by Adam Yoshida
It hadn’t been possible to bring any of the Pacific Fleet carriers over in time to join the final offensive. They had been detained for too long during the re-taking of the Pacific Coast and, once that had been completed, the Acting President had ordered that all of the damaged and worn-out ships be immediately refitted and repaired so as to ensure that America didn’t go into the post-war world without anything resembling a Navy. Anyways, because all of the Nimitz and Ford class ships were too big to fit through the Panama Canal, they wouldn’t have been able to arrive soon enough anyways. Cape St. George and the other ships that had joined the Prince of Wales had only been able to make it by running through the Canal and taking the entire journey at maximum speed. As a result, though he had been reinforced by some of the aircraft from the Pacific Fleet, all that Admiral Layton had to throw into the battle were his three carriers that were still capable of fighting.
Each of the three SuperCarriers was packed from one end to the other with fighters, a total of ninety had been crammed onto each. Now they were taking off, one after another. With the majority of the Democratic Union’s naval forces far away and distracted there was no need to hold anything back to defend the fleet. All two hundred and seventy-two of the flight-worthy fighters onboard the Task Force were going into this battle. The planes were taking off now, one after another. Together they formed two great formations.
“The first wave is ready to go,” reported the CAG from the CIC of the Reagan.
“Let’s end this thing,” replied Layton.
Bravo Troop, 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 1st BCT, 2nd Armored Division, Mount-Royal, Montreal
The first wave of the FNASA attack came in at a little after 2PM. Captain Dumont and the rest of Bravo Troop had, after their brief sojourn in the mall, been stationed along the edge of the road that approached it from the south. Once the enemy had realized that the survivors of the 1st Brigade Combat Team were attempting to gather in a single location they had responded by launching a hasty attack designed to disrupt their movements and Bravo Troop, manning one of the exterior lines of the position, had been among the first to fall under attack.
At first the artillery fire had been desultory and disorganized. The enemy was as low on ammunition as the US Army was and they didn’t quite seem to have the ground in front of them quite figured out. Dumont watched as the first artillery rounds simply flew over the positions established by the 1st Brigade. Within minutes, however, the efforts of FNASA spotters had allowed them to adjust their fire and the second round was more accurate. A handful of big 155mm shells flew directly over the heads of Dumont’s soldiers and struck the structures behind them. The soldiers of Bravo Troop huddled in their hastily-sandbagged positions as they heard, in the far distance, their own artillery open up with its own counter-battery fire.
Mercifully, the artillery had managed to spare the position held by Bravo Troop. The enemy’s mortars, however, did not. 81mm mortar rounds began to strike the ground. A few hundred feet from where Dumont was dug in the plunging fire of one round managed to strike a firing position dead-on, instantly killing four soldiers from the Third Platoon.
The handful of mortars that Bravo Troop still possessed opened up with their own counter-battery fire, attempting to use their barely-functional radars to detect the location of the enemy’s mortars. The mortarmen worked desperately, dropping one round after another into their own tubes and firing them off into the mid-afternoon sky.
Dumont sat silently as he watched the mortar teams adjust their angle of fire ever-upwards.
“It won’t be long now,” he finally said as he heard the pace of the artillery fire begin to slacken even more.
There was no subtly to the approach of the enemy force, which Dumont quickly realized was actually a company-sized force of Bundeswehr infantry. Instead, the storm broke over the American soldiers with an incredible fury in a matter of seconds as the German soldiers, tired-but-determined, took a straight run at their position.
Their intel must have been wrong, thought Dumont as he watched the first Germans fall to the ground under the intense fire of the American guns, not that I mind.
Though they were also horribly short on ammunition, Dumont had already ordered his general purpose machine guns to not hold anything back when the attack came on. The three M240s that Bravo Troop had rattled away at a rapid pace, spitting bullets into the German lines and killing men en masse. Dumont figured that he would, especially with the consolidation of the rest of the Brigade, either have his Troop rotated out of the line or they would be able to, owing to the urgency of events, beg, borrow, or steal some more bullets from somewhere.
The Germans approached within one hundred feet of the American lines. As they did this they began to fire their own rifles at the semi-protected American positions and to inflict casualties in the process. Bravo Company added its own rifle fire to the mix, killing dozens of Germans and wounding an equal number in a furious exchange of fire that took the lives of thirty-two of the American soldiers.
One hundred feet was as close as the Bundeswehr soldiers got. Someone recognized - or perhaps the soldiers themselves recognized - the futility of the attack and ordered a general withdrawal. As the Germans attempted to fall back, Dumont kept up his own fire. Even in the face of a rain of American bullets one of the Germans made the foolish mistake of turning around to attempt to attend to a comrade who had fallen to the ground. The German’s turn presented Dumont with a clear shot at his chest and the Captain took it. Three bullets hit the German soldier and he fell to the ground. Dumont kept his eyes trained on him and when the man twitched on the ground the Captain, almost by reflex, responded by firing another burst at him.
As the German retreat continued, Dumont could hear the rate of his soldiers’ fire begin to drop off.
