Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

176 – The Year of Four Presidents

The remains of Lee Mitchell were discovered deep below the White House along with those of almost two dozen others.

The 50th President of the United States had been killed in a devastating explosion which had ripped through an emergency access/escape tunnel. That route was being assaulted by attacking US Marines striking from both the PEOC below the East Wing and the Treasury Building across the street too. It would be said afterwards that Mitchell had a rifle in his hand: something not too outrageous as he was a former US Army Ranger. That story wasn’t generally believed though, nor was it thought that his death was the accident that it was said to be. Many Marines had likewise been killed by the same explosion, the official inquiry would later affirm, and the engineers with them were said to have made a mistake in the quantity of the explosives which they used to blast their way into that confined space which was the tunnel in an effort to capture him alive. Whatever that report said down the line, whatever was said in the immediate aftermath, there were always going to be many people who refused to believe such a tale.

President for a total of seventy-two days during the early months of 2029, Mitchell’s death during the putsch mounted by the US Marines’ 24th MEU forced the accession of Christina Cruz Flores to the presidency. She was the fourth to hold the office that year: Walsh, Roberts, Mitchell then her. That unprecedented situation of the presidency passing between the latter three in such quick succession took the breath away from so many in that year and also in future history.


President Cruz went over to Congress after she was informed that Mitchell was dead. US Army soldiers from one of those companies from the Old Guard that for several hours that day had been held prisoner in the city drove her in an armoured HMMWV to Capitol Hill. The route taken was short, down 14th Street and along Independence Avenue (Constitution Avenue was blocked by overturned vehicles), and Cruz was soon there. She went up the front steps of the complex on the western side, refusing to avoid the sight of several bodies covered with sheets when a different way in was suggested by her Secret Service escort. Capitol Police officers and US Marines alike had lost their lives during a short engagement on those famous steps and Cruz respectfully went past them. The congressional leadership was waiting inside for her. Absent the Senate Majority Leader – three Republican senators attended in-place of Lori Oakes –, everyone whom Cruz came to talk to first was waiting for her. She had been told that they hadn’t all been killed, not the Capitol broken into itself by those who had surrounded it, but was still relieved to see that that wasn’t just hope but the truth.

It was the new president who told them that Mitchell was dead. A range of emotions were voiced and displayed. There would be time for that later though, Cruz told them: first up was to tell the American people.

News crews from multiple networks who had been in the city during the day when it was held by those engaged in mutiny were brought to those steps where Cruz was flanked by the nation’s leading elected politicians. She broke the news to them, the country and the world that Mitchell had been killed. Cruz spoke of the horrors that had befallen the Mitchell family and then how her predecessor had refused to give in when armed intruders had assaulted the White House. He had promised to fight them back but he had unfortunately lost his life while aiming to avoid capture and what Cruz said likely would have been a murderous outcome. She spoke of all of the people who lay dead in DC that day. For just over six and a half hours, American democracy where it had its heart had been the victim of those seeking to end that and replace it with dictatorship. The 51st President promised that justice would be delivered to those who had committed such an infamous act. The ringleaders, Oakes in particular, were in custody and the heart of the city would remain in lockdown with that enforced by soldiers.

Cruz declared that she would continue with what Mitchell had been doing: negotiating an end to the war with the secessionist Democratic American Republic. That conflict had cost the lives of tens of thousands and was one which, no matter what had been tried, the United States was unable to win. She promised peace with honour and a lasting settlement that respected the rights of all Americans would continue to be the policy adopted in the talks with the DAR as the only outcome of them that she would accept. Nothing would change elsewhere with regards to the presidency and the direction of the government either. Those who had sought to change all of that had failed in what they had tried to do.


Images from events in DC on April 12th 2029 would be long remembered. The terrorist attack on Congress four months beforehand had incurred inside the Capitol Building and thus what exactly had gone on hadn’t been something that people could visualise. The putsch to overthrow the legitimate US Government and replace it with a usurper through the use of armed US Marine rebelling against authority had been widely captured for circulation either to be broadcast live or with later released footage.

There had been gun-fights out in the open where tourists usually congregated. Armoured vehicles had rolled down the middle of DC with one of them at the outset of the assault on the White House using attached chains to pull away the railings on the north side of that complex. Low-flying jets had whizzed repeatedly over the city. Corpses of police officers and military personnel had for some time lain in the roadway. The White House’s East Wing had burnt for some time before firefighters had put the fire out. There had been soldiers mounting roadblocks on bridges over the Potomac and then later on more had arrived via heavy-lift Chinook helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotors which had touched down throughout The Mall & next to the Washington Monument. Sirens and alarms had wailed. People had run in terror or broke down in the streets and cried.

New Jersey’s Senator Oliver Kirk, who had run in the Democratic primaries the previous year, had posed for a photograph that had been posted online when Congress had been besieged. Kirk had been holding a shotgun and alongside Capitol Police officers: his past US Navy service had been something he had often liked to boast of. There was recorded footage of Kirk later on that day where he had spoken of abolishing the Marine Corps because they were on the streets of DC and Marine One also hadn’t shown up to evacuate the president. Charlotte Filton, one of South Carolina’s senators, who had been among the first to argue that the war was lost and that Mitchell had to end it, had broadcast out a message during the day where she had spoken of her fear as well that the Marines were soon to burst in and begin killing everyone. She’d lost her composure and cried live on YouTube at the thought of never seeing her children again. A recording had been made on New York Avenue, near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, by Clarence Weaver where the DC Mayor had stood among civilians who had approached those US Marines who’d taken over the heart of the city. Weaver had remonstrated with them, calling them traitors. The civilians were government workers mainly, rather than Avenge Joes, but he had been with them where they argued on behalf of ordinary Americans opposing tyranny. The Marines had been spat at when armed to the teeth and Weaver had told them that an eventual fate worse that that awaited all those who committed treason. Associate Justice Kevin Singleton had stood outside of the open doors to the US Supreme Court and had too shouted at the US Marines who had killed police officers & surrounded the building that they were traitors. ‘Jellyfish’ he had been called by detractors who for so long had opposed his appointment but the afternoon he did that was the one when the whole country saw that he really did have some backbone. Marines with rifles pointed at him had tried to push him back inside the building: he had called them cowards while claiming he was willing to give up his life for American democracy.

Utah’s Senator Dominic Robinson hadn’t been inside Congress when it was besieged. He’d been at the Fox News studios during the whole incident. Just as his state was under occupation by those in the service of a tyrant, Robinson had said the same about the capitol of his country too. He had laughed aloud at the broadcast made by Oakes and called her some quite unpleasant names that had left the Fox News presenters a bit stunned. When everything was all over with, Robinson had told them and those watching that the cause for the liberation of the West was finished for good. He had long been involved in the fight to keep the war going so that the people not just of his home state held by the DAR could be freed but the other ones too. That fight didn’t mean any support for what Oakes had done though where she had claimed such was her intention. To Robinson, what had been done in the name of liberating the West had finally doomed it more than any battlefield engagement out West could ever do. Terence Darby said almost the same thing to CNN later that day when interviewed by in New York City. Mitchell had hired and then fired the Washington congressmen as his wartime Defence Secretary. The actions of Oakes meant that the West would never be recovered now, Darby said: Cruz could give away everything and get away with that because in the minds of the public, the attempt at overthrowing democracy played out in the streets of DC would be forever associated with restoring the freedom of Westerners.


All those personnel with the 24 MEU who had entered DC that day under the command of Colonel Gibbons were eventually disarmed and detained, even if they had swung behind Cruz’s restoration of control at the White House. US Army soldiers, later joined by US Navy personnel from military police units out of various East Coast bases flown in, took them into custody and established full control throughout the middle of DC. The day’s battlefield was policed with weapons, ammunition and military equipment collected. There were bodies of the dead and temporary field hospitals full of wounded to be dealt with too. An honour guard of soldiers were present when Mitchell’s remains were removed from deep below that tunnel underneath Executive Avenue to be taken away.

The majority of US Marines prisoners were held near the DC Armory, out in the open of one of the car parks for the RFK Stadium. They would be later moved elsewhere, spread to military holding facilities all over the United States with a good few held alongside DAR captives too in the end. The key people were taken inside the DC Armory though, that facility where high-level prisoners had been detained throughout the war ahead of appearances in federal court. Lori Oakes, the woman who would have been president if she had gotten her way, was taken there. She demanded that she been taken to a hospital instead due to the wounds she suffered during the gunfight inside the Oval Office yet those were superficial injuries. Two different doctors, US Navy personnel, examined her and found her to be safe to hold captive. Attorney General Gunnarsson went to see her. Oakes was told she would be prosecuted for treason. To avoid the death penalty, Oakes better start co-operating with the Department of Justice and name everyone else involved.

Gibbons was a different story. He was taken to the DC Armory in an Army ambulance against the wishes of the medics who had saved his life right there in the Oval Office where he too had been shot whilst resisting arrest. The initial medics were US Marines and so were detained after handing him over and the Army personnel didn’t give as much of a damn as they should have done when faced with an injured patient: traitor of not, more care was needed. Gibbons almost died when at the DC Armory. Those responsible were later punished because, in the opinion of the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when she heard about the incident, should he have lost his life, there would be no justice delivered for what he did that the American people would deserve to get. A Navy helicopter flew him to Walter Reed – where the orphaned Anna Mitchell was at that time still being treated post-poisoning – and he received complicated surgery.

