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"Not to sound like a broken record, but could someone please tell me why just yesterday it was simply slightly cold out, and now it is visibly unpleasant?" Shang Xiao (Colonel) Li Qi Zhou of the 152nd Armored Brigade asked as he smacked his hands together while he looked around at his brigade's officers, zeroing in on one of them who was an amateur meteorologist. "Well Shang Wei (Captain) Dian Thip? Do you have any wisdom you wish to impart?"
"Sun Tzu often said that knowing oneself is one of the keys to victory," Dian Thip said calmly, smiling back at Li Qi Zhou. "In this case I know myself well enough to know that I have no idea what could be causing this."
"I am certain that that will come as a great pity to all the troopers who are now stuck inside their barracks or in the hangar bays doing maintenance instead of outside performing calisthenics or other necessary drills," Li Qi Zhou said pleasantly as the others laughed at Dian Thip's joke.
"Shang Xiao Qi Zhou?" said a voice from the doorway.
The Shang Xiao and the other officers all turned and saw the general's aid, a young, pasty-faced youth with excellent party connections and, admittedly, decent cooking skills, but no martial ability whatsoever. He gestured for the Shang Xiao to follow him, and Li Qi Zhou, the leader of the People's Liberation Army's first energy-weaponized tank brigade, stood up quickly, waving to his fellows as he followed the man out.
In the anteroom to the general's office, the tall, trim senior field officer found four communication specialists all working furiously, while through the open door he could see the general staring at some kind of printout in one hand and then at the computer screen on his desk beside him. "Close the door, Shang Xiao," the older man said without looking up.
The Shang Xiao complied even as the general turned away and nodded to one of the communications officers before the door closed. An instant later alarms blared throughout the base.
The general nodded his head out the window, now looking up at the younger man in front of him. "China is at war. Are you prepared to defend party and state, Shang Xiao?"
It was a phrase that the Shang Xiao had heard before. Indeed, it was a question whose rote response was drilled into him just like it was every other man or woman who did their time in the army as they were required to as Chinese citizens. Unlike the vast majority of such, however, the Shang Xiao was a thorough going professional, having stayed in the military after his initial tour was up, something most young men and women didn't do. So he simply saluted and then moved into the parade rest position as he barked out, "What do the committee and party require of me, sir?"
"Russian troops are pouring across the border over the Alar River. Their objectives are unknown, but our border patrols were quickly overwhelmed, and they are already within Chinese sovereign territory. It could be as simple as just tying Chinese resources up fighting them, or they could be actually after some kind of conquest. Regardless, it falls to us to make certain that, whatever they are after, they do not prosper."
The Shang Xiao blanched. "Sir," he said hesitantly, "while our material resources are top-of-the-line, our troops are not nearly ready to fight the Russians on an even keel. Not even my brigade could turn the tide in a straight clash."
"We will not be," the general said coldly. "Your objective, Shang Xiao is, is simply to slow the Russians down while the rest of the army moves out and takes up defensive positions and aids in evacuating the citizens. The Central Theater command is already being readied for redeployment."
But that is not the biggest issue facing us or the Party's Army as a whole currently. Li Qi frowned, internally debating as trepidation held his tongue, but Li Qi decided that he had to speak up, regardless of whether it might be construed as an attack on the Party's ability to organize and see to its people. "Sir, we don't have enough winter gear for the army. Not for a winter as cold as this seems to be becoming. Not enough coats, gloves, or anything else."
"The infantry can survive long enough to fire a few shots, Shang Xiao. They will do their duty to the Party. The army as a whole, however, is not your concern."
Shang Xiao Li Qi Zhou tried to keep his displeasure off of his face at how cavalierly the senior general was speaking about tossing some of the finest troops of China away, but he wasn't sure he succeeded. "What is your command?"
"You are to take your brigade and move out as soon as possible. Slow them down. I want no pitched battles from you and yours. Just slow them, slow them down any way you can. Give my army time to truly prepare to meet them. The People's Air Force will be sending in planes as we speak, but I have no faith that they will be able to do anything."
"Sir," Li Qi said, saluting, then asking quietly, "What about Shao Xiao (Major) Fu Din? His mechanized unit is based closer to the border and should already be responding to this." Fu Din was a contemporary of the Shang Xiao and led a tank company assigned to one of the bases closet to the border with Russia.
"Again, Shang Xiao, he is not your concern!" the general snapped, slamming his hand down on the desk. "Do your duty to the party! And understand that others will be doing theirs."
About three hours travel later, Li Qi Zhou's command tank, a model called the Huoyan-shetou (flame tongue), passed by the remains of several destroyed trucks, a few dozen cars, and many more bodies, most of them in uniform. It would appear as if I have found Fu Din's command… So did they flee rather than fight, or were they simply overwhelmed?
The border between Russia and China had been in a state of a somewhat tense face-off since the Zhenbao Island Incident, and China routinely kept four regiments of infantry and two mechanized cavalry units—trucks, jeeps, and artillery half-tracks as well as tanks—near the front. In fact, they were barely a mile beyond the so-called demilitarized zone. Of course both sides had scouts that routinely entered that area, but the main units stayed to their own zones.
Before today Li Qi Zhou would have said that peace served both countries better than war and that they all knew it. Now, riding past the shattered remains of yet another burning jeep, he wondered what the hell the Russians were playing at. Perhaps they are worried about us because of our new allies.
While China wasn't technically speaking a member of NATO, it had certainly allied with that group when it became clear that Russia was beginning to flex its muscles again for whatever reason. And, unlike the former Communist Russia, the People's Committee had been able to make an agreement with the EDF and had begun to supply them with people.
"Where are they?" the Shang Xiao's gunner muttered, scowling as he traversed their turret from side to side. "Those wrecks are still smoldering; they must be nearby."
"Perhaps, perhaps not," LI Qi said softly, looking at the burnt out remains of a tank. It was one of the newest non-energy weapon equipped tanks, a heavy tank built based on the famous T-34 from Russia, a Type 69. They were not pleasant to be in by any stretch of the imagination, as many a soldier could tell you, but most of the people who used them would think that you were simply trying to make a joke if you told them that being in a tank should be comfortable in the first place. They were robust, tough, and decently quick, with sloped armor and a good-sized main gun, but were not a patch on his own Type 80 based tank. He also noticed that the other tank had been running away from the border. As had been the rest of the military units he could see. That did not bode well, but the Shang Xiao had his orders.
