress on the matter. Coming elections this November may change that but whether it will be for the better or worse for the exiles is not yet known.
There are British intelligence operatives active in the United States who have been tasked to operate against the exiles. Should they be caught, those involved would be in legal hot water and public exposure of their activities could do serious damage to the fragile trans-Atlantic relationship. Care is taken in their operations. They spy on the exiles and recruit among them those who will work against the cause of ‘Freedom for Britain’ from within. In addition to these espionage activities, there is also a highly secretive kidnap and/or kill programme ongoing. The long arm of Britain in striking within America against those Kings and Queens over the water who have the loyalty of sections of the public back in the UK is being used. There would be an uproar if the intelligence operations were revealed in public but if this was uncovered too… The consequences could be something quite dramatic.
The British Government would rather see important exiles snatched and smuggled out of America (via Canada or Mexico) to be brought back home. Once returned, they can be interrogated with the public trials of a couple of them for propaganda purposes. The others would either be left to rot in prison or quietly killed when they have ‘accidents’. The kidnapping is also difficult to do. It is done but assassinations are less risky. This denies the UK the knowledge that is in the heads of those they would like to squeeze dry. However, it does deny these people to their fellow exiles. Some of the most important figures are being killed. None of them are at the very top, those former politicians who sometimes appear on American TV screens talking about the dictatorship in London, but those around them. Organisers, activists and media strategists are losing their lives. They are dying in ways which are supposed to point to the cause being anything but a state-directed assassination conducted on American soil. Illness, accidents, suicides and such like have been occurring. Those at the top are having their closest advisers die off. A very few are turning up back in Britain where they wish to confess their crimes and publicly denounce those who have fled to America. Funerals are more commonplace though.
The FBI isn’t stupid. They know what is going on. Other agencies within the US Intelligence Community are aware too: the CIA and the NSA especially. To think that Britain could get away with this would be foolish. Before he died, one of those exiles killed when he ‘fell in front of a Subway train’ up in Manhattan had been to FBI Headquarters and given that agency’s deputy director a list of all of those exiles who had been killed. He was once a senior man at Britain’s MI-5 and someone whom the UK would have certainly liked to have smuggled home somehow. Alas, they had found him impossible to kidnap: killing him had been easier. Even without what that man did before he was subsequently murdered, the Americans knew. They had eyes on many of the exile community and also some of the British agents operating illegally within the United States. Months ago, the FBI Director had resigned after a dispute with the President on this matter. The new head of America’s federal law enforcement organisation has been less willing to press the issue than her predecessor. Instead, she has FBI agents frustrating and blocking as many British efforts as possible.
As to the rest of the US Intelligence Community, they long ago got over their outrage when shoving aside their moral compass for the sake of the ‘bigger picture’. The British Government is a firm ally of the United States. There is a global undeclared conflict raging, a new cold war. Britain led as it is now displays a willingness to be on the frontlines of that fight. America could do it alone but only if there was no other choice. The price to pay is a loss of true democracy in Britain – no matter what the president says in public about that – and the deaths of foreigners. Americans themselves aren’t losing their lives in these British activities. There has even been some assistance given. The CIA and NSA have kept their own hands clean but they have helped by pointing out some of the key exiles and releasing information on where they might be found. The American news media haven’t been able to get on top of this due to their efforts to stymie any independent investigations of all of those unfortunate, accident deaths.
The most prominent exiles will continue what they do, trying to lobby among the corridors of power in the United States to recognise what has happened to the country from which they have fled. Britain will continue to do all that it can, including killing those it can, to limit their influence. The dirtiest of all dirty conflicts carries on unabated. Perhaps the voters in November will change things?
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:37:47 GMT
Last column out of Karachi
It is November 1991 and the Soviet Union is in a state of collapse. Military forces aboard are receiving recall orders, including those long fighting wars in foreign lands to the south. From out of war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan too, there are instructions that those there are to make a return back to the Rodina. Gunfire is being heard in the streets of Moscow yet those orders stand: come home. The pull out begins. Lost in the shuffle, a result of a simple mistake, is the Soviet garrison in Karachi. They are ready to come home but fail to receive the final instruction to begin moving. By mid-December, when the security situation across Pakistan is absolutely dire, the error is realised. There is no conceivable way out that those in Moscow can see. New orders come to those in Karachi. Lay down your arms and surrender to the forces of the People’s Republic of Baluchistan. This instruction is something that is expected to be obeyed. Lt.–General Lavrov will do no such thing. He will return home, fighting his way across Pakistan, Afghanistan and even the Muslim lands of the southernmost reaches of the Soviet Union if necessary. The next morning, the last column out of Karachi leaves that city and begins marching back to the Motherland.
Tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks make up the column. While Lavrov has it as one overall, it is split into several component parts while moving. The main road running first northwest then north out of Karachi is followed as the line of advance yet not all of the column follows that route directly. There are flank guards off the highway. Forward scouts race away ahead from the main body. There is a rear guard too, those who protect the column from anyone following. Opposition quickly comes. The main body of vehicles rolling northwards is meant to be protected from these, leaving it to those on the outside to engage, but the rebels which Soviet forces have fought inside what was once Pakistan for the past five years are a clever, capable and cunning opponent. They avoid flank guards and let the forward scouts roll past them while hiding. When the exposed centre comes their way, the bandits strike. Lavrov is inside one of the few operational helicopters – others were left burning back in Karachi – above the column as it heads into the mountains. He listens to radio reports from those in contact while observing the rising smoke. With light weapons, rebel attacks are made. The enemy are mostly killed but they take Soviet lives too. The wounded and non-combat personnel are the main victims of gunfire and explosions. The column must keep moving though. The dead are left behind and forward movement carries on. The Rodina is the destination and there can be no halt made.
Khuzdar is reached. The small city is a battlefield between different Pakistani factions. Lavrov will not take sides. Passage ahead is blocked by those fighting and so he blasts them out of the way. There are mobile heavy guns and rocket launchers with his column. Those open fire to clear away around the city. Soviet forces bypass the Khuzdar, going through the mountains now. Enemy opposition comes here and beyond all the way towards Quetta. Sniping and roadside bombs are used by rebels as they attack the column. Continuous fighting is seen all while forward progress continues. The going is hard and the casualty tally rises significantly. Lavrov, back on the ground and riding within a wheeled command vehicle, is told that the helicopter he was on before has now been shot down. Rebels armed with American-supplied missiles have claimed another kill. The column is not even a third of the way home yet and most of the helicopters are gone. Without them, there will be no long-range observation of what is ahead.
Three days out of Karachi, the column is approaching Quetta. This is a bigger city than Khuzdar and one fully under the control of the Balochis. They know they have been abandoned by Moscow and will be subject to the revenge of the Pashtuns, Punjabis & Sindhis who will never forgive them for allying so willingly with the Soviets when Pakistan was forcefully broken apart by Soviet tanks. Lavrov will find no allies in Quetta. The Balochis will want to seize what they can, taking spoils of war from his column. His men will all be slaughtered. All roads led to Quetta though. There is no way around it. Lavrov must get his column past there before he can even begin to cross the more dangerous Afghanistan. He sacrifices men. To save the many, a few must lose their lives. Among those who he has launch a distracting attack upon Balochi forces are Pakistanis themselves: men from the other ethnic groups who hitched their tails to the Soviet Union’s war in their country and are running with them. Lavrov had no intention of bringing them to the Rodina. He’d known before leaving Karachi that they would come in handy. Using deception and breaking a flag of truce, Quetta is viciously attacked. The defenders are engaged and through the middle, Lavrov moves his column. He takes more losses than anticipated, but he gets past. Men are left behind and they will unfortunately suffer the consequences. The Afghan frontier is ahead though and that is soon crossed.
Another city on a crossroads controlled by the unfriendly is next. Kandahar is in Afghan rebel hands. The Mujahideen have never been allies, even ones to be betrayed. Lavrov cannot fight his way through Kandahar. His ammunition supply is far more depleted than projected with far more fights still to come. He can avoid the city directly though. Once inside Afghanistan, the number of vehicles in the column is cut down significantly. The journey has already been hard going on many of them but now things will be even more difficult. Men and stores are moved to others while spare parts and weapons are stripped away from those left behind. Lavrov is out of his command vehicle watching an armoured vehicle going through cannibalisation when an attack comes nearby. The Afghans give their welcome to those coming up from Karachi. His riflemen, joined quickly by tankers, make quick work of this attack. It is only a probing strike though and Lavrov is sure word is being spread. He anticipates that Kandahar will know of his presence nearby. Hopefully, they will be fooled into thinking he is coming straight towards them. He doesn’t: the column goes west, not north. The course of the near-dry Diori River is followed. The desert is on the left flank, Kandahar to the right but up ahead is Helmand. Lavrov drives his column into that region and then back towards the highway some distance away from Kandahar. His rear guards take casualties fighting off efforts to make a chase yet a successful escape is made.
The going across southern Afghanistan is hard. The elements rather than an enemy will see more losses accumulate. The column is laden with wounded and the ill. Because there can be no staying still, men die when on the move. Those who could have survived by staying in-place down in Karachi – of course if the city wasn’t soon to be lost to Pakistani rebels – will die while travelling through Afghanistan. Leaving Helmand, another fight is had at Delaram. This town is on the edge of the Khash Desert. The fight is unexpected. Lavrov makes a mistake where he is led to believe that the Afghan Government forces there will willingly step aside when faced with a strong oncoming force of armour which he shows them that he has out front. They are not taken in by the bluff, they see the weakness of his column. In addition, those here are not answerable to Kabul. They are rebels masquerading as erstwhile allies. A brutal fight occurs. Lavrov loses a hundred plus men. The enemy withdraws into the mountains to the north after causing a delay and inflicting those casualties. They are not beaten either. They follow his column afterwards to nibble at the rear. However, Lavrov is two-thirds of the way home now.