Gibbons would live… and later hang.

[gillan1220]

Holy Jesus. That was expected to happen. Four presidents in one year is bad enough. The DAR definitely got their wish of letting the USA tear itself apart. Now we will finally a divided America since the status quo has changed because the might of the U.S. military cannot function with the Glowworm still active.

[James G]

Jul 29, 2021 18:41:15 GMT gillan1220 said:

Holy Jesus. That was expected to happen. Four presidents in one year is bad enough. The DAR definitely got their wish of letting the USA tear itself apart. Now we will finally a divided America since the status quo has changed because the might of the U.S. military cannot function with the Glowworm still active.

There will be no more than four!
Glow-worm is still an issue that is being difficult to resolve: elsewhere though, settlements are happening.

[James G]

177 – Acceptance

After President Mitchell lost his life during the failed putsch back in DC, Special Envoy Leach had moved for a day’s break in the negotiations in Cañon City. When it had first been seen to have been put down, the former Secretary of State named by Mitchell to lead the peace talks with the Democratic American Republic, had aimed to get going again the following day under the belief that he was still alive. However, her successor, Renzi, informed her just ahead of the public announcement of Cruz’s ascension to the presidency of the fate of the 50th President. There had been a fixed communications link established between Cañon City and Salida and using that, Leach told her counterpart of the intention to delay matters. She did assure Antonetti that the negotiations would continue but with Mitchell dead, a break was needed. Renzi flew to Colorado Springs and Leach went up there by helicopter to talk with her. What the new president had said on the steps of the Capitol Building was, Renzi made clear, for public consumption: the truth of the matter when it came to the talks with the DAR was that Cruz was willing to go further than Mitchell had. The 51st President wanted a permanent end to the war. Naturally, the DAR wasn’t to get everything that they wanted and the United States was to still come out on top, but Leach was directed to concede on several sticking points while at the same time trying to get the best possible deal overall. Leach had already been assigned a difficult task and those remarks made things more difficult for her. She gave her agreement to those new instructions though. Cruz was trying to move the country part all that had happened, Leach understood, but she wasn’t sure if all Americans would agree to the manner in which that was done.

When she went back to Cañon City, Antonetti was in touch not long afterwards and asked if the United States wished to wait until after the weekend and delay until the Monday before restarting talks. Leach told him that they should meet throughout the weekend and get things moving with what they had set out to do. There would be another upcoming pause for when Mitchell’s funeral would be (the date for that wasn’t confirmed for several days) and they would continue until then. On the Saturday morning, Antonetti once again crossed through the front-lines which ran through the middle of the Rockies deep inside Colorado. Back to the community college campus on the edge of the small city he and Leach both went with their negotiating teams present as well. The respectful pause due to the death of the leader of the United States had come and gone so the talks then resumed. They went on for several days uninterrupted all the way up until Mitchell’s funeral in the middle of the following week.


The United States dropped the opposition on the table to the DAR retaining its acquired status as a nuclear weapons state. It wasn’t something that Leach was happy to do but it had been a stumbling block in negotiations where the stand taken against it, demanding that those stolen weapons be given back, got no one anywhere. The final peace agreement would note an objection on the part of her country that the DAR was armed with those weapons but there would no longer be the demand that they all be returned. It was treated as a big concession by the US delegation with Leach’s #2 pointing out to Antonetti’s people that the DAR should be willing to give up something in exchange. That wasn’t exactly how the other side saw things though not long after that major movement from Leach’s team, Antonetti did what had been expected of him and showed that his country was willing to move from its previous stance concerning the post-war status of Colorado. The belief was that the US conceding on those weapons meant nothing when it came to the DAR and Colorado, yet it was played out that way as diplomacy usually was. Antonetti accepted that Colorado would be divided. His opening position on that was that he wouldn’t accept what had first been proposed as to where the line of division, the new border between the two countries, would run: either on the Great Continental Divide nor exactly where the front-lines of war ran. He put forward nothing more than what Leach regarded as a ‘land grab’ by proposing that the DAR took most of the centre and even a good chunk of the southeast too. Maps were poured over by both sides and Leach pushed back. Where the front-lines ran was her position and she stuck to it apart from in the very middle due to the bulge in otherwise generally straight lines running along mountain ridges & those of counties. Several days of talks – while other matters were discussed at times too as each special envoy was in touch with superiors – brought forth eventual agreement. Where Vail Mountain was beside Interstate-70 in the middle of Eagle County was to be the new border. Colorado was split into two with each side getting a roughly equal share (the DAR portion just a bit bigger) though with the United States retaining all of the highly-populated bits and with the border inside the Rockies rather than down on the Front Range to leave all of that exposed. The front-lines where they had ended up generally became the new border, just as Leach had set out to first achieve despite the pantomime of other suggestions made.

There were a lot of detailed, complicated negotiations concerning money. The DAR came around to the issue of taking a fair portion of federal debts that the United States was responsible for with an actual settlement number to be later agreed but a percentage based on population split thrashed out. Leach stuck to her guns on that, with Renzi wanting her too, and Antonetti agreed in the end that is his country wanted a future relationship with the United States, then it would have to pay what was right for that to happen. There were more economic issues though and on those Leach gave way significantly. On the matter of federal pensions and costs beyond federal debts that she had previously insisted that the DAR must pay a share of, there was a dropping of those. Moreover, when it came to compensation for the loss of property by both private citizens and companies to those who lost what they had when the West seceded, a fifty-fifty split was agreed on that on who would pay. The DAR wouldn’t be paying full costs but only half of them instead. They came to a framework for how that would happen though the exact details were something to be addressed at a later stage. Antonetti knew that his country got a good deal on that, especially since the date of valuation for property was moved to January 2029 rather than the previous April (the start of the tax year) where costs were estimated by his economic experts to have been far higher. With the outlines of agreements on those issues, Leach accepted that the United States would be able to accept the Democratic American Republic as a country which it could recognise officially. Antonetti wanted the peace deal to ensure provisions to make sure that there would be no US intervention down the line to stop his new nation from entering international organisations and agreements via a US making any form of veto on that. Leach affirmed that her country wouldn’t block, though not support either, DAR entry into the world’s diplomatic community. For the DAR to join that though, the matter of spoils of war taken by that country from others who were allies and partners of the United States was something that was addressed. There had been those fighter jets put into DAR service but also a whole host of other military gear as well as civilian assets as well that hadn’t gotten as much attention. The DAR would have to return what it still had and pay fair compensation for what had been destroyed: payments would be made to the United States to pass onwards to those overseas.

Antonetti had to get permission from President Pierce on all of that but he did receive it. What it gave Pierce was, along with everything else agreed upon, the international recognition long sought. Throughout the several months of its existence, the DAR hadn’t gained any meaningful external recognition. The first country which would do so would be the United States – oh, the irony – and he went for that. It was seeking that goal that he allowed Antonetti to drop the DAR claims on the whole of Colorado and move on so many more issues too. The willingness of the United States to move forward and concede itself was noted, with exploitation done, but Pierce gave up a lot to see that future security of his country assured by such means as acceptance of the Democratic American Republic’s right to exist. The negotiations moved to determining post-conflict citizenship rights which the DAR gave in significantly from a previous hard-line position once recognition was agreed upon. That had been a big initial stumbling block that was overcome just like the division of Colorado had been too. Antonetti did hold firm on the matter of infrastructure division in trans-border regions and the deals struck on the future of all of that, where existing infrastructure crossed the new border and how that was to be worked out post-war, were beneficial for the DAR yet the United States got generally most of what it wanted there as well. That acceptance really meant a lot for Pierce for him to give in elsewhere, especially on the citizenship issue.


The talks in Cañon City discussed more than just eventual peace. When the last major stumbling blocks were overcome, following on from all initial agreements, there was still more to Leach and Antonetti being there in Colorado than just that. The fate of the first president of the DAR was one which Antonetti wanted to see settled with her handed over to the United States to do with as they chose. Maria Arreola Rodriguez was still in DAR custody and Antonetti expressed a wish to see her given to the government which Leach represented without conditions: at no time did Leach get a read on his personal feelings about that. All he wanted was a when and where as to her handover. Renzi and Cruz had both made clear that despite everything, MAR was still wanted by the US Government for leading the rebellion which formed that breakaway country. Her trial and punishment would be beneficial for the long-term heeling within the United States where traitors such as her got what they deserved visibly so. Leach agreed that she would be taken. A location for her delivery into the custody of US Marshals that would be waiting for her was agreed upon as being where the front-lines ran near to Cañon City, at the point along Highway-50 where Antonetti had been travelling into US-controlled territory through. A date was fixed as well.

