Icarus Rising
- Thread starter AnywhereButOTL
- Start date
Orville_third
Banned
I wonder who the Freedomites might pick for SC? Thurmond? Maurice Bessinger?Bob Jones JR or III?
I don't think there are enough people left in China for Ta-Ching to surpass the combined death toll of the Communists.
Thurmond is never going to win anything again now that those pictures got out.
Really? That almost seems a little too happy for this timeline but there are certain lights of hope I guess. I haven't read the whole timeline so what happened to the Generalissimo anyway?
As the Good Book says, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
IIRC the stresses of invading China expedited his death by a few years.
Good to hear. I was initially planning to kill him off during the mainland war and then introduce a few other characters to take his place but I'm glad that I haven't. Instead I am expanding him into a major character.
*sigh* I miss the Bush presidency too.
There might be certain similarities to OTL by simply having a black President face a hyper conservative splinter party, but no, I didn't base the Freedom Party off of the Tea Party. The Freedom Party is flat out malicious and evil, the Tea Party doesn't even come close.
Well, interchangable nutjobs are ten a penny in US politics in TLs like thisAnd I can't help but feel like the Freedom Party sweeping the south aould have just made things worse for a Democrat government, considering how full their hands would be clearing house after Reahan and Rhodes...would've spared us Bush's complete breakdown, though, and Johnson wouldn't've died.
And President John Wayne...this sounds far too awesome
I'm going to say that on balance things would be slightly better if Humphrey had won the election. Of course Bush might have decided not to leave the White House and things could have gone to shit anyways…
Things simply happened too fast for the crazies to keep up, hence Rarick bitching about the Freedom Party being unorganized and urging Schmitz to go be a pain in the ass until the midterms. As the Brooke administration enters the next few days, then the crazies will know what's up and start going for the jugular.
I think I have a 2:1 ratio of crazy to non crazy characters at the moment. I'm running out of decent, inoffensive nice people to act as characters. I might have to break out Jimmy Carter and Mr. Rogers pretty soon.
Not as bad corruption wise, civil liberties wise Ta-Ching might be a little bit worse. And thank you.
Yup. He dropped dead right after the Sino-Soviet Exchange.
Amen.
Keep it up, AnywhereButOTL!
Gracias.
Thurmond is dead in the water after pictures showing him engaging in an interracial relationship with a family maid were released by the Bush administration as part of their effort to dismantle the Freedom Party. Bessinger and Jones could be potential choices though.
True. Lin Biao's current high score will remain unbroken for the foreseeable future, unless there's a full thermonuclear exchange. However, if that happens then nobody will be keeping score so it won't even matter.
Very possibly. I'm not sure if their people would be able to tolerate it for very long, but they might try.
It's already started, the groups aren't very well equipped or effective, but the Jordanians are beginning to pick up the pieces.
Could we get an overview for the reasons why the ATL African civil wars started and what the current situation for each conflict is? Also yay for updates.
Mali: Currently embroiled in a civil war caused by drought and a surge in religious extremism. The government could be best described as Orwellian and is facing a shaky coalition of jihadist groups that will likely implode into a fresh civil war should they win. The jihadists are probably going to win this one unless the French step in, and quick.
Tunisia: The people have had enough poverty and oppression to last them a dozen lifetimes and are in the process of forming a popular revolt against the government. A few jihadist groups are scattered on both sides but do not have much power. The people are definitely going to win this conflict and install a liberal democracy. *sniff* I love happy endings.
Mauritania: Similar to Mali, the people are starving and are rising up against their oppressive, kleptocratic government. Jihadist groups are attempting to overthrow the government as well and this is a perfect example of a three sided civil war turned clusterfuck. Nobody knows who will win, but it's not going to be the government.
Sierra Leone: Ethnic cleansing prevalent, no sign of any faction strong enough to take power for long enough to guide the country into a lasting peace. Might be subject to foreign intervention in the near future.
Chad: Drought has inspired a popular revolt which has been hijacked by jihadist groups for their own nefarious purposes. The government is embattled but might actually win if the drought breaks in the near future.
Sudan: Religious and ethnic warfare between a Christian/Animist south and a Muslim north has been raging since the mid 1950s and has no end in sight.
Rwanda: Ethnic cleansing has killed nearly 25% of the country, nobody expects things to get better anytime soon.
Burundi: See 'Rwanda'.
Rhodesia: Technically in a civil war, but the government is winning by such large margins that most everyone doesn't call it anything more than a 'regional disturbance'.
Both are worse. Jail time ahoy for anyone who attempts either.
I apologize for the delay, here is an extra long update to make up for it.
40.
The first call came in at midnight. Mumbai. The embassy there was under attack once again, a crowd of at least two thousand repulsed when the guards opened fire with machine guns from the top of the walls. At least eight dead inside of the embassy, the Gandhi government refusing to allow any medical aid into the building. The entire diplomatic district of the city was blocked off by throngs of anti American protesters, he said, and dispersing them would be impossible. Blatant lies coming from the master of a police state but Brooke didn’t waste any time in trying to see if they could be subverted.
Speaking to Westmoreland earned him a set of two options. The first was that diplomacy be attempted, the second was more blunt. If the diplomatic sector of the city was not cleared of armed vigilante bands within the next two days then the United States would begin hitting military targets on the Pakistani border. With the Indian Army spread thin around the country, barely keeping the lid on simmering ethnic and religious tensions all across the nation, Westmoreland was certain that if the Indians responded with an attempted invasion of Pakistan then the nation would collapse before they could do any serious damage.
It was risky, but Brooke had no desire to negotiate for the effective release of his people. Gandhi was a tyrant, but his hold on power was far from cemented and treating him like a person to be feared would not bode well for future diplomatic negotiations. One of the many things that Brooke had taken away from his time in the Bush administration was that when negotiations were held it was unwise to negotiate with anything less than an overwhelming advantage in power. He didn’t enjoy instigating fights with other nations but if Westmoreland was correct then Gandhi would have no choice but to back down and let the embassy staff go. Brooke hoped that the other nations whose embassies were in Mumbai would take the opportunity to leave, because he had no idea how the Indian people would react once they realized that they had been decisively defeated on the world stage.
_______
The second call came from Pakistan, hot on the heels of the Indian call. A dozen car bombs had exploded across the city of Multan, including what was suspected to be another dirty bomb. A similar device had exploded in China and President Ta-Ching had advocated immediate bombing missions against Uyghurstan. Rogers, who had dealt with Ta-Ching before, convinced the man to hold off for proof that the Uyghurs had deployed the bomb while Brooke talked about the situation in Pakistan.
The rest of the night was spent in a flurry of calls made to sources abroad and as the sun rose Brooke found himself dialing yet another number, this one domestic. Hopefully this conversation would be more pleasant than some of the others.
_______
Daniel Inouye, halfway through signing a letter asking for the state legislature in Hawaii to vote for a healthcare expansion bill being promoted by Governor Ariyoshi, picked up his phone.
“Hello, Majority Leader Inouye speaking.” Considering the few others in the office this early he both expected and got the President.
“Hello Dan, it’s Ed. I’m calling to make a proposal.” Inouye set his pen down and wondered what it could be. Brooke sounded tired and stressed and in Inouye’s experience men offering deals while in a bind were often willing to give up far more than they had originally intended to.
“What type of proposal?” Inouye was careful to keep his voice level, even if talking to Brooke did stir up some emotions that weren’t necessarily positive.
“You’re doubtlessly aware of the rumors floating around that since Bush committed fraud in New Mexico then I am illegitimate. Since you’re the survivor of the Democratic ticket I would be willing to offer you a cabinet position of your choice in order to dispel those rumors. I’m going to put the people responsible on trial anyways but you being in my cabinet would definitely help.” Inouye didn’t hesitate, he had seen the question coming ever since Brooke mentioned the rumors.
“No. Sorry Ed but I have no interest in serving under you. I was just elected Majority Leader yesterday and I feel that I can get more done and work with you more effectively from the senate than I ever could from within your cabinet. I’ll make an announcement that you are indeed the legitimate President but please don’t ask me to be part of your administration, I’d like to stay far away from that part of government.” As Inouye stopped speaking Brooke realized that he had been clenching his jaw so hard that his ears were ringing. Inouye had dismissed him, politely and with an assurance that he would help him out, but with a dismissal all the same.
“I know that you’re hurting over Hubert’s death,” he said quietly, “I lost friends as well Dan...people that I was sitting right next to just seconds before they were gone forever. But the point is, you cannot blame me for something that Bush did, we can still be friends here, and I think that that would be preferable to a distant relationship. Congress needs to be unified so that we can all work against the Freedom Party, and implementing inter-party ties would be the best way to start. What do you think?” Inouye set the phone down on his desk for a second and just stared. Brooke had hit a nerve...he was blaming him for Humphrey’s death, and that was unfair.
“I’m going to need some time to think about this but I appreciate your efforts. Thanks for calling Ed, I’ll talk to you later.” Inouye hung up and finished signing the letter before checking his watch. Seven fifteen, he had some time before congress would be called into session for the day. Dialing a number, he wondered just what he would say, and what the impact of his message would be.
_______
Slipping out of his room and treading quietly down the hallway, Lee knocked on Chou’s door. It was nearly twenty one hundred hours and the man had returned to his room a half hour ago. Lee had given him time to change and relax for a few minutes, but now he was curious to see what the man wanted to speak to him about.
The door opened up and Chou beckoned for Lee to come in, a toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Lee said, glancing around at Chou’s room, “I can wait for a few minutes if you still need time to freshen up.” Chou shook his head, spat in the sink and rinsed his toothbrush.
“I was done anyways. Good to see that you decided to come.” Lee shut the door behind him and sat down in the little chair in front of Chou’s desk. The desk had a few papers on it, mostly training recommendations for recruits that were proving to be troublesome. The one closest to Lee advocated tying a recruit to his bed and forcing his platoon mates to carry him with them out to the training grounds if he overslept again.
“These bring back memories.” He said, tapping the paper, Chou sat down on the foot of his bed, facing Lee.
“Good ones I’d hope.” Lee nodded, he valued the training he had gotten and wondered just how it had evolved since the war had begun.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Chou smiled.
