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

Ash Like Snow
Part 1​

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

'To how things should have been'.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ash like Snow
Part 2​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And what happens when the spring comes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He frowned.

"What is it?"

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

 

Ash like snow
Part 3​

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

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

Something like a super mongol empire perhaps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question was why.

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

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

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

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

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

... or at least attempt it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ash like snow
Part 4​

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

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

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

The next generation of US armor.

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

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

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

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

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

"nothing that flies lives." He ordered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Second line strikes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ash Like Snow
Conclusion​

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

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

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

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

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

Magic though?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breathing hurt.

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

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

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

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

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

Could the Shongairi break out? Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... and then something happened.

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

 

Winterborn
Part 1​

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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