POW exchanges and withdrawal of troops from outside the territory each would control post-conflict had been the first things agreed with that to take place in a phased fashion. When Leach and Antonetti struck their agreement, the peace deal still needed to be signed-off upon by politicians: a process which wasn’t going to be fast. The first exchanges of prisoners and bits of occupied territory started ahead of that. On April 18th – while the two special envoys met again in Cañon City with their teams together to iron out as many technical issues as they would – the start of that got underway. The limited portions of Far West Texas which DAR troops held onto were withdrawn from while US forces up in the Idaho Panhandle pulled out too. The areas held were next to international borders (with Mexico and Canada respectively) and roughly equal in-size. No damage was done to military nor civilian infrastructure and there were working groups of military personnel on-hand to communicate with each other over unexploded munitions, civilian issues etc. El Paso was freed of the chain almost around its neck while the small Idaho city of Bonners Ferry was returned to the DAR though it was almost empty of civilians. No problems with what happened were reported to those at Cañon City. There would be future withdrawals elsewhere which would go ahead after that first hurdle had been passed.

That night, before Mitchell’s funeral in distant DC, the first POW swaps were made too. It was the badly wounded which went first with transfers made of an agreed-upon total of five hundred each through those withdrawn areas. That was another test to see how that would all go, whether difficulties would crop up, as well as one of gaining trust between two opponents. Medical teams were on-hand at each swap location with details passed to the of who was coming through as well as the scale of their injuries plus treatment history. Despite the interruption of an aborted guerrilla attack against DAR forces down US Route-2 east of Bonners Ferry, the exchanges were made. More withdrawals, swaps of prisoners and also the planned lifting of the United States at-sea military blockade of the DAR’s West Coast were on the cards afterwards.

Everything that those who had struck in DC had tried to stop when on after their failure.

Then there was Glow-worm as well. Leach and Antonetti discussed that when they were at Cañon City too. That computer virus developed by the National Security Agency to be used against a foreign adversary in time of war (or ahead of more likely) had been stolen by the DAR and used to cripple the US Armed Forces enough to cause defeat on home soil. Antonetti was offering, as Pierce had first promised, a solution for that which the United States would employ: the US Government had been duped before by such a prospect though. In talking with the DAR about Glow-worm, Leach was assisted by technical experts and also intelligence figures. Not just the solution to the issue, but in trusting the DAR and what that country wanted in return, matters outside of the peace treaty whose framework had been thrashed out, was extremely complicated. Whereas so much progress was made elsewhere, negotiation on that matter stalled. Leach’s country wanted to end such a menace to that danger to its wholescale national security but while Antonetti’s was offering that up, the whole process dragged out. A message to Antonetti from his president was sent for him to get on with the matter but he wasn’t the one causing the hold-up. It was the US Intelligence Community briefing President Cruz with serious concerns that delayed things.

[James G]

178 – Fellow plotters

Lori Oakes snitched on everyone. The failed would-be president fully cooperated with Department of Justice investigators where she named names and also provided testimony against all of those involved in the effort to see her seize the presidency via force. She did so for the one and only reason of saving herself from a federal death penalty sentence. At first, Attorney General Gunnarsson had Jackie Maguire’s team involved but due to the scale of the Oakes investigation, and the busy work on secessionist traitors that Maguire was involved in, a second Special Counsel was named with his own team and they soon took over. Garland Perry had once been the US Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky and was a retired private attorney of good standing whom Gunnarsson knew. President Cruz approved Perry’s rushed appointment and kept a keen eye on all proceedings too. She wanted to see justice done.

Detained at the White House alongside Oakes had been the ‘Ohio Clique’. Her senate staff and many personal acquaintances were all from her home state with Oakes preferring them over others from elsewhere in the country throughout her time in the US Senate. Fourteen staffers and associates were arrested in the damaged official residence of the president including a former federal judge who, as well as being her father-in-law, had sworn her in on live television: hours later, Cruz had herself taken the same oath of office though with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court doing that on the steps outside of the Capitol Building. Oakes didn’t have to give up any of her immediate followers though did provide evidence as to what they had all done in addition to what Perry’s DOJ people knew. There were plenty more fellow plotters though, those who had kept their heads down during the takeover in DC either waiting to make their move or whom had lost their nerve. They were accessories directly to or after the fact to the worst of all crimes: treason against the United States. The US Senate moved to expel Oakes while the DOJ went after those who had aided her.

Vic Groves was the first of the most prominent silent supporters of Oakes to be arrested. He was the Governor of Utah, a state in the West occupied by the Democratic American Republic and being given away in the peace deal which Oakes had tried to stop by taking power DC through physical presence. She had intended for him to be her vice president – a nationwide unity message: an Easterner and a Westerner – though he had had a last minute case of nerves and hadn’t joined her in the White House when she went there. Perry had DOJ agents and US Marshals arrest him at his temporary home in Georgetown. Groves had been considering fleeing, like he had done from Utah, but had waited too long to make his mind up as to where to go. Placed in handcuffs, he was arrested and detained. A trio of Members of Congress were arrested at the same time as Groves. They had all been inside the Capitol Building when it was surrounded by US Marines and had been biding their time when it came to revealing their support for Oakes. That time had never come due to their colleagues’ utter rejection of what the Senate Majority Leader did. All three were Republican representatives in the US House. Rick Deakin was from out of Ohio, June Lorenz from Nevada (the only Republican there pre-secession) with Callum Witt representing Missouri. They were in-line to be the secretary of defence, attorney general & secretary of homeland security respectively in Oakes’ ‘government’. Like her though, they were taken into custody on charges of treason.

Away from the elected politicians, there were public officials and private citizens who soon found themselves arrested and up on charges brought by the Special Counsel investigation. The numbers grew fast. Those involved whom Oakes informed on were joined by others whose involvement she didn’t know about but whose involvement was revealed either by further cooperating witnesses or unearthed in detailed enquiries made. Many actually hadn’t done anything but keep quiet. Oakes and her fellow plotters had sounded people out and been told no yet they hadn’t done as they should have and alerted the authorities. Those arrested either confessed, kept quiet on the advice of counsel or denied any involvement. Perry’s people had a lot of work to do when it came to further uncovering the conspiracy and seeing that all of those exposed could be successfully prosecuted.


Colonel Gibbons was charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with multiple felony-level articles. Conspiracy (article 81), mutiny (94), unlawful detention (97), murder (118), kidnapping (125) and conduct unbecoming an officer (133).

The Department of Defence retained responsibility for him and all those in uniform who joined the mutiny, knew about it but didn’t take part or were in any way involved indirectly through negligence. Gibbons was appointed counsel while he lay in intensive care at Walter Reed but that was a military officer from the USMC Judge Advocate Division: not a civilian attorney. Dozens of fellow US Marines were issued with similar charges at to the ones he faced with the US Armed Forces going further than the DOJ did. The burden of proof for a charge was less for those in uniform though that didn’t mean that a latter guilty verdict at a court martial would be easier to get. Why what was done was because the Marine Corps sought to rid itself of all those involved. Officers, non-coms and enlisted Marines within the 24 MEU were charged. There were many of them who had no idea what Gibbons had been up to and he had duped them. However, when faced with compelling evidence that they were acting in the wrong during the occupation of DC, the excuse that they were just following orders was considered to be no defence. There were others charged who were aware that the order to march on DC was wrong and didn’t go along with it yet they too faced military justice for not speaking out nor stopping Gibbons. The lieutenant–colonel commanding VMM-365, a hybrid Marine Aviation unit attached alongside 3/6 MARINES under the 24 MEU, had refused the order to join the assault on DC which made Gibbons attack using solely vehicles. She was just as guilty as he was though because she had done nothing to stop him. Her fellow officer of equal rank who commanded 3/6 MARINES, with whom the then-captive Cruz convinced that Gibbons was in the wrong so stood down his Marines, was also arrested and charged. He had known that the marching orders from Quantico were false yet had followed Gibbons despite his misgivings with the belief that ‘everything would sort itself out in the end’. It did: with his arrest.

A full colonel who lead HMX-1 was also detained by military police officers. He had been outside of Gibbon’s command chain and instead followed the orders of Major–General Harrington in standing down the ‘Whiteside’ element of his squadron on April 12th. HMX-1 had the Marine One/Two helicopters with that subunit alongside the test portions of the squadron. Those helicopters hadn’t gone into DC from Quantico, Davison AAF nor Andrews AFB to rescue Mitchell & Cruz when they were supposed to. Several staff officers alongside that colonel were arrested as well for following the same orders to do nothing. Secret Service agents had died making a valiant effort on the South Lawn of the White House waiting for those helicopters. More than that, the failure to do their utmost important task at such a critical time was a stain on the entire Marine Corps leading to many calls for the service itself to be abolished. Harrington had had many subordinates with him when he had gone to take over at that command post within Fort Belvoir. There had been survivors of the urgent US Navy air attack that demolished his HQ and killed him. A good few officers knew what he was doing or should have acted to stop him despite not being fully aware. Their dereliction of duty had lead to all of those deaths and an infamous act of treason against the United States. Furthermore, personnel in transportation, security & communications posts at Quantico, plus the base commander himself, had failed to do their duty and uphold the standards expected of them as US Marines. Not arrested, they were relieved of duties for allowing Gibbons and Harrington to do what they did.