“Would you like to come downtown with me and see the sights? You’ve been gone for three years Sergeant, I think that you’d appreciate how things have changed.” Lee hesitated, thinking about the awards ceremony that would be conducted the next morning, but then he nodded. Chou was right, he hadn’t been back for three years, even if he did plan on returning to the mainland as soon as possible...if that was even a possibility at this point.
“Why not. What time are we expected to be back?” Chou checked his watch.
“Midnight, it’s just about twenty one hundred so we have some time to go and see some things. I’ll have us back by twenty three thirty.” Lee nodded and together they headed out through the doors and into the vehicle lot, where Chou found his civilian car, a battered jeep with the Chinese flag embossed on the hood, the only part of the car that hadn’t been dinged or dented in any way.
“I apologize if I was being standoffish back at the airport,” Lee said as they passed through the base’s gates, showing their papers as they did so, “I hate being away from the fight, especially when we’re going to go to war with Uyghurstan soon.” Chou grimaced.
“I hope not.” Lee sighed.
“It’s necessary. The Uyghurs are making dirty bombs and selling them to jihadists and communists intent on killing us, the Americans and the Israelis. Either we kill them or they kill us...there is no room for deliberation.” Chou said nothing and pulled into a parking space that was reserved for military veterans. There were empty parking spots everywhere, but as Lee looked at it he saw that the space was slightly wider than the others.
“Let’s not talk about foreign policy,” Chou said, Lee rolled his eyes, “let me show you the city.” Walking along the sidewalk Chou gestured to the large screen advertisements showing various products. “Those are new, put into place by some Japanese corporation or another. Did you live in the city before you left? I didn’t look at that part of your records.” Lee glanced over at a neon lit restaurant filled with off duty soldiers. In fact a large portion of the people out on the street seemed to be in uniform, and the mood was strangely tense.
“I lived on the outskirts, in Linkou. Haven’t been back there in a long time.” Chou stopped walking and glanced back at the jeep.
“Do you want to go?” For a moment Lee hesitated, but then he nodded. He hadn’t seen his family in more than photographs for three years, it would be best to start now. Turning around, the two men got back into the jeep.
“Did you just want to get me out and about in the city or was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?” Lee asked, Chou hesitated, looking unsure, before nodding.
“When you were picked up at the airport, did you notice anything unusual about the route that we drove?” Feeling a sudden rush of trepidation, Lee shrugged, his expression guarded.
“We did make a lot of unnecessary turns.” He allowed, and Chou nodded.
“Do you know why?” Lee frowned, where was this going...and what was Chou dragging him into?
“Stop the jeep.” They were exiting the city proper, heading towards the outskirts, and Chou parked along the side of the road.
“It’s because there are pro democracy protests happening all across the city,” Chou said urgently, “nobody wants to admit that they’re happening.” Lee shook his head.
“What are you talking about?” His voice was dangerous now, and Chou seemed almost frightened to speak.
“More and more soldiers are returning from the front...and they’re dissatisfied with what they’re returning to.” Lee shook his head vehemently.
“Things are better,” Lee said bluntly, “sure there’s rationing and more police but that’s only to keep the people safe. If they’re too ungrateful to recognize that then maybe they deserve what they get.” Chou looked shocked and turned the jeep off.
“People here don’t want any more war...we’ve lost so many people over the past three years that we’re having trouble keeping full employment. And yet the draft keeps feeding more and more soldiers to the front. If we go to war with Uyghurstan then there’s going to be a revolt...the people are sick of not having a voice.” Lee slammed a fist down onto the dashboard of the jeep, making Chou jump.
“Don’t say anything like that,” Lee growled, “don’t you dare. We have wiped out an entire nation of communists, jihadists and subversives of all kinds...we have fought and bled for so long to do this and when I come home all I hear is you disparaging our efforts. Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t report you.” Chou looked frightened now, shaking his head.
“Because what I’m saying is true, you have to realize that the war cannot go on forever. Ta-Ching and his people are going to run us into the ground if we keep going like this.” Lee stared, Chou’s dissent seemed almost incomprehensible to him, how could someone be against a war of national survival like this?
“So you’d let the Uyghurs keep making dirty bombs...you’d cower at home and watch chaos envelope the world?” Chou opened his mouth to dissent and Lee raised a fist, watching Chou cower, but he didn’t bring it down.
“Don’t hit me,” Chou said, “it won’t solve anything.” Lee got out of the jeep and walked around to Chou’s side.
“Get over.” He said brusquely and Chou obeyed wordlessly.
“The nation wont stand for endless war,” he said, “you reporting me wont make that any less true.” Lee thought about hitting him but decided that it would be too much trouble, he didn’t want a fight now.
“Shut up,” Lee said tonelessly, “please just...shut up. I don’t want to report you...I just want to go and see my family.” Putting the jeep in gear, he continued onwards toward Linkou. Traffic was light and twice Lee passed cordoned off areas where the air made his eyes watery. There were lines of police and armored vehicles blocking off the sight but Lee could hear shouting and hear the occasional bang of a tear gas canister exploding. Chou said nothing, but it was obvious that he was hoping that Lee would feel something...anything towards the protesters. Lee didn’t.
“This is my neighborhood. Go back to the base now, I don’t want you sullying my family with your subversive views.” Chou sighed and scooted over.
“Tell them I said hello.” Then he was gone, the taillights of his car retreating down the street. The street lights were dimmer here than in the city and Lee could see a few others walking along, wearing the unusual dark uniforms he had noted before, and carrying telescopic batons.
“You,” one of them called over, “have you seen anything unusual in this neighborhood?” Lee shook his head.
“I just got here from the front, who are you?” The trio of baton wielding men glanced at one another before crossing the street, suddenly all smiles.
“It’s wonderful to meet a veteran,” the first man said, “we belong to the Political Warfare Bureau, our job is to find subversives and look for signs that the civilian population may be anti government or even pro communist.” Lee smiled and extended his hand.
“Good to meet all of you, I’ll be sure to report anything I know to you.” For a moment he had been tempted to report Chou to them, but that felt wrong somehow...he didn’t want to burden a civilian bureau with a military matter after all. Leaving the Political Warfare men behind, Lee stopped outside of one of the smaller houses and for a moment just stared. The house had been painted a different color since he had left, and the fence around the barren vegetable garden had been reinforced with old rusted rods of rebar but aside from that nearly everything looked the same.
Straightening his uniform, Lee went up the steps and rapped on the door.
For a moment nothing happened, then the door opened a crack and Lee found himself face to face with his mother. For a moment she just stared, almost incomprehensibly, then the door opened the rest of the way and Lee could see that his father was there as well. Stepping through the threshold, Lee took off his boots and looked at his parents, who were still staring.
“Hi mom,” he said, and turned to his father, “hi dad. Sorry that I haven’t written in a while.” A weak introduction, but it was all that he could come up with, and to his relief, his father nodded curtly.
“Well...you’re back now, even though you scared the hell out of your mother. All she saw was a man in a uniform coming up the steps...she thought that you had been killed or your brother arrested.” Lee blinked.
“Shen? What would he do?” His mother glanced back into the kitchen, where the oven was on. There was a great deal more electronic western gadgetry than when he had left but overall things still looked largely the same.
“He’s been hanging around with a bad crowd lately,” his mother said, and checked the oven, clearly upset about the situation but not daring to let it show. “He left earlier, promising that he’d be back before curfew, but he still hasn’t returned, and civilian curfew is in a half hour. I think that he’s participating in the pro democracy riots in the city.” Lee scowled and was about to turn back towards the door when a hand gripped his shoulder.
“We don’t know that though,” his father said, “he could be heading home right now. Now sit down, we need to talk.” Sitting down at the kitchen table, Lee watched his father beckon for his mother to join them.
“How long have you been back?” He asked, Lee thought back. Had he really only been back in the city for a day? Somehow it felt much longer than that.
“Since this morning. I’ve been reassigned from the front and am to become a drill instructor at Fort Ta-Ching.” His father nodded and Lee felt a little surge of guilty resentment bubble up as both of his parents smiled at him.
“That’s good. We’ll all be together now.” His mother said, Lee didn’t nod along. His father didn’t nod either, but for different reasons.
“Why did you stop writing to us?” Lee sighed.
“Because I was busy fighting and I didn’t think that you’d want to hear about it. I stopped reading your letters after a while too. I didn’t want to think about home when there was still so much work to do. We’ve cleansed most of China but there’s still so much to do...” Lee watched his mother shake her head, clearly she didn’t understand.
“What are you saying? Do you even love us anymore?” The question stung, and Lee stared down at the tabletop.
“Of course I do,” he said, “but it’s easier to fight if you pretend not to have anyone to care about. As I said, there’s still a lot of work to do at the front.”
“You don’t want to return to the front? Do you?” His father was speaking now, his arms folded but one hand clenched into a fist. Lee nodded.
“I do.” For a very long moment there was complete silence, then a chair scooted backwards and Lee felt his father grab his shoulder again.
“Let’s talk.” Lee had had these talks before and while his father was never the type to lay a hand on him, he had a way with words that could either be soothing or completely devastating depending on his mood. Right now it looked like his father was slightly confused. What that meant Lee didn’t know.
“What’s so bad about me going back to the front?” Lee asked, “I’m helping to clean up the mainland...someone has to do it.” His father sighed.
“Do you remember the story of your birth?” Lee did, it was perhaps his father’s favorite story to tell, and even three years of absence hadn’t erased it from his mind.
“I do.” His father nodded.
“So you’d know that you were born on the mainland and that we moved here to avoid the communists. But have I ever told you about my own life? I had five older brothers, I was the youngest one.” This was new territory, Lee had never known his father to speak about life before the fall of the mainland. He had picked up bits and pieces but for the most part his father’s life was a blank canvas.
“But they’re dead now.” Lee watched his father nod.
“Yes. They are. I was born in Korea, as you know...during a time when it was occupied by the Japanese. We weren’t encouraged to mingle, us and the Japanese, we were mostly servants to them...lesser beings. That didn’t stop them from conscripting me and my brothers to go to Manchuria when the war began there.” His father’s expression had grown pensive, like a man uncovering dusty relics that he had long forgotten belonged to him.
“Manchuria was a hotbed of bandits and lawlessness in those days, everyone hated the Japanese but also the Nationalists and communists. There were a few warlords here and there but the southern part of the country was pulling itself together into the Republic that you serve today. That was when the Japanese decided to go further and start digging into the entirety of China. So I ended up going to a place called Nanking, I’m assuming you’ve at least been nearby during your time on the mainland.” Lee nodded.
