Commission story 12: The rise and fall of the Hopps empire

Commission for Combat Engineer.

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Queen Judy Hopps could only sit back and contemplate where it had all gone wrong. Her empire had once been proud and strong, her capital springing up in the warm tropical coast, across the strait from the island of Formosa. Rich rains and strong fertile rivers created great fields upon which her cities were built. Soon an empire began growing, explanding, early fleets of triremes and galleases escorting her troops to the japanese home islands. A whole other empire fell as her fringes expanded up to the tundra wastes.

But it was to the west that destiny had lay.

The tropics were the breadbasket, but it was the hills in the centre of the continent that began building her great armies. Armed with their pikes and bows, they took off to the west, into the plains and then the edges of the highlands.

It was there that the Wilde empire was first encountered. Born upon the eastern shores of the caspian sea, their desert forces had marched south and east. From the breadbaskets of the north Persian coast, the Volga delta and the great syr darya and and amu darya rivers, a nation had formed that could turn the desert steppe into gold. Hitting the border mountains, they'd moved through, a great flood of newstart cities spanning across the gobi and Tibetan plateau. They then met, two nations with the potential to grow strong, together.

In its hubris, though, the Hopps empire had chosen to take it all, and be cunning like a fox while it did so. They all held a rough border with the weak nation in the Indian subcontinent, and it was here that Judy claimed her sights were set. Border clashes in Indochina were the casus belli, and it didn't take much for them to declare war on her. A foolish mistake as her remnant navy, old but still strong, threw itself upon the Vietnamese coastal cities, claiming them under the rabbit banner. They never knew how weak the navy had become by the end, simply paying a gold sum to call the truce. It was during this time though that the Hopps nation had become friends with the city state of Lhasa. Columns of troops marched through the friendly Wilde nation, their main forces off conquering Europe, all on their way to Tibet and the unclaimed mountain valleys, India beyond.

Only the peace was declared, they turned around, before piercing through the soft underbelly of the Wilde nation's gobi holdings. There was nothing he could do but protest as the war on two fronts carried on, her main forces coming in from the east. They conquered, they advanced, they made towards the Tian Shian, ready to bust through into the Wilde nation heart. Only to find that he'd been holding his troops off in the passes. A quarter of his land lost, but in turn fortresses and troops ready to mince the single lines of advancing units. Specialist longbowmen, supplied by the allied military city state of Sofia, became proficient at wiping out the enemies in the passes with their added range.

For centuries it continued.

She always attacked it with a renewed fever.

She ignored what else Wilde was doing.

Setting up an alliance with Australian forces, he split India between the two of them, Wilde also making sure to colonise areas of Indonesia, his navy holding the straits. Hopps put her forces on guard down there, for when the attack would come. Proxy wars were also fought up in the great tundra plains. Upon the shores of lake Baikal and then up above, Wilde set up two defending border cities. A Hopps attack almost broke through when the mobile cavalry arrived, sweeping them away but not pursuing past her own border.

The passes were still a bloodbath, troops pouring in only to be minced by the double ranged (and now double firing) gatling guns.

She hardly noticed when a small town popped up in the north of the Mekong river. After all, he'd finally paid Australia to attack her, alongside (to her surprise) the United states. The latter's navy outclassed the remains of hers by far, forcing a complete transfer away from Indochina. An advance there was impossible, multiple forces instead committed to fighting the enemy off from the land.

And then the paratroopers landed around two of her richest cities. Mass centres of production, they had once been the easternmost cities in Wilde's empire, set behind lines of rivers and mountains to the east for protection from her. They had nothing against the bombers and the tanks, fueled from the oilfields of Baku. Before she could react she'd lost them, the tanks and waves of troops moving up north through that new city. All this time, he'd been building his own Burma road, a railway linking his middle east and Indian holdings before winding up through the narrow passes to the forward settle. There was little she could do before all two remaining cities to the north were taken, her empire cleaved in two.

It was a disaster. Mass shortages of fuel oil, metals and so on from the mineral rich west collapsed the effectiveness of her troops. The many luxuries cut off also destroyed city morale. His bridgehead reinforced with waves of tanks and standard forces, the paratroopers dove east before raking back, looting all they could touch as they went. She always had a steady flow of forces heading that way, while also transferring as many as she could to fight the new threat, but they were disorganised and regularly harried by newly springing rebel troops. Few made it to the newly fortified opposition, having to stay home and stop things getting worse.

The western provinces were a loss. Undefended, weak, they melted like butter and were liberated by Wilde. The great masses of troops on her Tian Shian frontier began pushing east, forcing them back but paying a bloody fight to recapture the angry cities. Weakened by resource shortages, unable to replace their losses, a second wave of his bombers and paratroopers paid a hard price in destroying the remnant of her pass guards. It was then all over, as his elite guard forces dove east. Caught between the two sides, her grand army was minced. It was only a matter of time before it all ended.

Australia had taken the Vietnamese cities, japan had fallen to the american navy, her land was awash with looters and had no natural defenses left. Her forces moved to guard the southern approach to her capital, only to be outflanked, the northern half of her nation taken by tanks and planes.

Wilde then completed the Manhattan Project, and large armies became useless. He never used his nukes, but the fear was enough. Armies ordered apart, she tried to use them in a guerrilla defense, bleeding him dry. But her own rebel issues were doing the same to her, while he could heal faster.

It came as no surprise when he used the same new city tactic to advance from Laos, a new Indian army marching on her capital from the far south, along with the northern and central fronts. The first bombs began raining, then the artillery, then the city was surrounded. Wall upon wall, castles and fortresses and whatever could still be channeled into it put up a resistance for as long as they could.

The meat grinder ended after ten years, Wilde taking her capital.

"Damn you!" She muttered, looking up from her laptop. Nick, sitting in his underwear, looked up from his and smirked.

"You shouldn't have tried to outfox a fox. Especially, given my civ start position, a desert fox. Babu Yetu, Bun Bun!"

"I demand a rematch after this."

"This has already taken two days."

"How long until quarantine ends?"

"Point taken," he noted, pressing the next turn button.

…

"Oh cheese and crackers!"

"Yes. Rematch," Nick grunted, looking on in disgust. Mansa Moosa (Bucky and Pronk, over the internet (thankfully)) had just won the science victory.