General Charlie Shaw, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, came very close to quitting in the aftermath. He had felt that that would be the decent thing to do considering it was ultimately his Marines who had done what they had. The talk of vengeance against the entire USMC from certain politicians and sections of the media made him stay in-place though. In addition, he was going nowhere even when there was a lot of pressure to resign when he heard a notion being floated by the Acting SecDef to discharge every single Marine involved no matter what they did or knew. The 24 MEU had been a huge force, a small brigade in-fact, when it marched on DC. Close to two thousand Marines were involved with no more than thirty brought up on charges. Many more had failed to do their duty and Shaw believed that they should be punished but the concept of a complete pushing out of uniform of everyone involved from the lowest Rifleman upwards was abhorrent to him. 24 MEU, 3/6 MARINES & 3 RAIDER might as units be disestablished due to the stain on the Marine Corps their continued existence would be, that Shaw would agree upon, yet he fought on so as to keep the Marine Corps alive and also not see those innocent Marines treated so unjustly. They were held in detention all over the place after being disarmed and there had already been suicides & self-harm among some who had taken the knowledge of what they had done very bad. Shaw wouldn’t see them all thrown to the wolves for what a few had done where all those other Marines had been temporarily led astray.

[James G]

179 – Another funeral

The state funeral of President Lee Mitchell was held in DC on April 19th. He had died a week beforehand when the United States’ capital had been taken over by armed US Marines engaged in a mutiny to try an install a usurper to the presidency. Mitchell’s rightful successor, Christina Cruz Flores, attended the funeral and so did a large portion of her government and the congressional establishment too. There were ‘designated survivors’ outside the city in case of an attack, one which if it was made, would have to fight through intense security. A battalion of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division had flown home from New Mexico and there were US Army helicopters from the 12th Aviation Battalion present too for over-watch & evacuation: the duty of presidential flights hadn’t been returned to the US Marines’ HMX-1. US Navy fighter jets which had been flown off the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to bases on land provided high-level top cover. Secret Service agents, US Marshals, DHS contractors and civilian police were everywhere.

Anna Mitchell attended the funeral. She had been orphaned when her mother first (and sister too) were poisoned and then her father slain in that underground blast while evading capture by putschists. Her grandparents were with her alongside aunts, uncles & cousins too, but images of her in a wheelchair – she also had been poisoned, only surviving due to that then still-secret Russian-provided antidote – went global. It was widely agreed that her bravery in attending was something to be marvelled though a minority opinion was also expressed that the teenage girl shouldn’t have been ‘put on parade’ like she was. Another attendee who much media focus was on was former President Walsh. He had gone to the funeral of President Roberts in February though had been in less of the limelight than he was at the one for Mitchell. He stood behind Mitchell’s daughter during the service inside Washington National Cathedral and then next to one of her grandfathers at Arlington National Cemetery. Walsh was highly-placed in official national precedence as the previous living president and had every right to be where he was that day. His attendance though brought much ire. He had been in the White House when secession out in the West had happened and was blamed for doing nothing to stop that nor the resulting Civil War. He would depart from Arlington quietly afterwards, not going to the White House when Cruz offered him a place at the unofficial wake there, and instead went back to his Virginia hideaway where he had spent the majority of the preceding months. Many voices in Congress had openly spoke of seeing vengeance against him since he had left office, and there would be talk of that again after his appearance at the funeral for Mitchell, but nothing would ultimately come of that.

As had been the case in February for Roberts, Mitchell’s funeral saw the arrival in DC of a significant foreign contingent of leaders and important officials. They attended another funeral for a dead American president. There was a lot of uneasiness at attending due to security fears. DC had been the scene of repeated terrorist attacks, assassinations and then the putsch to try and overthrow the US Government. Generally the same people had gone to Roberts’ funeral in the middle of the civil war though, a time when DC had been targeted on-and-off by military action. That conflict had been fought to a standstill and peace talks were ongoing. The promise of extensive security provided a lot of reassurance in the end. Still… there were a lot of frayed nerves. Mexico’s president didn’t attend. His foreign minister went instead because the president down in Mexico City feared that should he leave his capital, his government would be toppled: Mexico was beset by an undeclared civil war brought on by what had happened across its northern border. Prime ministers and presidents, royalty, foreign ministers and senior military staffs went to DC from across the world.

Argentina, Brazil, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand… and so many more countries had their leadership in DC that day for the funeral. Russia sent its foreign minister while the Chinese ambassador (but no one from home) attended. Australia and New Zealand both had their prime ministers go and so too did those from Britain and Canada. The French President, the German Chancellor, the EU President were also in DC. The list of dignitaries went on. King George VII was there and there was more European royalty in attendance as well as others from the Arab world too. The Pope sent a senior envoy and so did the Dalai Lama.

The funeral was broadcast across the United States and much of the world too, even within countries not friendly to America. Eyes were glued to television, computer & phone screens. It wasn’t shown across the Democratic American Republic despite the (few remaining) networks there not having much else to show. Plenty of commerce came to a halt, or at least a slowdown, during the events of the day too. There were a good number of viewers near and far from DC that day who waited for something to happen. Maybe they were morbid, maybe they were pessimists, maybe they wanted to see all of those leaders killed. Either way, there was no disruption by violence to what went on. Mitchell was buried with full honours as befitting his status as a president, military veteran and family man. Once that was completed, there was a continuation of life regardless: that was the way of the world.


The gathering of many leaders of overseas allies in DC allowed for Cruz to have an informal summit with them. There were several series of talks with either a significant number of attendees at once or one-on-ones. The 51st President met with the leaders of the Five Eyes countries – Australia, Britain, Canada & New Zealand – together while also talking with the Israelis, Jordanians & Saudi separately. She spoke with Mexico’s foreign minister and the French president together where France was acting as an ‘interested third party’ in what was happening in Mexico. A large meeting of NATO leaders took place with that gathering over at the State Department rather than inside the still-damaged White House. There was a one-on-one with Poland’s acting president too, talks which concerned the view from the Cruz Administration (carried over from that of the Mitchell Administration) that Poland had submitted to Russia’s will after the killing of the previous Polish President: that was something which caused disagreement. Cruz took a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister but that was short and cordial with no friendliness expressed despite the efforts of President Makarov’s man sent to DC to try and repair relations somewhat.

With regard to those allies, the closest ones especially, an agreement came brokered by the British PM. He had been close to Mitchell and moved to try to position himself as the closest of allies to Cruz on the international stage despite many challengers for that post. The agreement was over how the Democratic American Republic would be treated once final peace came between that breakaway nation and the United States. Allies of the United States would lock the DAR out of the international order. They could work behind the scenes, though openly if necessary, to subvert efforts by the DAR to establish itself as a full member of the world community through diplomacy, organisations, trade & banking. While they did that, the United States would be free of blame for that to allow for a post-war settlement to take place along the fractured line that would be the new border between the two. Eventually, the US would join in but only once it got what it desired with regards to a peace that lasted and a re-establishment of its previous military strength. The example of successful armed secession frightened Britain and Canada, and the dictatorial oppression upset others too. Israel was aghast at the anti-Zionist foreign affairs approach of the DAR while the Jordanians & the Saudis didn’t have any regard for the hostile views espoused on ‘Middle East democracy’ that had come out of that country. New Zealand’s PM sounded some caution about pushing the DAR into the arms of China, something his Australian counterpart also agreed with, but Cruz pointed to a plan of action to deal with that down the line that allies came around to agreeing with once the outline was explained to them.

The United States and Canada would have post-war military ties even more extensive than already in-place through NORAD & NATO. A handshake agreement, one with Britain promising to aid Canada on that, was made on that issue. Canada, just like the UK and the other Five Eyes countries too, was already planning to increase defence spending in light of all that had gone on where the United States’ military forces had taken a step back from a dominant global role. Yet, there was a land border with the DAR that Canada had to face in the future with the knowledge that the DAR had that history of forceful expansionism. The protection of Canadian territorial sovereignty was promised to be supported by Cruz and NATO leaders. They’d go to war if the DAR tried to annex parts of Canada no matter what the circumstances… or at least promised to do so.


The same day as Mitchell’s funeral, there was a day’s pause in the peace talks between Leach and Antonetti. Out there in Colorado there was a secretive important event taking place away from the negotiating table at Cañon City. Where the ceasefire-stalled front-lines were located just to the west of there, up in the Rocky Mountain passes, the DAR delivered a prisoner to waiting US Marshals.

Maria Arreola Rodriguez was given to the United States for nothing in exchange.

She didn’t want to go. She had no choice in the matter though. Ministry for Public Safety agents had moved her from that DAR Armed Forces holding cell in the Mojave Desert and taken her to Salida first. MAR was informed ahead of time what was happening and protested. No matter what she said though, President Pierce had decided to hand her over gift-wrapped to the United States. It got rid of her from out of his country and he knew full well that she was desperately wanted by the US Government. While the gift was sold as without a price, it would certainly help gain the end to the conflict with the United States that he wanted just as much as Cruz did. MAR was passed over to those US Marshals at midday and was soon on her way to DC. Federal prosecutors had been for months waiting to get their hands on her and see her brought before a court. It had been something unthinkable when she had led the DAR, even after she was deposed, but they were told a day ahead of time that she was on her way and so prepared for her arrival. The following morning, she would make that appointment with a judge in the DC Superior Court.

[gillan1220]

Now we shall see the trial of MAR and Padley. Also part of me has a feeling the U.S. has trick up their sleeves to one-up the DAR.

[Brky2020]

Wow.

