Shanghaied - 2ACW

Jesus Christ. This is worst than I thought. There are only 187 F-22s in the USAF's official inventory. I wondering why these and the B-21s weren't evacuated on time. Those classified stealth technology...

61 – Foreign Object Damage

At March Air Reserve Base in southern California an aircraft crew chief opened up an inspection panel on the #3 engine of a C-17A Globemaster strategic airlifter. He placed a titanium wrench in the perfect place, resealed the opening and had the engine started. Two fellow Air Force Reserve personnel who shared his outlook on the matter of doing their bit to avert a civil war walked backwards rapidly like he did. They all watched their handiwork. Significant damage was done. It wasn’t as much as hoped yet the engine was left a complete right-off. That aircraft, the only one left at March after others had already flown away, yet soon meant to be joining them moving men & material ready for war, wasn’t going to be able to fly without a complete engine change. A remarkably similar piece of intentional sabotage was done in far off Mississippi, on the other side of the new border down the middle of America, to an identical aircraft. Working alone, a widely-experienced engineer placed a heavy power tool inside the engine of a C-17 which the Mississippi Air National Guard flew from Allen C. Thomson Air National Guard Base. He likewise had the engine started with that inside, in a place guaranteed to do horrendous damage and make the C-17 un-flyable until a replacement was fitted. The plan by that engineer there in the Deep South was to afterwards do the same to other C-17s at the airlift facility outside the city of Jackson too. He’d heard the words of the state’s governor the night beforehand where she had called the Democratic American Republic ‘North Korea writ large’ and said that Mississippi’s state militia forces would ‘wipe them out like a cancer’. Stopping that, slowing it down even, was what the engineer did his bit towards doing when he wrecked that aircraft engine and moved to do the same to others. He was challenged by a fellow airman though – who reacted to all of the noise – and others took notice: the engineer ended up being shot dead by his fellow Mississippians when he not just defended his act of sabotage but tried to physically assault them.

Foreign Object Damage (FOD) was a major fear of aviators of all stripes. The term was primarily used when something – inanimate or living (animals: birds especially) – was ingested into the engines of their aircraft/helicopter through the air intakes. FOD could and had brought down aircraft in-flight. Protection against that was done via many ways including sweeps of runways ahead of flights and detailed inspections of engines looking for foreign objects ahead of them being spun up. There were other forms of FOD where in-flight an aircraft fuselage or landing gear could be struck by birds or objects yet engine ingestion generally took precedence with such a term. Those acts of sabotage at March ARB and Thomson ANGB were done by those who knew all about the effects of FOD on engines such as those which powered big airlifters like the C-17. They attacked aircraft which they usually paid ever-loving care towards and would check extensively for anything which might cause FOD to them. Doing what they did on the ground, the saboteurs sought to make sure that no one was killed by their actions. They didn’t want to take the lives of others just like them: those put into a situation where they didn’t want to be. War was right on the horizon when that sabotage was done and so many of those due to take part in it didn’t want to. They looked at the weapons of which it would be fought with and stopped them from being put to use. Elsewhere in the country, there was a huge explosion of stored ammunition being removed by DAR Army troops out of the recently-taken Hawthorne Army Depot. That blast in Nevada wasn’t meant to kill anyone in the intentions of the man who set it off yet it did. In the Pentagon, a young female officer who worked in data storage struck ahead of time to play her own role in trying to stop Americans killing each other. She hacked into the main system from her own work terminal, crashing through firewalls with ease, and hit a ‘kill switch’. She purged from the Pentagon’s computers information that would make making war much easier. That data was recoverable in the eventual sense from outside sources yet not any time soon. Caught and arrested by the military police personnel, she gave her exact reasoning behind her actions to US Army Counter-intelligence officers. They accused her of working on behalf of the ‘traitors in the DAR’ and told her that she’d be shot for treason if she didn’t confess who she was working with but she stuck to the truth: she was trying to save lives!