Herat is ahead. Beyond there lays the Rodina… well the Turkmen SSR where Lavrov cannot be sure of the political situation. He’d rather face domestic rebels than any more Afghan bandits though. There are two roads leading towards the city of Herat. The shortest route, to the right, is the most dangerous. It goes near to Shindand Airbase and that is in Mujahideen hands. Shindand was to where Lavrov’s men were supposed to fly from Karachi to – leaving all equipment & stores behind – on the way home. When it was abandoned to the enemy, that was a key part of the process of seeing he and his men left to surrender when down next to the Indian Ocean. He takes the road on the left, the one which will see his column having to take the long way around, rather than go near there. Farah is soon rolled through with minor attacks from rebels there beaten off. At the smaller town of Aokal, the rebels from Shindand are met here instead. Far too late to do anything about it, Lavrov realises he’s been herded into a trap. The Mujahideen have chosen a battlefield to fight him on. They have been watching and planning, getting ready for this fight where they think they will win a great victory. A huge force has been established including men with anti-tank weapons. They have underestimated him though. Lavrov has not come all this way to fail. There is one weapon which he has not used, one which he is sure that his enemy, nor whomever is currently ruling the roost in Moscow, suspects he would use. There had been a small stock of nuclear weapons down in Karachi: tactical ones for battlefield use. The warhead’s KGB guards are dead and the weapons are at Lavrov’s disposal. He uses nukes to blast a way home.
Two explosions occur in the skies above Aokal. Each are five kiloton blasts when rockets loft them up to sufficient height. Lavrov has his men wearing protective gear where possible or buttoned up inside armoured vehicles with overpressure systems on if not. Moving the wounded about has been hard to do but Lavrov has no choice. It is the only way to get past. He has no regrets about what he does. Within minutes of the detonations, the column is moving. The Soviet Army is long trained to operate on a nuclear battlefield: Lavrov’s enemy is not. Aokal’s defenders have been silenced. The radiation has killed them… and too a lot of civilians. The column goes up to Herat, leaving hell on earth behind them. Herat is in sort-of friendly hands. The locals there answer not to Kabul but no longer to Moscow either. At times enemies of the Soviets, and at other times allies, Lavrov is weary about what Herat will bring despite information telling him that those there will not shoot Soviet forces on-sight. He sends forward an emissary to speak with the Tajiks here. Among the men of Lavrov’s column, he has Soviet Tajiks but these are Afghan Tajik in Herat. He has his meet with theirs. Those in Herat call themselves Herati too rather than regard themselves as part of the larger Tajik ethnic group which stretches across many countries: they also don’t consider themselves Afghan. The differences are ones which Lavrov understands and he hopes to make use of. The negotiations take longer than planned. Lavrov waits a whole day. The Herati block access and unless he wishes to make use of any more nuclear weapons again, he must wait. He would rather not take that step. There will already be trouble at home for already doing so. Moreover, the Herati here can make more trouble for him should he just blast their city and try to drive past the ruins on home. They control what is beyond. Lavrov will not use nukes close to home no matter how small those warheads are.
A price is settled upon. Lavrov hands over weapons and ammunition. He feels the pain losing each and every single rifle and bullet. It is worth it though. There is fuel given – just a bit, every drop needed – as well as passage past granted. The Herati drive a hard bargain but they keep their word. The way ahead is opened. The last leg of the long journey is now taken. It doesn’t take long to reach the Soviet frontier and there are no further rebel attacks made on the way. A few more lives are lost though when unexploded ordnance is encountered and Lavrov finds these casualties a remarkable burden to carry. That is because they are so unnecessary though when so close to home. Nonetheless, the Rodina is reached. Lavrov goes to the front of the column to meet with what he hopes will be Soviet border guards there, not some traitors answering to any abomination such as a Republic of the Turkmen. Thankfully, his fears are misplaced. These men at the border are his fellow Soviets. The last column out of Karachi, men left behind there to die, have reached home. One-third of those who set out from Pakistan haven’t made it yet Lavrov has led the rest of them to safety. What happened at Aokal has already changed the world – not for any good though – and he will have to pay for that. Yet, he will go to his grave knowing that he did the right thing overall. Staying in Karachi would have meant death from them all. Glory has been won in fighting the way home against all the odds. Lavrov and his column would go down in history alongside Xenophon and his Ten Thousand.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:38:38 GMT
Reunifying China
Taiwan has elected a president who has refused to say whether he will declare independence for the island nation which the Chinese consider part of their country. Throughout his election campaign and ahead of his inauguration, the new president has played a game of ambiguity on this matter. In Beijing, China’s supreme leader has received intelligence reports – credible ones – that such a thing is going to be done. This matches the feeling in his heart that independence will be declared. The confirmation from his espionage operatives is used to justify the already taken decision to reunify China… to do that with force. An invasion is ordered. It is a gamble in international terms. China believes that the United States will do nothing. The Europeans and the rest of the world community will complain but be fearful of economic consequences of acting against China. If this is mistaken, the outcome will not bode well for Beijing. However, the risk is taken. Finally bringing all of China back together is the lifetime ambition of its leader. He wants to do this and it will be done.
