Davidson I
Adam Davidson is a professor of Linguistics at Diné College, where he teaches fellow members of the Navajo Nation. An unassuming-looking man, with wireframe glasses and a slight paunch, he invites me into his office for the interview.
Q: Good afternoon, Professor Davidson. I know you have class in an hour, so I'll try to make it quick.
A: It's alright by me. What questions do you have?
Q: First, I would like to ask how you ended up a communications specialist for the war.
A: Oh, that's one fairly simple. About a year or so after the discovery of the Conquest Fleet, I was recruited by the Army, since I was in fairly good shape at the time, and I was fluent in both English and Diné-bizaad.
Q: That's the Navajo language, yes?
A: Yes. I grew up learning it and English alongside each other, but I never thought I'd use it outside the Nation. I mean, pre-war there were probably fewer outsiders fluent in it there were men who'd gone to space. Of course, that was why it was chose, just like in the Second World War.
Q: Care to explain?
A: Well, it didn't really differ that much from a hundred years ago. Diné-bizaad is a very hard language to learn for outsiders, and it's isolated from other Athabaskan languages. It's a tonal language, but it also possesses elements of agglutinative and fusional languages, which is a very difficult combination for most people who didn't grow up speaking a language like that. In the Second World War, it served as a very effective code; in fact, it stood as the only spoken code that never got broken. After all, what were the odds that some Japanese soldier knew how to speak it?
Q: But by that logic, wouldn't any human language qualify, as the Race came from a different planet altogether?
A: You have a good point, but the isolation of the language meant that there was no way the Race could pick up Diné-bizaad just by listening to radio broadcasts, or by scouring the internet. Considering that they were able to learn the bigger languages that way, it's clear we made the right choice.
Q: It still begs the question of why the Army decided to bring back code-talkers.
A: We weren't meant to be the forefront of communications; we were backup. We were meant to be used in case the aliens managed to decrypt our communications, or took out internet servers and radio arrays in the country. That was why the Army recruited Diné-bizaad speakers, as well as speakers of Tsalagi Gawonihisdi. That's Cherokee to you. Other countries did the same; China brought back Manchu, Japanese started using Ainu again, and I think the Egyptians used Nubian speakers.
Q: What were some of the codes used?
A: Well, we had to change around some vocabulary and use shorthand phrases; Diné-bizaad does not lend well to the translations of loan words. We didn't even call the Race 'the Race' in code, since the closest translation for that would be Diné, which means 'the People', and that was our own name for ourselves. We ended up calling them na'ashǫ́'ii, which is the word for anything that slinks along the ground, and generally means 'lizard'.
We also hearkened back to the Second World War, and used the terms the code-talkers used. We called tanks wakaree'e, which is nʉmʉ tekwapʉ for turtle. We just added na'ashǫ́'ii before our codes for planes and infantry. Na'ashǫ́'ii-wakaree'e for landcruisers, na'ashǫ́'ii-atsá for their starships, and so on.
Q: Were you taught anything else?
I was also taught how to send messages in Morse, and trained to use carrier pigeons. Hard to use an orbital strike on underground telegraph lines, after all, and the odds that the Race would realize we were using birds to carry messages was absurd.
I'm glad we were paranoid enough to go that far, considering what happened with Footfall. As soon as a third of the internet went out, and the fithp started hitting telephone lines and cell towers, I was rolled into service. We still had radio, but there were concerns that the Race could be using captured code-breakers, so we decided to fall back to Diné-bizaad for a lot of things.
Q: Many people claim that your language was instrumental in arranging the Battle of Route 55. Would you agree?
Davidson chuckles.
A: Well, considering how many messages I had to send back in forth, I certainly hope so.
-/-\-
Yeager IV
Yeager pulls out a map of southern Illinois and surrounding states. It is covered in pen marks and shorthand notes scrawled neatly over certain parts.
A: The damage along the Mississippi had really done a number on our defenses in the area. Communication was troublesome, and the sheer amount of damage made transportation difficult. A lot of local forces in the area were disorganized, or simply decimated by the attack.
