Chapter Fourteen: The Death Of The USA
Chapter Fourteen: The Death Of The USA
In 2028, America goes down in spectacular fashion. At least russia died too. Sorry about losing to China, though.
Timur threw himself into the dust, then rolled onto his back to stare up at the bright blue Rocky Mountain summer sky. The weight of the armored carapace pressed down on his lungs, and he struggled to draw as much air as he could force through the particle filters in his face mask.
Exhaustion seemed too weak a word to describe how he felt after more than three days of non-stop exercises. Timur had finally been able to make good on his promise to train his friends in the fine art of not getting shot or blown up while Sandra Chavez cheerfully tortured them hour after hour, running them all through one intensive combat drill after another.
He exhaled and held his breath until he couldn't stand it anymore, then slowly and steadily drew air back into his lungs. Knowing he was dehydrated, he felt around the inside of the mask with his tongue until he found the plastic drinking tube. Pulling it between his lips he took several long, slow sips, feeling cool water soothe his throat.
Patrick and Kim threw themselves down beside him, each encased in their own bugsuit, faces concealed behind masks and visors. They were just three broken insects waiting for their tormentor to decide what variety of pain to inflict next.
“That's it, I can't take this anymore,” Kim groaned, “I am not coming back up this hill one more time. Do you hear me, Chavez? I'm done.”
Timur grinned weakly, finding it oddly comforting to know that Kim, easily in the best shape of the three, was as over Chavez’ training regimen as Timur. Chavez didn't respond. Kim swore several times, and Timur was shocked that Jackson’s voice didn’t come on to chide Kim for it.
He checked his tactical map, and saw that Chavez was a few hundred meters down a long steep slope, advancing slowly to their position. Timur assumed she must be adjusting the training drones that had tormented them for most of the past three days. She hadn't given them more than a few hours rest since returning from the mission to destroy Southern Butte. In fact, she had hardly spoken to them at all except to bark instructions that had, so far, mostly amounted to go climb the bunny slope, the training range on a hill in the middle of the base where they tested new recruits. Or, as Timur and his friends had come to see it, tortured them until they physically broke.
The hill itself wasn't particularly tall, especially not compared to the peaks towering over the Missoula Regiment's base in what used to be Yellowstone National Park. But all of the paths to the summit were guarded by wheeled drones operated from a hidden bunker. Drones armed with an astonishing variety of what Chavez had assured them were less than lethal weapons. Tear gas grenades, rapid-fire paintball guns, shotguns firing beanbags, and, if you got too close, even a taser could pop out to play. Their purpose was simple: anyone who tried to come up the hill got chased away. Breaking through the drone defense was the task of the hapless recruits sent to be sprayed, pummeled, and shocked until they figured out some solution to running the gauntlet.
Normally, Timur knew a slope like this would have taken no more than an hour or two to climb. Yet all through the first day of training they never reached the top, driven back time and again by the relentless drones. On the second day, Timur had begun instructing his two friends in what he knew about how to successfully move around while getting shot at.
It was a simple routine. They would hide and wait until the nearest patrolling drones were far enough away that Timur and his friends could run for a few seconds without taking a hit. Then they could dash forward to whatever bit of terrain or vegetation further up the slope would offer protection from the paintballs, beanbags, and gas grenades that would quickly get lobbed at them. Then the trio would repeat the process, over and over again, step by painful, hesitant step.
Towards the end of the third day, when they finally reached the summit for the first time, Chavez had issued each of them a weapon, a bulky firearm identical to the one they had seen her carrying. The weapon’s magazines were filled with a special ammunition that fired with all the apparent power of a typical assault rifle, yet broke apart mid-flight into plastic pellets that did no damage to the drones or any armored bystanders. They did, however, disable the drones for a short period of time if hit in the right spots.
Now better equipped, Timur had trained his friends on the next essential ingredient of moving in combat: covering fire. Instead of the three of them timing group dashes, two would shoot at the closest drones to give the third a better chance to make the short dash to the next bit of cover. Then, another of them would run forward to join the leader, covered by the cross fire. The third leapfrogged the pair to reach the next-closest bit of cover, then they did it again. And again. And again. Throughout the day and well into the night.