A freight train requisitioned by the DAR Army out in Oregon, running on the Union Pacific Railroad was derailed while on its way to Idaho. The accident took no lives but would cause extensive disruption. There were no commercial services running yet a massive backlog was caused by the derailment where military cargo moving down from Washington state and across Idaho further eastwards wasn’t going to be taking that same route for some time. The derailment had been caused by a small explosion. An improvised explosive device had been laid on a curve in the track and detonated by command signal just as the freight train approached. The exact site was chosen by someone who knew as much about railroads as he did explosives. He caused that derailment in a manner where he wouldn’t hurt anyone and the train would stay upright yet it would be a nightmare for recovery personnel to get anything done soon with removing the wreck and also reopening the track. The bomber was was a national guardsman who’d gone AWOL two days before the blast. He’d served Oregon in defence of rioters and troublemakers yet wouldn’t fight against his fellow Americans as his state governor was instructing the 41st Infantry Brigade to do so. Running and hiding wasn’t for him though. He took action to satisfy his conscience and was left mighty proud at the results of that. There were DAR military convoys on the freeways too. Low-loaders carrying tanks and other tracked armoured vehicles rolled eastwards across the width of the DAR towards the ‘frontline states’ of Colorado and New Mexico. Civilian traffic problems a week after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence had cleared up due to the cessation of any significant cross-border movement. Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming & Montana all had nation guardsmen and state troopers on their side of the new border though there weren’t federal United States forces there. However, the convoys going through the DAR didn’t go directly up to the border itself. Several of the routes were blocked by acts of sabotage committed. Interstate-40 in the east of Arizona was forcibly closed due to placement of over two dozen concrete bollards in the middle of the freeway with hand grenades positioned underneath to explode should the obstructions be removed. That was something that engineers could and did do without too much trouble once they brought up an EOD team yet that took time. Utah falling into the hands of the DAR opened up the Interstate-15/Interstate-70 route between California and Colorado. General Fuller and his Western Command staff had been looking at how much easier things would be for them to move forward equipment & stores with Utah in hand before that happened. Before I-15 reached Utah, it ran north of Las Vegas across Nevada. Ahead of an approaching military convoy, a stolen fuel tanker was crashed deliberately in a lateral position and fuel values opened. Out poured gasoline, which was soon purposefully set alight. Once more, the blockage would eventually be cleared yet there was significant disruption done. In those two incidents, the same small group were responsible. They were former military personnel who had suddenly found themselves citizens of a country which they considered completely illegitimate. They didn’t want to kill anyone unless they really had to and so began their activities, which would grow significant in the weeks ahead, without taking any lives as they tried to avert a war by making that very difficult to wage. In both New Jersey and Ohio where state governors were mobilising their National Guard elements ready to take part in a coming conflict, doing so without any order to do that from the Pentagon, incidents took place by serving or retired personnel to make non-fatal attacks on their efforts to get ready to move cross-country. There was disruption caused to the efforts of both the 44th & 76th Infantry Brigades to meet lofty deadlines set by their governors to be prepared. However, their ultimate process wasn’t stopped.


The Democratic American Republic moved extensive military forces across their country during the final few days before the next United States president was sworn in on January 20th 2029. National Guard elements reporting to the Western Command were joined by regular military units who Fuller had gained for DAR service in transferring into positions poised to defend the sovereignty which had been declared post rebellion. Huge problems cropped up with that. The plentiful sabotage – which included combat aircraft being subject to FOD as well as non-combat ones – disrupted that and so too did much desertion. Soldiers walked away from their units in large numbers. There were defections where aircrew flew eastwards (or to neighbouring countries) and then mutinies as well. A major case of the latter was seen in Hawaii where a regiment of the 3rd Marine Division in the process of being flown to Colorado had its commanding colonel shot dead and US Marines supporting the cause of not fighting the United States engaged other US Marines who stormed the barracks which they had taken over. Americans died there at the hands of other Americans long before any real war was met. Fuller kept at it though. His president and the Minister for Defence & Security both told him that he needed to have the Western Command ready come midday on Inauguration Day to face all possible eventualities. The airlift out of Hawaii to the mainland carried on while that mutiny went on. Other aircraft flew men and equipment across the continental portions of the DAR too. Road and rail convoys moved about more of what Fuller wanted to get in-place. He and his central staff were all recently-retired or defectors from the United States Armed Forces. They knew exactly how their former fellow countrymen would fight the coming conflict and sought to negate all that would be done to bring to an end the country which they had sworn to serve. Everything they did was to stop that.

National Guard units from almost all of the forty remaining states of the United States were mobilised ahead of President-elect Roberts taking office. Even the Bluest of states, those which had strongly supported the Democratic candidate Maria Arreola Rodriguez in the presidential election, mobilised as much of their state militia forces as they could ready to see action beyond their homes. Georgia’s governor spoke with his counterpart in Texas and offered to begin the transfer to that ‘border state’ of the 48th Infantry Brigade without federal approval. That offer was taken up and Georgia was joined by others too in beginning the process of forward deployment. Montana and Wyoming both sought aid from other states and while there was a willingness to do that due to the threat each of them faced, other state governors from nearby held off the actual process of moving national guardsmen. They got everything prepared yet waited until the country swore in the 49th President: those governors wanted him to give the order.

