The sound of incoming enemy artillery was a low rumble in the bunker Lieutenant Colonel Duke Rogers stood in, seventy feet below ground. The space, dimly lit by flickering artificial light, was part of a massive underground complex of tunnels, bunkers, and fighting positions that made up the eastern defensive lines in the Ural Mountains. He stood silently, listening to the whir and hum of the 3D printers all around the room. He was in the main logistics bunker of his brigade and around him machines were busy printing the commodities that would keep his force in the fight.
Against the wall to his left was the munitions printer, rapidly churning out small arms bullets from sheets of metal polymer. The new rounds were launched using electromagnetic force and didn’t need any propellant, allowing for full production at the front. On the other side were the medical and food production printers. The food printer combined nutrients together and produced cubes that functioned as meal replacements. To produce medicine, the machines combined the chemicals used to produce pharmaceuticals just like in the old days at factories.
It sounded funny to Rogers to think of the old days. They hadn’t produced things in true manufacturing lines since he was a teenager. Not since the Big War of the 2020s. He had been a private then, at least when it started. That was twenty years ago now. He wasn’t the same kid as he was back then. Back then he was reckless and carefree. He had been promoted quickly, after being in one of the few tanks to survive his first battle. His tank commander had died when an explosively formed penetration round cut through their tank. After that, he did what he had trained to do. He killed enemy tanks. He killed a lot of enemy tanks. He kept doing it too. The Army gave him a medal for it, a Distinguished Service Cross. They commissioned him too. And he chose to stay because of that.
“Colonel Rogers? The boss wants to see you. This way.” Rogers recognized the division commander’s aide, who had entered unnoticed from a tunnel to his right. Rogers followed the lieutenant through a winding, underground maze connecting his series of underground bunkers to the command bunker.
The bunker was surrounded by screens showing maps and video feeds from surveillance above the surface. Intermittent chatter squawked from the radio stations around the room and phones rang. The command room hummed with energy, indicating he had been brought in for a purpose. He crossed to the lean and hawkish-looking figure with shoulder length graying hair standing with arms crossed watching one of the video feeds intently.
“Ma’am, you requested me?” Rogers slammed rigidly to attention a few paces shy of his commander.
“Yes, Steve, I did,” Major General Abigail Rose greeted Rogers using his nickname and gesturing to join her near a map. When he was younger, he picked up the nickname Steve, an homage to a comic book hero, because of his sheer presence and demeanor. He had only known Rose for a few months, but he knew the stories. She was a legend from the Big War. She had been in the Canadian Army, back before the super states existed. She was a lieutenant when that war started but rose quickly to full colonel and commanded a newly formed unit, the 2nd Ground Contact Brigade. It had been a new model, a mixture of tanks, infantry, cyber, artillery, information—all sorts of specialties rolled into one unit. It was a ground portion of the 61st Penetration Division, a unit designed to bludgeon its way through the enemy line and create an opening for follow-on heavy divisions to exploit. As brigade commander she fought the last great battle of the war and lost nearly 80 percent of her unit but held the line and secured the battlefield victory that finally brought peace. The division had earned the “elite” moniker for the fight. She had retired but a new threat of war led her to come back from retirement and the United Western Hemisphere command had rewarded her with command of her old division and a promotion to major general. Rogers now commanded her beloved brigade, having assumed command after the previous commander was killed by enemy shelling the previous month.
“You’ve read the intelligence updates?” Rose queried, gauging Rogers’s response.
“I have, ma’am. They certainly look like this will be their big push,” Rogers peered into the 3D map gazing at his exit points.
“Your assignment is Red Sector on the northern flank. We suspect they’ll use their new buzzsaw penetration method we’ve seen in some of the smaller attacks but on a larger scale. They have three of their heavy divisions with a mix of armor and quad pods,” she said. “Like the smaller buzzsaw attacks, we expect them to form their wedge and protect it using a mix of scout and sensor drones forming screen clouds.”
