+1 plus, it'll toughen us up. Cowardice has it's own risks. I just hope the Bugs and Goa'uld leave us alone.
((NASA has discovered there is an asteroid near Klendathu on a collision course with earth. They believe it should impact within 100 million years if no action is taken!))
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"an army marches on its stomach"
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2267
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When you joined the 17th infantry you didn't expect a cushy ride and boy were you right. The old grunts had a name for the newbies, "packmules". Well, at least you got to shake the "cupcake" callsign.
"What's in the pack?" "Beans." "What else is in the pack?" "More beans."It was hard slogging at first. The 17th had an even higher physical fitness requirement then the Guard and you were shocked to find out that 17th wasn't eating as well as the Guard when you signed up. It gave you a twinge of pride to know that your requisitions outfit in the Guard was doing a better job then these Feds. No wonder the 17th wanted Carter to take over.
After weeks of slogging your ways up and down the corridors of Boulder, you finally passed physical examination and got assigned your first patrol. You stood in the airlock nervous as a highschooler on prom night as the other soldiers around you made jokes about who was sleeping with who. Then the airlock opened and you stepped out into the broad new world. Furtively, you removed your goggles for a few minutes and looked at the outside world with your naked eyes for the first time.
Honest to god, I was standing right there and looking out more then a kilometerAs exciting as it was to see the Sun for the first time, you had signed up for a fight and it wasn't going to be a long wait. Three months into your time in the 17th, Colonel Bose called the whole outfit out to the parade yard, dressed in full uniform.
There you get the news you've been waiting for and more. Colonel Carter just got named acting General of the 17th by the Governor. And she just came back from Washington with Big News. Carter comes out to the cheers of the 17th and tells them she knows what they've been putting up with, the bad food, the bullshit from the top and having their hands tied. She holds up a piece of paper, an executive order signed by the President himself. She read it out word for word and then summarized it succinctly:
"The 17th and our brothers in the Guard are authorized to secure the food supply of Boulder and bring the people responsible for stealing our food to justice. Boys, it's time for us to open a can whoop-ass on Mendoza!"
You cheered like everyone else at the announcement but later you couldn't help but think about the way the order was phrased. The 17th was ordered to enforce the Federal rationing laws and arrest anyone illegally redirecting food. But Mendoza was never mentioned by name even though everyone knew it was about him. After Landry snuffed it, Mendoza started shipping all of Boulder's food to Wichita instead so it didn't take a genius to see it was Mendozas the 17th was going to bring in alive or dead. So the President wanted Carter to take out Mendoza... but was covering his ass the whole time, not actually saying it. Fucking politics, everyone always covering their asses.
But still, your job was clear. Your job was you were going to slog a big fucking pack all the way to Wichita. Mendoza had hovercraft that made it too dangerous to send the tanks and planes. Instead the 17th sent small units like your to hump it all the way to Wichita, slowly picking off Mendozas forward posts. She was a smart one, that Carter. Mendoza finally got frustrated and sent his air power in at Colorado Springs, exactly where Carter was waiting for him to strike. You weren't at that battle but you hear the Boulder National Guard tore the hovercraft a new one...
Hovercraft under artillery bombardment near Colorado SpringsAfter Colorado Springs, the way was wide open to Wichita and the 17th swept into the city with tanks leading the way and you enjoying the first car ride of your life. But Mendoza didn't go down easy. The siege of Wichita became brutal fighting in the depths of the city. Your squad only got fed most days because you knew how to trade for food with the "smugglers" who sold food that was "lost" from the convoys.
When you finally got Tracy that tin of beans after the hungriest part of the siege, he opened it up expecting to find a snake inside. He said those cold beans were the best food he'd had in his life.It was weeks of brutal fighting against the soldiers of Mendoza, the Wichita Guard, even gangs and bandits who worked as mercenaries for Mendoza. But block by block, the 17th cleared out Wichita. Then the news hit. Mendoza had blown his brains out but before he did, he gave an order for "mutually assured destruction". Missiles flew out from his compound east of Wichita carrying poison to the croplands of west Kansas. Within three days, the entire harvest was dead.
If I can't have it, nobody will.The loss of everything you were fighting for hit you like 10 tons to the chest. The rest of the news was enough to make you feel downright suicidal. General Norris in Oklahoma saw his opportunity and seized it. He was moving north from Tulsa and the 3rd armored had just landed at Corpus Cristie to join him. The 3rd armored, fresh from crushing the insurgency in Columbia didn't hump it's supplies cross country like the 17th infantry. The 3rd armored brought it's whole damn supply depot with it in an Amphibious Nuclear LandKruzer. ANLs, they call them Anals because that's a lot more pleasant then what they'll do to you. Norris announced on the airwaves that any soldier of Carter or Mendoza who didn't surrender would be considered a traitor.
50,000 tons of American military might. Pointed at your hometown.The 17th tried to retreat back to Boulder but the 26th Airborne took the city long before the 17th could make it. Norris sent the 3rd armored after Mendoza first which gave some of the 17th time to head towards Colorado Springs. There were a lot fewer of you in Colorado Springs then there was in Wichita. It was even rumored that Carter was dead for a while but when you are out on patrol you find her, very much alive. Although you couldn't say as much for the two dead bandits nearby. She is just sitting there, calmly, craddling her cracked helmet in her hands.
You quickly removed your helmet and gave it to the general and then scrounged a helmet for yourself off a dead bandit. Carter thanked you tersely and just sat there a while, thinking. Finally she spoke but you never knew if the words were for your benefit or hers.
"About seven thousand left. Assuming Hong makes it through with the K-concentrate I have protein to feed them for two months. After that... well with thermal de-poly and the phosphorus from the 155s I can feed about two thousand on yeast for a while. Might feed a few more with banditry but that's going to be hard in the mountains. So about two thousand."
Carter never made eye contact with you but instead just stood up and shook her head before she took a hazmat cloak from a bandit and walked off into camp without you. "It's too much to ask you soldier... I know, I know."
Carter left you sitting alone in the moss covered hills outside Colorado Springs and wondering what there was left for you to do...
A) Head west into the mountains with Carter. There you can join the insurgency and wait for the day that Norris get's what's coming to him. Carter needs people with your skills in the lean years ahead.
B) Sneak back into Boulder. You can't live there under your old name but you know people in Oldtown who can give you a new identity for the right price.
C) Join a cave dweller community in the mountains. There are still people who hide out there, away from the government controlled cities. They could use a hired gun.
D) Leave the United States of North America. If you can pay a smuggler to sneak you into Asia or Europe you will be far enough away that the government wont care about some rebel from a lost cause.
E) Surrender. Norris might be willing to make use of his former enemies. Facing the music is the only way you might be able to legally live in the USNA.
F) Other suggestions.
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Topic: 23rd century botony! (A wild sequel appears!) (Read 21890 times)