“It got hit by a Soviet nuke. There’s refugee camps on the outskirts but the city itself is destroyed.” His father smiled sadly.
“Perhaps just as well. I never went into the city myself, but I heard stories of what the Japanese were doing in there. I saw the wagons full of tied up women, I saw plenty of bloodstained katanas and bayonets. One of my brothers was killed in that place and to this day I don’t know how he died. What I do know is that I had had enough. I fled into the countryside, there was enough chaos for me to steal a pair of uniforms, one Nationalist, one Japanese, and I’d swap amongst those whenever I entered territory held by one side or another. I wanted to go back to Korea and find my family but I had no compass or map, so I ended up being captured by the Nationalists after a few days. They realized that I was a conscript and offered a place in their ranks, which I accepted, at least until I could flee home.” His father shook his head sadly. “That opportunity didn’t come. Instead of fighting the Japanese I ended up hunting down communists. I was very rarely in combat and even then it was just potshots, us and the communists were supposed to be working together to expel the Japanese but the communists were more interested in building up support for themselves for after the war was over. I was eventually reassigned to a support unit and remained behind the lines for a very long time. Since I spoke Japanese and Korean I was put to work as a translator and assisted in interrogating prisoners. Whenever we got a Korean conscript I always asked how my brothers were doing but nobody ever had an answer. Nobody was from my village, nobody shared our unit...it was as though my family had dropped off the face of the earth.” The flow of information was intense, Lee had known that his father had been on the mainland during the war but not much besides that.
“Are you alright?” He asked, and his father nodded.
“Yes. I was not in a good headspace in those days. We were losing to the Japanese, the communists weren’t helping us at all and I had no idea if my family was still alive. I started interrogating prisoners myself at that point because the man that worked with me was sent to the front. Shortly afterwards the Americans entered the war. I remember that because we got a half dozen Korean and Okinawan conscripts, one of whom recognized my name. He asked me if I had brothers in the Japanese Army, and told me that two of my brothers had been shipped out into the Pacific and that he had spoken to them on Okinawa before being conscripted himself. That was the last I heard of them, their names don’t show up in any records and I don’t know what happened to them. But at the time that lifted my spirits and gave me the strength to keep going, even if I didn’t know where my two older brothers were. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other in four years at this point, and that wasn’t uncommon at all amongst the men that I served with. The Chinese were very used to long periods of warfare, and a few of the older men that I spoke with could tell me stories of the warlord period and even fighting the British and other colonial powers. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t hope. We had faith that the Americans would get to us before the Soviets or even the Germans would, and I guess we were right in a way. But that wasn’t for a while and there was plenty more blood to be spilled before that happened. We moved towards the coast a number of times and though I never saw the big battles of that period but I always heard of them and saw their aftermath, the wounded, the shattered equipment being hauled behind our lines for repairs. We began to not get many prisoners at that point, and sometime in 1943 I was sent to the front for myself. However, instead of fighting the Japanese I found myself aiding in the war against the communist backed Turkic rebels. You don’t often hear about that war today, but I was there, and though I fought well and honorably, I still worried about my family and it made me furious at myself every time that I realized that I had absolutely no control over my situation and that there was no way that I would be able to see them before the war ended. But even as I was spending a miserable winter in what is now Uyghurstan, big things were happening in the eastern part of the country. The Japanese launched an offensive in the southern part of the country, and I ended up being sent there to deal with the very end of it. We plugged the holes in our lines and during all of that I took a bullet in the arm.” Lee nodded, he had noticed the wound badge amongst his father’s old military relics when he had peeked in on it as a child.
“Was it bad?” His father shook his head.
“No. Not bad compared to a lot of the others in the hospital with me. What was bad was the blood poisoning I got afterwards. That kept me in the hospital for two months and when I finally recovered the war was in a very different place. The Japanese had retreated back towards Manchuria, and I was being transferred north to chase after them. Once again I found myself being used as a translator and every time I spoke to a Korean, Okinawan or Formosan I would ask about my brothers. The regular Japanese didn’t want to speak to me and I was more than happy to hand them over to the military police. I caught word of my family from a man who had been stationed in Korea, but the news was more than a year old and I didn’t know whether it was still true. There was no word of my brothers. This was 1945 and the war was nearly over, the Germans had been backed into Berlin and the Japanese were on their way to a similar situation. There was some talk of fighting the communists after the Japanese were dealt with but I didn’t take that seriously, all I knew was that I was going to return to Pyongyang and see my family, I had no intention of staying in China once Japan was dealt with. The last few months of the war were oddly anticlimactic, the Japanese were more concerned with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria than dealing with us and their forces, even if they didn’t surrender they more or less splintered. I took leave and went cross country. I wasn’t supposed to leave China, or go anywhere near the front, but I wasn’t interested in adhering to rules at that point. I bribed a fisherman to take me to Korea from Yantai, which was a very risky proposal. The Japanese still had nominal control over the cities and so I made my way inland very carefully. I was once held at gunpoint by a communist group, but they let me go once they found my military identification. At that point the Nationalists still had a nominal alliance with the communists. that would change a few days later, when the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I heard panicked stories from people in the countryside, each description of the explosion more sensational than the last, and when I saw my first picture of the blast a few weeks later I was almost disappointed. I made it to Pyongyang on the day of the Japanese surrender, but I didn’t pay attention to the celebrations, I wanted to find my family first. And when I arrived at our address, after an absence of nearly nine years, I saw, to my horror, that a Japanese family was living there...or had at least used to. Somebody had broken in and shot them to death, leaving no survivors. I left the house briskly before anyone could notice and began asking the neighbors, some of whom recognized me, where my family had gone. Their answers were vague and it wasn’t until the next day that I got a definitive answer. My family had gone to work for a wealthy Japanese estate and when the owners of the estate had moved back to Tokyo mere weeks before I arrived, they had forced my parents to come along with them. At first I held out hope that maybe they could have survived, but when I learned of the firebombing raids over Tokyo, I realized, deep down, that my family was dead. I spent a lot of time being angry about that, I wandered into the woods and thought about shooting myself, but before I could do that I began to notice a great number of refugees fleeing south. Asking what they were doing I learned that a Soviet backed communist regime had taken power in Pyongyang. So I fled south alongside the other refugees and bribed another fisherman to take me back to China. I made it back to my unit only a few hours before I would have been declared AWOL, but that didn’t matter to me. A part of me hoped that they would declare me guilty of something and shoot me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt and sorrow that I felt over the loss of my family. But I kept going, feeling for all the world like a automaton, only simulating life, not actually feeling it.” His father paused and Lee saw a tear sparkle in the old man’s eye before he wiped it roughly away.
“Are you alright?” Lee asked again, and again his father nodded.
“What I learned after a few months of this was that the sorrow never quite goes away. I had lost my entire family, eventually getting news that my remaining brothers had been killed fighting the Soviets in Manchuria. I had lost my parents in the firestorm in Tokyo and I had lost many good friends during the war as well. The sorrow never quite goes away, but you do get to a point where it doesn’t bother you as much. I grieve every day for the people I lost, and when the war against the communists started up, I couldn’t handle it. I had just endured nine years of constant warfare with the Japanese and lost nearly every person dear to me, and now another potentially never ending war was starting. When we marched into battle for the first time I charged towards the enemy, bayonet bared, hoping that they would kill me and end my suffering, but instead the communists fled and I got a medal. At some point one officer or another noticed that I wasn’t all there and moved me to the rear so that I wouldn’t try to commit suicide by combat. There they put me to work filing papers and that was where I met your mother. When we evacuated the mainland you were barely old enough to walk, but even though most of the others around me were sobbing and agonizing over the loss of their homeland I didn’t share in their sorrow, I had a new family, and that was all that mattered to me. Family is important, and I hope that you don’t forget that even if you do return to the front at some point. Just remember the cost of war, and don’t charge into anything that you aren’t prepared for.” Lee nodded.
“I will.” And with that he exited the room, still mulling over his father’s words as he glanced at the watch. Civilian curfew was in two minutes, and Lee grabbed his boots.
“I’m going to find Shen, I’ll be back in a half hour.” Neither of his parents objected and Lee headed out the door. The Political Warfare enforcers were nowhere to be seen and Lee bundled his coat closer to him as he walked down the street. The pavement on the driveway of his parent’s house was unmarked, they hadn’t bought a car in his absence, which meant that unless Shen’s friends had picked him up then his brother was on foot, just like him. Thinking back to the days before he had gone away, Lee tried to remember where his brother had enjoyed spending time. The park, the cinema, places like that. Since the cinema was very likely closed for the night Lee decided to check the park first.
The night air was chilly and as he walked Lee thought about what his father had said. He had fought for more than a decade, losing his homeland, his family and his friends in the process, and had still managed to build a new and successful life in Taiwan. Suddenly Lee felt immensely guilty for not writing back. He had been selfish...so unbelievably selfish. Resolving to apologize once he had retrieved his brother, Lee detected distant voices and shouting, interspaced with muffled pops. There was a protest nearby, and as he hoped that it wasn’t being held in the park, he turned a corner and swore to himself.
There were easily two hundred people facing off against a similar number of police and Political Warfare men, a few traces of tear gas hanging in the air. Marching towards the protest, a vicious frown on his face, Lee scanned the crowd for his brother.
“Shen!” He shouted, “Shen, come here, it’s time to come home!” A Political Warfare man trotted over towards him and then removed the gas mask he was wearing.
“Hey, long time no see. What are you doing here?” Glancing over, Lee saw that he was speaking to the very same baton wielding paramilitary man that he had seen earlier.
“My brother,” Lee said, “I need to get him home, and I’d prefer that he not go to prison.” The man shrugged and checked his watch.
“He’ll get at least a warning for violating parole. If he’s involved in this mess then I’m not sure if avoiding prison is going to be realistic.” Lee scowled but the paramilitary man was already turning away.
“Stop the war you fascists!” Shouted someone and Lee ducked a stone as the crowd took notice of his uniform. Before Lee could react a mob of Political Warfare men had surged forwards and crashed into the crowd.