Q: What about the other parts of the country?
A: Well, the Race tried to make a push into Texas, after landing in the ruins of Dallas, but we were ready for that. When they tried to launch an offensive towards Austin, we managed to push them back, with help from Mexican fighters coming from over the border. Attempts to go north through Texas didn't work., either; the partisan fighting managed to slow them down enough for us to slam into them. They were essentially pigeonholed in Texas.
However, the offensive along the Mississippi was essentially unchecked. If we didn't do anything, they'd split the United States in half by the fourth day of their invasion. Combined with the ground lasers they had gotten from the fithp, and we were looking at the very real possibility that the East Coast could be at threat without help from our forces on the other side.
Q: Is that why the Battle of Route 55 happened?
A: It's a bit more complicated than that. We were already pulling together a military response to the threat; we could've just entrenched ourselves deep, make them bleed on the road to Chicago, then strike at their landing zones down south. However, it became decided that we needed something big, something that the American people could stand behind. They needed something to stand behind.
Sure, a lot of people had their resolve hardened when Straha essentially threatened to commit genocide on our nation, but lots of others were terrified. I'm sure there were plenty who'd be willing to surrender, if it meant not having to see their children die. Occupied areas were a mixed bag of resistance that'd make the Cong blush, and people who didn't make a peep. People who didn't have guns, but had lots of kids.
We needed this battle. We needed to play off our strengths, and crush the Lizards in a way that would inspire hope in the hopeless, to show that even this seemingly unstoppable force could be stopped.
Q: And so, the battle was planned?
A: Yes.
Yeager points at a line on the map.
Interstate 55 was one of the least damaged highways in the region, and the Race seemed to be planning on using it as they advanced towards Chicago. Now, the SOP for highways in enemy territory was to destroy them, but we decided to keep Interstate 55 intact, to keep the Lizards cocky and make sure they went where we wanted them to. We didn't have nerve gas on us, like in Europe, but we probably wouldn't have used it. We wanted to win the battle conventionally.
While small forces harassed the Lizards as they went through the edge of Tennessee, and while our partisans bled them in occupied areas, we started gathering our forces. The Race push to Chicago was two million strong. We managed to gather three million men, nearly a fifth of our armed forces, and we decided that we'd fight the battle a few miles from St. Louis. This was going to be a battle we played on our terms.
It was high time that we showed them why you don't fuck with Uncle Sam.
-/-\-
Dkolo I
Like many other veteran troopmales, Flight Leader Dkolo lives in Al-Fashir, where he owns a ginger parlor. There are a handful of Race males lounging around inside, casually chatting with each other as they taste some ginger after a long workday. A few locals are there as well, enjoying the high-quality marijuana imported in.
Dkolo greets me at the counter, wearing some human jewelry and the newest fad in body paint. He pours me a cup of spiced tea, and pours one for himself.
Q: You seem to be doing rather well for yourself, Flight Leader Dkolo.
A: Dkolo will do. I haven't flown a killercraft in years. I take it you're here to get my story?
Q: Yes. I was wondering if we could begin with the Battle of Route 55?
A: Eh, why not. I didn't really do anything before that; I was just waiting in orbit, passing rumors and polishing my cockpit. Just my luck that my first deployment would be in America.
Q: What was your time in the country like, before the Battle?
A: I flew patrols around the landing sites, then got transferred to occupied Little Rock. I was kept from leaving the base during that time; the partisan fighting was bad enough to make the commanders worry about having us vital pilots get in snipers' sights or Stinger targeting. It was like waiting in orbit again, but this time with more rain.
Then, after two boring and rainy days, we received orders to fly north. Apparently, up high had reason to believe there was a small gathering of American forces near some city called St. Louis, and they wanted to crush it utterly. That was the typical battle doctrine after Straha took control; try and vastly outnumber the opponent, since odds were they'd have better guns and tactics than you.