“Keep up your fire!” he ordered, “don’t forget that we’re trapped on a fucking island with these people.”
Daring to stand up slightly to get a better view, Dumont fired at one of the fleeing Germans. The first burst went a little high. The second struck him squarely in the back and sent him tumbling out of view. Watching the spectacle with grim satisfaction, Dumont reached for another magazine.
Fleet Air Arm F-35 Lightning II, Over the Celtic Sea
The math that faced the French fleet was every bit as daunting as that which had faced the small force they had managed to put into the air. Of the five ships of the Marine Nationale that had been dispatched alongside the Queen Elizabeth and her escorts only one, the Chevalier Paul, had any substantial anti-air warfare capability. Even the Chevalier Paul, a Horizon-class Frigate, only had forty-eight VLS cells that carried a mix of both short and long-range Aster 15 and 30 surface-to-air missiles.
While the fighting in the Mid-Atlantic had largely depleted the US Navy’s stock of newer Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles and the Royal Navy had likewise run out of the newer Perseus anti-ship missile, both navies still had plenty of stock of Harpoon missiles. It was true enough to point out that the Harpoon was old, slow, and practically obsolete: but they also happened to be damned plentiful. The one hundred and sixty-seven Harpoon missiles that the American and British fighters fired at the French forces were, in fact, only a part of the stocks held onboard their ships.
Lieutenant-Commander Windsor’s Lightning II carried only four of the missiles. Adding the capacity to fire the Harpoon to the F-35 had been accomplished with only some minor modifications to the aircraft involved. A handful of the fighters had not been modified and so their carried other precision munitions instead.
In the seconds after the last of the French fighters was downed, the British and American fighters began to launch one salvo of missiles after another. The number of missiles in the air bound for the French ships climbed with each passing second. The awful arithmetic quickly became inescapable to the officers and sailors onboard the French ships below. Chevalier Paul emptied her magazines in under a minute but, even with a success rate of over 90% for their missiles, they
barely made a dent in the wave of death that was rushing towards them. The VLS onboard the Charles de Gaulle managed to add another thirty-one Aster 15 missiles to the defensive effort that the Marine Nationale was able to mount, but these likewise failed to alter the fundamental reality that the French faced in any serious way. With all of their most powerful anti-missile weapons fired the six ships of the French task force still faced a swarm of ninety-four incoming missiles.
Onboard the Chevalier Paul, the ship’s captain watched the latest updates provided by the fleet’s radar systems and, with nothing else of practical value left to do, silently began perform Hail Marys. Whatever intercession this appeal for the grace of the Divine Mother might have brought, it certainly wasn’t enough to save the lives of either the Captain or his crew.
As the ship positioned closest to the Anglo-American force operating off of the Prince of Wales, Chevalier Paul was the first to go. The impact of a quartet of Harpoon missiles was enough to melt the superstructure of the ship along with any sailors unfortunate enough to be caught inside the range of the blasts and the fires that followed. These blows were enough to destroy the ship and kill a substantial part of the crew. The six that followed were, then, mostly superfluous.
One after another the ships of the French task force went down under the relentless missile fire. The fires caused by the impacts had barely even begun to spread through the Chevalier Paul when more missiles hit the nearby Aconit. The La Fayette-class Frigate proved even less able to stand the blows than its Horizon-class cousin. Five seconds after the impact of the third missile the Aconit simply blew apart, taking one hundred and thirty-one officers and men down with it.
The great prize, of course, was positioned in the centre of the entire group. An object of 42,000 tons cannot be reduced by a mere five hundred pounds of explosives, such as the warhead of a single Harpoon missile. The first missile, which had somehow managed to race ahead of the others, hit the Charles de Gaulle along its side. The Carrier managed to shrug off the first blow with contempt. The same could not be said, however, for the effects of the forty-two missiles that followed, which practically enveloped the Carrier and stung it endlessly and torturously, much like the bees that Macaulay Culkin’s character encountered in the 1991 film “My Girl.”
Still, despite the relentless impact of the missiles, the Charles de Gaulle continued to float. The explosions had scarred and wrecked the carrier but, in spite of fires that burned beyond all control, they hadn’t quite managed to complete its destruction yet.
Lieutenant-Commander Windsor’s course took him right over the flaming wreck of the carrier, which served as a bright and shining beacon amidst the growing darkness of the early evening.
5th Ave. and 59th St., Manhattan
The first missiles that reached into Central Park seemed to have come as a complete surprise to the forces that were stationed there. The AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles were targeted against the handful of radars that provided targeting information for the surface-to-air missile batteries that protected the forces that were stationed there. The light missiles came roaring into view at twice the speed of sound and slammed home, their skimpy 146lb warheads being more than sufficient to create havoc on the ground below.
Dallas and Mancini watched with satisfaction as the impact of the first missiles sent everyone in the military camp below scrambling, suddenly seized with panic as the long-expected attack arrived much sooner than anyone had anticipated. Presumably whoever was in charge of the FNASA’s planning for New York City had assumed that the final battle wouldn’t occur until either XII Corps moved further south or the Army of Northern Virginia swung to the north. Now, suddenly, a battle that was supposed to occur someday was occurring immediately.