More than nine hundred flights a week go between China and Taiwan despite their political differences. Ships move between the two, so many with different flags flying from them. There are Chinese tourists in their thousands in Taiwan. A ‘fifth column’ arrives in the days ahead of the invasion with the special forces troops going into hiding. Other deceptive moves are made elsewhere with the Chinese military build-up. Nothing is at it seems, nothing suggests even to the most suspicious outsiders that the People’s Liberation Army is making ready to attack. That it does though, out in plain sight. A readiness is reached with ease. The PLA is huge and geographically spread. The vast majority of those standing ready have no idea what they are about to do. Only at the last minute, ahead of seeing action, are they told. They are about to reunify China and are doing it now.
Commandos on the ground quickly overrun the two large airports either side of Taipei as well as the port facility at nearby Keelung. The entranceways to Taiwan’s capital are secured – with a fight it must be said – in the early hours of D-Day. Military transport aircraft disguised as charter flights arrive in Taiwanese skies just as missile attacks & commando strikes disable much of their defence network. Chinese paratroopers do drop over Taipei yet many more fly into the excellent airports. A couple of ships, non-military vessels, arrive in the harbour where they unload armoured vehicles with ease. Taiwanese marines, with tanks, are based around Taipei: they are garrisoned here to stop something like this. The Chinese try to pin them in their barracks but some fight their way out. Dawn in Taipei sees part of the city become a warzone. Elsewhere though, the PLA is taking over and bringing in more men. Their numbers increase rapidly. They have control and defeat the opposition.
Across Taiwan, the military forces of that nation, officially called the Republic of China Armed Forces, are under attack. They are bombed and struck with ballistic missiles. Contact is cut to some and false orders are sent to others. China has much control over internal Taiwanese communications and makes use of its long-established influence in the electronic field. Coordination is what Taiwan needs and what it now lacks. Around Kaohsiung in the southwest, a large urban area and Taiwan’s biggest port, there is a major military presence. Other Chinese paratroopers are here: just one brigade whereas there are three in the Taipei area. The paratroopers face a tough fight. Taiwan will not lay down and die. Beijing wanted Kaohsiung to be taken intact as much as possible but if those invading paratroopers – who have their arriving ships carrying light armour sunk – wish to survive, they must fight as hard as they can and destroy everything in their wake.
Taiwan has strong military forces from their army and marines long forward deployed on offshore islands. Dongsha, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu and Taiping are all major garrisons. Some of the islands are right off the Chinese coast while others are in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese defence strategy has always foreseen a fight for these islands. They aren’t to be disappointed. Chinese marines battle the defenders for the control of them. Small advanced waves are reinforced and likewise supported by immense air, naval and missile coverage. Islands fall but others hold. There is also a smaller Chinese move down in the South China Sea where Taiwan claims many of the Spratly Islands but only occupies one. It is seized in a vicious fight.
The main island of Taiwan is where the real fight is though. Despite off-island commitments, Taiwan has the majority of its armed forces here. The president and military chiefs are out of contact – all prisoners of the Chinese – but the military fight on. Jets get airborne despite missiles and interceptors. Army units still manage to begin moving in the face of everything thrown at them. They advance on Kaohsiung and especially Taipei. There are distractions though. Chinese raiding parties, mimicking larger forces, are active all down the western coastline as well as in the mountainous interior. The Taiwanese try to be everywhere at once. They manage to contain and isolate the Kaohsiung airhead but fail to prevent the Chinese from securing Taipei. The nation’s capital has fallen. Chinese propaganda with its capture is for their domestic and international audiences yet also directed – in a different manner – towards those still resisting on Taiwan too.
Taiwanese military units waver over continuing the fight. Some refuse to move any more, staying in-place and declaring themselves neutral in this fight… in particular once it becomes clear that America is not coming to their aid. Others do not. A counterattack is made towards Taipei. It is thought that the Chinese will be still few in number, especially in armour. They are wrong. China has a lot of tanks there and also close air support (aircraft and armed helicopters) to provide cover. The approaches to Taipei are fought over and the Taiwanese lose heavily. Mass surrenders begin after this. Fighting will continue though significantly lessen in the days the defeat outside of Taipei. The last organised resistance nationwide is soon no more.