So, I hopped into my killercraft and flew up, along with about twelve hundred others. It was to be the single largest air offensive since we were pushed out of Egypt. I was kinda anxious about the whole thing, as I took off and started flying over with my squadron. I'd heard the horror stories from other pilots, about how the Egyptians and Israelis had been merciless in the air.
I reassured myself by remembering that we were fighting a smaller American force. A hundred thousand men, at most, which meant probably only two hundred planes. Plus, now we had assistance from the fithp, and I remembered how they'd shot down Indian aircraft like gnats. I told myself we'd clean up the sky without a problem, then provide ground attack for males on the ground.
Q: When did you see combat?
A: I was about eighty kilometers from the supposed 'small' gathering of American forces when our radar first detected aircraft; about three hundred or so. What surprised me the most was how small they were; I was expecting something comparable in size to my own killercraft, but these things looked half the size, or even smaller. What's more, they were slow. They were moving at only a few hundred kilometers an hour.
He sips his spiced tea.
I was relieved beyond belief when I saw those tiny blips. I started thinking that the American military was a... how do you say it? Paper lion?
Q: Paper tiger.
A: Ah, yeah. I thought that the supposed 'mightiest of all Tosevite not-empires' was actually just a paper tiger. I didn't have much to disprove me at the time, considering how I actually hadn't seenthem in action.
So, I turned on my targeting system, and went after those aircraft. I guess they noticed, and so they immediately turned away. Now, usually this is when you don't pursue, in case they're trying to divert air support, but we pilots were selected for aggressiveness. My squadron and a few others broke off to pursue the aircraft in three different directions, and we started blowing them out of the sky. The things could barely dodge out of the way of a missile; a few of us even decided to save ammo and use our autocannons.
That was when the gunners made a discovery they were quick to tell us. Chiefly, that these aircraft didn't even have cockpits.
I was confused about it, until the first missile launches were detected, coming out of nowhere.
Q: SAMs?
A: No, these weren't coming from the ground. It was as though some phantom fighters had fired them.
Then a few veteran pilots from China started screaming over the comms, saying a term I'd dismissed as a stupid rumor - ghostcraft. Tosevite killercraft that could somehow go undetected by our radar systems, right up until their missiles hit us.
Well, it seemed that the ghostcraft were real, and I could practically feel my liver shrivel up in terror when they started shouting the word. Mind you, a lot of air combat is beyond visual range; a lot of pilots probably didn't even see the ghostcraft before a missile blew them out of the sky.
As soon as we realized what we were up against, we did the only sensible thing; we ran. We hit the afterburners, and tried to get as far away from the ghostcraft as possible. We warned the rest of the killercraft that were still heading to St. Louis about the ghostcraft, and that was when some just started exploding all on their own. No missiles, no guns; just whomp. A few of the pilots from India and China recognized the mysterious weapon, and warned the others that the Americans apparently had their own Emperor-forsaken ftaskelwank, just like the fithp.
Q: Those must have been from the COIL program.
A: My liver quivers to imagine what would've happened if there wasn't a rainstorm going on, and those American ftaskelkwank didn't have to focus forever to blow one of us up. It still scared the hell out of us, though. I was shaking in my pilot's seat I tried to fly back south, along with the rest of the air attack force.
He sips his tea again, and hisses.
Of course, that was when we detected more phantom missiles, and realized that we'd been led into a trap. Can you imagine that feeling? Thinking that you're about to win an easy victory, only to realize that you fell right into the enemy's clutches? To go from predator to prey in mere minutes? Because it was only fifteen minutes between seeing the drones, and getting intercepted by the ghostcraft.
Q: How did you survive?
A: I don't really know; my mind was on autopilot, no pun intended. I remember trying to get as high as I could, hoping that my superior operation ceiling would save me, then just swooped down south as fast as I could. A bunch of others had the same idea, but the American ghostcraft chased them down and killed them. When I realized they were coming for me next, I just bailed out, and winded up somewhere near Memphis.
He hisses again.
I was one of only four survivors from that air battle.
-/-\-
Perry I
Teerts's roommate, fellow pilot Alice Perry, joins in for the interview, after Teerts mentions that she flew in the Battle of Route 55. A middle-aged woman with vibrant red hair, she sits down beside her friend.