They had done well enough that as a reward Chavez had allowed them a slightly longer rest break than before, but by ten o'clock they were up and at it again. Three times that day already they'd fought their way up the hill, and as the sun waxed towards noon Timur was running out of steam.
At one point that morning Kim had come up with the clever idea of hiding for a longer stretch in order to rest. Unfortunately, as soon as they did the drones began to start moving in more complex patterns, grouping together to surround and bombard any hiding spot if they stayed there too long. Since their weapons could only temporarily freeze the drones, they were forced into constant movement, climbing the slope only to reset at the bottom more tired than before.
Their only consolation was that the clothing issued by the Missoula Regiment was quite effective at cooling, which was about the only thing that stopped them all morphing from coherent flesh into pools of sweat. Yellowstone was a surprisingly warm place in late July, or at least it was a quarter century into their future.
Laying there feeling more exhausted than he had in years, staring up into the blue, cloudless sky, Timur realized that he was as done as Kim. If told to go down the slope to start over, he would simply say no. Timur rolled to one side to look at his friends while he told them this in the exact same moment Chavez once again came close enough that the local peer-to-peer communication system linking their bugsuits broadcast her voice as clearly as if she was sitting there with them.
“Hey, guys,” she called out, sounding oddly relaxed. “You didn't do half bad this last run through. Actually, if I’m being honest, your performance was totally passable. Well done, that’s close to a record!”
“That had better be the last run today, Chavez,” Kim replied, “because we are effing exhausted. I’m not doing this bloody hill again, you hear me?”
Somehow, Timur could tell by her voice Chavez was grinning despite her face being completely covered by her own headgear and still well down the slope. He had noticed that she grinned a lot, which seemed strange given the intensity of the combat her people were engaged in.
“Hah,” Chavez snickered, “Jackson isn't listening right now, so you won’t draw a demerit for swearing. Weird policy, I think, but gotta grant the man a few concessions, I suppose! All right, I guess you guys do deserve a break. Gods but it's hot this week, isn't it? Look at that sky, not a drop of moisture up there. I'll come up and grab a slice of this shade too.”
A few minutes later Chavez thunked her carapace against the trunk of the tree shading them, letting her body slide slowly down to the roots. She turned towards the three of them and in one smooth motion pulled off her headgear, then let out a sudden yelp of pain.
Timur unclipped his own mask and raised his visor, trying to suppress a grin. She had paused mid-removal, her eyes wide, one hand clutching at a clump of her hair. Her teeth were clenched so hard Chavez actually looked a bit terrifying, her face contorted into a shape that could easily have passed for a grizzled old Japanese Samurai's battle mask.
“Ouch!” Chavez spat, hissing like a startled cat. “I frickin’ hate it when the helmet catches hair! I love this gear, but I am sure that a man designed the damned helmet. A man with short or even no hair. Goddessbezelbubjeebusdangitalltobloody… !”
Yanking the helmet the rest of the way off, Chavez rubbed her head and looked out towards the horizon. Timur had the distinct feeling that she was waiting for something, or someone. For several minutes they all sat there in silence, the three trainees catching their breath while Chavez stared out towards the mountains.
Without her helmet, Chavez almost seemed like a normal human being as she sat enjoying a break, not their determined tormentor of the past few days. Timur and his friends removed theirs too, he finding that the warmth of the summer sun was enhanced by the rest of his body being strangely cool despite all his hard labor. He preferred it to being drenched in sweat, but still found the entire experience unnerving.
“So I gotta say, Timur,” Chavez said at last, “I've seen a lot of green faces come through here over the past few years, but yours is definitely not that of a total newbie. Your DNA results confirm my suspicions, because you didn’t pop up in any standard military database… but we did get a hit from what is now the Cascadian immigration office in Vancouver. Must be from when it was still part of Canada and their federal government wanted to know if incomers had ties to any armed groups. Let me guess: you got dragged into the fighting business in southwest Asia by a family member?”