While those national guardsmen were prepared ready for war, none of the regular United States Armed Forces still loyal to the country were officially mobilised. The situation was quite extraordinary, unprecedented as far as so many were concerned. President Walsh wouldn’t give the approval for that to be done. He’d recently fired his Secretary of Defence and lost his entire Joint Chiefs to that mass resignation because he wasn’t prepared to use force against those in rebellion as well as allow his successor to be in the position to immediately do so. Walsh sat out his last days in office back out at Camp David again while refusing to allow for any war to be prepared for by federal forces at his command. Politicians back in DC along with citizens across the country furiously demanded that he do so. He wouldn’t budge though with the claim that Americans wouldn’t fight Americans at his direction for the remaining time that he served as the country’s leader.

That period in office of his – where he’d led the country to defeat in a (short) conflict with China and then stood by as good portion of the United States broke away in armed rebellion – ran out on January 20th though. America got a new president on that day.

62 – A New President

The official position of the Government of the Democratic American Republic was that what happened in Washington DC on January 20th 2029 was a matter for that other country. Mark Walsh leaving office to be replaced by Edward Roberts concerned the United States of America. In the DAR, they had a government which represented the will of the people and was entirely democratic in character (and Democratic in partisanship too) whereas that wasn’t the case across the new border. The 100-member Parliament of the DAR, a single body of appointed delegates pending planned elections, had others matters to address and so too did the expanded Council of Twelve. With (self-appointed) Governor Clarke from Utah and Idaho’s Governor Winkelman joining with their fellow governors of eight more states and the president & vice president, that represented the high-level of government above that parliament. Overall decisions were taken among those who had real power because they had a veto on-hand. However, the Parliament had been extremely busy since the formation of the country. They met in Las Vegas in near continuous session where new laws were created and voted upon at a rapid speed. Those who attended the sessions were all glad that there was none of the ‘troubles’ that they had met when in Congress back in DC. There was no Republican obstructionism and widespread agreement on everything that they did. They called that democracy… others would call it something else entirely. The parliament modified the laws of the United States – almost all of them carried over when the Unilateral Declaration of Independence was made – to better suit the DAR. The constitution which they followed allowed that to be done as long as agreement came from those state governors represented on the Council of Twelve. Opt-outs were allowed by those governors instead of a full veto (which needed a minimum of two of them) but nothing which came from the parliament in its first week and a bit of operation was rejected: everything had been sorted out beforehand. The New America forged, that Second Republic which many had long wanted coming into reality, pleased all of those parliamentarians in that Nevada city which the DAR had made its capital.

The DAR Parliament had voted for a National Police Service. It was under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Public Safety, Lauren Quiroz, and she began to see put into practise her police officers enforcing some of the most urgent matters the parliament wanted to see done. Guns was right at the top of the list. There was no Second Amendment in the DAR Constitution. There had been no outright banning of firearms in the hands of individuals yet it was up to the parliament to decide on the quantity and types of guns which citizens could own as well as who could have them. Officers from the National Police Service were tasked to enforce the new laws on that. An amnesty had first been announced where ‘illegal’ guns were to be turned in though police officers were sent at once to remove known mass stockpiles from those not allowed to possess them in the name of public safety. When that was done, there was trouble. Resistance was expected but there was regret from several governors that they had sent the majority of their national guardsmen off towards the border in the east: law enforcement efforts needed the support which National Guard units could have provided when faced with extraordinary use of firepower from many people who didn’t want the DAR government – any government in fact – seizing their guns. Quiroz herself faced a serious assassination attempt which was only stopped by the authorities at the last minute. Her being the public face of the gun seizures made many want to use theirs against her. Parliament had voted upon a currency for the new country. The ‘DAR Dollar’ was that with mandated one-for-one value upon transfer. From the seized US Mint facility in Colorado, new-printed bills were stamped with the DAR name across the middle of them (on each side) pending a later redesign of the currency to better reflect the character of the nation. Old bills in the hands of banks and other financial enterprises were supposed to be returned to there to be replaced like that. Such a simple idea turned into chaos! Things didn’t go as planned with that. Most money was electronic, not in physical form. The parliament had thought that making US Dollars into DAR Dollars would be easy there too. It surely was not, not with everything which had been done in DC to disrupt the financial systems of the DAR. Along with that disruption, there were immense troubles with internet service providers in the new country due to federal United States action against them. Large sections of the internet, of which so many people led as much of their lives as part of as they could, were dead. This effected social media and entertainment as well as, and more so, businesses.