China is reunified. It takes only a fraction of what the PLA has its disposal to do this, all in three days. They are only able to achieve the victory that they do, one where ‘only’ twenty odd thousand lives are lost, because the United States sits on its hands and doesn’t interfere. There is now only One China.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:41:59 GMT
Dover Castle, September 1940
Dover Castle is in the hands of Brandenburgers, commandos in the service of Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service (Abwehr). They’d taken it when Operation Sealion commenced with these unconventional soldiers of Germany using gliders to arrive and then trickery to take over much of the defences. There was a fight here, a final showdown because everything didn’t go to plan, but when Luftwaffe paratroopers arrived as reinforcements, they helped finish off the defenders. In the following days, as German forces moved inland away from the many coastal landing sites across the South of England, the detachment of Brandenburgers has remained. They have orders to stay whereas other commandos were busy helping destroy British efforts to defend their nation: Brandenburgers were in London storming the Tower of London, another historic castle used as a final bastion of resistance. Late last night, a ceasefire had been called. The British are giving in. This morning, arriving on his personal aircraft, Hitler comes to Dover Castle. He arrives with his SS bodyguards but these Abwehr soldiers are nearby too providing extra security. It looks like every single Briton isn’t about to lay down his rifle – they have established stay-behind units – and so there is a need for dependable troops to be in the immediate area.
One of the Brandenburgers assassinates Hitler.
The gruff-looking, prideful Nazi leader is having his picture taken while at the castle. The iconic image of Dover Castle in the background has been specifically chosen. It is supposed to be one for the history books like the image captured of him at the Eifel Tower after the French capitulation. This is meant to portray a veni, vidi, vici piece of propaganda for both domestic and international consumption of German supremacy. The picture is taken by a photographer Hitler himself has personally approved of. It is the last known image of the man who had just conquered much of Europe.
Two shots ring out moments later. They are fired from distance and up high by a man who is a pretty good shot.
Hitler is dead before he hits the ground. Only one bullet has struck him but it is enough to see his brains in the lap of one of his key aides. SS bodyguards – how they had failed today! – surround him with weapons drawn as Hitler is carried away. Desperate efforts are being made to save the Fuhrer’s life but it is all pointless. More SS men begin detaining everyone in-sight no matter what uniform they wear. Military officers from all services as well as conscripted soldiers are held at gunpoint. The Brandenburgers are ordered to lay down their weapons and they do, including the assassin himself who puts on the pretence of bewildered innocence.
Dover Castle is locked down. No one leaves and no information comes out. There are some very important Nazi figures who have come with Hitler to Dover and they urgently try to decide what to do. As Hitler had always wanted, they are divided and plagued by rivalries. They argue, fiercely too. Threats are made and there is even a bit of physical violence between them. No armed men are called in though. No one here has the will to truly act. Many actually believe that a miracle will see Hitler brought back, perhaps his brains can be shoved back inside his head, and no one wants to step up and take charge fearful of his rage at that being done. It will be no one here who takes charge.
Across the Channel, over at Reims where there is a captured French airbase, the head of the Luftwaffe is informed that the Fuhrer is dead. The information lock-down from those on the ground on the other side of the stretch of water which formed no barrier in the end to Hitler’s army failed to stop word leaking out. Field Marshal Goering knows that Hitler is dead with haste. Relief sweeps over him in a moment of privacy. Then comes something else: ‘the King is dead; long live the king!’.
Germany now belongs to Goering.
Orders arrive in Dover, sent from ‘Fuhrer Goering’. Hitler’s body is to be returned home pending a state funeral, sure to be an epic affair, so the nation can mourn. Everyone else will stay where they are. No one is to be allowed to leave Dover with no exceptions made. Goering will have an investigation done on the ground there into what had to be a conspiracy to murder Hitler. With that, Germany’s new leader secures his position for good. Those here in Dover are all guilty until proved innocent and they include among them those who might wish to vie for the post that Goering has just assumed. Finding who is responsible for Hitler’s death is important but this is more vital. Goering departs Reims for Berlin.
A storm arrives after the plane carrying Hitler’s corpse departs. Rain and wind batter Dover. The Germans take shelter indoors from mother nature. The weather is fierce. It appears to be a sign of things to come for many. Those who have nothing to do with that assassination a few hours beforehand fear that they will be blamed: a couple of them take their own lives, deciding that this is the time to leave this world. Others trapped with them decide that they must have been guilty and even if they weren’t, to the dead is where all fingers will be now pointed.
As to that gunman, the Brandenburger who’d used his rifle earlier, he is with his comrades all held by Luftwaffe guards. There is no real mistreatment for him and the others. He keeps his head down and is alone with his thoughts… and smiles.
If anything was worth another trip in that time machine, he silently tells himself, then it was the opportunity to fix my earlier mistake and kill that bugger.
