Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Rise and Fall of an Empire
Into the Wild Blue Yonder
The war between Light and Dark has raged for years, and every day territory is lost to the Dark Lord. Then a string of events turns the world on its ear most violently...
?Blocked
About 610 km above the South China Seas
0519 GMT (1:19 PM local time), 6 December 2001
The Michael Collins space defense station had just arrived in orbit over the South China Seas, and the radar had gone crazy with contacts all the way from southern central Russia to southern Tasmania. From Russia, they could see the combat air patrols flying near the border and making small forays into Mongolian and ex-PRC territory, although none so far as to spark an international incident. From the Korean sector, there were hundreds of blips on the screens, some so close together, that you could not tell whether they were red or blue, and it looked like the South Koreans were fighting a losing battle. The typhoon heading for Japan had dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared in the Pacific, causing all militaries affected quite a few headaches, as their plans had all been made around the storm, because they couldn't go safely through it. It turned out that the South Koreans had been accurate in their consideration of the North Korean objectives, as the campaign heading north into the fledgling nation of Dongbei halted and almost half the troops quickly transferred to the southern front. With the massive surge of troops came a similarly large gain of ground; Seoul had been overrun in only eight hours, Osan AFB about two hours after that, and at the end of the day, a little more than half of the South was in the custody on the KPA. It was blitzkrieg, and most of the personnel and equipment at Osan and Seoul evacuated at the last possible moment, although two of the B-1R Lancer airframes were unable to make it to the far-end of the runway, so they had to be destroyed via C4.
The Chinese invasion of Taiwan had advanced to the point where almost half the island was under the dominion of the neo-communist forces, even with help from air strikes and ground forces from Vietnam, the Philippines and the United States. The Vietnamese, while communists themselves were also exceptionally defensive of the status quo of the region contiguous to their country, and thus they became extremely irritated with the Chinese opportunists actions. They had quickly sent troops to aid the neighboring Taiwanese, which served a dual purpose in showing the world that they were a nation to respect and to warn off Chinese attacks on the homeland. When the whole situation examined, it looked like the Vietnamese had harnessed their wagon to a falling star, as the defense of Taiwan, executed by four different nations and three very different plans, made a very poor showing. The Americans wanted to go in with shock and awe tactics and then smash the invaders with everything in their arsenal, while the Taiwanese wanted to draw the Chinese into a trap, while the Vietnamese wanted to make a controlled retreat to Tsoying. Moreover, the military commands of each country had not integrated with each other at all, so the military situation became a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left was screwing up.
The Chinese provinces had further consolidated into eight separate nations, each with a population of approximately 120 million and all with sufficient technology to manufacture nuclear warheads, and the associated deliverance systems. The new nations closer to the coast were the more belligerent of the newly formed countries and thus were the ones that would be more than likely to go to war over some pathetic excuse for a reason. This also meant that they were more likely to launch a nuclear attack in either first strike or in a retaliatory manner than any other nuclear capable state. It just so happened that the leader of the ultra-left state that had formed from the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan, was an extraordinarily enthusiastic opponent of both the United States and Taiwan. Thus, when he saw the chance to exterminate over 45 million of his abhorrent adversaries, he leapt on the opportunity like a starving man on a Christmas ham, and the fact that he would kill millions of soldiers from another province was no matter to him. He quickly ordered his generals to launch four enhanced radiation weapons, also known as neutron bombs, at the island of Formosa, and after the radiation had become negligible, he would move in and take over. One hour after he had given the order, the four missiles were ripple fired from road-mobile, transporter-erector-launchers and the four missiles streaked off into the clear blue sky. As the missiles flew on deadly wings, the gimbaled rockets powering them slowly turned toward the area of their target, the center of the island of Formosa.