Timur swallowed. He had known it was only a matter of time before this came up. It wasn't something he liked to talk about, and even his closest friends had only ever heard bits and pieces, mostly the precious few stories and memories that weren't entirely tainted by fear and misery.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Timur shrugged. “When I was fifteen I got the brilliant idea to run away from home. My uncle in Srinagar took me in, but had no idea he was part of a group fighting for independence in Kashmir. I wound up dragged into it all that too.”
“Kashmir, oof,” Chavez grunted. “That was nasty business. I wasn’t too far from there at one point. No wonder you know so much better than your buddies how to keep your head in the dirt as much as humanly possible when the incoming arrives. But your name, Timur Tarkhan, that's not tied to Kashmir, is it?”
He laughed. “Nope. Our branch of the Tarkhans have lived in Punjab for centuries. As for the first name, well, Dad had an… interesting sense of humor. He couldn't even keep his faith simple. Mom’s family was from the area too, Sikhs, mostly, with equally long roots in Punjab. Supposedly we’ve also got branches that go up into Afghanistan and over to the Bengali part of South Asia. Our particular line claims direct Mongol ancestry, hence the khan in the name. Family dynamics get kind of… complicated, in that part of the world.”
“You're telling me!” Chavez laughed. “I've been boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Lebanon, and half a dozen other trouble spots in Eurasia. Anybody who thinks that heritage or faith is simple in that part of the world is a complete idiot. Too bad ‘idiot’ aptly describes most world leaders, in most eras.”
“Jeebus,” she continued, “no wonder you have your shizzle reasonably together. Fighting in Kashmir, as a teenager! Whatever militia made you play insurgent, screw the pricks, but they sure made my job a hell of a lot easier today. But dude, that's effed up. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get out of that mess?”
“It's all good,” Timur smiled weakly, expecting a far more thorough interrogation than that. “That part I don't mind talking about at all. When I was about twenty I got caught up in an Indian Army dragnet. But I was lucky, 'cause a bunch of humanitarian groups were working with captured insurgents to identify anyone who might be a child soldier and separate them from the ones the jawans were taking to prison. My family was decently well off, and I grew up speaking English, so I stood out. This couple from Japan finagled a way to get me into a refugee support program in Canada. And helped me get a high school credential, then into university.”
“Dude.” Kim exclaimed. “How did I not know this? Like some of it, sure, but never all!”
“Sorry Kim,” He smiled apologetically. “I just… wanted to start over. Vancouver was a whole new life for me. And I didn't want to have everyone look at me weird because I used to be a child soldier. I never really saw myself that way, I grew up pretty young. Had to, when mom died. And anyway, when you tell people you used to be a Kashmiri insurgent you get the strangest looks. Of course, half the time they ask me if I grew up making sweaters, so maybe I'm just being too paranoid or something.”
Patrick and Kim were both staring at him, and Timur realized that he'd tensed, anticipating… he wasn't sure what. Judgment, maybe? Anger? He was gratified to see nothing like that in their eyes, only compassion. Or maybe it was just fatigue and shock, it was hard to say. Regardless, he suddenly remembered why they were all friends in the first place. They'd all been through stuff in life, though most of them didn’t talk much about it. Consequently, they all knew that the past didn't really matter. Until getting scooped up by Loke, they'd all been pretty content to just live together and enjoy being young in British Columbia.
“Alright, that all tracks well enough,” Chavez nodded slowly. “Trying to figure out exactly who you are, Jackson and I even had your clothes tested, but there we got basically nothing useful. Isotope analysis of your blood results indicate a long dwell time in the Pacific Northwest, what most folks call Cascadia nowadays, so based on that and other stuff you've said, I have to conclude you all met up in Vancouver. Not a spot our enemies recruit from a lot. Just out of curiosity, how'd that happen?”
“Like Timur,” Kim said, “I came to Vancouver recently. I grew up in Jakarta, and came over for school. It’s… taken a while longer than planned. I've been working off and on to send money back home to the family, which makes graduating on time kind of hard. But luckily I met them and… some other friends, and together we keep rent pretty well covered. Helps that Patrick is our landlord.”