Now he just has to work out how to make a return to 2040.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,817
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:42:24 GMT
A visitor
She was looking for her daughter. The younger one had gone wandering off, where she wasn’t supposed to go. Her mother had repeatedly warned her against doing so. However, her daughter disobeyed. She was like that. She was impetuous with a real sense of adventure. Exploring was what the younger one wanted to do always do, alone as well. Her mother had told her not to go to a certain place. Of course, it was exactly there where her daughter had gone. Older and more experienced, her mother knew the dangers which lay that way and had carefully explained those to her daughter. Acknowledgement had come yet, despite everything, off to there her daughter had gone. With no choice, her mother had to follow. She would have to retrieve her daughter from the mess which she had surely gotten herself into.
She followed the course her daughter was sure to have taken. This way, then that way. Around there and past that. Along here and forward to the dangerous rock. That was a rock of many colours. There was a lot of blue but also much green. Whites, yellows and browns could be found too. Unfortunately, there was ugly greys and blacks here now. There were more of those colours than there had been before. The mother was sad to see that. It would have interested her daughter, of that she was sure. The trail was picked up and she took the plunge, going forward into danger all to find her daughter.
Landing on the rock out here so far from home, she let out a call. Her daughter responded with one of her own, heard by her mother like her own was despite the great distance involved. A location was fixed, one where her daughter was trapped. The older one set off to rescue the younger one from imprisonment.
A visitor arrived on earth, the second in the last one hundred and eleven years.
The younger, smaller visitor had appeared inside Tsarist Russia in 1909. It was a creature from the unknown, something to behold indeed. After a tough fight, the creature had been stunned into inaction and securely bound. It was held in various locations deep inside the huge country among great secrecy. It was studied while kept alive. An escape nearly occurred during the Russian Civil War where it almost got free. Ending up in the hands of the Communists after the Tsar was deposed, they hadn’t wanted to keep it. Lenin had considered killing it, Stalin too later. The creature was kept alive though. Experiments were done for decades on this creature which it was believed had come from out of the earth, not from out of space. The intention was that secrets would be revealed for the greater good of the Russian Empire / Soviet Union / Russian Federation. New leaders of the nation would come to look at it soon after taking power and have ideas about what to do with it but nothing ever really came of those. Now secured below the Ural Mountains, in a deep cave, when it called out today to its mother in reply, this came as quite the surprise. The mountains above shook. Those inside the holding facility lost their hearing for good. The creature almost broke free, showing much the signs of strength it had in the early years. Those binds which newcomers, including Putin himself, had considered a bit too much when stories of past events were disbelieved, only just held her in-place. There was chaos inside the facility. No one knew what was going on.
Her mother had landed in Africa, in the Sahara Desert within Niger. She began her ‘walk’ towards the Urals. She didn’t walk like a human or an earth-bound animal, but rather in her own particular way. Lifeforms were encountered soon enough. She’d seen them before: not that long ago in her memory but hundreds upon hundreds of years past in human terms. Animals got out of her way and so did many humans but there were some who opposed her. They attacked her from the ground and then from the air. Borders and countries meant nothing to her. The very idea of Niger, Libya and Egypt didn’t compute. A superpower located far away with a presence here now with immense weapons of war where humans flew within metal and plastic… all she knew was that they were dangerous. The desert was crossed and then the sea entered. She hadn’t swum in earth’s waters before but they were similar to those elsewhere, just dirtier. The humans didn’t bother her under the water though did again when she was back on land. Across Turkey she went, unknowing that that country, along with the whole world, was – for lack of a better term – freaking out at this advancing creature. Attacks came again. They didn’t hurt her. It was an annoyance really. Just before going back into the sea again, she called out to her daughter. A response came.
With a roar, the younger creature broke free. Scientific machines around the word would record the effects of the mountains crumbling all around her. Out of where she had long been held, daughter set off to meet with mother. Her strength was renewed with her mother so close. She was attacked like her mother was, with some horrible weapons which didn’t harm her one bit. Humans ran from her. There was a grey place, one of those which she had come to see to start this all off, where she met with her mother. Each of them celebrated… a city in southern Russia was destroyed in the process.
Now was the time to leave. The two visitors, who’d arrived separately, departed. Up they went, higher and higher above the rock below where there was all that uproar. Mother comforted daughter rather than chastised her. Their reunion had come and that was all that mattered… unless you’d been between them on earth that was.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 6, 2020 15:43:51 GMT
Red Beach
3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment made the assault on Red Beach.