I'm gone for a week (due to personal issues) and all hell breaks loose. At least the nukes didn't fly.

I'd love for Pierce to be exposed to the entire world for the bastard he is...and that he be deposed by the people, preferably via the ballot. He won't allow that to happen, so unfortunately other means will be necessary.

[gillan1220]

Aug 1, 2021 23:44:03 GMT Brky2020 said:

Wow.

I'm gone for a week (due to personal issues) and all hell breaks loose. At least the nukes didn't fly.

I'd love for Pierce to be exposed to the entire world for the bastard he is...and that he be deposed by the people, preferably via the ballot. He won't allow that to happen, so unfortunately other means will be necessary.

Pierce got the victory he wanted. He was not able to march the DAR Armed Forces all the way to D.C. but he does not need to (for now anyways, I bet he is getting ideas of crossing the Mississippi). All he needed was to keep the U.S. Armed Forces in check by holding them in the Continental Divide and let the Glowworm do its trick. Nonetheless, I have a feeling his pyrrhic victory won't last long since the DAR is pariah.

[James G]

Aug 1, 2021 17:45:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

Now we shall see the trial of MAR and Padley. Also part of me has a feeling the U.S. has trick up their sleeves to one-up the DAR.

If there is a trick up their sleeve, they have left it damn late!

Aug 1, 2021 23:44:03 GMT Brky2020 said:

Wow.

I'm gone for a week (due to personal issues) and all hell breaks loose. At least the nukes didn't fly.

I'd love for Pierce to be exposed to the entire world for the bastard he is...and that he be deposed by the people, preferably via the ballot. He won't allow that to happen, so unfortunately other means will be necessary.

A lot happened!
The fear of the people power unleashed during the revolt leading to independence is one the previous collective DAR leadership worried about turning on them. They 'fixed' that with a crackdown and a secret police in all but name. Pierce will reap the rewards and hold a grip on power now that opponents with influence are gone and thsoe with power on-side. Of course, that may not hold in the future though...

Aug 2, 2021 3:19:18 GMT gillan1220 said:

Pierce got the victory he wanted. He was not able to march the DAR Armed Forces all the way to D.C. but he does not need to (for now anyways, I bet he is getting ideas of crossing the Mississippi). All he needed was to keep the U.S. Armed Forces in check by holding them in the Continental Divide and let the Glowworm do its trick. Nonetheless, I have a feeling his pyrrhic victory won't last long since the DAR is pariah.

I think the West will be enough. The victory won was a close run thing. Tanks were prioritised over fuel trucks and that did hurt a lot, it took a long time to push the US Back out of DAR territory.
Glow-worm is the war winner.
The future doesn't look bright for the DAR. That pariah status is real and will hurt, hard 

[James G]

180 – Answer to infection

The Glow-worm computer virus had won the war for the Democratic American Republic by allowing it to retain its independence through military victory. It had been put into play early on, but before its true effects could manifest themselves effectively, the DAR had been right on the verge of defeat. The US Army had taken much of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona too. In that third state, there had been half a dozen combat divisions poised to cross the Colorado River and enter Southern California. They would have swung in behind Las Vegas on one flank, isolated Los Angeles & San Diego on the other while in the centre gone tearing forwards towards the Bay Area… all the way to the Puget Sound if necessary. At that crucial moment, when everything won was threatened with loss, Glow-worm had finally began to truly pay off. It had knocked out of operation all of the very best US weapons of war before then moving to eliminate systems lower down. The armies of the DAR had chased those of the United States all the way back to the Rio Grande and even got into Texas too. The turn around in fortunes for both sides had been solely down to that weapon. The DAR Armed Forces had had crippling supply and logistical issues while the US Armed Forces were doing what they were always best at when fully unleashed. If Glow-worm had done its worst a week or two later rather than when it did, the results would have been very different indeed. The DAR would have been destroyed with its leadership waiting upon death-row.

Tremendous damage had been done by that virus to US military systems. It could have also eliminated the DAR’s ability to make war too though. It was not a weapon which was controllable. It was an AI-driven learning virus that sought to expand itself, conversely destroying everything in its wake too at the same time. There was no master control panel for it. The DAR had sent a ‘booster’ when they had duped the US Department of Defence into re-infecting themselves with a second dose but they only learnt how to apply that follow-up attack the hard way. Glow-worm sought destruction without regard for its master. DAR military systems had been fitted with improvised shielding – a condom, so General Fuller had called it – because where they were put to use was in the virus’ playpen. Unprotected systems had suffered the negative effects of Glow-worm where the DAR had made mistakes in that shielding early on. At the National Security Agency, the parent of Glow-worm before it was snatched, there were those there who knew there about how shielding would have worked for the US Armed Forces. The Defence Department hadn’t listen to them properly in what was done yet, even then, the actual method of putting on the protective sheath was done wrong despite the correct materials. Those in uniform had looked at captured DAR military equipment and discovered the software in-place. They’d reverse-engineered the systems and, in a hurry, tried to apply it. When the NSA had stepped in to show them how it was done, they too had made mistakes. A whole team of software engineers and coders off in distant Area 51 could have told them how it was done, lending a helping hand to fellow Americans, but they had been on the opposite side of the great divide which had become the front-lines of civil war.

One of them, a young woman who’d defected to the DAR upon formation and took knowledge from Fort Meade with her to Nevada, had been left aghast at what the DAR was in reality beyond her notions of freedom, democracy & a paradise on the Pacific. She’d tried to re-defect, to take what she knew back to those she’d previously turned her back on. Extremely enterprising and with a mission she believed in, that NSA employee who’d gone AWOL only to regret that, had made it all the way down into Arizona and within twenty miles of where the front-lines had been in March 2029. DAR military intelligence agents had failed to locate her when it was realised that she had done a runner with a lot of information in her head and data in her backpack. If she had made it to where she sought to get to and done what her aim was, the story would have been one of legend. Alas, that wasn’t how things had turned out. US Army drones were tasked for spotting enemy special forces infiltrators and a little one of those which had no problem flying in a Glow-worm environment had taken notice of a contact labelled as hostile. A target spotted in camouflage with a weapon crawling around near a major supply base was classified as hostile by an algorithm. An infantry team had been first dispatched to engage her but ahead of them, another drone, that one armed and returning from an aborted mission, had been directed to engage her to free up the infantrymen. From out of nowhere, a drone had dropped two small bombs atop the defector. She’d survived for many hours while hurt and alone out on the edge of the desert. No one came to save her and she eventually bled out. What she knew in her head had been lost and what was in her backpack wasn’t found.


Glow-worm was discussed at Cañon City. The two special envoys sent by their governments, Leach and Antonetti, met to discuss that the day after the funeral in DC of President Mitchell. The DAR had offered to aid the United States in overcoming the virus when the peace proposal had been made the month beforehand (only days before that idealistic young woman died) as a condition for the fighting coming to an end. The high-level negotiations made in Colorado addressed everything else before they moved to that issue. Agreements were struck on how to end the conflict to the general satisfaction of both sides: the United States even received the DAR’s first president as a present as a result, the woman regarded as the #1 traitor. But Glow-worm was a sticking point.

There was no trust, that was the problem. That duping done by a false defector to allow for the second infection had been a fantastic piece of spy-craft undertaken by the DAR. They had found something that their opponent was desperate to address, someone whose story was entirely believable and jumped head first into the trick with their eyes wide open too. The military cost was immense. The political damage was extensive. It had cost the DAR very little to do and helped achieve battlefield victory. Therefore, from the moment that the DAR had offered to solve the Glow-worm issue for the United States, there was little faith in the good intentions with that. Mitchell and then his successor President Cruz had both had their own concerns, ones that were only small compared to those of figures within the US Intelligence Community. Such people were paid to be paranoid yet their justifications for not trusting the DAR on its ‘answer to infection’ were thought to be valid beyond their own circles. It wasn’t just what the DAR had done before, but more than that. CIA Director Winterbottom asked the same rhetorical question to Cruz as she had asked of Mitchell: why would the DAR allow us to re-establish our military might and then be in a position to re-start the war to crush those traitors for good?

In less incendiary terms, Leach put the same question to Antonetti. Why would the DAR give up the secret that had allowed it to win the Second American Civil War? She furthered the query by asking how could the United States trust what the DAR would tell them, in the long run? She raised the subject of a logic bomb, something hidden in a line of code to allow for the DAR to see a re-start to Glow-worm should the circumstances arise for a desire to once more re-employ the weapon. If by itself Glow-worm overcame protections and re-emerged as a threat without malicious human intervention, how could the United States know that the DAR wasn’t responsible? Leach explained that before they could move forward, those matters needed to be addressed.

Antonetti’s retort was that the DAR was willing to be open and honest with Glow-worm. There was a future relationship at stake to ensure peace. He also, to the former US SecState’s silent internal fury, claimed that the future national security of the United States was of importance to that of the Democratic American Republic too. Foreign threats would endanger them both and his government hoped to see down the line the two nations working side-by-side as partners, maybe one day friends. It took everything in Leach for her to bite her tongue at that outrageous statement. She’d always been one heck of a diplomatic but Antonetti came closer than anyone ever had to seeing her lose her cool in the middle of such important negotiations with what he said about mutual security and friendship in the future. After all that the DAR had done… Instead, Leach invited Antonetti to talk to his political masters back in the West about the concerns she raised. There needed to be proof, to be guarantees provided. Her guest at the negotiation site next to Cañon City had to come back with something that she could take to her own people back in DC. If not, there was going to be a problem with everything else going on. She put the ball in his court with that too, making it clear that she and her country’s leadership had to be satisfied on the matter. If not, everything else was in jeopardy. Peace was wanted by the United States, Leach made clear, but not at any cost and not with such uncertainty of the future either.