Such weighty matters as these were really important for everyday citizens of the Democratic American Republic. Their leaders though focused on other matters: the looming threat that once the United States had its new president in office, their nation would be attacked. Eleanor Rawlings serving as Minister for Defence & Security and the Chief of the Military General Fuller did all that they could to try and avert that ahead of time. Some members of the Council of Twelve consumed themselves with that too. Others were still focused upon expansion though. Idaho and Utah had been taken against the will of the majority of the residents within them and that should have been enough. Yet, more territory was sought… and gained. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands joined the DAR. Their governors came on-side with the one from the more populous former joining the Council of Twelve – Thirteen it became – due to the two previous separate entities becoming one state and the residents of those islands in the Western Pacific were declared to be full citizens. That eleventh state was fully integrated into the country following a short debate and subsequent debate in the Parliament. There were no significant United States military forces within Guam & the Marianas (the new state’s name) due to the aftermath of the Taiwan Conflict two years past to oppose that annexation, one which was, yet again, done without a public vote to make it democratic as the claim was made that it was. Such a further territorial acquisition would be the last one for the DAR.


The night before the presidential inauguration, Pennsylvania’s Governor Dwight Norris was found strangled to death in a hotel room down in Maryland. State police troopers found his body in that establishment in White Oak – just outside of the District of Columbia – alongside a female journalist from the Washington Post. Norris had slipped away from his protective duty of Pennsylvania troopers on the other side of the hotel to meet with the reporter. She had been shot rather than strangled. Only late the previous year, Norris’ teenage daughter had been kidnapped by far right extremists and gang raped before being rescued by by federal forces on the direct orders of President Walsh. He’d announced he was retiring from politics and a date in February had been set for his resignation as governor. Norris had been due to attend Roberts’ inauguration the following day though no one knew why he had made a clandestine meeting with a journalist nor what had occurred to see it end that way. The media coverage which mentioned a ‘hotel room’ and a ‘secret liaison’ made many think that there was something to that of a personal nature yet investigators from the FBI found that that wasn’t the case at all. The reporter from the Post had been seeking to share information with Norris – as they had done in the past it was discovered – in exchange for information coming back to her from him. What all that was about was unknown. They’d both been killed and the FBI didn’t consider their murders to be a random act. The professionalism shown in the killings where surveillance systems were disabled and no one had physically seen anything meant to the investigators that they were seeing the outcome of something big. Whatever one or both of those two victims had known had seen them killed for it.

That same evening, E. John Ferdinand met with a dozen senators in the Capitol Building. The recently-fired Secretary of Defence knew all of them well and attended the meeting alongside the president-elect as well. The senators were members of the Armed Services Committee with the Chair & Ranking Member present. Before he had been one of the ringleaders in the failed attempt to use the Twenty–Fifth Amendment to remove Walsh, Ferdinand was meant to have remained in post during the change of presidency. However, he’d been fired by Walsh and escorted out of the White House. To return to his position as SecDef as Roberts wanted him to, Ferdinand would need to be confirmed once more by that committee. There had been some feelings expressed in the days leading up the meeting that perhaps Ferdinand might not be the best choice to reassume duties at the Pentagon. Opinions had been expressed that while the loss of all of those military bases to the DAR’s General Fuller had happened after Walsh had terminated him, Ferdinand had left them really exposed as they were. In addition, other concerns had been raised that Ferdinand would be too timid in dealing with the DAR should he return to the post: after Idaho & Utah, the feeling was that nothing short of the absolute maximum in military action, and in a short time frame too, was the only course of action to take. Aided by Roberts, Ferdinand made sure that the senators understood that the blame was all on Walsh and he put all of those fears to rest about any sort of unwillingness to go all the way in fighting the DAR. He gave them the bare-bones of what he called ‘Operation Shining Sword’.

They were much impressed by what he had to say there. A huge opening attack, one aiming to limit casualties yet cause significant damage, would be followed by a rapid ground campaign to strike all the way towards the Pacific and liberate the country west of the Rockies from those traitors in rebellion. He spoke about the recent ‘Shanghaiing’ of two states by the DAR, gaining a good reaction to his political commitment to the cause of ending that illegal entity: it would be something he would say to the media the next day as well. Agreement came that the nomination and confirmation of Ferdinand to see him returned to the Pentagon would go through with haste. Everyone had known there was no time to mess around and drag things out. No other candidate had been seriously considered by those senators (and the other committee members not at that briefing) yet they had wanted to make sure that Roberts had picked the right man for the job of reunification by force which they, and the country, saw needed to be completed as soon as possible without grave loss of life.