Ahead of his tank a fast scout on a heavily modified and armored dune buggy moved over the horizon towards the Heilong River. A second later the Shang Xiao's com buzzed, but before whoever was on the other line could say anything the buggy exploded. "All tanks prepare for battle! Spread out!"
Behind him the columns of two hundred and ten tanks spread out into a loose line slowly, far too slowly. Li Qi could practically feel the trepidation, the shock of what had just occurred, and his men, while highly trained, had not yet experienced a real battle. It had been many years since the Sino-Russian conflict, and few veterans from that time had remained in the army after their obligatory time was up. Damn it!
Ahead of them the Russians began to fire even before they cleared the horizon, their solid shells able to lobbed up at an angle, a marked advantage at range against an energy-based weapon, Li Qi mused. "All tanks to evade, second company, advance on the right flank, third to the left. First company will fall back," he said, keeping his voice calm, almost amused, the better to put some steel in his men. He couldn't let them panic, whatever…
A tank nearby blew up in a blast of fire and flame from a direct hit on its turret, and the first tank battle since the end of World War II began. The first echelon of Russian tanks, their units somewhat mixed up for some reason, twisted to the side, keeping the range open as they moved, not towards Li Qi and First Company, but to the right flank. But now they were within range, and his own tanks began to fire. While the Russians had a marked range advantage thanks to their better equipment, two out of every three of his tanks were the new Type 80 with the same sized cannon as those on the Russian T-72.
They also had much the same armor. Only a hit on the back or direct hit on the turret could be assured of a kill. This was proven in the next few minutes as rounds spanged off the sloped armor of the front of his tanks, which twisted wildly to keep their frontal armor facing the enemy, who continued to spread out and were now falling back, possibly realizing their mistake in closing beyond their own maximum aimed range.
But they were still in sight, and that meant they were about to find out just what the other one out of every three tanks in his battalion was armed with. "All Huoyan-shetou, fire at will!"
Energy bolts of white and yellow around two feet long and as wide as the cannons' mouth lashed out in short bursts followed by steam escaping from the back of the turrets and the tanks as the energy guns developed by the Chinese Communist Party (really, by the Mandarin) fired. One beam, fired by a tank whose crew called it Loquacious Zu, hit one of the larger Russian tanks, one whose type Li Qi hadn't seen before. Where a regular 125mm round might have bounced off its frontal armor, the energy bolt didn't, hitting and melting through much of the armor. It wasn't, alas, a single shot kill, the armor having absorbed all the beam's heat, but it left a large, gaping hole in the tank, and the rest of the armor around it was molten now, actually sloughing off in places.
Li Qi's men were all well trained in what to do in this eventuality, and two regular Type 80 tanks twisted their turrets to the wounded behemoth. One shot hit its side, the ablative armor exploding outwards and protecting the tank. The other shot struck the side of the frontal armor and entered the tank, exploding inside. The Russian heavy tank slewed to a stop, its crew dead.
All around Li Qi the battle became more and more mixed, with more tanks coming up from both sides of the battle, spiraling out and around and moving this way and that as Li Qi tried to control his troops andto make certain none of the Huoyan-shetou tanks were left with their rears undefended. The Chinese had the better weapons, but the Russians had the experience. They started to split into two tank teams, attempting to flank the Huoyan-shetou while keeping the normal Type 80 tanks from getting into their own rear. More of them died to side shots from the Type 80, and the Huoyan-shetou tanks killed many, but the Russians took many of them along with them.
Then LI Qi watched in horror as one of those larger Russian tanks opened up with its own weapon. It was instantly apparent that the Chinese were not the only ones with energy weapons. The heavy tank opened fire, and a wide blast of nearly uncontrolled ravening energy like that of a lightning bolt slammed into one of Li-Qi's tanks, slagging it within seconds of sustained fire.
"Fuck!" Li Qi roared, then grabbed at his headset. "Open the range, open the range! All tanks pull back!" Before his men could do that, though, the heavy tanks slagged four more of his, all Huoyan-shetou, losing only one of their own.
Other tanks were beginning to fall out of battle. The tanks had been moving at full speed for several hours before the battle, and the rapid movements, back and forth, shifting, and the wear and tear of battle were beginning to tell along with the cold. The weapons of the Huoyan-shetou tanks were very good, but the rest of the Chinese equipment was subpar, riddled with quality control issues, and this told now.
Engines died, tank treads broke, turrets stopped being able to turn, the flame-tongue cooling system exploded or just died, forcing them to stop firing as fast as they had been previously, and the air machines within the tanks started to fail, forcing the tank gunners to pop the hatches. This in turn let in the cold, and that too began to take its toll. Many a man began to suffer as his hands started to freeze in the suddenly well below zero temperatures, sometimes even freezing to their controls.
Li Qi tried to keep it together, tried to pull his rapidly shrinking brigade back. They had bloodied the Russian's nose, and that was all they could do. This decision was reinforced as artillery rockets began to fall among his people from well behind the enemy tanks. They weren't very well aimed, but there were hundreds of the damn things. "All units, retreat!"
As the tanks pulled back, there was a heavy whistling in the air, and ten squadrons of MIGs flew over the battlefield. There were practically flying nape of the earth, so low that whatever anti-air the Russian tanks had could barely miss, and even so, they'd had a devil of a time getting up off the ground due to the cold affecting the maintenance of the fighters. The wind and visibility once they were in the air were god awful. Indeed, these squadrons were ragged, barely two out of every five planes still there.
But unlike the Western countries, who didn't have the stomach to pay that kind of butcher's bill before the battle was even joined, the Chinese were near fanatical about protecting the Party. Any hardship, any amount of loss of life was to be embraced in the defense of the Party against the imperialist Russian invaders. The MIGs flashed in, rockets firing down into tanks and the artillery pieces behind them, flinging their broken, scattered carcasses backwards. Then more anti-air weapons opened up, massive howitzers among the rocket launchers in the artillery as well as the high-tech weapons of the heavy tanks, elevating to take the MIGs under fire with their energy cannons. These proved as deadly against MIGs as they had previously proved against Chinese tanks, slagging the MIGs with even a glancing blow.