“Assaulting a veteran is a crime punishable by flogging!” Shouted someone and Lee pressed forwards, ducking under a bottle and wishing that he had a shield.
“Shen!” He shouted at the disintegrating mob, “Shen! Get over here!” And suddenly, amidst a knot of people with scarves around their faces, Lee saw his brother. His hair was longer, his clothes treading the edge of controversial, the sign in his hand reading something profane, but he was definitely the same Shen that he had known and loved before he had left for the mainland. Lee shoved his way into the crowd and knocked a pair of protesters aside.
“Fuck you and fuck President Ta-Ching!” He heard one of the people next to Shen say and wondered just what type of lunatics his brother was hanging out with these days.
“Shen! Get over here, we’re going home!” Before he could see what Shen’s reaction was, somebody swung a sign at him and Lee dodged backwards before kicking the swinger in the stomach. Seizing the sign, Lee broke the poster off of it and watched as two others ran towards him. Time seemed to slow and as one of them brandished a knife and the other waved a baton, Lee jabbed his stick forwards, cutting past the baton wielders‘ nonexistent defense and hitting him directly in the mouth. Teeth shattered like sugar cubes and the man dropped down, cradling his broken face as the man with the knife stared in sudden horror at his fallen comrade. Lee swung low and hit the knife man in the side of the knee with a grisly popping noise. The knife man’s mouth opened in an unmistakeable scream of agony, but before any noise could come out Lee had stamped down on the man’s face and passed by him, heading towards Shen and the little knot of people he was with. For a moment e thought that he would have to fight at least one of them, but with a few glances at one another, they broke and ran, leaving Shen behind, staring at Lee with a mixture of surprise and horror.
“What did you do?” Shen asked, his eyes wide, staring back at the trio that Lee had dispatched. The rest of the crowd was fully broken now and Lee saw that the window of escape that Shen had was growing slimmer by the second.
“Come on.” Ripping the sign from Shen’s hand, Lee took his brother by the arm and hustled him towards the edge of the park. As they exited the chaos and fighting, Shen tore his arm free from Lee’s grasp.
“I think you killed him,” he said, “you might have killed that man back there.” Lee shrugged.
“He pulled a knife on me. If you’re going to bring a weapon to a fight then you deserve whatever you get. Besides, I was rescuing you.” Shen shook his head, eyes still wide with terror, he looked even younger than his seventeen years and his hair was a mess.
“I wasn’t in any danger,” he said, “I would have been fine without you.” Lee scowled.
“Bullshit,” he growled, “you were with a crowd, protesting the war and God knows what else. Standing against the state is dangerous Shen, I don’t care what those traitors you were with think about that.” Shen looked shocked and scandalized.
“Those people are my friends!” He said indignantly, Lee laughed, a single harsh bark of false mirth.
“Is that why they ran and abandoned you to your fate when I was coming after you? Some friends you have.” Shen said nothing for a few moments, by which time they were nearly back to the house.
“What happened to you?” Shen asked, “you’ve turned into a complete fascist since you left.” Shen headed up the steps without waiting for a response and Lee followed wordlessly behind. Stepping inside he took off his boots and saw Shen being blocked access to the hallway by his father.
“You may not go back there until you explain what you were doing out so late.” As Lee stepped into the room his mother’s eyes widened in shock.
“You’ve gotten blood on you,” she said, “what happened?” Looking down Lee realized that there was indeed a spatter of blood on his sleeve, probably from when he had broken the second man’s teeth. He frowned, that would be difficult to wash out.
“I found Shen at a protest, mingling with a whole bunch of subversives. A few of them attacked me and I put them down. Shen seems to think that I should have let them stab me to death.” Lee knew that his answer was perhaps needlessly aggressive but he was too angry to care. His father looked at Shen, eyes cold and hard.
“Is this true?” Shen hesitated for a moment before responding.
“The police instigated the fight, we were being completely peaceful until they-”
“IS THIS TRUE?!” His father was shouting now and Shen fell silent before meekly nodding. Standing aside, Lee watched as Shen trudged down the hallway.
“Did anyone see him? Are the police going to come by and collect him?” Lee shook his head, they had made a clean escape.
“No. But don’t let him go out anymore, not until he gives up his subversive tendencies.” His mother gave him a strange look but said nothing.
“You should head back to base,” Lee heard his father say, “it’s late.” Lee nodded and collected his boots.
“I’m sorry for not writing back to you.” He said, and then headed out the door. He had an hour and a half before his curfew kicked in, and while he could have easily gotten a cab, he elected to walk. It helped to clear his head, and gave him time to think of exactly how he was going to handle the situation with Sergeant Chou.
40.
The first call came in at midnight. Mumbai. The embassy there was under attack once again, a crowd of at least two thousand repulsed when the guards opened fire with machine guns from the top of the walls. At least eight dead inside of the embassy, the Gandhi government refusing to allow any medical aid into the building. The entire diplomatic district of the city was blocked off by throngs of anti American protesters, he said, and dispersing them would be impossible. Blatant lies coming from the master of a police state but Brooke didn’t waste any time in trying to see if they could be subverted.
Speaking to Westmoreland earned him a set of two options. The first was that diplomacy be attempted, the second was more blunt. If the diplomatic sector of the city was not cleared of armed vigilante bands within the next two days then the United States would begin hitting military targets on the Pakistani border. With the Indian Army spread thin around the country, barely keeping the lid on simmering ethnic and religious tensions all across the nation, Westmoreland was certain that if the Indians responded with an attempted invasion of Pakistan then the nation would collapse before they could do any serious damage.
It was risky, but Brooke had no desire to negotiate for the effective release of his people. Gandhi was a tyrant, but his hold on power was far from cemented and treating him like a person to be feared would not bode well for future diplomatic negotiations. One of the many things that Brooke had taken away from his time in the Bush administration was that when negotiations were held it was unwise to negotiate with anything less than an overwhelming advantage in power. He didn’t enjoy instigating fights with other nations but if Westmoreland was correct then Gandhi would have no choice but to back down and let the embassy staff go. Brooke hoped that the other nations whose embassies were in Mumbai would take the opportunity to leave, because he had no idea how the Indian people would react once they realized that they had been decisively defeated on the world stage.
_______
The second call came from Pakistan, hot on the heels of the Indian call. A dozen car bombs had exploded across the city of Multan, including what was suspected to be another dirty bomb. A similar device had exploded in China and President Ta-Ching had advocated immediate bombing missions against Uyghurstan. Rogers, who had dealt with Ta-Ching before, convinced the man to hold off for proof that the Uyghurs had deployed the bomb while Brooke talked about the situation in Pakistan.
The rest of the night was spent in a flurry of calls made to sources abroad and as the sun rose Brooke found himself dialing yet another number, this one domestic. Hopefully this conversation would be more pleasant than some of the others.
_______
Daniel Inouye, halfway through signing a letter asking for the state legislature in Hawaii to vote for a healthcare expansion bill being promoted by Governor Ariyoshi, picked up his phone.
“Hello, Majority Leader Inouye speaking.” Considering the few others in the office this early he both expected and got the President.
“Hello Dan, it’s Ed. I’m calling to make a proposal.” Inouye set his pen down and wondered what it could be. Brooke sounded tired and stressed and in Inouye’s experience men offering deals while in a bind were often willing to give up far more than they had originally intended to.
“What type of proposal?” Inouye was careful to keep his voice level, even if talking to Brooke did stir up some emotions that weren’t necessarily positive.
“You’re doubtlessly aware of the rumors floating around that since Bush committed fraud in New Mexico then I am illegitimate. Since you’re the survivor of the Democratic ticket I would be willing to offer you a cabinet position of your choice in order to dispel those rumors. I’m going to put the people responsible on trial anyways but you being in my cabinet would definitely help.” Inouye didn’t hesitate, he had seen the question coming ever since Brooke mentioned the rumors.
“No. Sorry Ed but I have no interest in serving under you. I was just elected Majority Leader yesterday and I feel that I can get more done and work with you more effectively from the senate than I ever could from within your cabinet. I’ll make an announcement that you are indeed the legitimate President but please don’t ask me to be part of your administration, I’d like to stay far away from that part of government.” As Inouye stopped speaking Brooke realized that he had been clenching his jaw so hard that his ears were ringing. Inouye had dismissed him, politely and with an assurance that he would help him out, but with a dismissal all the same.
“I know that you’re hurting over Hubert’s death,” he said quietly, “I lost friends as well Dan...people that I was sitting right next to just seconds before they were gone forever. But the point is, you cannot blame me for something that Bush did, we can still be friends here, and I think that that would be preferable to a distant relationship. Congress needs to be unified so that we can all work against the Freedom Party, and implementing inter-party ties would be the best way to start. What do you think?” Inouye set the phone down on his desk for a second and just stared. Brooke had hit a nerve...he was blaming him for Humphrey’s death, and that was unfair.
“I’m going to need some time to think about this but I appreciate your efforts. Thanks for calling Ed, I’ll talk to you later.” Inouye hung up and finished signing the letter before checking his watch. Seven fifteen, he had some time before congress would be called into session for the day. Dialing a number, he wondered just what he would say, and what the impact of his message would be.
_______
Slipping out of his room and treading quietly down the hallway, Lee knocked on Chou’s door. It was nearly twenty one hundred hours and the man had returned to his room a half hour ago. Lee had given him time to change and relax for a few minutes, but now he was curious to see what the man wanted to speak to him about.
The door opened up and Chou beckoned for Lee to come in, a toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Lee said, glancing around at Chou’s room, “I can wait for a few minutes if you still need time to freshen up.” Chou shook his head, spat in the sink and rinsed his toothbrush.
“I was done anyways. Good to see that you decided to come.” Lee shut the door behind him and sat down in the little chair in front of Chou’s desk. The desk had a few papers on it, mostly training recommendations for recruits that were proving to be troublesome. The one closest to Lee advocated tying a recruit to his bed and forcing his platoon mates to carry him with them out to the training grounds if he overslept again.
“These bring back memories.” He said, tapping the paper, Chou sat down on the foot of his bed, facing Lee.
“Good ones I’d hope.” Lee nodded, he valued the training he had gotten and wondered just how it had evolved since the war had begun.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Chou smiled.