In something not entirely unprecedented, yet still rather remarkable, Walsh didn’t attend his successor’s inauguration. The 48th President departed from Camp David an hour before midday and flew in a helicopter at that point still with the call-sigh ‘Marine One’ to a rural home of his brother-in-law down in Virginia. He issued a statement, his last as president, asserting that he wasn’t attending due to his wish ‘not to distract from the inauguration of Roberts’ yet, of course, that very much did so. There had been a significant downturn in relations between the two of them when at first, after that US Supreme Court decision in November 2028, Walsh had at first been welcoming to the Texan who won the presidency. Everything that Walsh had done, hadn’t done in fact, with regards to trying to put as stop to the Democratic American Republic becoming what it did had gone wrong. Roberts hadn’t at first criticised Walsh’s inaction in public yet was forced to when everything had gotten really out of hand. In reply, Walsh had stopped taking his successor’s calls and allowed for members of his administration to sabotage the transition process. Roberts and Vice President-elect Mitchell had received less-than-satisfactory national security briefings especially. Roberts had demanded that Walsh use force of arms against those in rebellion against the United States all to no avail. The traditional letter left on the president’s desk in the Oval Office by Walsh for Roberts wasn’t placed there either. The 49th President could live without that contents of that but regarded it as an outlandish, childish thing to do.

Elsewhere with the transition, Roberts’ picks for important government posts had all met resistance to their moves into position from Walsh appointees. The country was in turmoil with part of it having illegally broken away yet also massive economic disruption following Black Friday. So much of the damage done which Roberts wanted to repair could have been made easier by Walsh doing what he had promised to and making things easy. He’d chosen not to though. That was his parting gift to the presidency: mess left in his wake with no leg-up for those coming in afterwards to try and sort it out. When public revelations of this would come out afterwards, Walsh would go down in history alongside the previously-agreed upon worst one – James Buchanan – as an equal for him.

Minutes before Midday, among immense security, even more than usually for such events, Roberts was sworn in as a new president for the country. The African-American Republican from Texas took the oath of office outside on the steps of the US Capitol: it had been suggested he do so inside due to a looming terrorist threat yet he had no desire to be seen to be hiding. In public he did his duty to his country. Roberts became the President of the United States at the allotted time. At once, he moved to reunify the nation whose leadership he had inherited. Everyone knew that that was going to cost many, many lives yet it was something that the nation demanded that Roberts do. He thus took the country into its second civil war.


End of Part Three

I wanted to have him thoroughly ruin any reputation he had left.
Guam got hit really hard by Chinese missiles as well as a full on airstrike. Andersen and the naval base were never repaired so there wasn't much there when the governor unilaterally handed his island over.

Part Four – Brothers will fight


64 – National Emergency

Once in the Oval Office, President Roberts signed a wave of pre-drafted Executive Orders. All dealt with what were regarded as important issues of national security. Some of them, most of them probably, were likely to be successfully challenged down the line by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional yet Roberts knew that that was the case ahead of time. In the meantime, the matters which they concerned were pressing and by the point that ultimate judicial rulings came, the 49th President believed that the need for what they called for would have passed. The situation was so urgent and Roberts had to move into what he said was a ‘grey area of the Constitution’ rather than endanger the fate of the United States any more than it had been during the lame duck last months of his predecessor’s presidency.

The EO for mass mobilisation of reserve elements of the US Armed Forces as well as recent retirees, plus an instant crash ‘stop loss’ order to curtail planned retirements, was something that wasn’t regarded by the Roberts Administration as anything to be challenged legally down the line. It was a recognised power that the sitting president had and had been used many times before by those who sat behind the same desk which he did. He, and so many others, had demanded that President Walsh issue the same EO all to no avail. Roberts set that right and the call-up notice went out so that hundreds of thousands of military personnel were to begin reporting to mobilisation stations. The National Guard elements of all forty states outside the illegal Democratic American Republic were federalised too. Most of them were already mobilised as per the orders of their state governors: after Roberts’ order, they all came under the control of the Pentagon. Once again, the implications of the EO might be challenged yet nothing was going to come of that. Roberts declared that there was a National Emergency in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and territories of the United States. The text of the EO with regard to that granted the ability of military forces ability to operate within them free of the usual legal constraints: in the long-run, the wide-ranging declaration of the National Emergency covering all of the country was likely to be met with legal reversal but only in part. Roberts did have a friendly, war-minded Congress – Republican-controlled with Democrats also urging for conflict – to contain issues around the Posse Comitatus Act and see off any effort to invoke restrictions via the War Powers Act.