LI Qi took his chance then and ordered his remaining tanks to fire on them. Most of his tanks nearly killed themselves, their cooling units now failing despite the temperature around them helping cool the outer siding of the cannons, at least. But they killed every single one of the enemy's lightning-equipped tanks and were able to pull away. The Russians continued to fire at them until they were out of range, but the MIG assault had disrupted their advance badly, destroying most of their artillery pieces and the few half-tracks at the far back of the advance, maybe even killing the local commander.
Later the Shang Xiao would learn that they had been allowed to leave because the Russian unit he had been facing was one of four that had launched across the Heilong river, and the other three hadn't been stopped, despite being hit by more MIG attacks. The other three nearly cut him off from the rest of his forces and decimated two more armies and their bases before taking the only town anywhere near the border under fire before the civilians there could be evacuated.
At the moment, however, Li Qi was willing to take it, though he paled as he finally began to look over his casualties. He had led a reinforced brigade of tanks into this battle. He was leading a bare company back out. If this is what war is like with the Russian bear, may Buddha help us.
Yet for all the Russians' success, they did run into difficulties. Because not everyone was unprepared for the cold…
OOOOOOO
George Abernathy was a soldier. His father had been a soldier, and his father before that, a freedom fighter. He believed in Finnish independence, believed that they had a right to self-rule, and would fight anyone that disagreed, including their giant eastern neighbor who historically had disagreed with that idea most violently. Indeed, he believed that the Gulf of Finland should belong to them entirely, not merely a little under half of it.
As one of the special forces, George was patrolling through the woods and mountains that were the borders between Russia and Finland. This territory was so rocky, so heavily forested and snowy almost year round, that the very idea of putting in real roads was kind of amusing. That and they are a natural defense, he thought in some humor as he breathed out, noticing that his breath had started to mist over.
He frowned at that, turning his head up to the sky and breathing in before gesturing with his hands behind him. His five man team paused where they were, and he turned in place on his skis. Winter had hit, but before just this moment he had thought it would be while before they entered true winter. Now, feeling the temperature dropping like a rock, he wasn't so sure. As his men, well-hidden even now, watched, he pulled up a mask and then flipped up his parka, pulling it tight. They all understood. They couldn't afford to let valuable warmth leave their bodies, and they couldn't let their breath give them away either.
White on white, the six men continued to move through the forest for another hour and then made a brief, impromptu camp. Well-hidden, they could now afford to talk, or rather, bitch, as all soldiers since time immemorial have done, while they took in the requisite calories needed to keep their bodies going. Most of the time they did so more to take their attention away from the horrible taste or appearance of the food.
"Bah, why are we out here like this, huh? Because the giant Russian bear has nothing better to do with its time than try to bare its fangs once more at little Finland," spat one of his men.
"Ahh, but you know the thing about musclebound oafs, yah?" said another man with a grin, grabbing at his heavily covered groin. "They always act out and work those muscles because they don't have any muscle worth mentioning down here."
"Yah, the overcompensating bear!" guffawed another man.
"And you know what they say about a Russian with a beard, don't you?" George said, getting in on the false bravado. "It's the only hair he can grow."
None of these jokes were all that funny, but they served a purpose: they allowed a certain amount of distance from the horror that was war, something that all too many of the men and women in Finland knew about, having grown up listening to stories about it. As they looked around, everyone there knew it and were reminded of the preparations they had seen back in their bases.
But the Finish Army was already prepared for winter on an institutional level that few other nations could match, along with a level of training and preparedness second to none. It had already begun giving out more rations—in winter you had to input more rations per calorie than during summer. Vaseline, condoms for the tops of rifles, and other makeshift but easily obtainable solutions abounded, though as Gregory remembered watching a group of soldiers wiping down an artillery piece with Vaseline as another group began to set a large tire on top, he could only laugh. He now shared the memory with his officers, and, despite the fact that the temperature was dropping so precipitously, the imagery was such that everyone was soon grinning.
Their laughter died, however, as they heard the sounds of rumbling in the distance. And there was not a storm cloud in the sky. The sound came from the east, and it wasn't thunder but the loud thrumming roar of thousands of engines. George stood up swiftly, heading to his skis along with two of the other men while two more worked to call it in and the last two put out the fire. It was a practiced move, and soon everyone was up and moving, spreading out, still in sight if you knew where to look, but disappearing into the background snow. The message they had sent to their superiors was simple: They are coming!
A bare second later George slid to a halt behind a tree, raising his rifle to look through the sniper scope and watching as tanks appeared, smashing through the woods.
These were large, bulky hover tanks, built around the same kind of technology that allowed the Titanium Man to fly. There were twelve of them leading columns of lesser tanks, and they came on, moving through the hilly terrain easily, only being halted by trees and the largest boulders, and even then not for long. They had two special cannons thrusting forward along a bulldozer-like shell at the front to deal with such as that and destroyed the trees as they came.
Those George had seen before, and behind them came the regular T-72 he had been trained to spot the weaknesses of. Yet at the back were four tanks that looked even more high tech than those in the lead. What are those? And to throw ten of those brand new hover tanks at us at the start of the battle? Andrew thought. He had seen some estimations about how much those hover tanks cost, and his entire extended family could have afforded to buy a mansion and live in it quite comfortably for the rest of their lives, including the lives of his children, on the money that even one of those things cost. The Russian bear, he thought, his body so still it disappeared from sight. The Russian bear flexing its mighty muscles!
Behind the tanks came row upon row of infantry, paralleled by several hundred on skis, moving through the woods as best they could, and for a moment the Finnish pride got the better of one of George's men. "Those Slavic bastards," he growled into the communicator, pointing ahead of him out of his tiny dugout. "They stole our idea!"
"It was more than forty years ago, Andrew," George said with a chuckle, "Everyone's stolen that idea. And fucking remember radio silence!"
