01: To the Hills

Rebel APC destroyed outside Mananas, Virginia

From the bright sunny south to the war, I was sent,
E'er the days of my boyhood, I scarcely had spent.
From it's cool shady forests and deep flowing streams,
Ever fond in my mem'ry and sweet in my dreams.

Kate:
Technically I was a designated platoon marksman, not a true sniper. At least that's what the Israeli and Rhodesian advisers used to say.

Never saw much difference myself. I find a place to hide, pick out important targets and eliminate them. When most girls were worried about soccer practice and the cute boy in homeroom, I was worried about setting up enfilade fire and where my egress points were going to be.

I was good at it too. My age was really the only thing keeping me from becoming a fully qualified sniper and even that didn't stop them from sending me to Washington DC when the militias in Georgia and Alabama started sending volunteers for what they thought would be the final offensive against the government.


I learned more history on the ride from Chattanooga to Manassas than I ever could in school. It seemed that someone would find minie-balls or buttons every time we dug in for the night. Most of the journey followed the same routes as Stonewall Jackson and his "Horse Infantry" from 1862.

At times it felt more like a field trip than a war. Sometimes the Garrison Forces would throw together some kind of resistance to try and slow us down, but we usually swept them aside easily. Our Vietnam Vets kept talking about Frequent Wind and the Saigon Embassy, but I didn't really understand much of that. Probably should have listened to those old guys a little more.

Things started getting a little harder once we left the Shenandoah Valley. They really bloodied our noses at Linden, with a counterattack led by what we thought at the time were foreign mercenaries. We overcame some troublesome defenses at Marshall and in the Bull Run Mountains, as well as facing some of the first Federal airstrikes that any of us remember in over a year.

Our company was advancing about a mile northeast of the Manassas National Battlefield when the order came to get out and take up defenses. A heavy force of armor and mechanized infantry was heading our way, supported by heavy air assets. So we dug in and got ready for the coming battle.

Steve:
Have you ever seen what a 30mm chain gun can do to a pickup truck or those M-113 Battle Taxis? It ain't pretty, and what's even worse is seeing what it'll do to the passengers. I rode through one patch of woods covered with the wreckage of various APCs, at least a company's worth. The terrain had burned over despite the rain, several acres of timber had been clear-cut in what was probably a matter of seconds.

Rumor has it that the Blue Helmets are bombing us from our own aircraft carriers. If so, maybe I should have tried to scuttle the USS George Washington before I jumped ship.

I could have, too. It wouldn't have been hard for me to buy or steal some munitions off the planes and set them off in the lower deck as a going away present. Most of the sailors on the ship were either down on opiates or high on speed, or both. We all expected we'd be dragooned into the Garrison Forces or an admiral would mutiny in some neutral port and we'd all be locked up in a Eurotrash internment camp.

Me and some of my crewmates went AWOL near Corpus Cristie and in no time flat were the terror of government forces in that area. There was one time in Brownsville where I lured four goons into a back alley, armed only with a baseball bat. No one but me came out of that alley alive.

[GM's Note: if accounts of heroics are a dime a dozen in this world, then a penny a dozen would be those accounts of heroics that no one else can corroborate.]

Eventually, we decided to head west with the Washington offensive. I hired myself out as a sort of free-lance scout, which is what put me at Manassas on the 16th of April. Sure am glad I was on an ATV instead of some glorified box on wheels.

Maria:
In admittedly-weak defense of the M-113, it's not like the boxes-on-wheels they keep stuffing us into were any safer. If you don't like what gunships do to your APCs, just remember that landmines are no kinder to ours.

The problem is that Americans do such stupid things to their vehicles. Most APCs or trucks I've seen have a missile launcher or recoilless rifle of some kind strapped to it. Good for hit-and-run attack maybe, but the crews seem to get this idea that they're driving tanks and wind up getting themselves killed.

Though there are plenty of things to recommend in this country: lots of guns, lots of people who can use them, and lots of places to hide. That last part is something we sorely lack in Latvia. Some bogs and forests, but not good defensive terrain overall. Russians can forget to check the brakes on their tanks at night and by morning they've invaded us again.

There wasn't much we could do when they started reconsolidating their "near abroad". Some tried to resist, we had done that before and did a pretty good job of it. I, however, thought I'd have better odds taking the Latvian Resistance out of Latvia. So I joined the New Red Army, using fake ID and trying not to talk too much.