What else the new president used the power of the office which he had just been sworn into to order was at once controversial. The Departments of Homeland Security & Justice both already had lists of those involved in the forming and operation of the DAR. The numbers of people on them ran past the two thousand mark. Everyone single person on those lists, from the DAR’s president down to state-level officials out West, was subject to arrest by federal forces. Roberts’ EO stated that once taken into detention, they were to he held without the usual access to legal counsel and communication with the outside world until the end of the National Emergency. Another EO signed by him covered the ability of the president to make emergency appointments in lieu of US Senate approval to positions within the highest reaches of the US Armed Forces and the Intelligence Community where in usual circumstances, there would have to be a successful confirmation. The Senate was to work flat out to see appointments made yet Roberts gave himself the power as president to fill positions with haste. However, the EO also allowed for the Senate to remove appointees, with cause, if necessary. That EO concerning the National Emergency meant that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could operate where needed across the nation without regard to bureaucratic hold-ups at a state level. In another EO, one directly concerning FEMA, Roberts gave the permission for them to at once begin assisting state governments across various areas of the nation which had received refugees who had left the area seized by the DAR. A hell of a lot of people had fled claiming harassment and fear of persecution. Unstated in the EO itself yet a key aspect of that was the ability of FEMA to be ready to assist in state authorities in the face of war damage expected to be seen once the federal and rebel forces clashed in armed conflict.

Roberts had spoken to the nation during his inauguration concerning the Democratic American Republic. He addressed the American people once more on the same subject from the Oval Office after those EOs were signed. Roberts said that his first priority as president was to restore the cohesion of the union. That he was going to do and he assured all those watching and listening that there would be be no half measures. The rebellion was illegal and would be put to an end. He spoke of the last time that the country had gone to war with itself, back in the 1860s, and brought up the huge cost in terms of lives lost then. Roberts said that he had no intention of allowing for such a grave loss of life once again. That was something he wished to entirely avoid. What he wanted, what Roberts said that he was sure all Americans wanted, was for there to be no casualties at all. The new president said that there was a way to make that achievable. He called upon those out West engaged in rebellion against the United States to halt their activities. From those at the very top to those at the bottom, Roberts called upon them to cease what they were doing. Abandon your posts, the president told those in uniform, and to the political figures he instructed them to turn themselves in to federal authorities. No mention was made of amnesty or the fate of federal charges against them though. Roberts left all that unsaid as he called upon and ending to the rebellion. He moved to put all the blame upon those who refused to heed his call for any loss of life which would come afterwards. It would be the responsibility of those who opted to fight against the United States of America for all that occurred in terms of casualties, not those who sought to defend the unity of the nation: so Roberts declared.

Give up, he urged all those in rebellion… or else.


There was no deadline issued by Roberts for those across the new border to do as he demanded and cease the rebellion which they were taking part in, just as there were no conditions attached either. That was all left open to interpretation and was a deliberate strategy. Before his inauguration, the new president had held conference calls with influential political figures – mostly Republicans – on how he could deal with the matter of the Democratic American Republic. He had made it clear to them that, due to Walsh’s inaction, upon reaching the Oval Office he would be unable to at once start sending troops advancing upon Las Vegas and the Pacific coastline beyond. The military situation, and the intelligence picture as well, was not ripe to do that straight away. Governors and senators from various deep Red states wanted him to do that: if not have soldiers going west then at least make air attacks. Yet, the DAR was in no way military helpless. All that Walsh had allowed General Fuller to seize, which he and the people around him knew exactly what to do with, had left the remaining federal forces outside of those ten states with a larger yet not overwhelming force size. There needed to be mobilisation as well as a shift from a peacetime structure to that of a wartime posture. With numbers and the right positioning, federal forces would be able to achieve the putting down of the rebellion using force of arms. Fuller had stolen a march on them but there would be a catch-up as soon as Roberts was in office. The reasoning, supported by others, won over those who had been demanding that the very instant Roberts became president, there would be immediate military attacks made with the war won before sundown.

