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

The Shongairi Invasion
Part 1​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So we did that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Shongairi Invasion Part 2​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Shongairi Invasion Part 3​

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

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

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

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

"That fire has been burning since yesterday."

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

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

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

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

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

"What for?"

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

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

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

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

"Salmon," She replied.

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

 

Hells Bells
Part 1​

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

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

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

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

The Shongairi had souls.

Not that he cared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but they'd be alive."

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

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

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

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

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

 

Hells Bells
Part 2​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The list went on.

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

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

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

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

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

Which there might not have been.

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

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

"So now what?" She asked.

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

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

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

"We didn't bring enough of them."

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

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

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

 

Hells bells part 3​

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I mean fully automatic."

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

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

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

"A third of the planet?"

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

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

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

"Where did it come from?"

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

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

Which was part of the problem.

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

"Any idea what started it?"

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

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

"And was our ambush successful?"

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

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

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

"And there is that." He agreed.

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

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

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