Mere seconds after the rocket motors on the first stage of the four missiles ignited, the sensors aboard the Collins relayed a ballistic missile launch warning to the Strategic Air Command satellite network and to all US battle commands within 1500 miles of the launch site. After only a few more seconds, the Collins minor maneuvering thrusters were locking the massive 35-megawatt main laser onto the missile with the highest altitude, and as soon as the computers had a solid targeting lock, the laser fired. An incredibly dazzling white-blue shaft of light appeared, struck the warhead and stayed locked on even when the warhead separated from the main rocket body; by the time this happened the missile was moving at almost 1.3 kilometers per second. Twelve seconds after the sensors had first detected the missile launches, the first of the warheads was completely eradicated, and then the station adjusted slightly and fired at the next warhead. This sequence repeated once more, with the same results as the first two times, and with the same deadly efficiency that would come to characterize the Michael Collins space station as one of the most important strategic defense units in history. The third warhead was moving too quickly for the station to get a target lock, so all units in the probable target area, notified via satellite transmissions, took shelter in nearby basements. The plutonium warhead detonated two point one kilometers above the western side of the island, irradiating approximately 95% of the invading hordes of Chinese, dousing them with over three hundred twenty curies of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Within the next week, ninety percent of the soldiers exposed to the radiation were barely able to breathe without the aid of a respirator, and by the week after that, they were dead. The rest would be put in POW camps in the Philippines until they could be safely transported to camps in the Indian sub-continent, and from there they would go to former Soviet Gulag facilities in the Ukraine.
San Francisco, California, the United States
1427 GMT (6:27 AM PST), 6 December 2001
The last two days had been relatively quiet, at least when compared with the frenzied activity of the week before, but the people of San Francisco could already see the effects of the war. Thousands of sailors were streaming into naval bases all across the west coast, and with the entire National Guard called up, so tens of thousands of people were moving to rally points throughout the state of California. An area of fifty square miles around each military base was set up as a no-fly zone to commercial air traffic, little there was, and off limits to civilians without 'Classified' or above security clearance, which meant that almost seventy five thousand people had to relocate to other areas. Overall, the new changes in policy were at the least disconcerting, and at worst infuriating to the civilians who saw this as an attack on their rights, even though they had supported the Californian governor when he had proposed the idea three days before. State and local governments were getting thousands of mixed messages from residents, saying that the people wanted someone, not the people themselves mind you, to do something, but not to restrict their personal rights even an iota. This put the entire system into a state of nigh unbreakable gridlock, with policymakers trying to go two directions at once in pleasing the peoples demand for action and sooth the various complaints concerning governmental restrictions on personal freedoms. This also meant that the police were working overtime, trying to keep the tranquility between perplexed MPs of the Fourth Infantry Division and the general citizenry of the state of California.
Of course, with the police and MPs tied up with the various civil problems that arose, that meant the door was wide open for less civilized problems to come in and take root. The domestic and racial terrorist group, Nation of Aztlan, a group of radical Hispanic supremacists decided that this would be a perfect time to set up the beginnings of a revolution in the -rightfully Mexican in their opinion- southwest United States. They had found that the more overt their actions, the less they accomplished in the long and short view of things, and they only worsened their standing in the public image, which in turn made their cause just about anathema to anyone with political aspirations. They had made a plan in the early 1990's to incite riots of the ethnic Hispanics and various illegal migrant workers all along the US-Mexican border, and some of the more active members of their organization had started several riots in Texas, although these were very small in scale and entirely ineffective. They had learned that the best way to achieve their aims was to create mass discontent within the people who would make their job all that much easier by tying up the major authorities, and the military would be attempting to go in two directions at once. In only the past three days, they had caused several disruptions in food and money supply chains all across the state, and had begun the process of pitting many of the Los Angeles gangs into an all-out war. The best part of all of this, at least for them, was that since they had gone through third and fourth parties, absolutely no direct connection could be drawn to their organization, which again would make the job of revolution easier. In San Francisco, the Nation of Aztlan branch there had disrupted medical supply chains, and they had stolen 40 tons of guns and ammunition, which would soon be heading to safe houses all over southern California and the Baja peninsula. They had been as generally uncooperative as possible, at least as far as soothing the tensions between the hopelessly incompetent MPs and the civilian population, and in any other place, they could be a broad-spectrum nuisance.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1737 GMT (2:37 PM), 6 December 2001