“Jakarta, huh,” Chavez nodded, seeming oddly focused now, “but with mostly Chinese heritage?”
“Uh huh,” Kim's brow furrowed suspiciously. “Mostly. Does it matter?”
“Not a bit,”Chavez shook her head, clearly deflecting, “just curious to know who I’m working with. You all ended up in British Columbia together? Small wonder. One of the fastest-growing places in the world for a couple decades now, since they are one of the few regions left that accepts immigrants and refugees without many preconditions. That whole Cascadia thing seems to be working out pretty well for them and the West Coast down into old northern California. Gods know there’s plenty of need for safe havens these days.”
“So, big guy,” Chavez nodded at Patrick, smiling coyly. “You are the European of the bunch, yeah? And the landlord? Well if that isn’t properly colonial.”
“Not exactly sure what you mean,” Patrick replied slowly, “but yeah. I’ve got a place in Vancouver because the husband is… was stationed near there. I grew up in Montreal, parents both immigrated from Estonia to get away from the Soviets, then wound up on the West Coast, So my blood is probably pretty boring by comparison. Just the token white dude of our group.”
“So if we're doing an interrogation,” Kim asked Chavez, “when do we get to ask where you are from? And, I suppose, why you and this regiment of yours are out here in an American national park. Since you haven’t been telling us stuff, for fear we’re spies.”
“Former national park,” Chavez grunted. “Once the money stopped flowing from DC back in the Collapse, the feds had to sell off all the rights. Which the Company bought right up when we got the contract to guard the missile fields up in Montana.”
“Well,” Chavez said, after sizing them up. “I guess the best place to start is the beginning, though the fact you all seem to require basic explanations about things like geography is slightly worrisome. Can’t account for your education, I suppose, and not everybody pays attention to current events or truly understands them, particularly the young who haven’t been around but a day.”
“But first,” she seemed to change her mind, “I think it’s best to do a quick debrief on what happened at Southern Butte. That'll offer some context for understanding the bigger picture, I think. So, tell me what happened, in your own words.”
Timur lay there for a while, not sure what to say, only speaking when it was clear his friends were as stumped as him. “We were just doing what you told us,” he said slowly, “while trying not die. Then stuff exploded all over the place, and for who knows what reason you all decided to launch a couple of freaking nukes at the other side. Honestly, I keep expecting someone else to drop a nuke on us at any time. I mean, that's what you do when nukes are in play, right? Embrace mutually assured destruction and ride the bomb like a cowboy?”
“You are not letting that go, are you?” Chavez shook her head. “Look, that was a quick and efficient way to eliminate a dangerous position. Not the method I expected, and I know for a fact it will have some major consequences, but it was a legitimate and legal Nagasaki strike all the same. The other option was to get them to pull their heavy equipment out into the open then plaster the place with regular explosives, which would have left us taking casualties the way that was heading.”
“The plan seemed reasonable enough to me,” Timur said. “I thought once the Deseret guns were shooting our own artillery was set to get in the fight.”
“True,” she nodded, “but it would have longer to silence the Deseret guns. I actually wish I had known they were up for nuking the joint, I'd have run the op quite a bit differently. We knew there was a lot of artillery on that hill, but not that much, nor that they had good laser detectors to work out where we were spotting from. Dessies aren’t usually great about keeping their kit up to date.”
“Why didn't they tell you?” asked Patrick. “Whoever gives you your orders, I mean.”
“Who knows?” Chavez shrugged. “Command isn't obliged to explain every nuance, just assign the mission and resources necessary to get the job done. Part of Company doctrine. Everyone has total autonomy to complete their mission as they see fit, taking advantage of circumstance and opportunities as they arise. Command is mostly about organization, logistics, and deconflicting where field commanders can't agree on something important.”