When questions were asked nationwide following Roberts’ call for those engaged in rebellion to stand down as to why he did that and not at once strike, the new president had a wave of support from those of importance as to his strategy of delaying an attack. The message which went out in response was that it was the right thing to do, to allow those who had erred to see the foolishness of their ways, and also allow for the Roberts Administration to have a little time to repair the terrible situation that Walsh had left things in. This went down very well with many Americans. There remained critics, yet the twin arguments of allowing for people to change their behaviour and also fix the mess left behind by the last president went alongside Roberts’ declared position that he was going to do all that it took to eliminate the Democratic American Republic. The Senate Armed Services Committee went into continuous session with regards to the reappointment of General Ferdinand as Secretary of Defence. Roberts could have, but didn’t, just appoint him because he’d already made an agreement with senators on that issue. In comments broadcast live across the nation in response to questions put to him, the SecDef-designate talked of how the US Armed Forces at his direction would lead the effort to put an end to the DAR using force should those out West not heed the president’s words. He spoke of military action to limit civilian losses to be taken on a degree never seen before by American military action. There were all of those fellow citizens of his who Ferdinand said had seen the states in which they resided ‘Shanghaied’ into an illegally-formed country at the behest of a ‘cabal of fascists’. The first term, referencing a Hollywood movie from the year beforehand, brought a laugh yet the second term witnessed solemn nods. Several members of that committee had started calling those in Las Vegas fascists in the preceding days due to the undemocratic nature of their government and the internal activities (against a free media and the right to bear arms) within the DAR. Ferdinand played to an audience there and in American homes. He also mentioned the mess that Walsh had left things in with regard to the military posture of federal forces and how it was going to take a little bit of time to sort that out. However, he urged the senators to be in no doubt, about what was going to happen if the DAR government didn’t dissolve itself and military personnel serving its cause didn’t walk away from their posts.

Away from the political theatre, following Roberts’ emergency appointment of a new Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (someone who would usually need Senate approval), the military readiness urgently being addressed was something which got underway within hours of him being in the Oval Office. Signifiant elements of the US Army were either lost to the DAR or stationed overseas in Eastern Europe. A partial removal of some of those troops from Poland and the Baltic States began with the 3rd Cavalry Regiment & 173rd Airborne Regiment being flown home. Roberts called NATO’s Secretary-General as well as spoke to key political leaders across the Atlantic to tell them that he had no choice but to recall them. They were expecting that already, fearing that he too would pull out more of the force deployed including the 2nd Cavalry Regiment as well as the 1st Armored & 3rd Infantry Divisions: Roberts told them he had no immediate plans to extend the pull out yet might be forced to at a later point. He also spoke to the Canadian PM and told her that due to the precarious situation which the US Army Alaska was in, there would be many overflights going there through Canadian airspace to support it against DAR or, unlikely he said, Russian action. However, no offensive missions against the DAR would be conducted through Canadian territory. She gave her (unasked for) consent to that and assured Roberts that as per NATO commitments, any external threat to Alaska – from Russia – would be one fought off by Canada. With regards to the US Army in the Continental US, five full divisions, plus bits and pieces of other combat units, remained at home for the disposal of the US Army to use internally. Those combat manoeuvre forces along with non-combat elements all began to mobilise at their garrisons are prepare to head towards the Rockies, where the easternmost reaches of the DAR’s control stretched and where Fuller was assembling his own army. The US Marines consisting of regular elements in North Carolina (2nd Marine Expeditionary Force) and reservists elsewhere (most of the 4th Marine Division: a small part had been taken by the DAR) were likewise mobilised and given deployment orders. Those instructions for where the US Marines were to be sent didn’t include them going aboard ships.

The US Navy was in the ‘best’ shape of all of the uniformed services. Bases on the West coast and in Hawaii had been lost to an unopposed DAR takeover and that included both vessels in port as well as land-based aircraft. However, a significant portion of the Pacific Fleet was at sea when that happened or had set sail in the chaos of the situation. The dispositions of the naval power still under federal control was all over the place without any major base of operations to rely upon: that’s why things weren’t so great. That didn’t mean that there was no way of resolving that though, not with Alaska and even American Samoa available in a limited form to support them. Roberts spoke with the Australians to get agreement on that front when it came to assisting in a non-combat way with helping the Pacific Fleet sort itself out. To the Pacific, via the fastest available means, were sent other US Navy assets from the Atlantic and the Middle East. Support ships got priority taskings ahead of combat ones to aid in the overall recovery from the mess which all of that afloat military power who had stayed loyal had ended up in. The US Air Force had a major footprint in what had become DAR territory. Walsh had sat on his hands and allowed for so many vital facilities and an immense number of military aircraft to end up under Fuller’s control. What had been done couldn’t be reversed on that. Still, more of the US Air Force, joined by Air Force Reserve and especially Air National Guard reinforcements, was located in states which remained in the union. Orders went to the US Air Force to begin deploying within the country to allow for combat operations to take place against the DAR. There was also a recall of one of the three combat wings deployed in Eastern Europe: the 48th Fighter Wing. Like the 31st & 52nd Fighter Wings, that UK-based unit had been sent to Poland in late 2027. Home they were recalled, back to the United States for the first time in many decades.