Q: I am surprised you two share an apartment together, now that I know you flew in that battle.
A (Perry): Eh, what's past is past. We don't hold each other accountable for what we did.
A (Teerts): Not to mention I lost sympathy for a lot of my fellow pilots after Footfall. They should've made it like... ah, sorry for cutting in on your story.
A (Perry): No problem.
Q: Alright, let's start with the beginning. What was your role in the battle?
A (Perry): I was a Lightning Lady. Uh, that meant I flew the F-35G. That's basically the F-35B, but with ablative paint to help protect against lasers. The STOVL was important, considering that I might need to land in a damaged runway, and it was unlikely I was going to be heading far, anyway.
A (Teerts): Still couldn't get skyhooked into a spaceship, though. Lowers jaw in laughter.
A (Perry): No, it just had augmented reality that made your radar look like those comical hearing horns back in WWI, stealth technology, and a bigger gun.
A (Teerts): ...fair enough.
Q: Um?
A (Perry): Sorry about that. Anyway, my squadron and I were flown out in a mixed air/ground attack config. Our job was two-fold: protect the attack aircraft, and do a little bombing ourselves. The killercraft were left to the tender ministrations of the Raptors and Super Hornets.
The attack aircraft we were protecting included Warthogs, B-2s... they even brought out a few of the old B-52s and crammed them with all sorts of new bombs. Between the attack aircraft and all the fighters, there were probably four thousand planes in the air.
Q: Did you see combat?
A: Not against killercraft, no. The Raptors and Hornets were already cleaning them up by the time the attack aircraft began the first stage of, well, attack. We were attacking along a stretch of turf about a hundred miles long, snaking along Interstate 55. Not everyone was on it, but there was definitely a lot of armor moving along the lanes. Our job was to break that long stretch up.
My squadron and I went first, along with the B-2s, since we had to take out anything that could threaten the more vulnerable bombers. We hit SAM launchers, turrets, even lasers.
Q: There were lasers there?
A: Yep. A few fithp were there, I guess, and they were bringing along small lasers. Nothing that could shoot down dozens of ICBMs or launch digit ships, but something that could take out aircraft, even through the rain. I got a bit heated in one of the wings by one, but the ablative coating did its job.
Q: Why didn't the fithp attack from orbit?
A: How could they? Their lasers would be shit when trying to hit something through the big rainclouds they made, and trying to hit us with their rods could easily smash their own forces. Talk about shooting yourself in the... She waggles her eyebrows. ..Foot?
Teerts hisses.
Q: What did the other attack aircraft do?
A: Well, the Warthogs did what they did best, which was 'brrrrRRRRRrrrt'. They took out three, four landcruisers in a good strafe, and their guided bombs put nice holes in the freeway, along with any equipment unlucky enough to be in the way. The B-1s and B-2s took out stragglers, and made nice little roadblocks as a result.
The real show-stealers, though, were the B-52s. They would fly in a group of eight, doing a broad run over a chunk of the Interstate, then circle back for the next three to bomb the next designated part of the Interstate, and they just annihilated everything they hit, scrapping anything within ten klicks of each side of the freeway.
By the time we were done with the first ground attack, we'd divided the Race advance into eight bite-sized chunks. We had to circle back by then; we were out of weapons, and needed to refuel. Besides, the next wave of aircraft were on their way, to back up the next part.
Q: Next part?
A: Well, after what we did, the Race decided it was a good idea to try and get the hell out of dodge. Thing is, there wasn't a lot of places to go. One on side, they had the Mississippi, and they couldn't go north or south without having to spread out dangerously, so they could only go west.
She grins.
And that's when the ground attack came in.
-/-\-
Shinifula I
A rather tall Hallessi, even for his species, Shinifula is a construction worker in Tampico, where he assists in the Xipe-Totec program to rebuild the Mexican coast. He agrees to the interview during his lunch break, and buys me some street tacos as we sit down on a bench.