“Command also gets to intervene at a strategic level when the Board of Directors or the Founder back in Paris decides it is necessary. I haven't gotten a full debrief from that end yet, but the explanation we’ve had so far is that they decided a major escalation was necessary to keep the Deserets from joining the Texans and Lakers in a triple assault on our forces in Montana. And nukes definitely count as an escalation! Despite their obvious utility in blasting that Deseret base to oblivion, they play a bigger role as a signaling mechanism. Telling our opponents that we're ready to take this thing all they way to full-on, all-out war if we're pushed too far.”
“Um, we're in a war, now, aren't we?” Kim scratched her head. “People are shooting at other people. And a lot of people had to have died on that hill that got nuked. Looks like war to me.”
Chavez smiled. “Sure, yeah, it’s one kind of war. But all life is a war. A constant struggle for resources in a continually changing environment. That's just the way life is. Basic ecology tells us that life is all about access to resources. To live, a body's gotta eat, and drink, and sleep, and f… ah, just look up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs’ on the Company Wiki some time if you need the full inventory.”
“The key point to keep in mind is that life is always a constant struggle to maintain your internal metabolism in the face of an environment that is always trying to kill you on some level. And that's what war is too, from the lowest level to the top. Sure, the details are wildly different in human wars, because humans are the only apes that organize on a global scale to fight over resources they are better off obtaining via cooperation.”
“Ugh,” Chavez yawned, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. “I'm obviously tired, yammering at you about philosophy. Back to the nukes, and the broader point. Command decided to signal that we're prepared for the most desperate kind of war. The kind where it all comes down to control of enough resources to simply survive, whatever the cost. Command demonstrated that we are ready to escalate this little fight over the Snake Valley to the highest of levels. That our backs are to the wall, and the next nuke shot may be at Salt Lake City itself. A full-on decapitation strike on the Deseret leadership, if it comes to it, even if we’d never really do something as brazen as that since we’d lose our international funding.”
“Doesn't seem like your backs are to the wall to me,” Kim said. “You won that battle, and you seem to be able to fly people all over the place as you like.”
“They aren't, Chavez laughed grimly. “not quite yet. But bad days are a'comin, I can scent them on the wind. We're about to feel serious pressure on two, maybe three fronts. Hence the need to solve our little Deseret problem fast and dirty, because they threaten our main supply lines leading west to California and Cascadia.”
“Okay, look,” Timur said, feeling irritated at how much he didn’t understand. “I know this will sound completely stupid, like I've had my head under a rock most of my life, but can you actually start from the beginning like you promised? Tell me why you people are all out here in the first place? Who are you, anyway, Chavez?”
“None of us pays much attention to current events or ever has,” Kim nodded, catching on to his play. “We’ve… just been trying to get by.”
A tone sounded, and Chavez grabbed her helmet and pulled it on. “Jackson will be here in a bit,” she said a moment later, “and has some interesting news. So I suppose there's time for a bit of history while we wait.”
She pulled her helmet off again and sighed. “As for me,” Chavez said, “that's easy. I was born in East LA, just like the old song says. Mom and dad came up from lovely Oaxaca, Mexico a few years before I was born and bought a little sort of humble hacienda in a run-down suburb, their little piece of the SoCal sprawl. I popped out of mom in ninety-three, second of three sisters, and at eighteen I didn't really know what to do with my life so I joined up with the old United States Army.”
“Got hooked on the thrill and made a point of getting into all the old specialty programs, the really fun stuff like sniper school, airborne training, even the Ranger program. When the USA started falling apart in the teens, I was just a sergeant on my second tour overseas, driving Bradleys around Kurdish Syria. Then the twenty-sixteen election happened, and everyone with any sense realized the USA was in deep doodoo, though a lot of people tried to pretend all was gonna be okay until it was too late.”
“Then twenty-twenty happened, and the USA was clearly dead and done. Sure it went into that weird zombie limbo that lasted almost ten years, but the writing was on the wall from turn of the decade onward. Twenty-eight just shattered something that was already too rotten to save. I was in Baluchistan, helping to stabilize the place after Pakistan fell apart and everyone was terrified of their loose nukes getting into extremist hands when General Hollahan and his dirty half-dozen launched their sick coup.”
