It took nearly half an hour for the rest of the army to figure out why their centralized headquarters went offline. Only when front-line US troops reported dozens of reconnaissance drones acting strange did people start asking questions. To the more supernaturally inclined soldiers, all those drones crashing or circling and waiting for guidance that would never come was a bad omen.
The death of General Lyon and his staff had little immediate effect on the battle ahead. In fact, the loss of their central leadership freed the division-level commands from further micromanagement. Rather than running around like a chicken with its head cut off, the individual units actually fought smarter. At least initially.
No, the problem wasn’t a lack of initiative or skill on the part of the field units, but that they couldn’t see the big picture. In the heat of battle, it’s quite difficult for a unit in contact to determine whether that enemy charging their position represents a major push or merely a diversion for something bigger, somewhere else.
Even worse, the senior division general that temporarily took over command had no idea how to use all the theatre-level assets under his command. Partly because he didn’t even know about them. While the rebels’ counterattack, a veritable armored fist, slammed down on federal lines from the north, the new US commander had no idea the resources at his disposal. Three squadrons of A-10’s, the most lethal tank-busting aircraft ever built, sat idling on alert just 30 minutes of flight away. With the enemy’s air threat, the Air Force couldn’t afford to sortie increasingly scarce aircraft unless they had solid targets.
Air strike requests from various forward air controllers around the battlefield were shrugged off, while waiting endlessly for confirmation from higher. That was the old, but cruel reality of war. You couldn’t just piss away your firepower helping every little platoon in contact. You needed to wait until it could make a difference. Today, though, the US waited too long.
Sure, the army untangled the clusterfuck within a few hours, but the damage was already done. Any chance to break up the rebel assault and seize the initiative was long gone. In the span of six hours, the US Army was thrown out of their comfortable siege and on the defensive. On the defense and deep within enemy territory.
Despite Washington’s shrill demands, the surviving federal leadership sided with commonsense over politics and ordered their forces to withdraw temporarily from Colorado. A militarily sound strategy, but a public relations disaster.
Chapter 8
SFC Walker muttered a prayer through her clenched jaw. Not for the first time in this campaign, but definitely the most heartfelt. Everything began falling apart less than an hour into their long-delayed onslaught. Against all odds, the URA somehow managed to dig up reinforcements.
A lot of them.
She would have found the half-finished rebel tanks pouring out of the base hilarious, if there weren’t so damn many. The new vehicles had no paint jobs. Hell, many standard features were missing. From headlights to armored side skirts protecting the vehicle’s drive train, hundreds of normal parts were deemed “luxuries” by California’s procurement officers. If it could drive and shoot, they threw it straight into the fight.
Tanks and armored fighting vehicles rolled off frenzied assembly lines out West and right onto railway cars. A few hours later, they’d roll off those trains from railheads across Colorado wherever fighting was the heaviest. There was little accountability. Waiting crews practiced a “first come, first serve” policy and snatched the next vehicle in line, loaded it down with fuel and ammo and roared off to meet the enemy. Usually only minutes away. The URA might have been desperate, but that same desperation made them terribly dangerous.
On the other side of the token, federal forces found it hard to match this extreme motivation. Their backs weren’t against the wall. Fall back a mile, advance a mile, what difference did it make? Up and down the line, even officers questioned the logic behind the ceaseless advance. Why fight tooth and nail over this particular cornfield or subdivision? Doubt, as much as casualties, began to slow the federal advance. There was never a direct order to withdraw, more a collective decision by small front-line units to fall back. That was all it took. Just a few units bounding back here and there soon became a stampede.
Sergeant Walker had no way to know that these brand new rebel reinforcements weren’t exactly fresh units. The training of their crews reflected the half-finished construction of their weapons. Greying Army retirees or beer gut-hanging truck drivers, given only a few hours of retraining, made up the bulk of the tankers. The infantry, well… the best of the bunch were the fit, young recruits yanked out of basic training after a few days and tossed into the grinder. A few even had uniforms. The worst were the wounded “volunteers” culled from various aide stations. Those soldiers were often too drugged or too concussed to care what was going on.
Walker squirted off a few rounds from her rifle at extreme range. Probably didn’t hit anyone, but anything that slowed their assault down for a moment was worth the effort. That was really her unit’s sole mission at this point: buy some time to allow the cumbersome support train to disengage. Try to keep the brigade from being flanked by these frantic rebel counterattacks. From tip of the spear to glorified shield, Walker still didn’t complain about command always given her unit the shit jobs. Mainly because she had more pressing concerns.
Some “tank” opened up on them. Just a big gun sitting exposed on an unfinished M1 chassis. Instead of a turret, sandbags provided some protection for the ageing Vietnam-veteran crew. Things were getting out of control. Walker melted into her shallow foxhole as a fountain of earth erupted only a few yards away.
She noticed the shot groups from the enemy’s small arms fire were getting tighter. The bastards must be bounding closer under the covering fire. She wiggled forward a bit to try and find a target without becoming one. With a dozen strapped-on ammo pouches all over her vest, it was damn near impossible to line up a good shot without rising too high off the ground.
She couldn’t just lay there forever like some earthworm though. Someone needed to know what the enemy was doing. Muttering an inspirational “fuck it,” she propped up on her elbows and ignored the rounds zinging past her head. Her eyes seemed unfocused, but at this range she wasn’t scanning for individual people, just for movement. Damn, the enemy dismounts were only 300 yards away. She ignored their vehicles. That was her mounted element’s problem.
In theory at least. It soon became her problem. The battalion’s last two mobile gun platforms clanked up behind her position, trying to support her company. The poorly trained enemy couldn’t match the rapid and accurate rate of fire from the professionals on her side. Unfortunately, numbers have a quality all their own. The two MGS Strykers behind her must have blasted half a dozen enemy tracks apiece, but they weren’t invincible. Truth be told, they weren’t much more than a 105mm gun mounted on an armored car. When the other dozen enemy tanks got their range, her support didn’t last long.
Walker fought the urge to huddle down as both MGS guns exploded at the same time and only a hundred yards away. Goddamn! It sucked being a leader. The bullshit people expected of you. Despite the torrent of ever-more accurate rifle fire now cracking around her, she forced herself back up to find the enemy’s location. White-hot shards from the MGS blasts rained down around her.
The captain, heck, the entire headquarters team, had been off the air for a couple minutes. Someone had to do something. She clutched the microphone of her most powerful remaining weapon. There was surprisingly little traffic on the radio. “Iron Main, this is Blackjack 2–6. Fire mission, over!”