Q: Thank you for the taco, Shinifula. I know it can't be easy to talk about your experience in the war.
A: Compared to many, I got off lucky. I am alive, my limbs are intact. I only lost a few friends.
He digs into his taco, chewing absentmindedly.
Q: Let's start with what your time in America before the battle was like.
A: It shall be done. Let's see... I was part of the landing in Montgomery, after the waves. I was a landcruiser driver for an experienced crew, but it was my first assignment. I was the resident rookie of the group, meant to replace their previous driver, who had the misfortune of being pulped by a mine.
It's... it's hard to describe what it was like, coming to America. Unlike many of the others, I was actually born on Halless; I moved to Home for studying. I was young when I left, but I can still remember it. It wasn't as hot as it is on Home, but it was even drier. I remember playing in dried riverbeds, dragging my foot claws over the parched soil and watching the dust billow away in the wind.
But when I landed in America, my first impression was of heavy, heavy rain, and ground that squelched and slurped at my feet. Such an alien sensation, at the time. I hated it, and I hated how cold it was.
I was ordered to drive up north with the big offensive towards Chicago, but it was slow going at first, navigating all the destruction. There was much to see. I saw the shattered remains of towns and cities, reduced to pieces of wood and concrete half-buried in mud. Flattened stretches of forest, with the occasional tree still standing, stripped of leaves. I'd never seen a forest before, or such devastation. Everything was alien to me, in ways both subtle and overt.
My fellow males said little to me during that time. There were occasional grumbles of discontent among them; many of them were... worried, about the transition in power. They disapproved of the devastation as well, but I did not join them in their grumblings. Perhaps it was because I was a novice, and perhaps it was more than a little concern. The true treachery had not begun yet, but there were inklings of it, even then.
Q: When did you experience combat?
A: It was my fourth day on Earth when I was flung into the American Cage. We were told of a small American force near St. Louis, and were ordered to crush it utterly, as to secure an easy victory while the enemy still reeled. I was afraid of what I'd see, once we attacked the Americans. I was afraid I was going to witness the slaughter of Race and Tosevite alike, like in India, much as how the veterans had discussed with each other in hushed tones.
Ssalnak was in the middle of commenting on how much nicer American roads were than Indian ones when the first frantic reports from the killercraft started coming in. I didn't know what to think of them at first; I thought the idea of ghostcraft and American ftaskelkwank were absurd. Ssalnak and the other veterans, however, took them with the utmost severity. They ordered me to drive out of the lane and onto the field. Shrieked it would be a better term, though.
Ultimately, it was what saved my life. Not two minutes later, one of those forsaken American aircraft came swooping down, the one they named after that African pig with big tusks. Even through the pounding rain and the hull of my landcruiser, I could hear that horrific noise it made, that low 'brrrrrrrrt' sound. When I dared to look in the rear camera, I saw that the nearby landcruisers who hadn't driven of the lane had been shredded apart by the gun.
Even after forty years, I can remember the chill down my stalks as though it was yesterday.
Q: What happened after that?
A: We kept on driving as far from the highway as possible, hoping to avoid the bombing run. I saw many other landcruisers doing the same, through the cameras. I had no idea what to do, or where to go. For all I knew, there could've been a Tosevite missile about to strike me at any moment.
The fear only deepened when I heard the artillery and cannons near our position. I could barely see through the rain as landcruisers further out began to blow apart, and then we realized there were American tanks cresting the nearby hill. These looked different from the pictures I'd seen of other tanks, however; these looked larger, and the gun looked absolutely gargantuan.
Q: It sounds like you saw M1A5s.
A: Well, they were certainly terrifying. It was less of a fight, and more of a desperate run for my life. Any landcruisers that actually tried to stand up against these monsters were destroyed; the gun was powerful enough to one-shot a landcruiser at all but the worst angles, and from outside our own range.
Ssalnak actually managed to get some shots in, on an American tank that decided to pursue us. They simply bounced off. Then it fired a single shot, and we were immobilized.
Q: How did you survive?
A: Propaganda.
Q: Pardon?