“You know,” Chavez shook her head as if pained by the memory, “I’m just old enough to remember September of two thousand and one, and I thought that was bad. But the attacks that triggered the Collapse... those were something else entirely. Nukes delivered by cruise missiles causing two million casualties across three major cities, including the one hosting the convention where the current President of the United States was about to give a speech alongside most of the cabinet. A perfectly coordinated strike pruning the line of presidential succession all the way back to the Secretary of the Treasury.”
“But by a stroke of good luck, the two missiles aimed at San Francisco and Oakland miraculously get shot down by Navy ships running an unannounced exercise. Pilsudska survives and becomes President, launching the counterstrike against North Korea and Iran it turns out was totally unjustified. I’m sure at least one of you remembers that crisis, China recovering wreckage from a downed missile revealing that the attack was an inside job.”
“Oh yeah,” Patrick nodded, clearly lying through his teeth. “Totally, what a horrible situation that was.”
Chavez was too caught up in her reminiscing to notice his furtive looks at his friends. “Sure was, man, sure was. I was back in the states by the time Pilsudska started getting slammed by the bogus story that she wasn't actually an American citizen. This of course was what allowed Hollohan and his puppet Young to carry out an effective palace coup and start their brief failed war with China to distract people from what was happening in DC. Not long after, state governors on the West Coast and in the Northeast got the gumption to declare their allegiance to Pilsudska. Thirteen years on, the Second American Civil War is technically still underway, though now its just a bunch of petty successor states battling for whatever resources they can cling to.”
“I’ve always been surprised the guy in DC didn't go just nuclear against his enemies,” Timur said, like Patrick trying to act like he was remotely familiar with events that should be common knowledge. “I mean, since they clearly had access to nukes and were OK with killing millions of Americans.”
“Well, I mean,” Chavez replied, shaking her head, “he did, just not as badly as he could have. There was a dump of a town in Northern California called Redding which was the site of a couple vicious battles for control over a key interstate bridge and river crossing. Conventional artillery mostly flattened the place in the first round of fighting, but when the Pilsudska forces in Cascadia were about to finally push south to liberate occupied California, the Hollahan side hit the place with three nukes dropped from an ICBM launched from North Dakota.”
“And then came the Russians!” shouted Jackson’s voice from right next to them. They all twisted so fast Timur was surprised he didn’t get whiplash, and Jackson stood there, staring wryly down at Chavez. Timur hadn't even seen him approach.
“Yes, Jackson,” Chavez rolled her eyes and waved, “Since the Hollahan regime had already launched an attack on China’s nuclear forces, old sick Putin put two and two together and decided, in his uniquely paranoid way, that Russia was bound to be next. So he takes his revenge for America backing Ukraine years before and launches a surprise attack.”
“Six hundred Russian nuclear warheads land on the missile fields spanning North Dakota, Colorado, and Kansas, two for every one of the three hundred silos in each of the two fields the Russians judge to be under the control of Hollahan loyalists. It remains the worst ecological catastrophe in human history because the assault kicked up a plume of radioactive dirt that merged with a particularly nasty weather system and headed east. Nebraska, Southern Minnesota and the Dakotas, Iowa and Northern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Western Pennsylvania, all of them got treated to a solid dousing with radioactive rain.”
“I hear Russia got it much worse, though,” Jackson grunted. “When Pilsudska ordered retaliation with sub-launched missiles that took out the rest of Russia’s land-based nuclear forces. Price for avoiding an all-out nuclear holocaust was a managed exchange conducted with the tacit approval of the Russian generals moved to overthrow and execute Putin in the days after his mad intervention. Fortunately, in the states there was time to evacuate most of the people directly affected by the fallout, but much of the old Midwest had to be permanently abandoned.”