They were on the left of the regimental landing team when it arrived in enemy held territory just as dawn broke. The US Marines, veterans and newbies alike, had been told that this would be an opposed landing. There would be an enemy behind the beach who would do everything that they could to repel their landing. 3/1 Marines were to fight through that and secure their battalion objectives up on the shoreline regardless. When they left their amphibious transports, loading into assault craft, the US Marines were aware of all of the supporting warships here. They knew the firepower that the US Navy, joined by Marine Corps air assets too, could muster to support them. The pre-dawn light allowed them to witness just a small portion of the massed sea power. From those warships, ahead of the 3/1 Marines making their landings, there came the crash of heavy guns and the woosh of rockets. Low-flying aircraft filled the skies. Those on Red Beach there to defend it were getting a taste of American firepower. These US Marines believed that they would just be mopping up survivors, many disregarding warnings that there would be a fierce defending force there still alive. There would be those who would pay for that foolishness.
Red Beach took the fire of a battleship which mounted three trios of sixteen-inch main guns, twenty five-inch guns and two multiple-launch rocket batteries. Two cruisers and three destroyers all had five-inch guns too which were used against the stretch of sand and the rocks up above it. Attack aircraft from a flotilla of four carriers made strikes in support of the 1st Marine Regiment where they used high-explosive bombs, rockets carrying napalm and their cannons too. Bombers from the US Air Force had hit Red Beach – along with Green Beach and White Beach too – with bellyfuls of their own bombs including ones with nerve gas warheads. All that firepower hit the defenders who’d been observed from afar as well as up close to exactly locate their fighting positions. It was an immense display of firepower, going on alongside the attacks made against another pair of three beaches (different colour codes for them) both to the east and west of here. The attacks went inland too, back towards where there were more of the enemy. They had been relentless and on a scale like nothing seen before in the history of warfare.
In defiance of all that ordnance expended to stop such a thing, assault landing craft carrying 3/1 Marines took heavy and accurate fire from those defenders as they came into sight of Red Beach. They were hit by anti-tank guns that made short work of their armour plating. Holed and often on fire, those hit hard enough quickly sunk with few of the passengers aboard being able to get out of them in time. The defenders had napalm and nerve gas themselves. They used the former just ahead of the 3/1 Marines reaching the sand and then the latter when they did. That gas attack – with mortars lobbing those shells vertically close-in from positions that had survived all efforts to silence them – came alongside the fire of hundreds of rifles and dozens of crew-served machine guns. There were mines of the beach too, laid where naval pathfinders had said that there weren’t any. The casualty count even before landing was staggering and 3/1 Marines quickly suffered many more deaths and injuries when on the beach to increase that dramatically. An opposed landing it really was. The battalion was at fifty per cent combat effectiveness within minutes of being on Red Beach.
There were artillery direction personnel on the beach with the first of the assaulting US Marines. Men from the 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company were here to correct the continuing fire of the supporting warships, including those of that battleship. Radio messages flashed out and the sixteen-inch guns threw those huge shells of hers forward. A full broadside was given with smaller guns joining in. The impression to those on Red Beach was that this didn’t have any effect at all. Accurate and deadly fire was still poured towards them from defenders who they couldn’t themselves get at. They were pinned down. 3/1 Marines was stuck at the water’s edge. Landing craft burnt around them and they were caught in a minefield. No one was standing up, everyone was down (bellies or backs) on the sand with seawater lapping at them. There were the screams of the wounded and the pounding of heavy guns. Shouting was the only way that anyone could communicate. Officers, sergeants and NCOs tried to get the men moving forward. The few who tries to go forward were cut down. Staying still was no better either. The defenders targeted them carefully: they killed & maimed the men with 3/1 Marines at will.
Shells, rockets and bombs hit the defenders. One of the attacking aircraft crashed into the rocks up above and exploded with the biggest blast so far witnessed on Red Beach. The US Marines underneath this had seen that it was one of ‘theirs’ (a Marine Corps attack-fighter) and believed that while fatally wounded, the pilot had crashed his aircraft on purpose into the enemy to help them. This gave many the impetus to try to rush forward, hoping that this would turn the tide. Those brave fools were cut down when machine guns and rifle grenadiers swept through them. Another gas attack came straight afterwards with those mortars used again: wounded men of 3/1 Marines had their chemical warfare suits torn open and through those holes seeped the poison that would take their lives in the most gruesome manner.
Red Beach wasn’t being taken by the 3/1 Marines. On the two others, their regimental comrades had no luck too. No one was getting forward. They were pinned down and being massacred. Then they saw their enemy. Running through all of the firepower used against them in support of the US Marines, taking horrendous casualties themselves, the enemy attacked. They came out of their trenches and forward into the counterattack. With bullets and the rifle-mounted bayonets, they finished off 3/1 Marines. No prisoners were taken, none at all. Their own losses were to be greater than those of the attacking Americans, but they had retaken Red Beach. The same situation as repeated at seven more beaches: only on Black Beach, some distance from Red Beach, did the US Marines (2/7 Marines there) manage to hold on… and only just too.
It was August 1963.
Those defenders on Red Beach and elsewhere where the US Marines landed wore the uniforms of the army of Oceania.