[gillan1220]

If only the Glowworm was used against China. At least both LV and DC know the threat posed by America's adversaries who are already taking advantage of the chaos from the 2ACW.

[James G]

Aug 3, 2021 10:05:08 GMT gillan1220 said:

If only the Glowworm was used against China. At least both LV and DC know the threat posed by America's adversaries who are already taking advantage of the chaos from the 2ACW.

Yes, they do. But any future partnership is poisoned by all that has happened.
Talking of America's adversaries, there is a different kind operating on the border... 

[James G]

181 – El Paso del Norte

3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had been re-raised within the US Army during the mid-Twenties. It had gone overseas to Eastern Europe to face off against the Russians during the deployment starting in late 2027. Shipped back home during the ‘REFORGER in reverse’ during February ‘29, the brigade had seen conflict during the last stages of the fighting in New Mexico. Equipped as a light unit, it hadn’t fared very well in combat across the southeast of New Mexico when faced by heavy DAR Army units. Nonetheless, it had been pulled out of that engagement ahead of the ceasefire relatively intact: far more damage had been done to other 3rd Infantry Division units. It had been back over the state line where the 3rd Brigade had gone, to the Midland–Odessa area in West Texas. Orders were sent to the commanding colonel during mid-April to move westwards again, though staying outside of New Mexico with the new deployment.

The 3rd Brigade went across the Pecos River and, following the route of Interstate-20 first, deployed into Far West Texas. DAR forces made a mutually-agreed withdrawal back over what was to become the new international border and right in the far corner of Far West Texas, over at El Paso, that area was to be the site of POW exchanges where the first of those were made of the most seriously wounded. Fort Bliss was there (with the DAR having pulled out) and the 3rd Brigade was to establish not just a presence there but also in and around El Paso. The lawlessness of El Paso and nearby was known about ahead of time. Part of the 3rd Brigade had followed Interstate-10 which ran alongside the Rio Grande when moving towards El Paso – the remainder going cross-country up to near the Guadalupe Mountains and following US Route-62 to Fort Bliss – and had seen for themselves all that was going on there in the absence of law and order. The initial mission had been to secure the location for prisoner exchanges though, as well as both the battle-damaged El Paso International Airport & Biggs Army Airfield. That was successfully done. However, on April 20th, new orders came. The 3rd Brigade was to support the civil authorities who had been experiencing difficulties in El Paso though also down a long stretch of the US-Mexico border as far as the Big Bend.


El Paso had been abandoned to the armies of the DAR during their offensive across the Rio Grande inside New Mexico during March. United States Army North had fallen back in disarray though not into Far West Texas. Tanks & infantry with the DAR’s Arizona Corps had moved southwards and they had been engaged by volunteer quasi-militia forces in the service of Texas. The Texas State Guard had been well-equipped and capable but it had been no match for the DAR Army securing its flank by taking those two important air facilities right on the very edge of New Mexico. After bloody, one-sided exchanges, the TXSG had collapsed. Men and women wearing that uniform had either fled or surrendered. Those who did the latter had been the ones closest to the New Mexico state line. The others had got out of El Paso though not been followed into there or even past the city, down I-10, by the Arizona Corps. El Paso hadn’t been occupied, just near surrounded leaving that escape route which tens of thousands of civilians had followed after the TX SG had used it to make a dash for freedom. Governor Garner would later argue that her much-hyped State Guard hadn’t abandoned the fight and what happened in & around El Paso had been the fault of the US Army. That was a load of rubbish. Her lies were all about posturing, about playing the blame game. There had been widely-shared media footage of the TXSG running from battle. In all fairness to them, they should never have been in the way of the victorious Arizona Corps and it was either die or run. Garner couldn’t accept that story though. She had put that militia force there, declared it would ‘fight like Texans always have’ and then seen such a position blow up in her face. To admit the truth wasn’t something she was capable of doing, not with all of her ambitions and previous behaviour.

When first the TXSG had left El Paso, and then so many civilians too, they had been followed by personnel with the US Customs & Border Protection. Federal agents serving within the USCBP had feared that the DAR would continue going deeper into Texas and they would be on the front-lines of war. When that hadn’t happened, putting those agents back where they had been in El Paso itself and further down along the Mexican border from there had been difficult even following the US-DAR ceasefire. The border had been opened up to criminal elements and that had been exploited significantly. A return of federal agents and also Texan state personnel sent by Garner to try and re-establish control over the frontier with Mexico had been met with violence. That had dramatically increased in the days leading up to the deployment of those US Army soldiers from the 3rd Brigade.

The itself city and the whole border region had descended into a lawless no-go area for anyone who could manage to stay away from that portion of Far West Texas. Those who couldn’t leave had faced criminals from near & far who had taken over. There were unorganised violent elements as well as the highly-organised too. Garner off in distant Austin (there was no way she would dare venture towards El Paso herself) blamed ‘Mexicans’ for all that went on. There was a significant number of criminals, including drug cartel gunmen, who came over the border yet they were outnumbered by Americans themselves. From inside El Paso and also from across the nation among ‘volunteers’ who had driven to the region, they weren’t the foreigners who looted and murdered with abandon when there was no one standing in their way. Juárez, just over the border, had been hit with the same sort of violence before El Paso was with Americans having gone over to that Mexican city to commit acts of criminality. There was no law and order there and no soldiers too. The terrifying twist that the Mexican Drug War had taken during 2029 saw to that. Carrillo had tried to forcibly merge cartels from coast to coast throughout northern Mexico and come pretty close to that before he had been assassinated. After his demise, what he had been trying to create had fractured and utter chaos had broken loose. Thousands had lost their lives in Juárez and then it had become the turn of El Paso to get a dose of the same.

Before it had received its current name, Juárez had previously been known as El Paso del Norte: the pass of the north. El Paso was a shortened version of the same. Where the mountains and the river ran produced a well-traversable pass used by those moving north or south long before the European ‘discovery’ of America. In the modern era, the cross-border region had been an economic magnet due to location, infrastructure and access to cheap labour. Civil wars in both America (declared) and Mexico (undeclared) had seen great disruption to all of that but there had still be a lot of trade and manufacturing right up until the TXSG did a runner rather than die for El Paso. Along with the legitimate economy, the El Paso del Norte had long been used for criminal purposes too. Smugglers had made use of it where two cities had grown up on different sides of the Rio Grande with border controls that were always exposed somewhere. Drugs and people going north with guns going south had been for so long moving through the region. The loss of civil and military authority over first the southern side and then the northern side later on provided what had first been regarded as a fantastic opportunity for the organised criminals. They’d rushed to exploit that, making the best of the situation before it could be later corrected. Anyone who stood in their way had faced death. Yet, others seeking to make themselves rich and powerful had seen the same opportunity spring up. Local criminal elements in El Paso and also armed patriots from across the United States who’d initially gone to Texas to fight had done the same. There were empty businesses and commercial property as well as houses from where citizens had fled. The local police in El Paso hadn’t stood a chance to try and stop that. Cartel gunmen attacked them at their stations, even their homes after their shifts had ended. American criminal shot at them as well.

While all that went on, countless numbers of immigrants had crossed the border going north. There were Mexicans among them yet the majority were from further south in Latin America fleeing from poverty, oppression and violence. Wartime lies spread by traffickers and troublemakers had promised them that America was a utopia which they could reach. They met hell while in the north of Mexico before they could cross the border. They were targeted by the vicious cartel gunmen (a lot of them deserting Mexican soldiers) who exploited, kidnapped, raped and murdered them with impunity. Sanctuary was sought inside the United States: that was where they ran to. So many of those who went through the El Paso del Norte didn’t find that there though.


Arranged early on during the high-level negotiations at Cañon City for when it came to the first prisoner exchanges through small portions of occupied territory outside of declared borders had been on-the-ground working groups to facilitate that. There was one of those working groups up at Bonners Ferry in the Idaho Panhandle with Fort Bliss being the second site. Soldiers who had not long beforehand been shooting at each other were ordered to cooperate allow for the transfer of a certain number of wounded and also provide the other side with details of unexploded munitions, wartime-caused danger to life & also civilian issues that needed attention. DAR liaison officers there in Far West Texas informed their US counterparts of the problems they had observed in El Paso. The warning was taken seriously just not addressed in time. Garner’s actions too where she sent Texas state armed personnel into the area meant that the problems were at first thought solvable without the need for the US Army to intervene. That wasn’t how things turned out though. When it was finally understood what was going on, when the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Acting SecDef had managed to impress upon their president the seriousness of the situation, the whole issue had gotten even worse. Criminal elements had by then moved to turn El Paso into their own version of Juárez. The police department was practically destroyed and what had been done to those immigrants south of the border had moved to occur to ordinary Americans themselves in their own city north of the frontier. Hell had come to those in El Paso like it had to those south of the border.