A: I managed to scramble out of an access panel, then crawled away in that cold, alien mud, just in time to see the American tank smash right into my crippled landcruiser like a battering ram, then shoot it at point-blank. I am certain I saw pieces of my fellow troopmales shoot out of the fiery wreckage that was once my landcruiser.
It was equal parts horrifying and confusing; I remember simply staring as the tank went to rejoin the assault on our offensive, leaving me to stand in the cold rain. I did not know at the time why the Americans decided to go for such a risky and brutal maneuver, until after I was taken prisoner by a passing IFV near the close of the battle.
He hisses to himself, and takes another bite of his taco.
Could you imagine, narrowly avoiding the embrace of death, simply because the enemy desired to have something spectacular to show its people?
-/-\-
Wierzbowski I
Ret. Corporal Nicolas Wierzbowski is usually found nowadays in Fresh Start, Georgia, where he works as a florist. He greets me in his shop, soil lining the creases in his hands.
Q: Lovely shop you have here, Mr. Wierzbowski.
A: Thank ya kindly. What kinda questions ya got for me?
Q: Well, I'm mainly here to ask you about the Battle of Route 55.
A: Battle o' Route 55? Goddam, why the hell do everybody call it that? It was an interstate. Pretty sure Route 55's in Jersey or somethin'.
Q: Fair enough. Would you care to tell me about your experience in the Battle of Interstate 55?
A: Ooh, that's always an excitin' one ta talk about. Later stuff was borin' for me; didn't really get to shoot nothin'. I was a tanker then, doin' the shootin' for a Thumper. I mean, an M1A5. Yeah, me and two others were in the tank; Ramirez did the drivin', and Herb was the commander. We didn't have a loader, since we had one of 'em fancy autoloaders they started puttin' in the new tanks.
Q: You had autoloaders, like the Race?
A: We an' the French had 'em, I think. The first models were shit; kept on jammin' or breakin' down, then they got a good one about a year before the Lizards came a knockin'.
Man, the Thumper was a thing o' beauty, but it was also a bit much for the job, actually. We were expectin' Lima to come down with shit like in Independence Day or somethin', so the army planners went overboard. I'm talkin' a layer of ablative coating in case they had lasers, brand-new IR imagin', the latest reactive armor, and the gun.
Wierzbowski closes his eyes for a moment, as if reliving a pleasant memory.
Oooooh, that gun. I guess the brass were afraid that Lima was gonna have force-fields or the ultimate scramblin' stuff, 'cause they decided to put a big fuckin' gun in. Back when we didn't know there were aliens comin' for us, the Abrams had a smoothbore that was about 120 mm. The Thumper had a smoothbore too, but it was a 140 mm across. If you know anythin' about tanks back then, then you'd know that's a bit much. Thank god for the autoloader; I'd hate ta try and heft one of our old DU rounds.
Q: DU?
A: Depleted uranium. Some rounds are HEAT, which is when it explodes and sends a stream of molten metal through tank armor, but DU rounds are just meant ta punch right through, and ya can't detonate them prematurely. When it comes ta modern armor and shit, DU rounds are the ultimate tank-fuckers. I saw one punch clean through a landcruiser, the long way.
Q: So you saw combat in the battle?
A: Hell yeah. Me and the others were part of the northernmost push, right near St. Louis. They had us lyin' in wait, covered in branches to help with our camo, in case the snouts were lookin' to drop some crowbars on our heads. I have ta say, watchin' those Lima tanks rollin' down the interstate from eight klicks aways with the IR kinda made my sphincter pucker right up. I had no idea if we were gonna get flattened right as we attacked, even if the brass said the rain would hide us.
Then the Lizards got swatted out of the sky by our boys, and we got the order to go huntin'. The bombers were already disrupting the line, makin' the Lizards run right into us. No need to be subtle; the platoon and I just rolled out, and the speakers started blarin' Stars and Stripes Forever. Y'know, hypin' us up and freakin' the Lizards out.