They fought on the southern coast of Airstrip One against ‘Eurasians’ apparently.
The country once known as the United Kingdom – Britain if you must – had seventeen years ago gone a bit crazy. Big Brother had radicalised his people and it was their soldiers, proles aplenty, who did the impossible and turned back the opening attempt at the ‘liberation’ of their country… all while being lied to about who they fought and why too.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,817
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Post by James G on Jun 23, 2020 19:45:06 GMT
Down the plug hole
One day in early 2021, seven objects fall from the heavens and subsequently crash into the Earth’s oceans.
The first lands in the Arctic Ocean, off the barren Russian possession known as Bolshevik Island (post-Soviet Russia has never changed the name). The second impacts the water in the South Pacific, in another isolated stretch of the water which covers the majority of Earth, with Easter Island being the closest landmass. The South Atlantic, between Brazil and Angola, is where the third touches water but this site is far from both. The fourth strikes the Western Pacific near to Palau and not that far from the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest known portion of the world’s oceans. The fifth lands some distance to the north of the Seychelles within the Indian Ocean: the African continent is not that far away. The sixth reaches the waters of the North Atlantic between Greenland and Newfoundland in yet another lonely, out-of-the-way place. Finally, the seventh makes impact in the Southern Ocean in the Wendell Sea with the Antarctic Peninsula to the east.
Each rock – it would be the best way to describe the objects as rocks considering what they are – makes their way to the bottom of the oceans and soon travel away some distance from where they land. Two of them are noticed when arriving and there is later a discovery of the impacts of two more: the three others aren’t known about. Military radars and then seismic data supporting civilian research efforts make certain world governments aware that unknown objects have fallen to Earth. Discussions are had at the highest levels while the public isn’t told. The fact that the four (the other three remained undetected) all struck the ocean instead of land and are spread across the globe in the manner which they are causes eyebrows to raise. They weren’t meteors. They slowed down. They didn’t burn up in the atmosphere. This isn’t something ‘normal’.
Investigations are done in secret. Searches are made for the ones known about. Using military submarines and unmanned submersibles, there is a hunt on to find them. These efforts are ultimately fruitless despite plentiful effort expended. No trace can be found of what has arrived from the heavens. They should be where the look is made for them but they are gone from there.
By the end of the year, with near global ignorance of what occurred back in January, the mean sea level of the world’s ocean drops by two millimetres. This is a reversal of trends, quite the dramatic one in the time of climate change. Maybe this is just an abnormality, an outlier?
In 2022, there is another drop. This regression is of just short of thirty-one centimetres. A century of rises has been suddenly reversed in less than two years! Global weather patterns see dramatic shifts too. The world seems to be drying out. It isn’t raining as much and desertification fears spread. Nations panic and seek to secure resources while they watch the oceans slowly disappear.
The next year, 2023, the drop from 2021 figures in the previous average world sea level is that of one-point-eight-nine metres. All sorts of terrible global effects come due to this. There are wars, famine and societal upheaval on Biblical scales all directly related to less water being in the oceans. Where has all of this seawater gone? If it hasn’t gone up, it must have gone down. Is it possible that water is being drained into the Earth away from the surface? Who or what is causing this is an answer that no one can give those who ask. The connection between the falling objects from heaven and the slow disappearance of the oceans is made but nothing can be done by now.
2024 sees much more of the world’s ocean disappear. That drop in mean sea levels is more than twenty meters now. The dry surface of the Earth, where the seas have retreated from the coastline in the face of this, means that there is more of the world above water than below as was the case before. With rivers and lakes gone, and little rain falling from the sky, billions upon billions of people die. Humanity falls apart at a shocking rate. The things which are done to try and save nations and people by their governments defy all reason. Nothing works to avert what is coming. Still, it is tried and this only hastens the demise of humanity.
Humanity cannot measure the retreat of the oceans, the drop in average height, during 2025. The figure is close to four hundred and sixty meters. The amount of water which has disappeared is unfathomable. Where has it all gone!? Land bridges between continents are now a very real thing. The ocean floor is exposed. Few, so very few people are around to see this or explore them. They have more pressing concerns: surviving with so little water. The global population has dropped below a hundred thousand… down from eight billion in 2021. Those survivors are living on the very edge of life. A ruined planet is what now remains, one poisoned as humanity dies in the manner it does. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur by the hundredfold. The tectonic plates move with the rising of some portions of the Earth and the sinking of other parts.
More objects fall from the heavens at the end of 2025. There are hundreds of them this time, clustering together in the remaining oceans. They sink too, down to the bottom and open up more holes through their efforts. Seawater disappears at an even greater rate through the beginning of 2026. Again, what is left of humanity isn’t aware. Like the oceans, the rule of humans over Earth has gone down the plug hole.
The planet has new rulers now. They will reign over a waterless world with no animal life, plants nor people. This is how they want it too.
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