The other man muttered incomprehensibly but subsided, and they all continued to watch the incoming army again, the two artillery spotters in his group well behind the other four of George's squad. For a moment George began to frown, wondering where the artillery was, and then he got his answer.
The Finnish artillery was far back, out of sight and unable to see their targets, hence the forward spotters. Now they opened up without warning, without waiting to for the Russians to fire on them. The Finns were not NATO forces; they didn't have to wait for someone to prove they were hostile. You cross their border, they were going to fuck your shit up, which was all to the good in George's opinion.
Andrew watched in delight as the artillery shells slammed down, bursting in among the tanks, destroying one out right and grounding two more. Another shell hit among the regular tanks falling behind, blowing three of them into the air and onto their fronts or sides. The infantry scattered, and, on high, Andrew could vaguely see artillery shells racing back the other way towards his own, but he trusted the fact that the Finnish artillery were firing at the front of the Russian army, and the Russian artillery was further back than that.
However, a moment later he couldn't concentrate on that. The Russians were pushing ahead anyway, all of them moving like seasoned winter-trained veterans, keeping to cover, moving easily over the snow, and with camouflage too he thought, sighing sadly. Well, Papa, it looks as if you and your generation killed all the stupid ones. A second later Andrew and his scouts began to open fire, every other man firing down range at the Russians while pulling back and separating, moving deeper into the woods and away from the line of advance, taking turns, firing from cover and covering one another in an intricate dance.
Behind them their artillery continued to wreak havoc with the main Russian column even as Andrew and his people began to take fire in return. For all that they were not as used to this kind of terrain and didn't know it like the backs of their hands as the Finns did, the Russians were still extremely competent soldiers, and their weapons were just as good if not better.
Nonetheless, Andrew and his people gave a good account of themselves as they pulled back, leaving fourteen dead Russians on the ground and sixteen more that had wounds which would need to be taken care of. Wounds in the cold, especially at temperatures like this, were horrifying things. Your blood could freeze, and it was just horrible, the cold sapping your energy.
At that thought Andrew quickly pulled out an energy bar, chomping into it even as he continued on, skiing cross-country through the woods. He met up with his troops at a rally point, nodded to them all silently, and as a group they faded back even further into the woods, the dense, immensely wooded, immensely rocky, nearly unpassable woods. A local specialty, Andrew thought as he went, taking his skis off and climbing over a series of ice and snow strewn boulders after switching to snowshoes. We will see how the Russians like it.
Behind Andrew he could hear one of his men starting to sing softly. It wasn't much of a song, more of a mantra, really, but the sentiment was delightful. As much about pride now as it was back when it was originally coined even as he knew this war was going to be even harder than that one. "'They are so many, and our country so small; wherever will we bury them all?'"
OOOOOOO
The forces in Finland were also ready for the downturn in weather and the forces in China were able to match their enemies in numbers at least at first. The NATO forces in Poland could do neither. Poland had thought it had more than a month to go at minimum before the weather started to turn this bad, and it had been a very long time, since the 1940s, in fact, that Poland had seen a winter like this, and those two facts now caused tremendous problems on every NATO base.
Sergeant Marty was a tanker by training and inclination, but he firmly believed that his men should know their rides well enough to do some of their own maintenance. Now he grimaced as he pulled on his heavy pair of gloves again, wincing as the bite of the cold hit his fingers now that they were no longer actually in the way of the wind which had quickly cut off all feeling quickly. "It should be fine now! Try turning the engine over again!"
The trooper above him in the cockpit of the tank did so, and the engine they had been working on sputtered, sputtered again, and then came to life at last. "It works! About damn time!"
Marty stuck his hands underneath his arms, grimacing at the cold and then all around them. This was inside a heated and reinforced hanger. Outside it had quickly turned into a kind of frozen hell. The NATO forces here in Poland hadn't gotten all their winter equipment yet. Various countries had supplied bits and pieces, but it had come in piecemeal, since everyone was more interested in getting the weapons and ammunition and food in as fast as possible. Now that was biting them on the ass in a very, very bad way, since not many men had hats and fewer had gloves. "What's the word about the Russians?" he shouted to no one in particular. "And has the weather spook said about where the hell this weather came from!?"
"Nothing good," shouted a few voices, and with no officers present he gave them all the finger. "I know that! I wanted specifics, you bastards!" That won him some laughter, and he rolled his eyes and went back to his work.
He was still working forty minutes later when alarms around the base began to sound. Marty looked up in shock as a voice came over the loudspeakers, crackling with interference as even the wires of the speakers were being affected by the cold temperatures. "Invasion! This is not a drill, this is not a drill! All combat personnel to report to battle stations! All combat patrols are to report!"
Then a new voice came on in a squawk of electronic noise. "Do not bother! You and yours could hardly stop a group of Russian children come to play, let alone an army trained and molded on the steppes of Russia."
The voice was that of the Russian mutant-cyborg named Sputnik, and his power was that he could take over anything electronic. He could bend computers or anything with an electrical current going through it to his will, even molding its physical form like silly putty if the energy available was high enough. The Russians had snuck him into this, the main NATO base in Poland where their missiles were kept, with some difficulty, having lost the entire team of spies they had sent with him. But he now acted upon his orders, taking over the missile silos and then launching them towards other NATO bases. With that done he escaped into the snow and swirling cold. The Russians did not want to lose one of their most important and well-trained mutants in an opening gambit, no matter how potentially devastating.
Yet those missiles would never reach their destinations. As men and women all over the base watched in horror that horror rapidly gave way to joy as the missiles were suddenly wreathed in fire. Marty and more than one man with him stared at the missiles and the fire, wondering if it was just them that thought the fire looked as if it had been shaped into the talons of a massive bird. Every soldier on the base and the furious Sputnik nearby watched for a time as those talons rose into the air, pulling the missiles up into the sky and out towards space until they were out of sight.
As they went, the spell on Marty was broken. "All right, you grease monkeys! Back to work! We've got a war on in case you hadn't noticed! Let's get these damn tanks ready to move!"
