OR2-EP1: Perun Awakens (7)

Michael McNeil picked up a wet towel and wiped his face, which had almost frosted over again, he carefully set the towel aside and sat down without a word to rest on a small stool. A dozen or so soldiers were patrolling around him, and they were gradually approaching the frontline towns in the Eastern Ukraine region that were under Russian control, and every move had to be made with great care and caution. U.S. drone swarms can't gain full advantage in this region, and traditional confrontation is back in the picture. For the Ukrainians, too, they cannot tolerate so-called friendly forces reducing their own country to rubble in order to destroy the enemy more efficiently. If it weren't for the Ukrainians' perception, the U.S. military might have come up with a way to deal with other small nations by bluntly eliminating the enemy's ability to resist.

"If only there was hot water."

"Then you'd just lose your skin."

McNeil stepped out of the hut, shivering from the cold wind blowing in his face, and followed the path to his left to the nearest fire point, where American machine gunners were still watching every breeze below. The total strength of the rebel army New Russia in Eastern Ukraine was only about one-sixth of the Ukrainian army, and most of the opponents the U.S. Army had encountered on the battlefield so far had been Russians rather than these guerrilla and militia armies, which played little role. Prior to the war, the U.S. military's approach was to destroy the rebel groups directly with carpet bombing and precision targeted strikes, and then to clear out the stragglers one by one. This plan collapsed due to strong opposition from the Ukrainian authorities, and U.S. forces reluctantly cooperated with these low-fighting friendly forces in their offensive to the east, with little success.

Soldiers nervously watched the gray skies overhead, lest enemy drones reappear. Generally speaking, an ordinary soldier touching a drone was certain death unless he had a weapon beside him that specialized in dealing with drones ... provided he survived the first attack and avoided facing the drone's direct line of attack.

Sergeant Javier Salas waved his hand and ordered the other soldiers to follow the road. The town, like many other towns and villages in the Ukraine, was built entirely on an agricultural economy, and the arrival of the new ice age had completely destroyed the industries that the townspeople relied on to make a living and cut off their hopes of saving themselves. To avoid dying of poverty and starvation in the midst of the ice, many townspeople fled to the cities, and the countryside became further emptied, and the shrinking of agriculture intensified. The Russians easily took over the town without firing a shot, and the remaining local inhabitants made no attempt to resist. In any case, they spoke Russian after all, and there was no need to go sword to sword with their former compatriots who spoke the same language.

"I'm surprised they didn't resist."

"To be precise, they actually didn't revolt against us, and that's thank God for that." Sergeant Salas walked behind McNeil, needing to make sure there were no Russian snipers or other traps on either side, "It's against the law to speak Russian in Ukraine, so the Russians in the east have never had much love for Ukraine. So it's lucky for us that they didn't just choose to assist the Russians."

McNeil froze, nearly slipping on his feet, and took a few quick steps forward to hide his inner turmoil. Such a simple and brutal order meant nothing but more resistance and hatred, and the United States had so far not banned the Spanish language, and many community service workers had to specialize in learning the widely spoken Spanish to do their jobs better. He was appalled by the short-sightedness and arrogance of the Ukrainians, or at least he himself didn't think a simple ban would have any effect.

"A more powerful threat than any enemy from the outside is the direct destruction of the foundations on which the United States was founded."

The Ukrainians don't realize this. They could have opted for a more moderate approach, and the move to increase instability internally when Russian hostility towards them could not be eliminated was undoubtedly unwise. The Alsace-Lorraine region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire and Germany, and fell into French hands for less than a hundred years, while the German Empire occupied it and guarded its inhabitants like thieves, ultimately pushing the land into the arms of the French once and for all. Today, when people talk about this region, most of them don't think of it as belonging to Germany.

A few soldiers creeping through the snow approached one of the outermost houses. A Russian sentry on a tower not far away watched the road, and perhaps this fellow with less than perfect eyesight did not notice the American troops who were outflanking him from both sides. But as soon as the battle began, all camouflage would be rendered ineffective, and they had to wipe out the enemy as quickly as possible if they were to survive the unknown lands.

McNeil approached the door to the room and he heard the sound of a television news program coming from inside. The soldiers behind him looked at McNeil, who had taken a few steps back, suspiciously, wondering what he was planning to do.

"What do you guys think, could the Russians be in here?"

"I don't know. But no one says you can't watch someone else's TV while you're out fighting." One of the soldiers offered his opinion, "Anyway, let's rush in and see what's going on, if it's not the Russians ... then it's not much of a loss."