“Would you like to come downtown with me and see the sights? You’ve been gone for three years Sergeant, I think that you’d appreciate how things have changed.” Lee hesitated, thinking about the awards ceremony that would be conducted the next morning, but then he nodded. Chou was right, he hadn’t been back for three years, even if he did plan on returning to the mainland as soon as possible...if that was even a possibility at this point.
“Why not. What time are we expected to be back?” Chou checked his watch.
“Midnight, it’s just about twenty one hundred so we have some time to go and see some things. I’ll have us back by twenty three thirty.” Lee nodded and together they headed out through the doors and into the vehicle lot, where Chou found his civilian car, a battered jeep with the Chinese flag embossed on the hood, the only part of the car that hadn’t been dinged or dented in any way.
“I apologize if I was being standoffish back at the airport,” Lee said as they passed through the base’s gates, showing their papers as they did so, “I hate being away from the fight, especially when we’re going to go to war with Uyghurstan soon.” Chou grimaced.
“I hope not.” Lee sighed.
“It’s necessary. The Uyghurs are making dirty bombs and selling them to jihadists and communists intent on killing us, the Americans and the Israelis. Either we kill them or they kill us...there is no room for deliberation.” Chou said nothing and pulled into a parking space that was reserved for military veterans. There were empty parking spots everywhere, but as Lee looked at it he saw that the space was slightly wider than the others.
“Let’s not talk about foreign policy,” Chou said, Lee rolled his eyes, “let me show you the city.” Walking along the sidewalk Chou gestured to the large screen advertisements showing various products. “Those are new, put into place by some Japanese corporation or another. Did you live in the city before you left? I didn’t look at that part of your records.” Lee glanced over at a neon lit restaurant filled with off duty soldiers. In fact a large portion of the people out on the street seemed to be in uniform, and the mood was strangely tense.
“I lived on the outskirts, in Linkou. Haven’t been back there in a long time.” Chou stopped walking and glanced back at the jeep.
“Do you want to go?” For a moment Lee hesitated, but then he nodded. He hadn’t seen his family in more than photographs for three years, it would be best to start now. Turning around, the two men got back into the jeep.
“Did you just want to get me out and about in the city or was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?” Lee asked, Chou hesitated, looking unsure, before nodding.
“When you were picked up at the airport, did you notice anything unusual about the route that we drove?” Feeling a sudden rush of trepidation, Lee shrugged, his expression guarded.
“We did make a lot of unnecessary turns.” He allowed, and Chou nodded.
“Do you know why?” Lee frowned, where was this going...and what was Chou dragging him into?
“Stop the jeep.” They were exiting the city proper, heading towards the outskirts, and Chou parked along the side of the road.
“It’s because there are pro democracy protests happening all across the city,” Chou said urgently, “nobody wants to admit that they’re happening.” Lee shook his head.
“What are you talking about?” His voice was dangerous now, and Chou seemed almost frightened to speak.
“More and more soldiers are returning from the front...and they’re dissatisfied with what they’re returning to.” Lee shook his head vehemently.
“Things are better,” Lee said bluntly, “sure there’s rationing and more police but that’s only to keep the people safe. If they’re too ungrateful to recognize that then maybe they deserve what they get.” Chou looked shocked and turned the jeep off.
“People here don’t want any more war...we’ve lost so many people over the past three years that we’re having trouble keeping full employment. And yet the draft keeps feeding more and more soldiers to the front. If we go to war with Uyghurstan then there’s going to be a revolt...the people are sick of not having a voice.” Lee slammed a fist down onto the dashboard of the jeep, making Chou jump.
“Don’t say anything like that,” Lee growled, “don’t you dare. We have wiped out an entire nation of communists, jihadists and subversives of all kinds...we have fought and bled for so long to do this and when I come home all I hear is you disparaging our efforts. Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t report you.” Chou looked frightened now, shaking his head.
“Because what I’m saying is true, you have to realize that the war cannot go on forever. Ta-Ching and his people are going to run us into the ground if we keep going like this.” Lee stared, Chou’s dissent seemed almost incomprehensible to him, how could someone be against a war of national survival like this?
“So you’d let the Uyghurs keep making dirty bombs...you’d cower at home and watch chaos envelope the world?” Chou opened his mouth to dissent and Lee raised a fist, watching Chou cower, but he didn’t bring it down.
“Don’t hit me,” Chou said, “it won’t solve anything.” Lee got out of the jeep and walked around to Chou’s side.
“Get over.” He said brusquely and Chou obeyed wordlessly.
“The nation wont stand for endless war,” he said, “you reporting me wont make that any less true.” Lee thought about hitting him but decided that it would be too much trouble, he didn’t want a fight now.
“Shut up,” Lee said tonelessly, “please just...shut up. I don’t want to report you...I just want to go and see my family.” Putting the jeep in gear, he continued onwards toward Linkou. Traffic was light and twice Lee passed cordoned off areas where the air made his eyes watery. There were lines of police and armored vehicles blocking off the sight but Lee could hear shouting and hear the occasional bang of a tear gas canister exploding. Chou said nothing, but it was obvious that he was hoping that Lee would feel something...anything towards the protesters. Lee didn’t.
“This is my neighborhood. Go back to the base now, I don’t want you sullying my family with your subversive views.” Chou sighed and scooted over.
“Tell them I said hello.” Then he was gone, the taillights of his car retreating down the street. The street lights were dimmer here than in the city and Lee could see a few others walking along, wearing the unusual dark uniforms he had noted before, and carrying telescopic batons.
“You,” one of them called over, “have you seen anything unusual in this neighborhood?” Lee shook his head.
“I just got here from the front, who are you?” The trio of baton wielding men glanced at one another before crossing the street, suddenly all smiles.
“It’s wonderful to meet a veteran,” the first man said, “we belong to the Political Warfare Bureau, our job is to find subversives and look for signs that the civilian population may be anti government or even pro communist.” Lee smiled and extended his hand.
“Good to meet all of you, I’ll be sure to report anything I know to you.” For a moment he had been tempted to report Chou to them, but that felt wrong somehow...he didn’t want to burden a civilian bureau with a military matter after all. Leaving the Political Warfare men behind, Lee stopped outside of one of the smaller houses and for a moment just stared. The house had been painted a different color since he had left, and the fence around the barren vegetable garden had been reinforced with old rusted rods of rebar but aside from that nearly everything looked the same.
Straightening his uniform, Lee went up the steps and rapped on the door.
For a moment nothing happened, then the door opened a crack and Lee found himself face to face with his mother. For a moment she just stared, almost incomprehensibly, then the door opened the rest of the way and Lee could see that his father was there as well. Stepping through the threshold, Lee took off his boots and looked at his parents, who were still staring.
“Hi mom,” he said, and turned to his father, “hi dad. Sorry that I haven’t written in a while.” A weak introduction, but it was all that he could come up with, and to his relief, his father nodded curtly.
“Well...you’re back now, even though you scared the hell out of your mother. All she saw was a man in a uniform coming up the steps...she thought that you had been killed or your brother arrested.” Lee blinked.
“Shen? What would he do?” His mother glanced back into the kitchen, where the oven was on. There was a great deal more electronic western gadgetry than when he had left but overall things still looked largely the same.
“He’s been hanging around with a bad crowd lately,” his mother said, and checked the oven, clearly upset about the situation but not daring to let it show. “He left earlier, promising that he’d be back before curfew, but he still hasn’t returned, and civilian curfew is in a half hour. I think that he’s participating in the pro democracy riots in the city.” Lee scowled and was about to turn back towards the door when a hand gripped his shoulder.
“We don’t know that though,” his father said, “he could be heading home right now. Now sit down, we need to talk.” Sitting down at the kitchen table, Lee watched his father beckon for his mother to join them.
“How long have you been back?” He asked, Lee thought back. Had he really only been back in the city for a day? Somehow it felt much longer than that.
“Since this morning. I’ve been reassigned from the front and am to become a drill instructor at Fort Ta-Ching.” His father nodded and Lee felt a little surge of guilty resentment bubble up as both of his parents smiled at him.
“That’s good. We’ll all be together now.” His mother said, Lee didn’t nod along. His father didn’t nod either, but for different reasons.
“Why did you stop writing to us?” Lee sighed.
“Because I was busy fighting and I didn’t think that you’d want to hear about it. I stopped reading your letters after a while too. I didn’t want to think about home when there was still so much work to do. We’ve cleansed most of China but there’s still so much to do...” Lee watched his mother shake her head, clearly she didn’t understand.
“What are you saying? Do you even love us anymore?” The question stung, and Lee stared down at the tabletop.
“Of course I do,” he said, “but it’s easier to fight if you pretend not to have anyone to care about. As I said, there’s still a lot of work to do at the front.”
“You don’t want to return to the front? Do you?” His father was speaking now, his arms folded but one hand clenched into a fist. Lee nodded.
“I do.” For a very long moment there was complete silence, then a chair scooted backwards and Lee felt his father grab his shoulder again.
“Let’s talk.” Lee had had these talks before and while his father was never the type to lay a hand on him, he had a way with words that could either be soothing or completely devastating depending on his mood. Right now it looked like his father was slightly confused. What that meant Lee didn’t know.
“What’s so bad about me going back to the front?” Lee asked, “I’m helping to clean up the mainland...someone has to do it.” His father sighed.
“Do you remember the story of your birth?” Lee did, it was perhaps his father’s favorite story to tell, and even three years of absence hadn’t erased it from his mind.
“I do.” His father nodded.
“So you’d know that you were born on the mainland and that we moved here to avoid the communists. But have I ever told you about my own life? I had five older brothers, I was the youngest one.” This was new territory, Lee had never known his father to speak about life before the fall of the mainland. He had picked up bits and pieces but for the most part his father’s life was a blank canvas.
“But they’re dead now.” Lee watched his father nod.
“Yes. They are. I was born in Korea, as you know...during a time when it was occupied by the Japanese. We weren’t encouraged to mingle, us and the Japanese, we were mostly servants to them...lesser beings. That didn’t stop them from conscripting me and my brothers to go to Manchuria when the war began there.” His father’s expression had grown pensive, like a man uncovering dusty relics that he had long forgotten belonged to him.
“Manchuria was a hotbed of bandits and lawlessness in those days, everyone hated the Japanese but also the Nationalists and communists. There were a few warlords here and there but the southern part of the country was pulling itself together into the Republic that you serve today. That was when the Japanese decided to go further and start digging into the entirety of China. So I ended up going to a place called Nanking, I’m assuming you’ve at least been nearby during your time on the mainland.” Lee nodded.