Several hours later Marty was involved in the first tank-only battle in this new war. It began and ended within an hour. On the one side were a full division of main battle tanks, with none of the accompanying infantry or mechanized infantry units that would be normal in a equivalent NATO force. On the other side what should have been a division in the NATO tradition of a more mixed unit were only three hundred working tanks. All of their other resources were moving in full retreat behind them, those that were able. All the other tanks and trucks and tracks had issues, all of them caused by the cold and the way it hindered maintenance.
"Turn around, turn it around! Target the next one!" Sgt. Marty shouted as he desperately tried to twist the wheel of his tank around in order to let his gunner get a shot off at the incoming tanks.
They were going too fast. His own tanks had been nearly at a standing start in comparison, for God's sake! And the enemy tanks just kept coming through their own artillery fire. "Come on!"
"Damn it, I can't get the turret to move! The freaking gears aren't working!" the gunner shouted. "And the range finder is fritzing too!"
Marty was able to get the tank around, and his gunner fired, only for the enemy tank, a T-72, to twist into their fire, taking the shot on its frontal armor where it bounced off. The enemy attack fired and their tank also shuddered at the hit, but their frontal armor wasn't going to be penetrated that easily.
For a moment the two tanks dueled at range, shifting this way and that, firing and firing as best they could, but eventually the rest of the battle came crashing down on Marty. An enemy tank from one side blasted out his tanks treads, and another cannon round sheared off their main gun near the base. "FUCK!" the gunner yelped, twitching away from the controls.
All around them the rest of their ad hoc brigade were destroyed in a similar manner. The six or so tanks Marty could see were the dull gray and white of the Russians' winter camo, and as he watched a few survivors of their crews crawled out of the wreckage and waved down a few of their nearby fellows. He watched them for nothing better to do, prepared to die as the Russians finished him and a few other immobilized tanks off.
But to his shock the Russian tanks didn't linger. They pushed forward, leaving the shattered remains of their enemy behind.
For a moment, as the tanks which had peeled back towards Russia disappeared in the opposite direction, Sergeant Murphy counted his blessings at being alive and started to shout aloud to get any survivor's attention. No one replied at first, but two of his men took up the charge, allowing Marty to turn his attention to the Russian tanks.
They were nearly out of sight, but as he watched they started to fire at the retreating column of jeeps and support trucks which had almost made it over the horizon. Those support trucks were soon burning, but the sound of distant gunfire and cannon blasts continued on for some time. Marty pulled out a pair of binoculars and watched the horrible slaughter. Unprepared, with most of their weapons malfunctioning in the cold and taken by the faster, far more heavily armed tanks at range first, then in close with machine guns, the infantry regiments and those men who had been forced to join them when their tanks hadn't worked were slaughtered.
No one's going to be able to retreat to base camp Bravo, he realized with dull horror. As he watched the Russian tanks peeled off. Half of them twisted around and moved back the way they came, shooting any tank they came upon, but by that point Marty and his crew were hiding behind a downed Russian tank with several others for lack of any other cover. As those tanks broke off from their fun and headed back the way they came, he looked past them, back deeper into Poland at the others.
Those tanks, they have gasoline containers on their backs. They were set for extended independent operation. He knew now that those same tanks were going to continue on to maul the forces at base camp Bravo, and with the main base in the region at Camp Charleston gone, Bravo might well be on its own.
Looking around, he started to shout the other men into moving, leading the way towards the infantry and trucks they'd been supposed to protect. As he walked the blood on his coat from a ricochet started to freeze, and he started to lose feeling in his fingers and toes.
But when he started to get close to the column of trucks he found a few scattered survivors as well as two more downed enemy tanks, taken out by lucky side-on bazooka shots by their damage. But while a bazooka could put down a tank under the right circumstances, creating those circumstances was damned tough, and he found a lot of unfired bazookas lying behind their dead owners. The Russian tanks had moved quickly, never stopping and staying at range, and their machine guns and main weapons had made them deadly against infantry who had yet to acclimatize to the suddenly intensely cold winter.
Marty paused for a second, his head dipped in prayer. Then he reached down to grab one bazooka for himself before he started to organize the rest of the survivors in sight, finding himself the most senior of them, by a bare few hours in a few cases of other sergeants.
Near the end of the large column, a young Lieutenant had also survived, though, and had already been pulling survivors together, pushing them to move along the road that they had been trying to retreat along before, finding few if any certain supplies, and more than one survivor. "Why didn't they finish us off?" he asked as Marty joined him, looking around in confusion as he hopped in place, trying to keep warm.
The sergeant scowled bitterly. "They didn't have to finish this off Lt.; they didn't even have to kill our tanks. All they had to do was destroy our trucks and then let General Winter do the rest."
At that the lieutenant paused in his jumping, looking around as the snow continued to fall, slowly burying the evidence of the battle as he and Sergeant Murphy tried to organize a continuance of the retreat. But it was so cold out, so cold, and the night was coming on…
OOOOOOO
Nor was the Russians' army the only aspect of their military on move. Their air force might be downed by the force of the winter along with the air force's of every other nation, but they still had their navy.
The United Kingdom's Baltic Sea flotilla had originally been tasked with keeping a watch on of the Russian Northwestern contingent. This flotilla consisted of eight destroyers, two frigates, two missile cruisers, and one somewhat dated, but massively refurnished (with guns based off designs passed on by Harry Potter), battlecruiser as its flagship. Normally all these ships weren't out at sea at the same time, obviously. Conditions in the Barents and Greenland seas were such that ships needed maintenance and people downtime more often than they would in warmer climates. The temperatures up here rarely got above minus twenty degrees, and that impacted both the machines aboard the ships and the people, causing sickness and injury with sad regularity.
But when the ball went up the whole flotilla had been out on maneuvers. While NATO had been dismissive of Harry's worries about Russia possibly having backing from an alien race or being manipulated by one, William and his admirals had not. Because of this they had been among the first normal people to notice the change in climate. It was awfully hard to miss the ocean actually freezing as you were watching it from the bridge of your ship or listening to the sounds of men thumping out onto the deck to join the now near-constant deicing teams.
"What in the world is going on?" muttered Captain Truedor, CO of His Majesty's heavy cruiser, Redoubtable.