The President of Argentina, just kicked out of office the day before, quite literally in fact, was the seventeenth to leave said post in six months. Frankly, it was a sheer wonder that the country managed to survive the totalitarian autocrat Juan Peron and the immensely hopeless financial state of affairs that he and Eva had left the nation to deal with. Ever since then, the country had fit the lexical definition of a banana republic, with some leaders in office for only six hours, so saying you were the president of Argentina is like boasting about having a title from Henry VIII. As with many of the regime changes in the South American continent, a socialist revolution at 3 PM, a military coup at 5:30 PM, and a new interim government being set up by 9 PM, accompanied this most recent change. Looking at it from an outside perspective, it seemed like an utterly bizarre form of the game musical chairs, although with marginally higher stakes risked in the betting pool. Unfortunately, a pan-Hispania supremacist group, whose stated main goal was to unite all of South and Central America in a single superpower, overthrew the near perpetual 'interim' government. The real purpose of their recent activity, however, was much more sinister in nature, and much more deadly in intent to both life and the quasi-stability in the region. The Pan-Hispania group that replaced the multitude of political groups was merely a political front for the largest drug cartel south of the equator, with more than 15 billion dollars worth of capital available to them at any moment. This would only be the next stage in their quest of globalization, and the next stepping-stone on their path to being the most powerful drug smuggling ring on the planet.
The first thing the new President did was to declare martial law in the country, and to declare the new government essentially neutral to all conflicts that did not directly involve the Argentinean people. His staff then quickly relayed this message to the Argentine commanders all over the world, giving them orders to return to their homeland. The next thing he did was to make a big show of rounding up the criminals and drug lords that had been running the country, and he eliminated some of his more vocal opponents in his own organization. Only hours after the new policies implemented, there also began a propaganda campaign not seen since the days of Joseph Stalin, and this even used many of the Stalin-esque media exploitation vectors. Massive billboard pictorials with his face on them went up all over the nation, and hourly radio 'news reports' of what the great leader was doing for the common Argentine worker broadcasted with much more fanaticism than one should ever have reading the news. The writers who made the fictional news reports were exceptionally good at the art of bullshit, which every politician needs on his side, and even now, which parts are real and which aren't is a hotly debated topic. Along with the fictional news reports, new books for schoolchildren had to be written, all with 'appropriate messages', i.e. they preach that the United States is a nation of imperialist oppressors of the world and similar ultra-nationalist rhetoric. The last thing he did before the day ended was to make sure that the stage was for surreptitious forays into Chile and Brazil, in order to further the goal of destabilizing the unfriendly governments of the surrounding nations and advancing the Pan-Hispania agenda.
Rouen, Haute-Normandie, France
1821 GMT, 6 December 2001
The Dutch Army had just rolled into Rouen, over 200 kilometers from the Belgian border, something that should have strictly impossible by any means of warfare. However, the Dutch had help from the Dark Lord, and the armies were marching with unnatural swiftness towards the Atlantic, mowing down any resistance in their path. Even the elite armor units of the French Army, with their new AMX-40s were no match for the near endless hoards of robe wearing magicians, who shot deadly bursts of light from the tips of their wands. One by one, every city the Dutch passed fell and was soon occupied by a force of magic-wielders and soon after the Army rolled even further to the east. Wave upon wave of French troops fought valiantly to defend their homeland, using everything from their standard issue assault rifles to steak knives, but it was to no avail. Then reports started filtering in that enemy forces had landed in the Bay of Biscay and near Cherbourg, and very soon, the French forces were caught in a pincer move that divided their forces in half. This was by no means a fault on the part of the French military, but rather the fact that this new war was a form a blitzkrieg never before seen, a war fought against an enemy who could defend against even the most powerful weapons the world can offer. By the end of the day, the entire Channel coast of France was in the hands of the Dark Lord, and most of the eastern coast was going to fall the following day if things continued in their current vein.