“It got hit by a Soviet nuke. There’s refugee camps on the outskirts but the city itself is destroyed.” His father smiled sadly.
“Perhaps just as well. I never went into the city myself, but I heard stories of what the Japanese were doing in there. I saw the wagons full of tied up women, I saw plenty of bloodstained katanas and bayonets. One of my brothers was killed in that place and to this day I don’t know how he died. What I do know is that I had had enough. I fled into the countryside, there was enough chaos for me to steal a pair of uniforms, one Nationalist, one Japanese, and I’d swap amongst those whenever I entered territory held by one side or another. I wanted to go back to Korea and find my family but I had no compass or map, so I ended up being captured by the Nationalists after a few days. They realized that I was a conscript and offered a place in their ranks, which I accepted, at least until I could flee home.” His father shook his head sadly. “That opportunity didn’t come. Instead of fighting the Japanese I ended up hunting down communists. I was very rarely in combat and even then it was just potshots, us and the communists were supposed to be working together to expel the Japanese but the communists were more interested in building up support for themselves for after the war was over. I was eventually reassigned to a support unit and remained behind the lines for a very long time. Since I spoke Japanese and Korean I was put to work as a translator and assisted in interrogating prisoners. Whenever we got a Korean conscript I always asked how my brothers were doing but nobody ever had an answer. Nobody was from my village, nobody shared our unit...it was as though my family had dropped off the face of the earth.” The flow of information was intense, Lee had known that his father had been on the mainland during the war but not much besides that.
“Are you alright?” He asked, and his father nodded.
“Yes. I was not in a good headspace in those days. We were losing to the Japanese, the communists weren’t helping us at all and I had no idea if my family was still alive. I started interrogating prisoners myself at that point because the man that worked with me was sent to the front. Shortly afterwards the Americans entered the war. I remember that because we got a half dozen Korean and Okinawan conscripts, one of whom recognized my name. He asked me if I had brothers in the Japanese Army, and told me that two of my brothers had been shipped out into the Pacific and that he had spoken to them on Okinawa before being conscripted himself. That was the last I heard of them, their names don’t show up in any records and I don’t know what happened to them. But at the time that lifted my spirits and gave me the strength to keep going, even if I didn’t know where my two older brothers were. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other in four years at this point, and that wasn’t uncommon at all amongst the men that I served with. The Chinese were very used to long periods of warfare, and a few of the older men that I spoke with could tell me stories of the warlord period and even fighting the British and other colonial powers. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t hope. We had faith that the Americans would get to us before the Soviets or even the Germans would, and I guess we were right in a way. But that wasn’t for a while and there was plenty more blood to be spilled before that happened. We moved towards the coast a number of times and though I never saw the big battles of that period but I always heard of them and saw their aftermath, the wounded, the shattered equipment being hauled behind our lines for repairs. We began to not get many prisoners at that point, and sometime in 1943 I was sent to the front for myself. However, instead of fighting the Japanese I found myself aiding in the war against the communist backed Turkic rebels. You don’t often hear about that war today, but I was there, and though I fought well and honorably, I still worried about my family and it made me furious at myself every time that I realized that I had absolutely no control over my situation and that there was no way that I would be able to see them before the war ended. But even as I was spending a miserable winter in what is now Uyghurstan, big things were happening in the eastern part of the country. The Japanese launched an offensive in the southern part of the country, and I ended up being sent there to deal with the very end of it. We plugged the holes in our lines and during all of that I took a bullet in the arm.” Lee nodded, he had noticed the wound badge amongst his father’s old military relics when he had peeked in on it as a child.
“Was it bad?” His father shook his head.
“No. Not bad compared to a lot of the others in the hospital with me. What was bad was the blood poisoning I got afterwards. That kept me in the hospital for two months and when I finally recovered the war was in a very different place. The Japanese had retreated back towards Manchuria, and I was being transferred north to chase after them. Once again I found myself being used as a translator and every time I spoke to a Korean, Okinawan or Formosan I would ask about my brothers. The regular Japanese didn’t want to speak to me and I was more than happy to hand them over to the military police. I caught word of my family from a man who had been stationed in Korea, but the news was more than a year old and I didn’t know whether it was still true. There was no word of my brothers. This was 1945 and the war was nearly over, the Germans had been backed into Berlin and the Japanese were on their way to a similar situation. There was some talk of fighting the communists after the Japanese were dealt with but I didn’t take that seriously, all I knew was that I was going to return to Pyongyang and see my family, I had no intention of staying in China once Japan was dealt with. The last few months of the war were oddly anticlimactic, the Japanese were more concerned with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria than dealing with us and their forces, even if they didn’t surrender they more or less splintered. I took leave and went cross country. I wasn’t supposed to leave China, or go anywhere near the front, but I wasn’t interested in adhering to rules at that point. I bribed a fisherman to take me to Korea from Yantai, which was a very risky proposal. The Japanese still had nominal control over the cities and so I made my way inland very carefully. I was once held at gunpoint by a communist group, but they let me go once they found my military identification. At that point the Nationalists still had a nominal alliance with the communists. that would change a few days later, when the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I heard panicked stories from people in the countryside, each description of the explosion more sensational than the last, and when I saw my first picture of the blast a few weeks later I was almost disappointed. I made it to Pyongyang on the day of the Japanese surrender, but I didn’t pay attention to the celebrations, I wanted to find my family first. And when I arrived at our address, after an absence of nearly nine years, I saw, to my horror, that a Japanese family was living there...or had at least used to. Somebody had broken in and shot them to death, leaving no survivors. I left the house briskly before anyone could notice and began asking the neighbors, some of whom recognized me, where my family had gone. Their answers were vague and it wasn’t until the next day that I got a definitive answer. My family had gone to work for a wealthy Japanese estate and when the owners of the estate had moved back to Tokyo mere weeks before I arrived, they had forced my parents to come along with them. At first I held out hope that maybe they could have survived, but when I learned of the firebombing raids over Tokyo, I realized, deep down, that my family was dead. I spent a lot of time being angry about that, I wandered into the woods and thought about shooting myself, but before I could do that I began to notice a great number of refugees fleeing south. Asking what they were doing I learned that a Soviet backed communist regime had taken power in Pyongyang. So I fled south alongside the other refugees and bribed another fisherman to take me back to China. I made it back to my unit only a few hours before I would have been declared AWOL, but that didn’t matter to me. A part of me hoped that they would declare me guilty of something and shoot me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt and sorrow that I felt over the loss of my family. But I kept going, feeling for all the world like a automaton, only simulating life, not actually feeling it.” His father paused and Lee saw a tear sparkle in the old man’s eye before he wiped it roughly away.
“Are you alright?” Lee asked again, and again his father nodded.
“What I learned after a few months of this was that the sorrow never quite goes away. I had lost my entire family, eventually getting news that my remaining brothers had been killed fighting the Soviets in Manchuria. I had lost my parents in the firestorm in Tokyo and I had lost many good friends during the war as well. The sorrow never quite goes away, but you do get to a point where it doesn’t bother you as much. I grieve every day for the people I lost, and when the war against the communists started up, I couldn’t handle it. I had just endured nine years of constant warfare with the Japanese and lost nearly every person dear to me, and now another potentially never ending war was starting. When we marched into battle for the first time I charged towards the enemy, bayonet bared, hoping that they would kill me and end my suffering, but instead the communists fled and I got a medal. At some point one officer or another noticed that I wasn’t all there and moved me to the rear so that I wouldn’t try to commit suicide by combat. There they put me to work filing papers and that was where I met your mother. When we evacuated the mainland you were barely old enough to walk, but even though most of the others around me were sobbing and agonizing over the loss of their homeland I didn’t share in their sorrow, I had a new family, and that was all that mattered to me. Family is important, and I hope that you don’t forget that even if you do return to the front at some point. Just remember the cost of war, and don’t charge into anything that you aren’t prepared for.” Lee nodded.
“I will.” And with that he exited the room, still mulling over his father’s words as he glanced at the watch. Civilian curfew was in two minutes, and Lee grabbed his boots.
“I’m going to find Shen, I’ll be back in a half hour.” Neither of his parents objected and Lee headed out the door. The Political Warfare enforcers were nowhere to be seen and Lee bundled his coat closer to him as he walked down the street. The pavement on the driveway of his parent’s house was unmarked, they hadn’t bought a car in his absence, which meant that unless Shen’s friends had picked him up then his brother was on foot, just like him. Thinking back to the days before he had gone away, Lee tried to remember where his brother had enjoyed spending time. The park, the cinema, places like that. Since the cinema was very likely closed for the night Lee decided to check the park first.
The night air was chilly and as he walked Lee thought about what his father had said. He had fought for more than a decade, losing his homeland, his family and his friends in the process, and had still managed to build a new and successful life in Taiwan. Suddenly Lee felt immensely guilty for not writing back. He had been selfish...so unbelievably selfish. Resolving to apologize once he had retrieved his brother, Lee detected distant voices and shouting, interspaced with muffled pops. There was a protest nearby, and as he hoped that it wasn’t being held in the park, he turned a corner and swore to himself.
There were easily two hundred people facing off against a similar number of police and Political Warfare men, a few traces of tear gas hanging in the air. Marching towards the protest, a vicious frown on his face, Lee scanned the crowd for his brother.
“Shen!” He shouted, “Shen, come here, it’s time to come home!” A Political Warfare man trotted over towards him and then removed the gas mask he was wearing.
“Hey, long time no see. What are you doing here?” Glancing over, Lee saw that he was speaking to the very same baton wielding paramilitary man that he had seen earlier.
“My brother,” Lee said, “I need to get him home, and I’d prefer that he not go to prison.” The man shrugged and checked his watch.
“He’ll get at least a warning for violating parole. If he’s involved in this mess then I’m not sure if avoiding prison is going to be realistic.” Lee scowled but the paramilitary man was already turning away.
“Stop the war you fascists!” Shouted someone and Lee ducked a stone as the crowd took notice of his uniform. Before Lee could react a mob of Political Warfare men had surged forwards and crashed into the crowd.
“Assaulting a veteran is a crime punishable by flogging!” Shouted someone and Lee pressed forwards, ducking under a bottle and wishing that he had a shield.