“I still can't believe,” Chavez shook her head sadly, “that the USA didn't get rid of all these miserable Minuteman silos back at the end of the Cold War and just keep all their nukes on submarines, which even today are still basically impossible to track. Instead, they just plopped massive targets down on the people living near those ICBM fields, creating what experts of the day called America’s nuclear sponge, its only purpose to absorb Russian warheads that might otherwise blow up other stuff. If the Russians hadn't mistakenly thought Pilsudska had control over the fields in Montana, there'd have even more states irradiated to high hell.”
“Stupidity explains many things in this universe,” Jackson said. “Though if they had, we wouldn’t be fighting to guard them today. Life is all about the tradeoffs.”
Timur chuckled, despite himself. “So, back to your personal story,” he asked Chavez. “How did you go from experienced American soldier to working here?”
“When your country goes belly-up,” Chavez shrugged, “what can a soldier do but sell the skills she's got to whatever group is willing to pay? When the surviving states got together in thirty-one and amended the Constitution to formally break up the USA, the Pentagon decided to let military personnel choose what region they'd prefer to join. On the West Coast, wasn't much room for an Army cavalry scout used to deploying in the Middle East every other year.”
“Lucky for the Company,” Jackson said, squatting next to Chavez, I recruited Chavez when she was figuring out her next move, even introduced her to the Founder. Then and since his goal was to build up the Company by recruiting people with experience.”
“And this Company has all the resources of a military?” Kim said, looking at a pair of helicopters as they took off from the nearby airbase. “Must have a nice budget. Can’t help but wonder where it comes from.”
“Contracts all over the world,” Jackson replied. “We’ve brought peace to more regions in ten years than any country or the United Nations ever had before. Which is why they award so many global security contracts to us.”
“And the Deserets?” Timur asked. “What’s their part in all of this? One of the post-American successor states, I take it?”
“The poor Deserets,” Chavez smiled sadly. “They tried so hard to peacefully unite the Intermountain West. But Salt Lake keeps flipping between leaders who want only peaceful integration and those who accept expanding their rule by force. They're fighting us solely because the war-mongering set among the Quorum has used our presence as an excuse to whip up bogus fears of an international intervention in Utah, though why anyone would bother is beyond me. We keep whacking them when they poke at us, but that only reinforces the argument their nutter set makes about us being harbingers of the impending apocalypse or whatever. Nasty cycle that we haven't been able to break out of.”
“Actually, that's why I'm here.” Jackson grunted. “It’s finally come together. If you’re done telling campfire tales to newbies, we’ve got work to do.”
“Oooh, oooh, have we finally jumped through all the hoops, then?” Chavez nodded eagerly.
“As soon as it starts to get dark,” Jackson grunted, “I've got a couple choppers coming to pick you all up. We just got word that our asset Lehi finally wants extraction. Should be a milk run. Only a couple or three guards to put down to make it look like he resisted. Less than lethal ammo only. Decent practice for the newbies.”
“Holy sh… Lehi wants out?” Chavez exclaimed. “Whoah, that's news. Any reason given?”
“Thought you'd be interested,” Jackson smirked. “Since you two go back a ways.”
“Huh, interesting,” She nodded slowly, looking off into the distance. “Alright, kids, guess we'd better wrap up today's lessons. Where were we, anyway? Any basics left to cover? You know why we’re fighting, and who I am.”
Timur checked the sky. The sun was almost ready to slip behind one of the western peaks. Something about the mountain struck him as odd, but he wasn't sure what.
“Well, Chavez,” Timur shook his head, “I suppose you can finish what you were telling us about life being war, or something like that. I think there was supposed to be a connection in there to the past few days we’ve spent on this bloody annoying training course of yours.”
“You really know how to be blunt, don't you Timur?” Chavez snorted. “But yeah, I stand by what I said: life and war are the same. And this repetitive, often ridiculous training exercise is relevant to both. It is the practice you all have to do in order to learn the fundamental ecological rhythms of combat. It begins with small teams cooperating to achieve some objective. Everything else flows from there.”
“I'm, like, huge into music,” Chavez’ eyes glittered, suddenly, “especially metal out of Gothenborg. Amon Amarth is a particular fave. Big fan of the old ethic of the ancient North of Europe. And one lyric in particular I have pretty much come to live by over the years. It goes like this: Men will fight, and men will die. Wars will be lost and won. That's how it's been, and still will be, long after I am gone.”