0519 GMT (1:19 PM local time), 6 December 2001
The Michael Collins space defense station had just arrived in orbit over the South China Seas, and the radar had gone crazy with contacts all the way from southern central Russia to southern Tasmania. From Russia, they could see the combat air patrols flying near the border and making small forays into Mongolian and ex-PRC territory, although none so far as to spark an international incident. From the Korean sector, there were hundreds of blips on the screens, some so close together, that you could not tell whether they were red or blue, and it looked like the South Koreans were fighting a losing battle. The typhoon heading for Japan had dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared in the Pacific, causing all militaries affected quite a few headaches, as their plans had all been made around the storm, because they couldn't go safely through it. It turned out that the South Koreans had been accurate in their consideration of the North Korean objectives, as the campaign heading north into the fledgling nation of Dongbei halted and almost half the troops quickly transferred to the southern front. With the massive surge of troops came a similarly large gain of ground; Seoul had been overrun in only eight hours, Osan AFB about two hours after that, and at the end of the day, a little more than half of the South was in the custody on the KPA. It was blitzkrieg, and most of the personnel and equipment at Osan and Seoul evacuated at the last possible moment, although two of the B-1R Lancer airframes were unable to make it to the far-end of the runway, so they had to be destroyed via C4.
The Chinese invasion of Taiwan had advanced to the point where almost half the island was under the dominion of the neo-communist forces, even with help from air strikes and ground forces from Vietnam, the Philippines and the United States. The Vietnamese, while communists themselves were also exceptionally defensive of the status quo of the region contiguous to their country, and thus they became extremely irritated with the Chinese opportunists actions. They had quickly sent troops to aid the neighboring Taiwanese, which served a dual purpose in showing the world that they were a nation to respect and to warn off Chinese attacks on the homeland. When the whole situation examined, it looked like the Vietnamese had harnessed their wagon to a falling star, as the defense of Taiwan, executed by four different nations and three very different plans, made a very poor showing. The Americans wanted to go in with shock and awe tactics and then smash the invaders with everything in their arsenal, while the Taiwanese wanted to draw the Chinese into a trap, while the Vietnamese wanted to make a controlled retreat to Tsoying. Moreover, the military commands of each country had not integrated with each other at all, so the military situation became a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left was screwing up.
The Chinese provinces had further consolidated into eight separate nations, each with a population of approximately 120 million and all with sufficient technology to manufacture nuclear warheads, and the associated deliverance systems. The new nations closer to the coast were the more belligerent of the newly formed countries and thus were the ones that would be more than likely to go to war over some pathetic excuse for a reason. This also meant that they were more likely to launch a nuclear attack in either first strike or in a retaliatory manner than any other nuclear capable state. It just so happened that the leader of the ultra-left state that had formed from the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan, was an extraordinarily enthusiastic opponent of both the United States and Taiwan. Thus, when he saw the chance to exterminate over 45 million of his abhorrent adversaries, he leapt on the opportunity like a starving man on a Christmas ham, and the fact that he would kill millions of soldiers from another province was no matter to him. He quickly ordered his generals to launch four enhanced radiation weapons, also known as neutron bombs, at the island of Formosa, and after the radiation had become negligible, he would move in and take over. One hour after he had given the order, the four missiles were ripple fired from road-mobile, transporter-erector-launchers and the four missiles streaked off into the clear blue sky. As the missiles flew on deadly wings, the gimbaled rockets powering them slowly turned toward the area of their target, the center of the island of Formosa.