"Is that a rhetorical question, sir? Because it seems to me as if the ocean's freezing," noted the man next to him, the head of the ship's communications department and one of Truedor's closer friends aboard the ship. As much as a captain could be friends with his crew, anyway, which, honestly speaking wasn't much. Still, he did approve of the other man's very British, stiff upper lip attitude and dry humor.
"That was a rhetorical question, yes, though if you have an answer to it beyond a flippant one, I'd be all ears, Commander," he said dryly.
"Some mutant power at work?" the other man asked more seriously. He was one among many who were worried about mutants and their powers, but he had never been an actual racist about it.
"That makes sense, yes, but if so, why, or rather, whose interest is this serving?" Truedor replied, gesturing out to the ocean where he had been watching ice starting to build up on top of the waves.
A third voice interjected at that point, causing the captain to turn from the view out of his bridge's windows. "Well, sir, I suppose that would depend on how wide reaching this kind of thing is."
The captain nodded to his first officer and was about to reply when the communications officer raised his hand, cutting them off, as he held a hand up to his headset. His face paled noticeably. "Sir, report from home. I have Admiral Southhampton on the line. Red Dawn, Red Dawn."
The captain snapped to attention, staring at the man, all his earlier ease and laid back air disappearing instantly. "Verify!" he barked out.
At the same time he glanced towards his first officer, who saluted crisply and moved towards the intercom system, his hand over the button. They waited a second, staring at the communications officer as the entire bridge crew watched him in terse silence. After a moment the communications officer nodded. "Call code authenticated service, Russia has declared war on NATO. They've got forces…"
"Thank you, that's enough," the captain said, cutting the other officer off quickly and nodding to the first officer.
He slammed the hand down on the red alert side, barking into the intercom, "All crew to ready stations! All crew to ready stations!"
The captain turned back to the communications officer. "Get on the horn with the destroyer captains. Tell them Operation Beater is a go."
This quick response took the man aback for a moment, but he nodded grimly and was on the mike with the commanders of the two destroyer squadrons in an instant. There had been a few blips over the past few days on their long-range sonar of unidentified subs out there, and if they were Russians...
At this order the destroyers reacted like so many previously leashed puppies suddenly let loose. They each individually twisted and twirled away from the flotilla, zooming out in different directions. Elsewhere some of the bridge crew could barely make out the movements of other ships in the distance, doing the exact same thing. The entire flotilla had just basically exploded, almost, their ships flashing out in every direction.
Sonar also flashed out from every ship, combing the seas for submarines, while two reconnaissance drones were launched from the missile cruisers, the latest Yorkshire class. At the same time the frigates started to move directly behind the now screen of destroyers, their more powerful radar reaching out across the oceans, looking for airborne or sea-based threats. Every ship began evasive maneuvers, sudden shifts in direction that were designed to throw off any torpedoes.
A tense hour passed as the news circulated throughout the flotilla about what was going on. Soon everyone knew this was most certainly not a drill, as many of the lower rankers had thought. No, this was all too real. At the same time Truedor got on the horn with home, getting an update on what was going on. It made for grim listening, but he thankfully had no new orders: simply keep patrolling the Barents Sea and make certain that the Russian fleet in the Kara Sea was, if not boxed in, then watched.
As the hour passed the tactical map, a large table set in the back of the bridge, was updated with sightings of several submarines. The destroyers that had spotted them were quickly shifting towards them as the flotilla went from ready stations to battle stations. Two of those blips disappeared, the other stayed on the screen for several minutes before doing the same.
A second later the missile frigate's drones hit the outer edge of their control and began to spam radar pulses. A moment later the map updated again, this time with the designations showing ships coming towards them from the northeast.
Smiling grimly, the captain leaned back in his chair, listening to his well-ordered team going about their business. The only sign of anything approaching concern that appeared on his face over the next few minutes came from the the report of the weather getting even worse and one of the recon drones actually failing, its internal structures slowly freezing as it fell to the ocean. "Make a note of the weather and send it off to GHQ. Any reinforcements will need to know what to expect and prepare for it."
He held up a hand as the marks on the board updated again, and he internally cursed before saying calmly, "And ask them to update our orders, please? Because I think I'm dealing with the entire Barents Sea fleet coming out after us."
OOOOOOO
A similar scene was occurring on the United States Fleet Carrier Constellation, flagship of the Alaskan fleet. This was a much more powerful squadron than the Barents Sea flotilla, consisting of six missile cruisers, four heavy cruisers, four destroyer flotillas of six ships each, all built around the carrier Constellation, one of the most powerful warships on the face of the planet, and two smaller carriers.
The Constellation's creators had designed the carrier so that she could continually launch fighters and had built it to withstand a lot of punishment. But the problem was, offensively its punch was its fighters. It had been proven time and time again in World War II that the future of naval warfare was based around carriers. But that supposed that the weather would allow them to get their birds up into the air, and that visibility wouldn't be entirely zero above the level of the ships at sea.
But that was what they were dealing with now: anything above a thousand feet off the ocean's surface was in an almost complete whiteout, with people aboard the ships actually having trouble seeing not ten feet away. And the higher you went, the worse the visibility was. The ship had already lost six planes on recon flights, and Admiral Stutton had been glumly wondering how the Congressional review was going to go for losing so many young boys to routine flights when the ball went up.
He cursed luridly as he read over the dispatch, his flag officers all watching his face as they continually updated the tactical situation on the large plotter, one that was far more advanced and just larger than the one on the Redoubtable. The problem for Stutton, though, was that the ocean between Alaska and Siberia was far smaller than the playground Truedor was dealing with in the north even as those very oceans froze. Truedor could use his ship's speed to move back, giving up ocean for time. Stutton didn't.
And then there was the other reason for Stutton's anger: the conditions. If the Russians pushed across now, my ship, this glorious carrier, would be next to useless. Not good, he thought, not good at all.
Nor was he the only one who knew it. Ahead of his flagship, deep beneath the water, lay four Russian submarines, all of whom had been given simple orders. The moment their officers began to worry about the cold they were go to go on the attack, sinking any ship they could, going especially for any large ship they spotted. It was a simple plan and only vaguely organized, but, because of that it was unpredictable, as were the movements of the subs in question. Added to this was the new communications equipment they had been given in the past few months, allowing them to communicate without being detected.
