The Second Civil War- The Complete History

by Adam Yoshida

  Arlington, Virginia

  Mark Varro watched the latest news from Canada with grim satisfaction. Perhaps, he thought, I ought to have joined the forces over there - there might have been something to be gained from that. In any case, it was too late for regrets. As he drove his stolen car to the campus of the American University, he turned every few seconds to look at the sword which lay slung across the passenger seat.

  It was, he reflected, rather foolish to leave it sitting out there in the open as it would be very difficult to explain to any police officer who happened to pull him over why he was driving around with a sword in his passenger seat, but it was just too cool-looking to not leave it there. He had contemplated making the act a fully-public one. Completing the execution of this particular criminal in the middle of one of his communistic anti-American lectures would be genuinely satisfying. But he had to weigh that thought against the certainty that, were he to do so, he would almost certainty be caught and consequently prevented from carrying out other executions. Therefore, he had had to monitor the Professor’s classroom and find a time when he was sure he would be alone. Also, rather than appearing, as he would have preferred, in full dress uniform to carry out this particular act it was necessary for him to adopt a disguise.

  As Varro stopped in the university parking lot he opened up the guitar case that was also sitting on the passenger seat and placed the sword inside. Getting out of the car, he stopped to check that his wig was in place and to admire his Metallica t-shirt. Carefully gripping the case so as not to jostle the contents, he gave himself one last once-over and smiled.

  He walked casually, as he imagined that a slacker might, from the parking lot into the hall where he knew that Professor Anderson was finishing his lecture. Based upon the few times he had already sat in on it, he knew that students wouldn’t be eager to hang around and chat afterwards and that both of his teaching assistants had to quickly move on to lead tutorial sections. Quietly, he slipped into the back of the class and waited for the room to clear.

  Once the last student had left, Varro sat and watched as Anderson methodically collected his papers. Varro went for his case and snapped it open, collecting up the broadsword with both hands. He raised and and began to move towards the Professor, who wasn’t paying the least attention.

  “Professor Anderson!” he shouted, jolting the man to attention. The Professor looked up and adjusted his glasses, before startling and falling backwards.

  “Professor Anderson!” he repeated, “you have been tried before the court of the American people. Your crime is treason! Your punishment will be death!”

  “What?” cried out the mystified Professor, “I have always…”

  Varro swung the sword at Anderson’s side. He had hoped that the blow would cleave the man in half. Instead, however, it left a huge bloody gash in his side. Blood spilled across the classroom floor as the Professor desperately crawled away.

  “I…” he coughed and struggled for words, “I’ve always been an advocate of the people…”

  Now Varro swung for his head. The blow caught Anderson along the side of the neck, inflicting a mortal wound that went a long way towards severing the head from the body, but not quite killing the Professor instantly. Varro raised the sword with both hands and drove it into Anderson’s chest. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, before pulling a note from the interior pocket of his coat and using a hunting knife to pin it to Anderson’s chest.

  Northern Ontario

  “Fuckers!” General Price cursed as he looked at the latest situation reports from the front. He had expected an attack. Perhaps he had even desired one. What he had not expected was for the Western force to hurl itself upon his lines in such a sudden and fierce fashion. Burying hundreds of men and women alive might have been cruel, but it had also cut large holes in his defenses, holes through which several hundred Western tanks had poured. He had counted upon them to attempt a systematic reduction of his defenses. Now, instead, the Western Army had already punched a major hole in his lines and had passed thousands of his men into the heart of his works. The grim reality that now existed was that many of his fixed defenses had become an impediment to holding the city as they tied down substantial forces in easily-bypassed strongpoints and left those men and women in a position where, when they attempted to break out of defensive works that had become prisons, they would be slaughtered due to their lack of mobility.

  “Where are our own tanks?” he asked, attempting to sort out a battlefield map that was a masterpiece of confusion.

  “The Armoured Regiment is four kilometers to the south of the town. They’re gassed up and ready to go,” came the reply from an anonymous staffer.

  “Ok. Order them forward,” replied Price.

  The 1st Canadian Armoured Regiment (Provisional) was made up of every Leopard 2 hull and every person with tank experience or anything like it that the Federal government could pull together in a hurry. The Federal Government had sought to purchase additional tanks and vehicles abroad but, with its credit now very shaky, this had proven to be difficult. While some had eventually been secured, even if they came with usurious financing terms, none of those had reached the front yet. The tanks that the Army of Northwestern Ontario threw into the Battle of Thunder Bay represented, aside from a few training units and other odds and ends held at various depots, the whole of the armored strength of the Federal Army.

  Major Dunford’s company, rested and refitted after having participated in the opening engagement of the battle, had been assigned to spearhead the First Brigade as it led the breakthrough after the engagement along the forward trenches. Speed was all that mattered at the moment. The scattered men and women who manned the outer ring of the defenses built up around Thunder Bay could go two ways in the hours ahead: they could break apart into smaller-but-deadly meteorites that would strike all portions of the Western Army with terrible force or they could prove to be so divided and dissipated that they would dissolve harmlessly in the atmosphere. The latter outcome would be most likely if they found, once they were able to raise their heads and look around, that the Western Army had already shattered the second ring of defenses, leaving them genuinely isolated and alone.