They waited for the friendly forces on the other side to make their move, the sentries had to be taken care of before they could launch their attack. When McNeil saw the sentry plant himself from the tower, the directional demolition charges he had planted on the door detonated, and several soldiers behind him fishtailed into the empty room. The lobby was devoid of any residents or soldiers, except for the television, which was still broadcasting the day's news to the outside world. The disappointed soldiers looked at each other and decided to send two of them upstairs to continue the search while the others stayed on the first floor to clean up the scene. Just as the other two soldiers were advancing up the stairs, there was intermittent gunfire not far away that didn't sound very real. McNeil came to the window to watch, he looked at several other houses still sleeping in the snow and ice and turned his head in confusion and decided to go out and investigate. The fact that the shots were coming from the northeast was a bit strange in itself - they had launched their attack from the west side, and it wasn't logical that they should have reached the other side of town so quickly. By McNeil's reckoning, it would take them about half a day to get out of the town on foot.

The empty-handed soldiers reported to their companions below the results of their search on the upper level: nothing.

"But the house itself is occupied. As you can see, the house is clean." Tom pointed to the spotless floor, "Where did the occupant run off to?"

This method of judgment was unreliable, and if the owner of the house had been a slovenly character with rather poor habits, the crowd would have simply assumed that the house had been abandoned for a long time. Presently they withdrew from the house in good order, and followed the path outside toward the area where the firefight had taken place. The Russians were scattered all over the town and could not rally their forces quickly enough to counterattack, which left plenty of room for the American troops to infiltrate. McNeil was the first to spot the Russian soldiers approaching them, and the enemy appeared to be very cautious and did not intend to take the initiative. The crushing defeat in the East had temporarily sobered the Russians, who thought they were still at the forefront of the world in terms of military power, and they could not afford another defeat without this bringing about drastic changes that would turn the world upside down. Opposition factions of all colors rallied to form a fragile, temporary coalition for a common goal, and as soon as the Russians met another defeat in the next war, the Kremlin would change hands.

"B-4, B-4, take cover ...B-4?"

McNeil stomped half-exasperatedly on the snow on the ground, and there was no answer on the other side.

"B-6, go around behind the enemy ... Hello? Hell, no response again." Knowing that his comrades had perhaps met an untimely end, he gave up on the idea of relying on friendly forces to assist in the battle. It was a foregone conclusion that the five Russians in front of him would be able to sieve him the moment he appeared. Someone had to come along and distract the enemy, especially if they were to scatter their firepower as well, for McNeil to have any chance of winning this battle. He came up with the idea of planting time bombs in the corners, but then the startled enemy might call in more help, and besides, if he hurt any friendly troops that might be passing by, he would be a complete failure. While McNeil was still thinking of a new countermeasure, Tom and another machine gunner entered the house next to him and informed McNeil that they were ready to attack at any time.

McNeil pulled out his grenade and threw it down the slope of the street toward the Russian soldiers arriving below. The Russian soldiers were stunned when they saw the grenade roll down, then they planned to take cover, but the machine gun coming out of the house on the left interrupted their plans, and the panicked Russian soldiers dodged the grenade and opened fire on the house. As they focused their attention on the house, McNeil, who had appeared from the front, fired at them, killing two of them in quick succession. The last Russian soldier, who was fighting and retreating, was shot and killed by the American troops who surrounded him from the rear.

Sgt. Salas looked at the devastated scene and shouted toward McNeil:

"Team-B has been ambushed, and it looks like it's a total loss."

"Where?"

"It looks like they broke into a Russian lair, and not one of them made it out alive." The sergeant put on his goggles to analyze the battlefield around him, "The Russians already know we're here, the infiltration phase is over. However, we don't seem to have the advantage in this melee."

On the west side of the street, the two armies fought around a half-collapsed building. The American troops hoped to set up a new fire point here to control the surrounding streets, and the only advantage they had was the result of a mistake on the other side: the Russians had forgotten to set up their defenses here. However, the Russians, who quickly realized what a mistake they had made, immediately launched a counterattack, and thanks to the efforts of the brave soldiers, also wearing white military coats, they drove out the American troops who had just recently occupied the building. Unwilling to cede points of fire to the enemy, the American commander ordered his men to attack forcefully, and the two sides engaged in a white-knuckle battle in the narrow space of the building. The second round of fighting continued to end in victory for the Russians, and many American soldiers were seriously injured, some of whom had their ears bitten off by the Russians. Nearby U.S. troops rushed to the scene and reached a consensus that made all parties reluctant to blow up the building. Greeted by rockets and grenades, the ordinary semi-collapsed building held up for a few minutes before it was completely reduced to rubble, and the Russians who hadn't had time to retreat were all buried in the rubble, with no one caring what happened to them. Perhaps some of them, like McNeil, were lucky enough to crawl out of the pile of corpses and make their way back to their camp, but that's sort of an afterthought.