Not gonna lie, after everythin' the aliens did to us, with the Foot and basically threatenin' ta split the country in half, it was good to hear that song. I had the worst case of war wood when we began ta tear into the Lizards' asses.
Q: War wood?
Wierzbowski grins.
Q: Er, never mind. What was combat against the Race armor like?
A: Well, we had ta be careful ta avoid friendly fire, so we didn't just try ta surround 'em. We split into a few dozen platoons each, and went in for a pincer movement, hittin' the landcruisers from the sides, where the armor was thinner. I mean, even a big round can actually bounce off shit armor if ya hit it at the wrong angle.
Normally, when you're fightin' in a tank battle, ya actually need mechanized infantry as well; it ain't good to be all exposed to some guy with a Javelin or RPG, and so the infantry are kinda meant to counteract it. Same thing with the air.
Thing is, we'd taken out most of their killercraft by then, and we didn't need ta worry about the Lizards' infantry. They never bothered ta invent AT weapons for their grunts. I guess it makes sense; can you really see some tiny Lizard, eighty pounds soakin' wet, heftin' a Javelin?
It was a total fuckfest. The Lizard guns had shorter range and less oomph, their armor was shit against our guns, and they were totally unprepared for this kinda fight. The mud was makin' 'em sink in and get stuck, and I guess a desert planet people never bothered to make something to see the enemy in case it rained. Plus, their tactics were shit.
We actually nearly ran outta ammo from all the landcruisers we were hittin'. By the end, we'd only lost three tanks from mobility kills, and that was due ta the fact that the brass wanted to get something cool down on camera.
We were gettin' surrenders en masse from the scared survivors, especially the infantry who realized just how fucked they were.
Q: Did you accept the surrenders?
Wierzbowski's jovial expression disappears. He rubs his face wearily.
A: I mean, we did. More than a few of us felt that it'd be better ta show that we were the better men, so ta say. The brass didn't say much about prisoners; didn't say to just execute everyone, but they didn't tell us to try and save as many as we could, neither.
And, well, a few of us had family in Texas or Louisiana.
I'm not sayin' it was right, when a few guys started killin' prisoners. Those accounts of forcin' 'em into holes, then fillin' 'em with mud? That's fucked up. That's the kinda shit you'd hear from WWII, from the Nazis or angry Russians. I didn't shed a tear when the guys got locked up.
But, I can understand it. It doesn't make it right; never makes it right. But when the enemy was dehumanized from the start, thanks ta bein' alien lizards, and when they hurt you, you wanna hurt 'em back.
That's the nasty thing about war. Do you think those guys were eatin' puppies or somethin' before they enlisted? Nah. Those people were office workers, or teachers or electricians. I'd say the vast majority were good folk, who just wanted to feed themselves or their families, and hang out with their friends. But war hurts people, and I'm not just talkin' about the guys who get their legs blown off, or have to go to therapy for anxiety attacks whenever someone farts too loudly.
I'm talkin' when you lose somethin'. Could be a leg, could be family, could even be a future. And all that pain's like fuckin' acid, eatin' away at ya, until it makes you as mean as the war around ya. It can make some plump lady who taught kindergarten before the war start skinnin' Lizards, or some college student who wanted to be a doctor force prisoners to dig their own graves in the freezin' rain.
Same shit with the Russians, back when they were pushin' the Nazis back. All that killin' and rapin' they did in Berlin… those Russkies were fuckin' farmers or factory men, just mindin' their own business when the Nazis came in and took everythin' from 'em, and all that pain turned into anger, and twisted those good farmers into angry animals.
He sighs.
People like ta say that war's in our nature, but I don't bite. If it was, then why does it fuck us up so bad?
-/-\-
Yeager V
Yeager overlays the map with an old plastic sheet, showing faded marker lines pointing into the projected Race forces.
Q: Is that the planned offensive, or the actual paths took by American forces during the battle?
A: Actual. I was still in NORAD with the President and Joint Chiefs, drawing over the sheets as we got more news coming in via the Navajo code talkers and combat feeds. It was a very tense time; we had no idea if the Race would have the fithp try and send kinetic impactors our way once the Fleetlord caught whiff of what we were doing. We had the remaining Ow guns primed, ready to try and knock any intruding spacecraft out of the sky.