  Every available air asset that the Western force had was now being devoted to clearing a path for the tanks trying to reach the centre of the city. Forward Air Controllers flew light aircraft that were practically invisible in the night sky, transmitting GPS locations of enemy forces back to the high command for air targeting. As Dunford’s Merkava drove forward he saw, just ahead of him, one missile and bomb and another descend from the heavens to light up the darkness and shatter some hapless enemy below.

  On the road just to the east of the city, the Federal Leopard 2 tanks, still an intact formation despite being hit by two rounds of air strikes that had destroyed eleven vehicles, made contact with the First Armored Division, led by Major Dunford’s company of the First Brigade.

  The Federal tanks were coming at him at full speed.

  “That’s not very good for fire control,” commented Dunford’s Merkava driver. The Leopards were nearing the edge of their engagement range but, driving forward at maximum speed, their first shots proved to be wholly inaccurate.

  “They ought to have slowed down by now,” agreed the Loader.

  Dunford held back for a second before speaking.

  “They don’t want us to be able to engage them by air. They’re going to try to close distances with us in order to make artillery and close air support almost impossible without causing friendly casualties.”

  “How do we respond to that?” asked the driver.

  “We let them,” answered Dunford.

  The fire of the fast-moving Leopards had, so far, proven to be fairly inaccurate. The fire of the Merkavas on the other hand, holding in place and taking their time to find their targets, proved to be superlatively accurate. One round after another struck the Federal tanks as they desperately attempted to close the ran
ge in order to deprive their enemies of the invaluable assistance that they received in the form of air and artillery support.

  Within seconds, the Eastern and Western tanks were fighting an armored engagement at practically point-blank range. The battle quickly degenerated into a murderous close-range street fight being fought with seventy ton chunks of steel. Fire, fragments, and flesh coated the battlefield as the intensely-bright fires of close quarters combat between tanks set the night ablaze. Within a minute, the numerical superiority of the Federal force over Dunford’s company began to tell. As the tanks continued to hammer away at one another, the number of friendlies dropped. One minute there were eleven tanks on the battlefield. Then eight. Then four. As the superior size of the Eastern force began to tell, General Price and everyone else watching events live began to entertain hopes of a wholly different outcome than that they had expected a few minutes ago.

  “Numbers and tactics both tell,” Price announced to his headquarters staff.

  Major Dunford knew that he couldn’t last much longer. He and his men were outnumbered. They had inflicted casualties far out of proportion to their numbers, but they did not have the strength to overcome everything. Finally, mentally conceding the inevitable, he flipped a few pages on his computer and called for every form of support that he could.

  “Outback,” his command radio cackled to life, “you have called in air strikes upon your own position. We can’t do that.”

  “Command,” Dunford radioed back with a slight chuckle in his voice, “none of us are going to be here much longer. Deliver the strike.”

  It was Colonel Stern’s eighth air mission in forty-eight hours. He could barely keep his own eyes open. But he was still a combat pilot and determined to carry on. He suppressed a yawn as the forward air controller ordered the strike package that he was leading to divert from their planned attack upon a strongpoint erected closer to the centre of the city in order to provide close air support instead.

  “Shit,” one of his wingmen radioed, abandoning all pretense of discipline, “those look like our fucking tanks!”

  “They know what they’re doing,” Stern quickly responded, narrowing his eyes and subtly leaning forward as he attempted to block everything but what was in front of him from his mind.

  The MiGs continued their flight, dodging and weaving as intermittent anti-aircraft fire began to fly into the air around them. Finally, with an almost-agonizing slowness, the targets came into full view. Stern banked his Fulcrum to the right and, arcing upwards to avoid being caught in the blast, released his bombs.

  Dunford had taken over the gunner position in his Merkava and was loading the gun himself, diving from one crew position to another. The gunner was dead, killed by a piece of shrapnel that had caught him after a 120mm shell had directly impacted the tank. The loader and driver had both fled, at his orders. Whether they made it through the maelstrom around them or not, he had absolutely no idea.

  He fired another round at one of the incoming Leopard tanks and looked around again. The forward battalion was swarming his company. He wouldn’t have time to load and fire again. He wanted to be a hero but had no desire to be a martyr. He popped that hatch and emerged into the fiery world that surrounded him. A machine gun bullet struck him in the chest, sending him falling the ground. He crawled a few feet before he turned over onto his back, when he caught sight of the MiGs passing above. Dunford rolled himself into a neighboring slit trench, landing with a splash. He laughed as the world around him dissolved into flame.

  “I don’t think that there’s anything left of the advance company,” Colonel Raleigh, the commander of the 1st Brigade who was now the de facto second in command of the Division, announced to Jackson over their secure video chat.