McNeil and Tom burst into a house on the street where a middle-aged man with a shaved head was sitting on the couch watching TV.

"Hands up!"

"He doesn't understand English-"

This was true; the middle-aged man, seeing that the two men were not hostile and did not hold him down and search him as soon as they met, muttered something to himself and went back to watching his television. This calmness surprised both McNeil and Tom, who couldn't believe that a civilian in a war zone had such poise. If the man hadn't really experienced another death, he was numb. Tom believed that the Ukrainian in front of him had lost his reflexes after being in shock; after all, even many battle-hardened soldiers get PTSD, so how could an old Ukrainian peasant outwit a professional soldier?

The civilians in the other scenes probably had no such luck. A team of American soldiers searching a civilian house find the homeowner flying the Russian tricolor flag and immediately decide to arrest him. Despite the homeowner's repeated explanations in Russian that he simply decided to fly different flags at different times to protect himself from the war, the American soldiers who captured him insisted that the guy was a spy or an undercover agent for the Russian army. They trusted their judgment, an old method handed down decades ago. U.S. troops on missions in the Middle East back in the day would also arrest civilians with Saddam Hussein's picture, preferring the wrong person to a suspicious one.

"If he's really loyal to Ukraine, he should speak Ukrainian." The soldiers assembled in the house whispered.

Sgt. Salas frowned; with a large portion of Mexican blood and a weekday life in his hometown where he basically spoke only Spanish, the other soldiers' comments sounded especially harsh to him. However, he offered no rebuttal and simply asked the Ukrainian civilian some detailed questions about the Russian occupying forces in the area with the assistance of an interpreter before deciding to let the other man go. By the time they had dealt with the matter, it was mid-afternoon, and the American troops were still fiercely contesting the town with the Russians. The American soldiers, somewhat tired from fighting hungry for almost half a day, advanced stiffly under the urging and orders of their officers and continued their attacks toward the Russian-held strongholds and defenses. The Russians had wisely abandoned the neighborhoods that were not easily defended and turned those sections with difficult terrain into fortresses, and every step forward by the American troops was quite costly.

Michael McNeil, searching the cellar beneath a house, climbed up in disappointment and reported his latest discovery to Tom, who was waiting above.

"It would be nice if there were a subway here so we could sneak up on the opponent's flank. If it's a big city, the subway could help us outflank the enemy faster."

"I don't see the enemy leaving us that chance." Tom laughed, "Back in the day, the Germans chose to open the floodgates to drown civilians and wounded soldiers hiding in the subway alive to prevent the Russkies from outflanking the Reichstag with the subway."

"Also true." McNeil smiled back, convinced that the Russians could have done it - however, I'm afraid the United States wouldn't have cared about civilian deaths if a similar war had taken place on United States soil. The retaliatory massacres and arson by Union Army during the Civil War had made such a poor impression on the Southern states that organizations like the KKK had later demanded even more of their members to prioritize their crusade against white Northerners.

Since they couldn't find a shortcut, they had no choice but to attack recklessly from the ground. The town was large, and with the fact that the U.S. Army wasn't sure if the Russians would spread some of their forces to other neighborhoods, their advance was slow. By the time the horrible night fell, the exhausted American soldiers retreated back to their area of control early, preparing to attack again the next day. Night fighting faced problems not only with vision, but also with physical strength. Nighttime temperatures in the New Ice Age era were generally shiveringly low, and the cost of launching an offensive at night was likely to be frostbite and death for a significant portion of the soldiers. The United States had not invented equipment that could completely insulate soldiers from the effects of cold environments, and fighting in these environments greatly tested the will and ability of soldiers.

But McNeil seemed to have no chance to rest. He was often perplexed by the fact that he was always losing his chance to sleep for inexplicable reasons, and he had spent several midnights crawling through the snow from the day he had been awake. This time, they had been assigned by their chief to a special mission: a trip to the northeast to scout for enemy intelligence. According to the U.S. Army's intended battle plan, another force was supposed to have taken over there, and with no word back from them so far, and the army's attempts at reconnaissance with drones being intercepted by the Russians, the situation was becoming confusing. The closer they get to the borderlands of Eastern Ukraine, the more cautious they must be. Once US forces had de facto invaded Russia, this would likely bring about World War III - an apocalypse brought about by nuclear powers destroying each other with nuclear weapons was the last thing McNeil wanted to end up with. As such, he was also curious as to why Russia had not chosen this same option after their defeat in the Far East.