When one of those captains spotted the Constellation, the largest ship he'd yet seen, he nodded, lining up his shot, and fired.
Back aboard the Constellation, Sutton was debating a very hard decision here. His most powerful ship, and his two next most powerful as well, were going to be next to useless now thanks to this weather. So should he retain it or should he send it further south? And, if so, should he cede the entire area to the Russians, hoping that they weren't interested in Alaska, where a full American Army group had been stationed along with a Canadian army group right on the border with Alaska in a joint defense operation?
And whatever I decide, our own subs should be moving into the area too. There was a sub-pen down in the Aleutian Islands which served six subs year round, and whatever the Russians thought, their subs were not up to par with America's, not the latest Seawolf class, anyway.
If they come across the ocean they'll get a lot of hard knocks from the subs and have to deal with a tremendous amount of distance even for them to keep up lines of supply. They have to know they won't find the means to support themselves in Alaska. No, their main thrust has to be through Poland and into Finland. Then down into the Baltic area.
Like most of the rest of the military and political leaders in the world, Stutton didn't have any idea why the Russians were willing to go to war. They already had all the resources any nation could possibly want in order to build up their industrial capacity, and he didn't really think that pride alone could force them to act, although he was of the opinion that Harry Potter's decision to exclude Russia from the EDF until they started to crack down on anti-mutant atrocities was foolish in the extreme.
As Stutton dithered, the decision was rapidly taken out of his hands as a spotter outside shouted, "Fish! Fish in the water on the port bow!"
"Evade!" the captain of the ship shouted. "Change course into it; don't present our profile!" While the captain had forgotten much of the terminology to deal with an actual enemy torpedo in the water, his training was spot on. If the ship turned towards the torpedo they wouldn't present as large a target. But it was too late.
The submarine had launched not one, but six torpedoes all at once in a wide radius, and though the Constellation tried, two of them slammed into its bottom, blasting through its hull below the waterline. The water exploded up and out from the impact points, flooding inside as the ship listed badly.
But this was a carrier, and the Americans had learned during World War II the importance of both building to take damage and training damage teams. Even as their fellows died, and the ship began to take on water, those teams went into operation, racing towards the damage: welders, divers, and others doing what they could.
For a moment the Admiral could only simply keep his feet by grabbing at the plotter as the ship shuddered underneath them. "Get me a damage report!" he shouted, forgetting for a moment that he was an admiral and not a captain, earning a subtle glare from the ship's actual commanding officer even as, around them, the ships of their flotilla responded to the assault. Three destroyers broke off from where they had been on escort position, racing into the formation towards the direction the attack had come from. Their Hedgehogs were firing already in a show more of enthusiasm then actual training, unfortunately.
But the head cruiser under commander Brown dipped away in the opposite direction, corralling three other destroyers, and sending them out in a different direction.
Aboard that ship, Rebecca Brown smiled grimly to herself. "Now, if I was a determined little Russian, that would've been what I would call the first shot. The fusillade would come from another direction."
And, as she had expected, more torpedoes were in the water seconds later, and her ships began to evade rapidly. Not one of them hit, and then she was above them, and her ships were dropping depth charges. The Russian Navy might have struck first, but it also lost the first ships of this new war as two subs succumbed to the depth charges of the Americans.
However, the damage was done. The Constellation was hobbled, and, with the weather as it was, it was also useless. Stutton smashed his hands down on the tactical screen, shaking his head despairingly. "Captain," he said formally to the commander of the Constellation. "Your orders are to break off from the flotilla. We will retreat south. Whatever weather this is, we need to get away from it.
"If we even can, sir," his communications officer said. Both officers turned to look at him, and he shook his head. "Sir, I'm getting reports from GHQ. This cold is spreading everywhere!"
OOOOOOO
That was an understatement. The cold was spreading, far faster and far more widespread than anyone could have ever anticipated even after seeing Storm in action. The African beauty would have been hard-pressed to control this amount of weather. People unprepared for the cold in areas around the equator started to succumb to it in areas that had never felt such cold temperatures. Houses started to freeze while, around the world, power grids started to work overtime and, in many places, fail.
Soldiers dealt with frostbite, broken equipment, and losing energy quickly more than they had been trained for, rapidly going through their ration bars, even officers not realizing they needed to husband those calories even more now. In areas north of Georgia the cold quickly got to the point where, if someone had skin open to the weather for even a short amount of time, they would have to deal with frostbite.
In the Black Sea, the sea began to freeze as the Turkish civilians watched, shivering and retreating into their homes, wondering about what was going on, while their military began to suddenly realize that perhaps they needed to get ready as well for an invasion. If the Black Sea froze, the buffer zones of Georgia and Azerbaijan would no longer matter. Elsewhere, it was as if history was repeating itself, as the mighty Russian armies smashed across borders accompanied by the cold into the Ukraine, Poland, and elsewhere.
Nor, unfortunately, was that the only issue that Harry and his allies would have to deal with.
OOOOOOO
"Yes," Sinister said almost happily, staring into the TV screen as the reporter on the other end began to babble about what was going on. Elsewhere he had other screens showing more detailed reports of basically what spy satellites the world over were telling their creators. He didn't know why the Russians were doing this—he had his suspicions, but Sinister honestly couldn't care less. Whoever ruled the world today, or whoever fought over Eastern Europe today didn't matter. All that mattered was the future; all that mattered was creating the ultimate mutants, the X-Project.
He nodded over to the Marauders present at the moment—Blockbuster, Arclight, Scalphunter, and Gambit—and his communications officer, his face splitting into a wide, dangerous smile. "Now," he said coldly. "Do it now."
In the small African nation of Genosha, riots began at his command, both for mutant rights and against them, in every one of the four major cities spread across the island and the few outlying farms and other areas. None of these seemed connected except for the timing of the outbreaks. Here violence began because of a bank robbery by a mutant gang turned into a shootout. Here a mutant miner was beaten and his family and friends rioted in revenge. Here two gangs of pro-mutant and anti-mutant marchers met and began to fight, soon spiraling into further violence.