  “Not from what those drones are showing,” Jackson glumly replied before perking up slightly and adding, “but they really let us tear those fuckers in their tank regiment a new asshole.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Raleigh, “I don’t think that they’re moving forward at all.”

  “Total disarray,” General Price’s aide repeated his assessment of the situation along the front.

  “I understand what the general plan of the defense for this area was - forward strong points with an armored reserve and reserves in the city to be re-deployed as necessary, but they’ve simply taken our defenses at a run. They cut up some of those trenches, fucking buried them in dirt - and they really slammed our tanks. They paid for it, but that’s a pretty Goddamned small consolation, if you don’t mind my saying. I don’t know what we can do now.”

  “Fall back,” said Price softly, “save whatever can be saved.”

  “Not fight for the city?”

  “Without our mobility, it’s pointless. They can bypass our infantry and leave us to wither on the vine if we don’t have protection against their tanks and fighters.” They’ll simply hammer our strongpoints.”

  The people around the table nodded.

  “Sir,” another aide entered the room, “we have a call from the Prime Minister’s office.”

  “I would have thought that they’d have pulled back immediately. Our tanks are mauled enough that, though they’d have had to abandon a lot of stuff, we probably wouldn’t have been able to pursue immediately,” Colonel Raleigh observed, circling the positions still held by the Federal army on the interactive map that was being broadcast across their video chat.

  “If they hold the town behind us, they’ll still be a threat to our rear areas,” noted Jackson quietly.

  “Only if they’re mobile. They’re pretty dug in and I don’t see them sallying forth anytime soon. They’re pretty new, I don’t think that their discipline would hold up through that.”

  Jackson looked thoughtfully at the screen.

  “No...” he said, “I think you’re quite right about that.”

  Second Lieutenant Gerri Wagner had been a student at McGill when the war had broken out, majoring in Human Geography. Never, in all of her life, had she imagined that she would end up as a soldier. But, when the Prime Minister had called for volunteers to counteract what he described as - and what she agreed was - a “right-wing coup” not even so odious an institution as the Army had been too hateful for her to join in defense of her country. The men who had cried about women being unsuitable for front-line combat in the infantry had never met Gerri Wagner. Lean, fit, and five foot ten, she’d been able to score well above the average of all recruits - regardless of gender - on her Canadian Forces Fitness Test. That was a legacy of fourteen years worth of soccer. She’d never touched a gun in her life before she began Basic Training, but she had also qualified as an expert marksman.

  Now, she was in command of a platoon of young men and women and stuck holding a building in downtown Thunder Bay, Ontario - a place that, in her opinion, made her native Calgary look cosmopolitan. In the interest of expediency, the volunteer units had been largely allowed to remain together in regional or other groupings. As a result, most of the brigade that she belonged to and the platoon that she was in charge of consisted of young students from around Montreal. They’d spent many days and nights together talking through why they were here and about the kinder, gentler, and better Canada that they hoped would emerge on the other side of the war. Now, though, having heard whispers of what had happened to the mostly-veteran soldiers in the first trenches and having smelled and seen some of what happened when the armoured regiment had charged forward they were all frightened. Together they’d been sitting for hours, carefully watching the windows and gripping their rifles as they waited for their first taste of combat.

  Minutes ticked by as Wagner walked up and down the line, talking to her soldiers.

  “It’ll be ok,” she told one of them, “they’ll probably bypass us anyways at this point.”

  Then the first shell began to burst. The windows around them began to shatter from the concussion of the nearby blasts. Soldiers backed off and hit the deck. A few of them, wounded by flying glass and spli
nters, began to call out for medical assistance. Wagner held back, cooly watching as events played out all around her.

  “It’s not just that we only have a limited supply of shells here,” Lieutenant Colonel Abernathy, the acting commander of the Corps’ artillery, told Jackson, “it’s that we don’t have a lot of shells anywhere. They’re still offloading them in Vancouver, at the very end of the tail. They can fly us in some more, but that’ll only mean that we’ll be getting a dribble of the things.”

  “I understand that, Colonel,” replied Jackson, “and, to be frank, I don’t care. Pour it on, as long as you can. We’ll worry about the rest of it as we need to. It’s not like we’re about to fight an artillery engagement here.”

  Around Jackson and Abernathy, the 155mm howitzers boomed almost continually as they continued to bombard the Federal positions within the city itself, expending ammunition at a furious rate.

  The shelling had gone on for nearly a hour, leaving buildings all along the city’s main streets in smoldering ruins. Wagner had done her best to comfort and prepare her soldiers, but she could tell that they weren’t all with her. Some were looking straight at the ground, dazed even after they had found better shelter in the basement of the building. Some were crying quietly to themselves. Others were openly weeping. Explosions continued to move the earth all around them. Then it stopped.

  “There’s enemy infantry incoming,” her radio croaked out, its signal distorted somewhere.

  “This is it,” she announced to everyone around her in the shelter. She was greeted by silence.

  “This. Is. It,” she announced again, this time slower and more deliberately. A few people turned to look. She caught the eyes of one of them.