Mere seconds after the rocket motors on the first stage of the four missiles ignited, the sensors aboard the Collins relayed a ballistic missile launch warning to the Strategic Air Command satellite network and to all US battle commands within 1500 miles of the launch site. After only a few more seconds, the Collins minor maneuvering thrusters were locking the massive 35-megawatt main laser onto the missile with the highest altitude, and as soon as the computers had a solid targeting lock, the laser fired. An incredibly dazzling white-blue shaft of light appeared, struck the warhead and stayed locked on even when the warhead separated from the main rocket body; by the time this happened the missile was moving at almost 1.3 kilometers per second. Twelve seconds after the sensors had first detected the missile launches, the first of the warheads was completely eradicated, and then the station adjusted slightly and fired at the next warhead. This sequence repeated once more, with the same results as the first two times, and with the same deadly efficiency that would come to characterize the Michael Collins space station as one of the most important strategic defense units in history. The third warhead was moving too quickly for the station to get a target lock, so all units in the probable target area, notified via satellite transmissions, took shelter in nearby basements. The plutonium warhead detonated two point one kilometers above the western side of the island, irradiating approximately 95% of the invading hordes of Chinese, dousing them with over three hundred twenty curies of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Within the next week, ninety percent of the soldiers exposed to the radiation were barely able to breathe without the aid of a respirator, and by the week after that, they were dead. The rest would be put in POW camps in the Philippines until they could be safely transported to camps in the Indian sub-continent, and from there they would go to former Soviet Gulag facilities in the Ukraine.
San Francisco, California, the United States
1427 GMT (6:27 AM PST), 6 December 2001
The last two days had been relatively quiet, at least when compared with the frenzied activity of the week before, but the people of San Francisco could already see the effects of the war. Thousands of sailors were streaming into naval bases all across the west coast, and with the entire National Guard called up, so tens of thousands of people were moving to rally points throughout the state of California. An area of fifty square miles around each military base was set up as a no-fly zone to commercial air traffic, little there was, and off limits to civilians without 'Classified' or above security clearance, which meant that almost seventy five thousand people had to relocate to other areas. Overall, the new changes in policy were at the least disconcerting, and at worst infuriating to the civilians who saw this as an attack on their rights, even though they had supported the Californian governor when he had proposed the idea three days before. State and local governments were getting thousands of mixed messages from residents, saying that the people wanted someone, not the people themselves mind you, to do something, but not to restrict their personal rights even an iota. This put the entire system into a state of nigh unbreakable gridlock, with policymakers trying to go two directions at once in pleasing the peoples demand for action and sooth the various complaints concerning governmental restrictions on personal freedoms. This also meant that the police were working overtime, trying to keep the tranquility between perplexed MPs of the Fourth Infantry Division and the general citizenry of the state of California.
Of course, with the police and MPs tied up with the various civil problems that arose, that meant the door was wide open for less civilized problems to come in and take root. The domestic and racial terrorist group, Nation of Aztlan, a group of radical Hispanic supremacists decided that this would be a perfect time to set up the beginnings of a revolution in the -rightfully Mexican in their opinion- southwest United States. They had found that the more overt their actions, the less they accomplished in the long and short view of things, and they only worsened their standing in the public image, which in turn made their cause just about anathema to anyone with political aspirations. They had made a plan in the early 1990's to incite riots of the ethnic Hispanics and various illegal migrant workers all along the US-Mexican border, and some of the more active members of their organization had started several riots in Texas, although these were very small in scale and entirely ineffective. They had learned that the best way to achieve their aims was to create mass discontent within the people who would make their job all that much easier by tying up the major authorities, and the military would be attempting to go in two directions at once. In only the past three days, they had caused several disruptions in food and money supply chains all across the state, and had begun the process of pitting many of the Los Angeles gangs into an all-out war. The best part of all of this, at least for them, was that since they had gone through third and fourth parties, absolutely no direct connection could be drawn to their organization, which again would make the job of revolution easier. In San Francisco, the Nation of Aztlan branch there had disrupted medical supply chains, and they had stolen 40 tons of guns and ammunition, which would soon be heading to safe houses all over southern California and the Baja peninsula. They had been as generally uncooperative as possible, at least as far as soothing the tensions between the hopelessly incompetent MPs and the civilian population, and in any other place, they could be a broad-spectrum nuisance.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1737 GMT (2:37 PM), 6 December 2001