But these outbreaks of violence were small and nearly pitiful in comparison to what was about to occur. In one of the port cities a young mutant whose code-name was Chamber arrived. He was a near-energy proto-form, half his body being able to turn into energy and explode on cue or in times of great stress. Ironically, he had been a British citizen before his powers manifested and destroyed everything around him in a radius of a hundred meters, including his family and their house. Sinister's agents had snatched him up before the government could, well before Potter had begun to ally with them about bringing in young mutants and training them up.
Now here he was, drugged to the gills, the energy within his body kept in check by a specially designed remote-controlled suit that looked to be a regular jacket and scarf combination covering his chest and neck. His power had also been heavily modified by Sinister to be even more out of control, even more powerful.
Chamber didn't have much ability to think or even see the world around him at this point. All he saw were shades of different colors in among the blobs of red, white, and hot pink, the drugs in his system a concoction to make most hallucinogenic drugs pale in comparison. He stumbled forward, subliminal messages keeping him moving for a bit until he was well away from the ship that had dropped him off here. He continued to stumble forward, some voice in his mind telling him he hadn't yet arrived where he was going.
More than one passerby noticed this, and finally one of them actually moved over to grab Chamber's arm, halting his stumbling progress. "Excuse me, are you all right, young man?" the other, somewhat older man asked.
Chamber looked at him, then felt something on his chest start to give way, a pinging sound reaching his ears as his jacket started to pop open. "Ge…" he muttered.
The other man leaned in, pulling Chamber to one side of the sidewalk so he could lean against the wall of one of the buildings lining the street. As he did, Chamber spoke again, but once more the man couldn't make it out. "I'm sorry, young man, what was that?"
"Get away…" Chamber said, forcing the words out as his jacket and scarf opened up as if from a single seam, revealing the roiling orange and red energy within. The older man had barely a second to stare at the energy within Chamber before it finally exploded.
One moment the port city was hustling and bustling save for the bits of it being wracked by violence, which had been mostly contained by the local police. Then the next a blast wave of energy blasted out in every direction, immolating people and smashing buildings into rubble and ash. What had been a bright, vibrant center for commerce became a fiery hellhole.
The explosion could be seen from offshore by several hundred leagues. And soon, thanks to Sinister's robotic and mutant agents, everyone knew what had caused it: a mutant going out of control.
"No more mutants!" was the scream. "No more freaks walking free!" The government, its military and police, too, were affected by the upsurge, rabble-rousers in their ranks urging their fellows on to capture, chain, or otherwise control mutants for the good of the nation.
"No more atrocities, no more humans, Homo Superior rules!" was the shout of the mutants. Quiet, slowly rising agitation and violence by Sinister's people reached a fever pitch with the suddenness of a string breaking, and Genosha went to war with itself.
Into this maelstrom of violence Sinister led the Mutant Liberation Front. Clad in his black, form-fitting armor he made a speech, carried to his scattered gathering posts. "For decades we mutants have been ostracized, hunted, feared, reviled, and beaten down. Many of you have experienced things equivalent to torture. Of late, the world would like to forget, to move past this shameful past, to believe that we Homo Superior and mere Homo Sapiens can live in peace. 'Honest progress has been made,' the wizard Potter would have us believe. 'There are bigger issues at stake,' he would cry. Yet those bold words cannot truly cover the fact that he has forsaken the mutant on the street who can tell you that the darkness is still there, the hate and fear which have forced the flatscans to persecute their betters. Nor that his promises of salvation, of a home for mutantkind, had already been compromised.
"Yet the idea is a good one: a nation controlled by, protected and led by mutants would serve us just as well as it has the Jews. And now the hatred flatscans feel for us have given us a chance. When you touch Gateway, he will take you all through to the nation of Genosha, an island nation whose flatscan population wish to enslave your fellow mutants. We will not let this happen. Instead we will enslave them!" Sinister waited for a moment for the cheering to die down before going on. "Follow your team leaders, follow my Marauders, and we will be victorious."
With that Sinister nodded to Gateway, an ancient looking Australian aborigine, who started to whirl a stone on a string around him. The string started to expand and grow, and around him a large gateway appeared to a random city street. "Now go and claim our freedom!"
At that shout the first group of the MLF being brought to Genosha roared and moved forward, led by Blockbuster. In the next hour Gateway would transport every branch of the Mutant Liberation Front into Genosha, and with them the battle would start to go against the 'flatscan' controlled government.
Of course, Sinister didn't really care which side won. He could step into a leadership position on either side, but the man with the position of High Technologist, his cover title among the Genoshans, was known as a recluse. Once the dust settled, and the collars he had developed and the robots and mechs he developed had won, he could step forward then in that guise to take over from the shattered government. The MLF needed a more face-to-face sort of approach, and he had just given them that.
Regardless, he too transported himself through Gateway's gate, a personal one between larger groups. Once in Genosha, he made his way to his lair there, where a few of his aides, in particular Experiment Pryor and others, were waiting for him hidden behind layers of security and prepared anti-magic defenses. The whole assault on Genosha was, after all, a mere sideshow to his real goal: Jean Grey and the child, or children, she carried.
And I even have obtained a sample of Scott Summer's DNA, if the children of the wizard Potter proved unsuitable for my purposes. Honestly, that aspect was almost too easy. Xavier really should look into getting soundproof rooms in that mansion of his, otherwise couples will always be going elsewhere for their fun times, and who knows what that could lead to? In this case it had led to one of his barely sentient cyborg spies picking up a discarded condom as well as a sheet with a sample of Rogue's blood on it. Now I just need the other side of the equation, Subject Grey.
Unbeknownst to Sinister, however, two among those watching were not among his true believers. "So, that's the big guy, huh?" Morph whispered to Mystique as Sinister made his speech. "Funny, I thought he'd be taller."
"Shut up," Mystique said coldly as they moved forward to join Ripper and Harpoon going through the teleportation circle as it became time for their group to head home. "We need to be ready here, and we need to realize that Potter and the Custodes might not be able to help us very quickly. Sinister doesn't get away. One way or the other, that doesn't happen." "
"Hmmhhmmm, yep, and I know our target, too," Morph replied, staring hard at Gateway and guards standing beside him. Specifically, Morph was wondering about the necklace the man was wearing. That really doesn't seem his style, does it?