“It works as a life ethic for me,” Chavez continued, “because way I’ve experienced it, that's just living, man. War is something people do, for the same basic reasons, no matter the era or location. In groups, people struggle to maintain their collective metabolism against the environment. And sometimes, that requires violent collective action. Because even if you don't want to fight over resources or territory, someone else is eventually gonna force you to. One day, if you live long enough, you'll eventually have something someone else wants. And there will always be a chance that they'll try to take it by force. You can't just wish that danger away, and think that if only people would link hands and sing Kumbayah the world would change overnight. It hasn't in ten thousand years, and won't anytime soon.”
“Which is why,” she bared her teeth, “the rest of the lyric is equally as important to me as the first, and it goes like this: doubting not I give of blood, that I may enter hall up high. The sky belongs to Asa-gods, as long as the raven flies!”
“And that means… ?” Patrick asked, shaking his head tiredly.
“The world is what it is. The gods of war will ride until the world's end, and the carrion eaters will follow in their wake. For whatever reason, our universe makes us fight to survive. So I accept the inevitable: no matter what I do, whatever I want to accomplish in this life, I must give of my scarce time and energy, and sometimes my own blood, in order to get it done. This is how I leave my mark on the world. As far as I’m concerned, maybe the Norse are the ones who got it right. Maybe we all end up in Valhalla, if we're worthy. If we struggle well, and for the right reasons. At the very least it's an ethic. And I say its better to have a flawed ethic than no ethic at all.”
“Truth be told,” Chavez sighed, standing up. “You've all learned the essence of living by my ethic over the past few days. Given a totally arbitrary, made-up environment, you've figured out how to work together to achieve the basic goal I set for you: move forward, to the summit of that stupid little hill, in the face of opposition. You've learned how to deal with the environment to progress as a unit.”
“She’s right, you know,” Jackson added gruffly. “This is the basic mechanism that underpins all human social affairs. Building a business, managing a household, governing a country, fighting a war: all require collective action and careful use of resources. Communication, planning, execution, assessment, all united in an eternal cycle of perpetual adaptation. All serving the basic goal of survival, maintaining metabolism against the environment.
“Oh come on,” Patrick shook his head. “There has to be more to life than just endless war and struggle and pain!”
“Of course there is!” Chavez exclaimed. “But people don't get to actually live a life until they've solved the basic problem of acquiring the necessary resources that support doing things other than acquiring more necessary resources. War in the way most folks typically use the word is just a conflict between countries, which is just a struggle for power between human groups warring over territory. But this is not the only kind of war.”
“This Bunny Slope,” Jackson added, “is meant to force you to learn to move and fight as a team. Small teams working through the environment, forcing paralysis on their opponents in order to take control of the terrain: this is the fundamental rhythm of war. Whether a million are involved with nuclear weapons or two with sticks, it’s the same.”
Timur looked up, and saw that the sun was starting to slip towards the western slopes. Night would fall soon, and already he heard the unmistakable sound of helicopter rotor blades approaching. From the south, barely over the trees, two blurs approached, soon resolving into Havoc-type attack helicopters, pods of rockets and missiles fixed under their stubby wings. Timur groaned silently, knowing it would be another cramped ride to wherever it was they were going next.
Chavez reassembled her headgear, and then without another word led them down the slope towards the airbase. Timur watched the helicopters swoop low, grimly reattaching all his own gear.
“Catch you all on the flip side,” Jackson waved as they followed quickly after. “As usual, Chavez, try not to die. And say hi to Lehi for me. It’s been a long time since we served together in Iraq.”
Soon enough Timur and his friends were packed like sardines into the aft compartment of an attack helicopter. It soared skyward, heading west, mountain peaks passing by on either side.
Philosophy, history, it mattered little to him or them. They were subjects to these things, not their architects. And in this strange new life, in order to survive he and his friends would have to learn the hard ways of war.