Sgt. Salas briefly explained the surrounding situation to the other soldiers before asking for comments from team members who had questions about the plan.

"I have a small question: in case we are surrounded by the enemy, can we retreat to the territory of Belarus?"

"... Theoretically you could, but that would be no different than being captured." Sgt. Salas repeated, "As we all know, Belorussia is now in a confederation with Russia, and we have reason to believe that the Russians would count whatever new Russia is in this Eastern Ukraine region as one of its members. Assuming that we enter Belorussia for some reason, the fate that awaits us is arrest by the Belorussian authorities and subsequent transfer to the Russians."

McNeil looked at the map of the Ukraine and an uneasy feeling appeared within him. No, something had gone wrong with their judgment. The main direction of attack for the Russians was the south, and the territory claimed by the so-called New Russia was also South Ukraine. Russian troops had already appeared at Kherson, and the southern part of the front was seriously threatened, while the American army was still steadily advancing eastward, as originally planned, and assumed that the possible new danger would be to the northeast. Indeed, if Russia intended to intervene in a major way or simply go to full-scale war, the Russian-Belarusian coalition forces would enter Ukraine from the northeast to relieve the rebels who were being compressed into the Don River. Another possible outcome would be for Russian forces to move directly south from Belorussia and cut Ukraine off, thus eliminating the main body of American and Ukrainian forces in the east.

However, that is a consideration from a purely military perspective. Russia and the Britannian Empire seem to be similar in one respect: having gone through a long period of decline and being called a great power they actually have no dominant power. If one could not keep the power in their hands, the fruits of their struggles would be stolen by others, or all their achievements would be erased, which was another reason why many people risked their reputations for the sake of power; not all of them coveted power, they just didn't want to make their ideals a tool and a victim of others. Tortured by the Ice Age, Russia's environment had become unsuitable for survival, and to put it in a colloquial and crude way, they sought literally living's room. Not only could Russia not afford another defeat, it could not even afford a victory that did not match the expected outcome. It must find more habitable zones, puppet states and satellites are meaningless, and spheres of influence and international status are illusory. The existential threat is more tangible and deadly than all threats, and the new Russia only claims sovereignty over South Ukraine with this purpose in mind. The Russians would not risk war with the United States in favor of eliminating all of Ukraine, assuming that seizing South Ukraine would be the answer to their immediate needs. Even if the U.S. Army had put a noose around their necks, they would not have forgotten their original purpose. Since it's always a choice between downfall and extermination, the Russians would be hell-bent on attacking South Ukraine and using no declaration of war to keep the United States in check. The United States thought they could force the other side to declare war by pushing the Russkies hard enough, yet the United States would not be able to invade Belorussia if the Russians completely abandoned the Northeast Front - instead, the Russians would be able to attack the weak South directly from the Crimea. Extreme pressure presupposed that the other side would buy or collapse, and Russia and the United States were simply not on the same page in this game.

He pondered this until he was on his way, and stopped repeatedly to mutter to himself, which drew the sergeant's attention.

"What's the matter? Homesick?"

"I'm wondering if there's a point to our operation or not."

"Ugh, I actually sometimes wonder if the missions I'm on don't make sense." Sergeant Salas patted McNeil's shoulder, "But when I think of my family still waiting for me to go back to ... still waiting for me to feed them, I can't die in a place like this. It's just a matter of saying demoralizing things to yourself once in a while, but if you say it too much and believe it yourself, that's what kills you."

McNeil marched along with the sergeant, his inner doubts not yet dispelled.

"The Russians don't necessarily care about our offensive, you see they haven't clearly launched a counterattack so far."

"They'll care, if this new Russia falls, their proxy war is a complete failure."

"Not necessarily, they could choose to do another blitzkrieg like they did with the annexation of the Crimea - as long as they can quickly gain the upper hand and stabilize the southern front, and later declare the occupied territories annexed to Russia, and then it becomes us initiating the war against them." McNeil continued, "Sir, the Russkies don't give a damn about the Eastern Front, they don't even care about their agents, their aim is to get us to waste our energies in the East while they'll make a big push on the Southern Front ..."

"Well, young man." Sergeant Salas grumbled disgruntledly, "Nonsense has to be reasoned with, and these speculations of yours are a personal affair."

McNeil had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, he knew he was talking to the wrong person.

TBC

Chapter Notes:

The local population, surrounded by ultra-nationalism, had to prepare different flags and slogans at the same time for the new changes of the next day.

Indeed, whether nuclear war can completely destroy human civilization (obviously, nuclear war cannot destroy the Earth) is a question worth exploring.