“Shen!” He shouted at the disintegrating mob, “Shen! Get over here!” And suddenly, amidst a knot of people with scarves around their faces, Lee saw his brother. His hair was longer, his clothes treading the edge of controversial, the sign in his hand reading something profane, but he was definitely the same Shen that he had known and loved before he had left for the mainland. Lee shoved his way into the crowd and knocked a pair of protesters aside.
“Fuck you and fuck President Ta-Ching!” He heard one of the people next to Shen say and wondered just what type of lunatics his brother was hanging out with these days.
“Shen! Get over here, we’re going home!” Before he could see what Shen’s reaction was, somebody swung a sign at him and Lee dodged backwards before kicking the swinger in the stomach. Seizing the sign, Lee broke the poster off of it and watched as two others ran towards him. Time seemed to slow and as one of them brandished a knife and the other waved a baton, Lee jabbed his stick forwards, cutting past the baton wielders‘ nonexistent defense and hitting him directly in the mouth. Teeth shattered like sugar cubes and the man dropped down, cradling his broken face as the man with the knife stared in sudden horror at his fallen comrade. Lee swung low and hit the knife man in the side of the knee with a grisly popping noise. The knife man’s mouth opened in an unmistakeable scream of agony, but before any noise could come out Lee had stamped down on the man’s face and passed by him, heading towards Shen and the little knot of people he was with. For a moment e thought that he would have to fight at least one of them, but with a few glances at one another, they broke and ran, leaving Shen behind, staring at Lee with a mixture of surprise and horror.
“What did you do?” Shen asked, his eyes wide, staring back at the trio that Lee had dispatched. The rest of the crowd was fully broken now and Lee saw that the window of escape that Shen had was growing slimmer by the second.
“Come on.” Ripping the sign from Shen’s hand, Lee took his brother by the arm and hustled him towards the edge of the park. As they exited the chaos and fighting, Shen tore his arm free from Lee’s grasp.
“I think you killed him,” he said, “you might have killed that man back there.” Lee shrugged.
“He pulled a knife on me. If you’re going to bring a weapon to a fight then you deserve whatever you get. Besides, I was rescuing you.” Shen shook his head, eyes still wide with terror, he looked even younger than his seventeen years and his hair was a mess.
“I wasn’t in any danger,” he said, “I would have been fine without you.” Lee scowled.
“Bullshit,” he growled, “you were with a crowd, protesting the war and God knows what else. Standing against the state is dangerous Shen, I don’t care what those traitors you were with think about that.” Shen looked shocked and scandalized.
“Those people are my friends!” He said indignantly, Lee laughed, a single harsh bark of false mirth.
“Is that why they ran and abandoned you to your fate when I was coming after you? Some friends you have.” Shen said nothing for a few moments, by which time they were nearly back to the house.
“What happened to you?” Shen asked, “you’ve turned into a complete fascist since you left.” Shen headed up the steps without waiting for a response and Lee followed wordlessly behind. Stepping inside he took off his boots and saw Shen being blocked access to the hallway by his father.
“You may not go back there until you explain what you were doing out so late.” As Lee stepped into the room his mother’s eyes widened in shock.
“You’ve gotten blood on you,” she said, “what happened?” Looking down Lee realized that there was indeed a spatter of blood on his sleeve, probably from when he had broken the second man’s teeth. He frowned, that would be difficult to wash out.
“I found Shen at a protest, mingling with a whole bunch of subversives. A few of them attacked me and I put them down. Shen seems to think that I should have let them stab me to death.” Lee knew that his answer was perhaps needlessly aggressive but he was too angry to care. His father looked at Shen, eyes cold and hard.
“Is this true?” Shen hesitated for a moment before responding.
“The police instigated the fight, we were being completely peaceful until they-”
“IS THIS TRUE?!” His father was shouting now and Shen fell silent before meekly nodding. Standing aside, Lee watched as Shen trudged down the hallway.
“Did anyone see him? Are the police going to come by and collect him?” Lee shook his head, they had made a clean escape.
“No. But don’t let him go out anymore, not until he gives up his subversive tendencies.” His mother gave him a strange look but said nothing.
“You should head back to base,” Lee heard his father say, “it’s late.” Lee nodded and collected his boots.
“I’m sorry for not writing back to you.” He said, and then headed out the door. He had an hour and a half before his curfew kicked in, and while he could have easily gotten a cab, he elected to walk. It helped to clear his head, and gave him time to think of exactly how he was going to handle the situation with Sergeant Chou.
Very possibly. Taiwan has a delicate path to walk, but it shall walk it all the same. Namely, with the finesse of a blind man navigating a tightrope.
Lee is a soldier serving in the army of the Republic of China. He's been my viewpoint of the situation on the mainland and is AH.com's favorite authoritarian conservative reactionary. That claim is completely unfounded but I stick by it anyways.
I don't usually describe my characters (I believe in allowing the readers to fill in the blanks and as such am open to people assigning Lee whichever features first come to mind when they read about him). But since you asked, Lee is 5' 8" (average Taiwanese height), well built, has close cropped black hair, brown eyes and always remains clean shaven. He also has a scar on his chin from when he accidentally cut himself with a pocket knife as a child.
A shorter update today, sorry about that.
41.
“Before this congress begins its work for today I would like to address a series of unsettling rumors that I have heard ever since Edward Brooke assumed the presidency. Due to electoral fraud committed by President Bush during the last election, many seem to think that President Brooke is thus illegitimate. This is not true. On January 3rd, when the electoral college counted and confirmed their ballots, they elected George Bush and Edward Brooke over Hubert Humphrey and myself. I would be lying if I said that I do not hold some bitterness over the whole unfortunate affair, but what is more important than seeking misguided revenge is fixing the damage done to this nation by George Bush.
The simple reality of our situation is that Edward Brooke is now the legitimate President of the United States of America, the commander in chief of our military, and the man in charge of running our nation for the next four years. Already I have heard a truly depressing number of allegations leveled at President Brooke, accusing him of such things as murdering George Bush and organizing the bombings of the 21 Club and the White House. I can assure you that these are not facts, but rather vitriol spewed by those misguided enough to think that a man’s skin color decides his competence in life.
This is not to say that I do not have my disagreements with the President. I suspect that we may not get along perfectly over the next four years, but what is important in these dire times is staying organized and working together to build up from this low that the nation has found itself in. There will be those who disagree with that sentiment, indeed nearly a hundred of them are in this very room, but it is my hope that we can work together, not just as a congress, but as a nation. Thank you.” Stepping away from the podium, Inouye surveyed the two houses of congress as he returned to his seat, hoping that he had made an impact. Congress seemed to be being conducted as a joint affair quite constantly these days and he was alright with that, it made it easier to address everyone at once.
“Boo!” Someone shouted from the back of the House benches, “go home chink!” Inouye rolled his eyes as he sat down and a few representatives jumped at each other. Glancing over at Frank Church, his whip, Inouye shook his head in mock sadness.
“You’d think that they’d be able to use the correct slurs by now.” Church chuckled and then watched as Robert Byrd took the podium.
“Our first order of business today is to debate and vote upon the first few choices handed out to us by President Brooke and Vice President Rogers,” a cascade of booing and jeers at the mention of the President, but Byrd spoke over them, “John Connally for Secretary of State, and Jacob Javits for Attorney General.” As the House filed away to begin their own business Inouye nodded at Church.
“Connally?” Church asked, and Inouye shrugged.
“He’s a good man, I’ve spoken to him before and he’s done a good job as Treasury Secretary.” Church seemed unconvinced.
“Let’s go see what everyone else thinks.” And so began the solemn process of debating over the President’s new cabinet. Javits, being a relatively inoffensive choice for Attorney General, and having significant legal experience, was subjected to little debate, and though the conservative wings of both parties announced their opposition, it was not enough to overcome the liberal and moderate coalition which handed him a position in the Brooke administration on a 64-28 vote.
Connally’s nomination was slightly more controversial and while many questioned whether he had the correct diplomatic experience to be the face of American foreign policy abroad, especially in light of growing tensions with India and Uyghurstan, there were just as many who spoke well of the man and in the end Connally was confirmed as well, despite an attempted filibuster from the Freedom Party that was defeated by Byrd and Inouye. As the senate broke apart for a recess, the Freedom Party gathered and plotted, wondering just what they could do to defeat their numerically superior opponents.
_______
Not too far away, Brooke was listening to Inouye’s speech and checking up on National Guard progress in the south. Sadly there still wasn’t much to be seen, operations within the cities of the deep south had been bogged down by refugee movements and Brooke had ordered the construction of temporary housing for displaced persons to stay in for as long as it would take for the violence to be ended. The firebombing of buildings occupied by armed rioters had become the norm in places like Birmingham and though the tactic had seemed to work at first, at least four police helicopters had been shot down in the past day by groups who had wised up to police operations.
One thing that did seem to be working was the usage of Operation CHAOS data to track militants and other armed groups. It wasn’t uncommon for looters to call one another and discuss which shops and houses were undefended, and while police responses were too slow to catch the robbers at the scene, they could identify them via phone records and arrest them later. This had been hugely successful to stop petty crime, but more often than not the groups responsible for most of the unrest, the Black Panthers, KKK, Aryan Brotherhood and Nation of Islam did not use phones, or at least made sure that their voices and locations were disguised before they did so.
Intelligence gathering had also been stunted by the mass defection of at least a third of the CIA’s leadership, who Brooke had ordered the Army to arrest not long after first taking office. This bothered him, but as he picked through the agency, looking for those responsible for disappearances and other domestic horrors, he knew that it would be a long time, perhaps months, before he would be able to fully rely on the CIA again.
_______
Deputy Director Schlesinger was twenty feet away from boarding his flight when a man in a suit pointed a revolver at his face.
“Drop your suitcase, get down on the ground, hands on your head. Get down!” Schlesinger blinked before slowly complying. Somehow he had expected to make it out of the nation, but now he was suddenly surrounded by FBI agents who were showing badges to the people nearby and telling them to back up. Handcuffs snapped around his wrists and Schlesinger sighed as he was hustled away, one agent toting his suitcase along, another telling the public to back away. A few cameras flashed and while Schlesinger could hear a few people shouting abuse at the agents hauling him away he supposed that they wouldn’t be defending him if they knew that he was...or at least had been the Deputy Director of the CIA. As the agents exited the airport he saw that not only had the FBI shown up, but a half dozen police cars as well. Here to guard the agents and their cargo he supposed. A nice gesture, even if he was very likely going to be killed before the day was out.