I figured they'd show me which end of a Kalashnikov the bullets come out of before sending me off to Ukraine or Chechnya. Yes, training was about as bad as I expected, and I was more than a little surprised to find myself in Virginia, but that didn't really change the plans. I frag my officer one night, set the barracks on fire, escape in the confusion, and eventually joined up with renegade sailor and his family.

Caleb:
I was lucky in that battle. I was manning the Ma Deuce on one of the technicals, but my transport unit got to stay in the back and guard the artillery. Mortars mostly, and a few old pack howitzers taken from who knows where. Italian-designed, Chinese-made. The crews don't seem to think much of them but they beat what they were previously using: blackpowder cannons.

I spent most of the battle rolling from one firing position to another, trying to avoid counter-battery fire while taking potshots at all the aircraft which seemed to fill the skies. Didn't seem to do a lot of good.

Our position was overrun near sunset, and it was only by luck that I escaped with my life. Bunch of Humvees infiltrated our rear and came charging out of the treeline, machine guns and grenade launchers blazing.

A 40mm grenade can do some pretty terrifying damage and has a decent blast radius. Fortunately, a 105mm shell can do even better. They managed to fight off the first wave but knew they couldn't repeat their success against Bradleys. As for me, I knew good and well that I wasn't in a tank, and our decision to bug out was pretty-much unanimous.

Our last transmission from Division HQ was thus: "Message to all members of the Unified American Resistance: Operation Early cancelled. You're on your own now. Good luck."

Jimmy:
Bull Run is flowing red with American blood again; we counted our chickens before they hatched, and now we're paying the price. History is full of rebels that tried conventional warfare too early and were destroyed because of it, and I hope that doesn't happened to us.

My epilepsy kept me off the front lines for the most part. I worked Military Intelligence, and was hearing nervous rumblings long before the Blue Helmets showed up. The Feds were too confident; they didn't seem overly concerned by the fact that they only maintained control in the Rust Belt, Atlantic Northeast and a few large cities that they were losing by the day.

We had considered the possibility of foreign intervention, but our biggest fear was that they were about to pull the nuclear card and annihilate our strongholds in the South and West. For all I know, that may have happened. There's all kinds of rumours going around and who knows what's really going on in, say, California when it would take two and a half months to get there?

I don't know if it was Providence or the luck of Brownian Motion that brought so much of our family to Northern Virginia. We gathered together after the upset at Linden and set up a rendezvous point in the event of more undesirable surprises. Five of us eventually made our way back—we waited as long as we could for the rest, and then we moved on. We sought out the remnants of the Shenandoah Rangers and their semi-mythical leader, Colonel Robert Donner.

Robert:
I like family acts, and I was a little amused by their high opinion of me. People are cooking up all kinds of heroic folks tales and twisted horror stories about us, depending upon their personal allegiances. Apparently, a popular moniker for our cells is "Donner Parties"... I'm not sure how I feel about that...

I wasn't sure how I felt about this family when they first stumbled across one of our patrols saying they wanted to become a Donner Party. A ready-made cell, familiar with the area, seemingly-competent, and ready for action? Spetnaz infiltration team if there ever was one!

We held them for a few weeks and ran some background checks, enough to learn that they probably weren't Russians (not even the European turncoat, who seemed angered by the very idea). We didn't shoot them, but we didn't quite welcome into our HQ with open arms either. These days, I follow something called the Grandma's Biscuit Rule: if you don't know me well enough to know her cooking style, I'd rather you not know where I'm staying.

I have a typist, 20 year old former soldier for the Florida Militia. Got off the boat just in time to shoot it out with the Feds when they tried kidnapping one of her fellow refugees. Left almost completely blind by an experimental NASA laser in the Siege of Orlando, she may not seem like the best choice for a military formation even in a rear-echelon role.

I consider her an excellent choice; she's my niece. Most of my closest associates are family or might as well be. It's nepotism, but in this environment it's necessary. Better to have one squad of trusted members than a company with an informer.

As for the new arrivals, I sent them to meet a contact in Pincher County and begin organizing resistance in that area. It's a rural, isolated county right along the West Virginia border that's been overlooked by us and our enemy alike thus far, and it'll be very interesting to see what they can do there.