“I’m going to stay on the bunker,” announced Dallas as he trained the laser rangefinder on a nearby FNASA position. Mancini, nervously looking about, merely grunted in response. No more than a minute passed before Mancini, looking out the window, was able to spot the first pair of F/A-18E Super Hornets come streaking across the skyline of the city.
“Here they come!” the Detective shouted, his voice raising slightly in his excitement.
Dallas pulled back from his rangefinder for a moment to take a look.
“Not headed our way,” he said, “probably towards Lower Manhattan. Brooklyn, even, maybe.”
The fighters were followed by a second group, this one of a dozen. The Super Hornets moved across the sky towards the position that Mancini and Dallas held.
The first of the Super Hornets swept in low over the part and dropped a pair of 500 pound Paveway IV laser-guided bombs. The munitions fell and struck their targets, a pair of tanks that had been positioned near the gate of the FNASA encampment. Moments later a second F/A-18 moved into view and dropped its own bombs. These struck the bunker that Dallas had been designating.
“Got ‘em!” shouted Dallas as he watched the bombs detonate. Instantly he took a slight turn to the right and targeted his laser against a French APC that was holding its position. Another Super Hornet immediately took up the designation and dropped a bomb that blew apart the APC like an aluminum pop can struck by a boot.
A string of bombs fell against the positions of a FNASA infantry battalion slightly to the north. The initial explosions occurred beyond the view of Dallas and Mancini, both both could well imagine the effects on the ground.
“Alright,” said Dallas as he watched yet another bomb strike one of his targets, “we’ve got them here. The rest is going to be up to your people.”
Bravo Troop, 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 1st BCT, 2nd Armored Division, Mount-Royal, Montreal
As Captain Dumont had predicted, Bravo Troop had been pulled off the line to refit in the aftermath of the attack by the German battalion. There had been a brief lull in the fighting that had stretched into the late afternoon as the FNASA forces in Montreal had realized that what was left of the 1st Brigade Combat Team still had significant fight in it. Using materials salvaged from the mall it had even proven to be possible to provide hot meals for the men.
Dumont was devouring his second Swanson’s TV dinner - he’d always been partial to their “fried chicken” - when the call came through the radio.
“Captain,” said the radio operator, “it’s Major Olafson.”
Dumont threw back what was left of his sixth can of Coca-Cola and picked up his radio headset.
“Go ahead Major,” he said as he walked over to one of the buckets that someone had set up and unzipped his pants.
“They’re coming back,” said Olafson, “and we need everyone on the line. It’s a major formation this time. Not just scattered units. They’re coming at us with the better part of two brigades. Fresh ones. Grab everything you can and get a good position to the east of the main complex.”
“Alright,” said Dumont as he finished and zipped back up.
Unified Army Group Headquarters, Brossard, Quebec
“They shifted some air resources to try and interdict our movements across Montreal,” reported Colonel Chernow as General Wesley looked at the latest depositions of his forces on the map table in front of him, “but it wasn’t very effective. Things are such a mess on the ground and they don’t have that many planes left in serviceable condition. We lost around one hundred men and a dozen vehicles.”
“Alright,” replied General Wesley, “and how about the rest of our forces?”
“It’s pretty messy as well, but we’re getting packed up and ready to go. We’re going to have to abandon a fair bit of materiel,” said Chernow.
“We’ll destroy it?” asked the General.
“Yes, of course,” replied the Colonel.
“Ok,” said Wesley, standing up and straightening his own uniform jacket, “I guess that it is now time for us to go.”
“I was about to suggest that, sir,” said the Colonel.
“Order the forces in Montreal to press the attack, irrespective of losses,” ordered General Wesley, �
��and let’s get everyone else the fuck out of here as fast as we can.”
HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08), The Celtic Sea
A few of the more-nervous officers onboard the Queen Elizabeth had looked askance as Admiral Childers’ order for HMS Defender to approach the burning remains of the French task force to attempt to search for survivors - after all there might have been one or more attack submarines along with the rest of the French ships out there and looking for revenge - but the remorseful Admiral had insisted that a rescue effort begin as soon as was humanly practical and consistent with the protection of the rest of the force.
The Admiral received that initial report from the captain of the Defender in utter silence.
“Sir?” said the Captain over the video conference link in response to the Admiral’s non-responsiveness.
“Are we still connected?” asked the Captain.
“Yes,” said Admiral Childers quietly, “is that all?”
“I’m afraid so, sir. We’ve found six survivors so far. All people who were blown clear of the ship. And it appears that someone nasty happened with the reactor. I’m afraid that we can’t approach any closer. Not without risking the safety of the ship.”
“But there could still be people alive onboard Charles de Gaulle?” asked Childers.
“Perhaps,” said the Defender’s captain, “but I think, from the radiation levels that we can observe, they’re doomed anyways.”
“Very well,” said Childers finally, “thank you for your work, Captain.”