“Mr. Schlesinger,” an older agent said as Schlesinger was packed into the backseat of a black armored vehicle, “you have been arrested and will be brought in for questioning. No harm will befall you if you cooperate, but if you do not then you may find yourself being locked up for a very long time.” Schlesinger blinked, what was this? No threats of torture or murder? Just jail time? The older man nodded at the look on Schlesinger’s face. “Yes Mr. Schlesinger, this is a new time for America, now please answer the questions...”
_______
Not too far away Schlesinger’s former boss had just finished eating breakfast when his bodyguard was shot in the chest through the front door. William Colby had seen combat before and dove to the floor as his door was kicked in. This was a planned operation, he thought as he scrambled into the kitchen and lunged for the phone. Dragging the receiver with him, he snatched a knife and dialed for the police. Even as he did so he realized that there was no dial tone and saw, to his horror, that he had dragged the phone cord out of the wall in his haste to escape.
With no time to head back Colby listened to the tread of boots heading through the kitchen before heading into his bedroom. He had a gun in the nightstand and he aimed it at the door, his heart hammering and his vision seeming to constrict into the door and only the door. But even as agonizing seconds passed there was no movement, nobody tried to open it, and Colby heard nothing from outside. A minute passed, then another, and Colby sincerely wished that he hadn’t put bars over his windows. Sure it kept people out...but it also kept him in.
Finally, with his patience at the breaking point, Colby took a step forward, the floorboards creaked and a hole the size of a grapefruit appeared in the door. Colby jerked to the side and was in the process of raising his gun to return fire when he realized that his arms were suddenly refusing to work. Probably it had something to do with the orange sized hole in his chest.
Opening his mouth to swear at the men who had shot him, nothing escaped but a gout of blood, and even as the door was cautiously opened, Colby kicked and squirmed his last, and the trio of masked men nodded to one another before removing the cans of spray paint they had brought with them, and going to work.
41.
“Before this congress begins its work for today I would like to address a series of unsettling rumors that I have heard ever since Edward Brooke assumed the presidency. Due to electoral fraud committed by President Bush during the last election, many seem to think that President Brooke is thus illegitimate. This is not true. On January 3rd, when the electoral college counted and confirmed their ballots, they elected George Bush and Edward Brooke over Hubert Humphrey and myself. I would be lying if I said that I do not hold some bitterness over the whole unfortunate affair, but what is more important than seeking misguided revenge is fixing the damage done to this nation by George Bush.
The simple reality of our situation is that Edward Brooke is now the legitimate President of the United States of America, the commander in chief of our military, and the man in charge of running our nation for the next four years. Already I have heard a truly depressing number of allegations leveled at President Brooke, accusing him of such things as murdering George Bush and organizing the bombings of the 21 Club and the White House. I can assure you that these are not facts, but rather vitriol spewed by those misguided enough to think that a man’s skin color decides his competence in life.
This is not to say that I do not have my disagreements with the President. I suspect that we may not get along perfectly over the next four years, but what is important in these dire times is staying organized and working together to build up from this low that the nation has found itself in. There will be those who disagree with that sentiment, indeed nearly a hundred of them are in this very room, but it is my hope that we can work together, not just as a congress, but as a nation. Thank you.” Stepping away from the podium, Inouye surveyed the two houses of congress as he returned to his seat, hoping that he had made an impact. Congress seemed to be being conducted as a joint affair quite constantly these days and he was alright with that, it made it easier to address everyone at once.
“Boo!” Someone shouted from the back of the House benches, “go home chink!” Inouye rolled his eyes as he sat down and a few representatives jumped at each other. Glancing over at Frank Church, his whip, Inouye shook his head in mock sadness.
“You’d think that they’d be able to use the correct slurs by now.” Church chuckled and then watched as Robert Byrd took the podium.
“Our first order of business today is to debate and vote upon the first few choices handed out to us by President Brooke and Vice President Rogers,” a cascade of booing and jeers at the mention of the President, but Byrd spoke over them, “John Connally for Secretary of State, and Jacob Javits for Attorney General.” As the House filed away to begin their own business Inouye nodded at Church.
“Connally?” Church asked, and Inouye shrugged.
“He’s a good man, I’ve spoken to him before and he’s done a good job as Treasury Secretary.” Church seemed unconvinced.
“Let’s go see what everyone else thinks.” And so began the solemn process of debating over the President’s new cabinet. Javits, being a relatively inoffensive choice for Attorney General, and having significant legal experience, was subjected to little debate, and though the conservative wings of both parties announced their opposition, it was not enough to overcome the liberal and moderate coalition which handed him a position in the Brooke administration on a 64-28 vote.
Connally’s nomination was slightly more controversial and while many questioned whether he had the correct diplomatic experience to be the face of American foreign policy abroad, especially in light of growing tensions with India and Uyghurstan, there were just as many who spoke well of the man and in the end Connally was confirmed as well, despite an attempted filibuster from the Freedom Party that was defeated by Byrd and Inouye. As the senate broke apart for a recess, the Freedom Party gathered and plotted, wondering just what they could do to defeat their numerically superior opponents.
_______
Not too far away, Brooke was listening to Inouye’s speech and checking up on National Guard progress in the south. Sadly there still wasn’t much to be seen, operations within the cities of the deep south had been bogged down by refugee movements and Brooke had ordered the construction of temporary housing for displaced persons to stay in for as long as it would take for the violence to be ended. The firebombing of buildings occupied by armed rioters had become the norm in places like Birmingham and though the tactic had seemed to work at first, at least four police helicopters had been shot down in the past day by groups who had wised up to police operations.
One thing that did seem to be working was the usage of Operation CHAOS data to track militants and other armed groups. It wasn’t uncommon for looters to call one another and discuss which shops and houses were undefended, and while police responses were too slow to catch the robbers at the scene, they could identify them via phone records and arrest them later. This had been hugely successful to stop petty crime, but more often than not the groups responsible for most of the unrest, the Black Panthers, KKK, Aryan Brotherhood and Nation of Islam did not use phones, or at least made sure that their voices and locations were disguised before they did so.
Intelligence gathering had also been stunted by the mass defection of at least a third of the CIA’s leadership, who Brooke had ordered the Army to arrest not long after first taking office. This bothered him, but as he picked through the agency, looking for those responsible for disappearances and other domestic horrors, he knew that it would be a long time, perhaps months, before he would be able to fully rely on the CIA again.
_______
Deputy Director Schlesinger was twenty feet away from boarding his flight when a man in a suit pointed a revolver at his face.
“Drop your suitcase, get down on the ground, hands on your head. Get down!” Schlesinger blinked before slowly complying. Somehow he had expected to make it out of the nation, but now he was suddenly surrounded by FBI agents who were showing badges to the people nearby and telling them to back up. Handcuffs snapped around his wrists and Schlesinger sighed as he was hustled away, one agent toting his suitcase along, another telling the public to back away. A few cameras flashed and while Schlesinger could hear a few people shouting abuse at the agents hauling him away he supposed that they wouldn’t be defending him if they knew that he was...or at least had been the Deputy Director of the CIA. As the agents exited the airport he saw that not only had the FBI shown up, but a half dozen police cars as well. Here to guard the agents and their cargo he supposed. A nice gesture, even if he was very likely going to be killed before the day was out.
“Mr. Schlesinger,” an older agent said as Schlesinger was packed into the backseat of a black armored vehicle, “you have been arrested and will be brought in for questioning. No harm will befall you if you cooperate, but if you do not then you may find yourself being locked up for a very long time.” Schlesinger blinked, what was this? No threats of torture or murder? Just jail time? The older man nodded at the look on Schlesinger’s face. “Yes Mr. Schlesinger, this is a new time for America, now please answer the questions...”
_______
Not too far away Schlesinger’s former boss had just finished eating breakfast when his bodyguard was shot in the chest through the front door. William Colby had seen combat before and dove to the floor as his door was kicked in. This was a planned operation, he thought as he scrambled into the kitchen and lunged for the phone. Dragging the receiver with him, he snatched a knife and dialed for the police. Even as he did so he realized that there was no dial tone and saw, to his horror, that he had dragged the phone cord out of the wall in his haste to escape.
With no time to head back Colby listened to the tread of boots heading through the kitchen before heading into his bedroom. He had a gun in the nightstand and he aimed it at the door, his heart hammering and his vision seeming to constrict into the door and only the door. But even as agonizing seconds passed there was no movement, nobody tried to open it, and Colby heard nothing from outside. A minute passed, then another, and Colby sincerely wished that he hadn’t put bars over his windows. Sure it kept people out...but it also kept him in.
Finally, with his patience at the breaking point, Colby took a step forward, the floorboards creaked and a hole the size of a grapefruit appeared in the door. Colby jerked to the side and was in the process of raising his gun to return fire when he realized that his arms were suddenly refusing to work. Probably it had something to do with the orange sized hole in his chest.
Opening his mouth to swear at the men who had shot him, nothing escaped but a gout of blood, and even as the door was cautiously opened, Colby kicked and squirmed his last, and the trio of masked men nodded to one another before removing the cans of spray paint they had brought with them, and going to work.
Just a small thing that has been bugging me as I read the more recent China updates (still haven't finished to comment on them but I will try to finish quickly), but Ta-ching is not a surname that would be used in China or Taiwan. While there are some examples of two-syllable surnames (Ouyang, Situ / Szeto, etc.), they are not very common in the 20th-21st century and Daqing / Ta-ching (大慶) was never a historical two-character surname. If you're envisioning Chen Daqing as "President Ta-Ching", then he would be referred to as President Chen or Chen Da-ching.
Sorry for the nitpick, I'll get back to reading now.
Sorry for the nitpick, I'll get back to reading now.
I'm halfway through Falls and have been doing a little skimming ahead. Anyone mind telling me either here or via PM what happened to Ford after the 72 election?
President Bush had Ford, the Kennedys, and many other people blown to smithereens as they were meeting to discuss how to handle Bush's dive off of the deep end.
That's the main thing.