The President of Argentina, just kicked out of office the day before, quite literally in fact, was the seventeenth to leave said post in six months. Frankly, it was a sheer wonder that the country managed to survive the totalitarian autocrat Juan Peron and the immensely hopeless financial state of affairs that he and Eva had left the nation to deal with. Ever since then, the country had fit the lexical definition of a banana republic, with some leaders in office for only six hours, so saying you were the president of Argentina is like boasting about having a title from Henry VIII. As with many of the regime changes in the South American continent, a socialist revolution at 3 PM, a military coup at 5:30 PM, and a new interim government being set up by 9 PM, accompanied this most recent change. Looking at it from an outside perspective, it seemed like an utterly bizarre form of the game musical chairs, although with marginally higher stakes risked in the betting pool. Unfortunately, a pan-Hispania supremacist group, whose stated main goal was to unite all of South and Central America in a single superpower, overthrew the near perpetual 'interim' government. The real purpose of their recent activity, however, was much more sinister in nature, and much more deadly in intent to both life and the quasi-stability in the region. The Pan-Hispania group that replaced the multitude of political groups was merely a political front for the largest drug cartel south of the equator, with more than 15 billion dollars worth of capital available to them at any moment. This would only be the next stage in their quest of globalization, and the next stepping-stone on their path to being the most powerful drug smuggling ring on the planet.
The first thing the new President did was to declare martial law in the country, and to declare the new government essentially neutral to all conflicts that did not directly involve the Argentinean people. His staff then quickly relayed this message to the Argentine commanders all over the world, giving them orders to return to their homeland. The next thing he did was to make a big show of rounding up the criminals and drug lords that had been running the country, and he eliminated some of his more vocal opponents in his own organization. Only hours after the new policies implemented, there also began a propaganda campaign not seen since the days of Joseph Stalin, and this even used many of the Stalin-esque media exploitation vectors. Massive billboard pictorials with his face on them went up all over the nation, and hourly radio 'news reports' of what the great leader was doing for the common Argentine worker broadcasted with much more fanaticism than one should ever have reading the news. The writers who made the fictional news reports were exceptionally good at the art of bullshit, which every politician needs on his side, and even now, which parts are real and which aren't is a hotly debated topic. Along with the fictional news reports, new books for schoolchildren had to be written, all with 'appropriate messages', i.e. they preach that the United States is a nation of imperialist oppressors of the world and similar ultra-nationalist rhetoric. The last thing he did before the day ended was to make sure that the stage was for surreptitious forays into Chile and Brazil, in order to further the goal of destabilizing the unfriendly governments of the surrounding nations and advancing the Pan-Hispania agenda.
Rouen, Haute-Normandie, France
1821 GMT, 6 December 2001
The Dutch Army had just rolled into Rouen, over 200 kilometers from the Belgian border, something that should have strictly impossible by any means of warfare. However, the Dutch had help from the Dark Lord, and the armies were marching with unnatural swiftness towards the Atlantic, mowing down any resistance in their path. Even the elite armor units of the French Army, with their new AMX-40s were no match for the near endless hoards of robe wearing magicians, who shot deadly bursts of light from the tips of their wands. One by one, every city the Dutch passed fell and was soon occupied by a force of magic-wielders and soon after the Army rolled even further to the east. Wave upon wave of French troops fought valiantly to defend their homeland, using everything from their standard issue assault rifles to steak knives, but it was to no avail. Then reports started filtering in that enemy forces had landed in the Bay of Biscay and near Cherbourg, and very soon, the French forces were caught in a pincer move that divided their forces in half. This was by no means a fault on the part of the French military, but rather the fact that this new war was a form a blitzkrieg never before seen, a war fought against an enemy who could defend against even the most powerful weapons the world can offer. By the end of the day, the entire Channel coast of France was in the hands of the Dark Lord, and most of the eastern coast was going to fall the following day if things continued in their current vein.
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