The 3rd Brigade was needed in the El Paso del Norte area and beyond too all the way down along the Rio Grande.

Those soldiers rode into battle either in their HMMWVs or by heli-lift. DAR military officers on-site at Fort Bliss weren’t informed because, in the opinion of those back in DC, it was none of their business despite how close that occurred to where the ceasefire-stalled front-lines of war had moved to. What they thought about what happened wasn’t regarded as a concern. The matter was one for the United States only. A restoration of law and order was enforced by the 3rd Brigade. The US Army had done something similar in the southern reaches of Arizona when on the offensive three during February and encountering criminal elements who’d crossed the then porous border to unleash terror upon such places as Douglas. Things were worse in Far West Texas but moved upon to crush it there as well. Live ammunition was used. There was no messing around. The soldiers were sent to fight an invading army, so the mission was, and that meant that they could use deadly force against armed enemies on American soil. A lot of Americans were killed, more of them than foreigners were. Heavy weaponry was employed to put down resistance to a re-establishment of US sovereignty in places such as Fort Hancock and Presidio all the way down the I-10 corridor and beyond. Inside El Paso, there was the same use of deadly force just with a little more caution due to there being far more civilian about. Not everywhere was blasted to pieces.

Nonetheless, a lot of innocents were killed. There were people who had guns to defend themselves and weren’t quick enough to drop them when faced with armed soldiers sent on a combat mission into what for them was hostile territory. Others were caught in the cross-fire. In repeated instances, cartel gunmen bugging out of El Paso when faced with what they did, forced immigrants out between them and the US Army, fired some shots and fled from the consequences of that. They had stolen & abandoned Mexican Army heavy weapons of their own and used those at other times when they didn’t withdraw back towards the Rio Grande. Heavy machine guns and rocket launchers were used against the 3rd Brigade, who returned fire with all that they had. Not enough care was taken to see that those shots didn’t hurt the innocent.

After two days, the fighting died out. El Paso was back in American hands with the US Army there occupying it. The butcher’s bill was huge and the outcome of the realisation of that saw heads role. Both the brigade commander and his divisional commander too were removed from their roles when it became clear just how out of control things had got. Criminals had killed more innocents than the soldiers had, but at times the latter had been completely out of control. The death toll was put on the heads of the 3rd Brigade entirely. They had turned El Paso into a war zone rather than going in there on a ‘simple security mission’ as ordered from above. Garner and Texan politicians turned their ire on the US Army. There was an ongoing political spat between the governor and the congresswoman-turned-president as part of that yet there was still real anger from Texan politicians when they realised the scale of the violence that the 3rd Brigade had brought to El Paso when they had been sent there to do the opposite. What occurred would also be brought up in the following days at Cañon City too. The United States position would be that that was none of the business of the DAR. El Paso was to become a border city – between the DAR and Mexico both – yet was sovereign US territory: the DAR was to keep their noses out of what didn’t concern them.

The tragedy, and the recriminations, was something that went national and global. The US Armed Forces had been defeated in battle by domestic secessionists and then was accused of going on the rampage inside an American city slaughtering innocent civilians. The facts, the minute details, were distorted for political purposes all over the place. Numbers of those killed and the scale of the damage done was inflated, or even downplayed. Nonetheless, blood had run in the streets of El Paso and it had been spilt by the US Army. The whole incident was avoidable and portrayed as deliberate when it wasn’t. That suited those who wanted to give that appearance very well indeed.

[James G]

182 – War on Treason

Presidents Mitchell & then Cruz had allowed the ceasefire in the West to take place and began conducting negotiations for a peace deal with the secessionists in the Democratic American Republic without the support of the majority of Congress, even a strong minority to be fair. Opposition to what was done was extensive and across party lines. Taken to its extreme, that opposition had seen Senate Majority Leader Oakes attempt a putsch to end that and continue the war. What she had done had met utter rejection from Congress with senators & representatives held captive by her demanding their support while they feared she would massacre them. The aftermath of her failure had seen positions soften what from some but that in no way had meant that a complete reversal of belief that the war should end like Cruz was aiming to see it finish. Moreover, from those whose opinions had shifted to understanding that it had to be finished, they had moved to opposition to how the negotiations were conducted instead of the idea of negotiations… ones done without their input. They had no role in what went on, what was given away and how Cruz had her special envoy out there agree to exchanges of territory & POWs ahead of any deal being approved. What happened in El Paso was effectively part of that exchange. When the news came, with the truth and lies both believed by different figures, the outrage against Cruz increased.

Who the heck did she thing she was doing all of that alone, as if she was some sort of modern American Emperor!?

The anger against Cruz’s actions didn’t turn to a mood to make a move against her. What Oakes had done had been well outside the political sphere yet the national public reaction to that made Members of Congress weary of taking her on directly even if that had been very different than the attack against Mitchell’s authority. Instead, there were political moves made against what she was doing and those acting on her instructions rather than attacks on the 51st President. SecState Renzi was called before senators. Both the US House and the Senate had moved to continuous session, meeting almost every day: there was no Tuesday-to-Thursday routine and taking it easy. She was busy but they got her to make an appearance. On what authority did she have to trade away portions of US territory? Senators ripped into her supervision of the peace talks with the DAR taking place in Colorado. Special Envoy Leach was too called to appear before the same committee. She was too busy to do so. Too busy? The former SecState was threatened with a subpoena if she didn’t comply. Renzi told her to stay in Cañon City and took the matter to her president.

Cruz went to Capitol Hill on the Saturday afternoon and met with the congressional leadership plus several influential senators who had been leading the effort to savage the ongoing negotiations. The Republicans had selected a new leader in the Senate: Malcolm Rigby. After what had happened with Green and Oakes too, Ridgy was very much a quieter, calmer figure. He was an effective organiser but not a passionate ideologue. Others who had sought the same post after Oakes had been rejected by their colleagues because they were. Rigby, House Speaker Fraser, the two Democratic minority leaders were in attendance. She asked them what they wanted. What could she do to ensure that there was no misunderstanding between the White House and Congress? Cruz went through why she believed, as the slain Mitchell had (laying that on thick), that the war had to come to an end. She went through the intentions of hers when it came to dealing with the DAR. Leach out there in Colorado, the president explained, was acting on her authority. So much of the West was lost for good and couldn’t be retaken no matter what, but Cruz was seeking to ensure the security of the remainder of the country by striking a bargain with the DAR so that the United States came out on top. Cruz’s vision for the future was laid out where was being done in those talks, what she intended to see the DAR agree to, would ultimately doom that illegal country. Not everyone was convinced. Cruz won over some but not all. Fraser told her that even if she was right and got what she wanted from those negotiations, Cruz would never see a peace treaty with the DAR go through Congress. Only they could approve a treaty or anything like that. A ceasefire might last yet a real peace backed by a treaty would never happen. Rigby was less forceful in his response yet spoke in agreement with Fraser: the Senate would never make an approval too.

A request, a demand in all but name, was made of the president that she had the State Department negotiating team turn over every document that they had concerning those talks. Minutes and everyone else were wanted to be studied by the congressional leadership to be passed onto several committees. Cruz could have refused, claiming that to do so would jeopardise the talks with a fear of leaks, but she did agree. A fight like that was one she didn’t want to have. She concentrated on what she had won from her meeting with those over on Capitol Hill. They were opposed to what she was doing yet had indicated a lessening of their attack. That wouldn’t be the case from individual and groups of Members but the leadership was of mind to see how things would play out in Colorado. However, before she left them, one of those senators who’d gone after Renzi, seeking out Leach too, made an open demand. It was one that Cruz at once saw had support from the others present. That senator was Jerry Stokes, one that almost everyone would agree was just a thoroughly awful person in everything he did. Still, on his demand he got that wide support.

Before any peace deal had been finalised by Leach and her counterpart, before Congress had had any input at all, there had been a withdrawal of US forces out of a portion of Idaho which they had held. That was sovereign United States soil, part of a state which the DAR had Shanghaied into its nation and claimed as its own. In exchange, DAR forces had pulled out of a bit of Texas. Stokes had focused on Idaho though and what had happened there. He declared that that should never have happened. Rigby, Fraser, Senate Minority Leader Yorke and House Minority Leader Burke were in agreement when Stokes demanded that any more of that must stop, at least before negotiations were over with. Renzi had told questioning senators that the US would be doing the same across other states in the West: Cruz was told that must be halted. If not, there was going to be real trouble. Stokes wanted too to stop POW exchanges though spoke only of halting the ongoing swaps of badly wounded captives. Cruz argued against that, supported by Rigby as well who spoke of the humanitarian concerns. Stokes subsequently tried to turn the argument his way and win another victory but that didn’t work. It was only wounded being exchanged with like-for-like numbers. There was the matter of a certain number of US POWs held by the DAR who were supposedly rejecting being turned over and saying they wished to stay. Stokes argued that they were being kidnapped. He again didn’t have any luck in persuading the others though, not when they all knew that far more DAR military personnel captured during the war had spoken of refusing to ‘go home’ themselves. Defeated in those battles, Stokes ended his fight there in person with Cruz.

