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

Hells Bells
Part 4​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But that's why we do this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


"So what then?"

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

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

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

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

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

 

Hells Bells Part 5
(Conclusion)​

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

The Boog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Something opened up?"

"There was an explosion, alright."

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

"It was probably just a meth lab."

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

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

"What about the power plant?"

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

"But they're working?"

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

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

Another explosion rumbled in the distance.

"Hells bells,"

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

"We can't go down there."

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

 

Boog
Part 1​

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They're fighting again."

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

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

"FN barrels?"

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

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

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

And that was useful. "And the Shongairi?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Boog Part 2​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell?"

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

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

or not. Kane shrugged his reverie aside.

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

All of them were hosti humanis generis.

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

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

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

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

There was no immediate response to his comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Boog Part 3​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Howell?" Kane questioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Excuse me?"

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

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

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

"We know that." Ana replied sharpishly.

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

 

Boog Part 4​

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

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

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

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

"Florida?"

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

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

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

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

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

"The cartels?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Dvorak didn't know what to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Boog Part 5​

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

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

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

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

"What's the next step?"

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

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

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

"Leprosy?"

"Armadillos," Probably.

"The plague?"

"Ground squirrels out west." Probably.

"Polio."

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

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

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

Scavenging from ruined cities, or building ore collectors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Lords of the Night
Part 1​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"God?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Fuck you man!"

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

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

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

The problem was that they weren't there yet.

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

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

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

He checked his wristwatch "Captain Mitchell is late."

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

"What goodies was he delivering this time?"

"Surface to air missiles."

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

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

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

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

"What are we gonna tell Asheville about this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Lords of the Night​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Asheville."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are we going to kill Howell?"

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

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

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

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