Thankfully, there wasn't.
Q: How long did the battle last?
A: All in all? I'd say maybe twelve or fourteen hours. This was the fastest battle of such size in human history; most of the time, a million-man slug out can last weeks or months. Kursk? That was about eight weeks, and that used to be the biggest tank battle. The Nazi invasion of France was forty six days long, and had millions of men involved, too.
Thing is, though, the very nature of this war changed everything. We were fighting an enemy with logistics that could allow rapid deployments, but who had very poor tactics, instead relying on numbers to win their victories. The Race didn't really take to urban combat all that well, and hadn't really run into a well-entrenched enemy due to landing in areas that benefited their tactics.
On our side, we'd never had to mobilize our forces in such a manner since WWII, back when we were using prop planes and had to rely entirely on radios and telegraphs for large-scale networking. Combine that level of equipment with modern logistics and networking...
The nature of our technology, and of theirs, meant that battles became a helluva lot quicker. Either they crushed a small force with superior numbers, or we crushed them with superior tactics and weapons. The longest slug out was Shanghai, and even that was only a few weeks.
It definitely showed.
Q: Even considering that, how was the battle won so quickly? The Race's technology was still fairly advanced.
A: Numbers and tech aren't everything, especially if you don't know how to use it. But, at the same time, even a small tech advantage can go a long way, if you use it right. I know some critics will probably flay me for saying this, but it's a lot like the Gulf Wars. Back then, the Coalition was actually outnumbered by the Iraqis when they invaded, and it wasn't like the Ba'athists only had Toyotas with machine guns on them; they had jets, they had tanks.
Thing is, our tanks and jets were more advanced, even if the gap wasn't as bad as the gap between us and the Race, and we knew how to use them better. Tactics, discipline, and exploiting the hell out of every homefield and tech advantage we had. That's why we managed to take down Hussein with less than two hundred dead, initially. The occupation was a whole other matter, but that's not important to this discussion.
Point is, I wasn't too surprised when the final report for the battle came in.
Q: Which was?
A: For us, we lost eight hundred men, three tanks to mobility kills, sixteen fighters, three bombers, and eight IFVs. The Race lost one and a half million, twelve thousand landcruisers, and more than seventeen hundred killercraft. We ended up taking half a million prisoners, though the number dropped a little by the time we got them over to our POW camps.
He smiles a little.
We got what we needed. We stopped their advance to Chicago, and we got thousands of hours of footage, footage we ended up plastering all over the remaining internet and on every TV screen in the country. We had our propaganda victory.
We certainly needed it, considering all the other shit going on.
Q: How so?
A: We might've taken out a two-million Lizard force, but there were still nearly ten million of them left in American soil. They were still trying to push into Texas, they were spreading towards northern Georgia and Tennessee, and intelligence reports indicated that they were getting ready to try and push their way past the Appalachians.
Not to mention, but it'd be a lot harder to assault occupied territory than to stop a Lizard offensive. They already had the big lasers on the ground in the south, and there was no telling how long the rain was going to protect any pushes into turf the Ow guns couldn't cover.
And there was the dark cloud hanging over our heads, in the shape of a possible future impactor. We could crush their ground forces all we wanted, but ultimately, whoever controlled the orbitals controlled the war. Even then, I knew a lot more blood was gonna spill before we could see the light on the other side.
In the meantime, however, we'd scored a victory. Morale jumped through the roof as we put on the footage of the battle, and partisan reports indicated that the Race forces on the ground were starting to lose any bluster they had.
It wasn't just a tactical and strategic victory. It was a statement. It was a statement to the American people, and to the Race itself, that we were holding strong.
We looked Straha right in the eye and told him that despite all that he did, and all he threatened to do...
He pauses for a moment, then smiles.
We told him that America did not break, and never would.
-/-\-
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Worldfall, Chapter Twelve: Invasion U.S.A