It would continue elsewhere. He was far from the only one in Congress, Easterners as well as a few Westerners still holding their positions, who were determined to carry on opposing so forcefully what was happening even if the congressional leadership was showing acceptance of the defeat incurred. The problem was that what Oakes had done had poisoned their argument with so much of the American people. The tilt in public opinion had firmly shifted towards and end of the war following that putsch to keep it going. Those in Congress who wanted to keep it going, to reverse all that was being given away, were finding themselves increasingly outnumbered by others who had correctly read the way the wind was blowing.


There was a lot more going in with Congress at that time than just the criticisms of what was happening with those negotiations in Colorado.

Moves were made to expel Oakes from the Senate and the trio of Deakin, Lorenz & Witt from the US House. No senator had been expelled since the First American Civil War back in the 1860s. With House members, there had been recent examples yet the whole process had previously been time-consuming and complicated. When a total of eighty-four senators & representatives had in January 2029 started their boycott of Congress and then all sat in the DAR Parliament, efforts had begun to expel them. Working together though, they all simultaneously resigned their seats over a two-day period. Having their thunder stolen from them with those Democrats acting first at the beginning of the year, when it came to the four Republicans involved in the deadly attempt to topple the US Government, Members of Congress moved faster. Lorenz beat them to the punch with the Nevada congresswoman managing to quit first but the other three were officially expelled from Congress: Deakin had also tried to resign but his effort was purposefully delayed so he could be forcefully expelled. A victory against treason was declared by many Members doing what they did in working together to throw out Oakes, Deakin and Witt.

The loss of the West meant that the ‘Blue Barrier’ was gone for the Democrats when it came to future elections. California and the other Western states such as Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon & Washington were lost when it came to their votes in presidential elections as well as House & Senate representation. The Republicans would miss the Red states of Idaho and Utah – though their ‘Red Sea’ out there had been weakened ahead of the loss of those two where Democrats had won congressional races in 2028 – but the Democrats came out of the political calculus far worse. With half of Colorado, the populated half too, staying in the union, some of that loss could be offset as it was also with Hawaii likewise having been returned, though the majority of those seats from that pair of states had been held by the Democrats before secession so they gained nothing overall. A very different political future was what Members of Congress saw when it came to national elections. The process began to start re-seating members to represent Eastern Colorado (that name was starting to stick) as well as Hawaii by the Democratic leadership in each chamber. There had been previous stalling but a major effort was made to push on once the US Supreme Court declared (following CO Governor Webb’s lawsuit) that denial of representation was unconstitutional. There was some Republican support for that due to thinking in their party that the political landscape in each might change due to all that had happened, but a problem cropped up. That was one which the House Speaker called ‘the future of ghost deputies’.

There were senators and representatives from the states out West which had formed the DAR who had refused to go along with that initial boycott and the later forming of an opposing parliament. Democrats and Republicans alike held seats in Congress for states lost. There were almost two dozen of them. The term which Speaker Fraser used was one that came from the history of Taiwan, back before that country was finally lost in 2027. For forty years from the historic loss of the mainland by the then Republic of China until democracy had come in Taiwan at the beginning of the Nineties, parliamentarians in Taipei had represented portions of their nation held by the Communists. No elections could be held for those seats and the deputies had aged while seated. When they died, they were not replaced and, finally, the system was overhauled there on Taiwan. Fraser had pondered over whether such an example would be followed in the United States or would there be ghost deputies instead with senators & representatives appointed to represent all of those vacant seats. How would that work in the future with reapportionment? Or, if those holding those seats were to stay in-place, was that democratic? Both chambers debated the issue while there was much outside media coverage over it too. No one could agree on what to do nor were there any compromises on the horizon.

Right before the US Army had been sent into El Paso, the situation in that city and the nearby stretch of Far West Texas had been discussed extensively and passionately in Congress. Acting Secretary of Defence Fitzpatrick had been harassed by not just Texan Members of Congress but others from elsewhere in the country to sort out the situation there. Stories had come out of El Paso, some true and some not, that the politicians reacted strongly to. Fitzpatrick over at Raven Rock had been trying to confirm what was going on, arrange for the freeing up of troops and also get Cruz to authorise a deployment for a mission such as the one which would be needed. The security situation there had been one big concern for Congress but it was known that the power, water & telecommunications links were all out as well. That big humanitarian crisis, along with all of the violence, had driven demands upon the Defence Department. That was an American city within what had become the most-populous state in the union following the loss of California. Texas was important and a portion of it had been in the process of near societal collapse… at least represented that way in the media. The US Army then went in that and there came that clusterf*ck where the soldiers ended up shooting all of those American civilians there. Blame was put on the US Army for the whole thing, the entire body count that actually included a lot of non-Americans as later realised, with Fitzpatrick savaged by Congress. Cruz hadn’t made an intention clear to nominate him for the vacant position of SecDef yet there was a bipartisan consensus afterwards that Fitzpatrick couldn’t, wouldn’t be staying at the top of the Defence Department. The same feelings were there with the entire uniformed leadership of the US Armed Forces because of not just El Paso but the loss of the war against the DAR. Just like after the defeat in the Taiwan Conflict two years beforehand, Members of Congress wanted rid of the Joint Chiefs: US NORTHCOM commander Reilly was also for the chop despite his late wartime appointment and the fact that he couldn’t honestly be blamed. Congress was in a vengeful mood and would get rid of all those who they blamed.

Cruz hadn’t publicly suggested, let alone moved to nominate, a vice presidential candidate. As had been the case when Mitchell put her in her role, Congress had the ultimate approval of whom that might be. There were candidates angling for the role – there was always the chance they could rise to the presidency themselves and that was quite the prize – from in Congress and without. Names mentioned in the media following apparent ‘leaks’ from out of the White House were discussed with dismissals or tacit approval. They waited upon Cruz for that though.


The United States had suffered gravely due to treason committed. There had been the secession in the West, an extensive domestic terrorist campaign and then a putsch using armed soldiers taking over the middle of DC with the result being the death of the 50th President. Combatting all of that treason had proven too much for the country in terms of the loss of the West. When it came to the terrorism and the effort to topple the legitimate government, those battles had appeared to have been won yet the victory hadn’t been one to the liking of those in power. Members of Congress sought to see a way where what had gone on through the Years of Lead and then the Second American Civil War didn’t happen again.

Senator Donner from out of Florida – appointed when his predecessor had been assassinated by terrorists within the confines of Congress itself – was the first major figure to propose a Department of National Security. There had been colleagues of his talking about a War on Treason with his expressed belief to fight that there needed to be a reorganisation of the federal government’s ability to combat such serious threats to the nation as what had been facing. The echoes of 9/11 at the beginning of the Noughties were there for many to see with his proposal: the War on Terror and the Department of Homeland Security. What the 41st President had done back then had been to focus on an external threat directed against the United States. Donner saw the internal threat having been fought by the DHS in a fight which it couldn’t win. The DHS had been on the front-lines of the conflict against treason and had failed. There was significant agreement to what he was saying including support from several Democrats outside their party leadership as well. Recognition came that the DHS didn’t have enough of a mandate nor capability to do what it was tasked to do. Two DHS Secretaries in a row, Arguello and Miller, had lost their lives to terrorism. Each had failed in their campaigns to bring treason to a heel yet Donner convinced those in his audience listening that it was more than just those two people doing wrong. Why the loss in the fight against treason had come had been because of the different challenge faced a long time on from 2001.

The example of Carrillo was pointed to. Only the CIA had known what he really was and they had told no one until it was far too late because he was an asset of theirs. Carrillo had duped and used the CIA who hadn’t told anyone else – the DHS, the FBI, the DEA, politicians who should have known too – what he was. So much of what had happened with the formation of the Democratic American Republic had been down to him. If what he had been had been known, if the CIA had shared what they had known, Donner argued that he could have been stopped. Information had come to light following the death of former Senate Majority Leader Green following his death down in Peru about opportunities that had been missed to expose his control of the AIA terror group. His successor Oakes could have been stopped in what she did too, so argued Donner. Just like before 9/11 almost thirty years beforehand, it was a lack of coordination and mission direction, plus the jealous guarding of turf by independent agencies, that had combined to allow all that had happened to occur. Donner’s proposal for a Department of National Security gained support in Congress because it was realised there that there would be a continuing War on Treason. There would be others seeking to act against the United States from within be that terrorism or even secession elsewhere: they would have seen an example succeed. Intelligence agencies would be brought together, put under one head. The proposed DNS wouldn’t have to rely upon civilian contractors from private military companies but instead have its own semi-militarised force. Treason in all forms would be fought before it could lead to a repeat once again of what had been recently witnessed.

Opposition came to Donner’s idea. There were Republicans and Democrats alike who didn’t like it, for a variety of reasons. It was said that bringing together and merging intelligence agencies and also fielding also fielding what would be a ‘national police force’ under a new DNS focused on threats to the nation was completely un-American. Fears were raised that in the future, that might be exploited by those without intentions to protect the United States. Donner’s own patron, FL Governor Cook, came out against it. There were former chiefs of various agencies from the US Intelligence Community who didn’t like it either, and they had allies in Congress. Nonetheless, Donner started to win people over. Rigby had a favourable opinion though would like to see changes to the proposal.

Cruz too liked what she heard. She thought it would work.