So much of the US Space Force had been lost that there remained little of it for the new Chair of the Joint Chiefs to give orders too. That service had all those bases in California and Colorado in DAR hands leaving bits and pieces elsewhere (Alaska and Florida). Regardless, Roberts had the Pentagon finally do what they had been itching to do ever since Fuller’s takeover out West. Control was seized of orbiting satellites via action taken on the ground in federally-controlled territory. It was done via computers yet meant accepting real damage done to control systems due to the forcible re-taking. Leaving the DAR in control of all of that reconnaissance and communications capability should there have been a refusal to accept any damage wasn’t something that Roberts – cued-in by advisors on the matter – could do. That would have given the DAR what the United States didn’t have: the ability to shape a reconnaissance picture of the other side and also properly communicate securely. The delay which the president allowed for with military action had factored in all of this. The Pentagon had a great deal of intelligence on the enemy it was likely to face on the battlefield due to other means but needed to be sure before military action commenced to put down the rebellion. They needed that satellite coverage as well as the ability to deny it to their opponents.


Roberts had a meeting with FBI Director Cohen – a man he intended to replace – the morning after he took office. The murder on the night of January 19th where the Governor of Pennsylvania had been one of the two victims, the other a journalist, concerned him greatly. Governor Norris was a Democrat yet he and Roberts knew each other quite well and had a relationship beyond political differences. Like his predecessor, Norris had been assassinated while in office. What was going on there in Pennsylvania? Cohen couldn’t provide all the answers which Roberts sought. His investigators did believe that the female journalist Norris had been meeting with had been conducting a quiet, but effective investigation into the American Insurgent Army: it looked likely to be related to that where the AIA had shut down a danger to them. Cohen spoke too of how Pennsylvania, like Florida, Idaho & Michigan, had all been states so terrible effected by right-wing militia violence in recent years. Governors of Pennsylvania were thus at risk more than elsewhere. Nothing Cohen said convinced Roberts that it would be a good idea to keep him in-place. The investigation there, which he wanted to go on and get to the bottom of what had happened, wouldn’t be impeded he believed by the soon-to-be announced removal of Cohen. That man had overseen the disasters out West and while Walsh was to blame for a lot of it, Roberts, like many others, believed that Cohen shared the blame with him too.

Maria Arreola Rodriguez waited until the next day to address Roberts’ demand that she and those around her dissolve their new country and turn themselves into federal custody. She spoke to the people of the Democratic American Republic through (a recently tightly controlled) media with the broadcast seen across all of the divided America too. She gave a complete rejection to Roberts’ demands and called his presidency an illegitimate one which had been won on the back of electoral fraud and lies told to the Supreme Court. She didn’t recognise his authority nor that of his government. The West had won its sovereignty, backed by the will of the people, and wouldn’t be giving that up at the behest of Roberts nor anyone else in ‘the other country, one we left, which was the failed United States’. MAR assured all of those listening that the country she led would fight to defend its sovereignty using ‘all means at its disposal’. In closing remarks, she also called upon United States military personnel not to fight against their ‘brothers and sisters’ in the West and to do as Roberts had urged those in DAR uniform to do: desert or resign their commissions.

Few of those either side of the new border through America knew that Fuller had seized all of those nuclear weapons that he had: naturally, Roberts did. No matter what he thought of her, and he barely knew her as was usually the case with opposing presidential candidates, he didn’t believe that she meant that the DAR would use nuclear weapons with those remarks. He had no intention of using them on American soil himself and for her or the Council of Thirteen (as it had become) to do anything like that was completely inconceivable. The new president saw what he and his advisors regarded as a coded threat as an empty one. Of course, there would be preparations for a retaliatory strike if the DAR did so first, but it was going to be a conventional fight in the president’s mind. A quick one too... once it got going that was. And that wouldn’t be long as the delay was never going to be long.

She did enjoy herself though.
Drones will draw the first blood: big bats.