He had seen the technique before. The enemy liked to form units in the classic cavalry wedge formation with their heavy armor forming the center line and their quad pod vehicles forming the outside edges. The quad pods were small, two-seater, all-terrain gyrospheres that mounted four heavy weapons, which used an electromagnetic-force mechanism to launch large-caliber rounds at thousands of feet per second. It was like rolling around in a ball with four automatic rail guns on it. They were cheap systems that protected the real killers, the energy tanks. To complete their formation, the enemy forces would fly swarms of drones above and on its immediate flanks, which served both to sense locations of enemy positions as well as to absorb the defenders’ fire during an assault. The attack left an ever-widening trail of debris of damaged and destroyed equipment that made it look like sawdust along a cut piece of wood—hence the nickname buzzsaw.
“Once they begin their assault and pass Phase Line Issi 1st Ground Contact Brigade, Stag, will launch their assault from the tunnels on the southern flank of the enemy wedge along Green Sector,” Rose continued. Rogers watched as the formations appeared and began moving along the map as she spoke. “Once the enemy formation crosses Phase Line Hattak you, Fox, will exit your tunnels and attack them from the north. You will be offset of 1st Brigade to prevent friendly fire but the two of you will conduct a double envelopment that cuts off the tip of the enemy wedge so that our artillery and the rest of the allies can destroy the enemy in detail. After you complete the envelopment, 3rd Air Contact Brigade, Bird, will follow you from your tunnel exit and provide overhead cover to shield you from enemy artillery using their antiair and antimissile lasers. This is the decisive operation of II Corps and key to holding the entire line for 3rd Western Hemisphere Army. If we don’t hold here, the People’s Republic of Asia rolls all the way to the Oder River before we can hope to stop them again, if at all. If they get through, they’ll envelop our defensive positions and the pursuit will destroy most of the rest of the Federation of Europe’s Eastern Army. I need you ready to go within a half hour. Any questions?”
“No, ma’am.” Her plan was simple enough. Draw the main enemy force into the corps’s killing space and cut off any support. Simple, effective, but dangerous. As Rogers watched the animation play through the envelopment it returned to the starting point and ran the simulation again, as if to emphasize the simplicity. There was only one thing that made him nervous: once his formation cut off the enemy force, he’d be faced with enemy formations both to the west and the east of his position. And there was a massive enemy force to his east. The mountains offered some protection by canalizing the forces into a narrower space but the seemingly endless enemy forces that would be to his east made him nervous. He would just have to trust the system to function and pray that it would destroy the lead enemy forces to his rear quickly and he could hold on long enough to be reinforced.
“Dismissed!” Rogers turned and entered the maze of tunnels leading to his command.
* * *
“Tom! Bring Sergeant Major Aguirre and join me at the map,” Rogers shouted at his operations officer as he entered his command bunker. Major Thomas Neil was anxious to prove himself to his commander, which Rogers hoped wasn’t going to be a liability. He was competent though and Aguirre, the operations noncommissioned officer that worked with Neil, was a solid and experienced Argentinian that wouldn’t let Neil get into too much trouble.
“Our sector is Red, we attack second. First brigade hits first in Green Sector to the south after the enemy cross Issi and then we hit them with the second attack from the north after they cross Hattak. Hopefully they’ll be so busy trying to respond to the southern attack that we will completely dislodge their momentum and they’ll have to pull back and reset.” Rogers was talking fast and manipulating the 3D map by hand as he spoke. “I want 1st Battalion to do the main penetration with 2nd Battalion focusing on protecting the eastern flank and 3rd Battalion planning to follow and assume the penetration.”
“Yes, sir,” Neil replied before dictating more detailed instructions to the machine that would produce the graphics and instructions he’d pass to the respective battalions. “Sir, will 1st have enough to push through?”
Rogers glanced at the forecasts on the screen next to the 3D map and frowned. “Pull three platoons of energy tanks from 2nd Battalion and task them over to 1st Battalion,” he replied and watched the projections change in real time as the orders were adjusted. “Move one of 1st Battalion’s infantry platoons to 2nd Battalion to try and offset the loss. Maybe that will give them a chance to keep some of the lighter enemy forces back for a while. That will have to be enough—anything else won’t allow any flexibility later. Send it out when you’re done, I’m going to find Al.”
“Yes, sir.” Neil responded, already busy at work with the orders machine that combined the forecasting with the current intelligence and unit status to enable the unit to operate quickly. Rogers walked down another tunnel into a large bay where the commander of his 1st Battalion, Major Allen Ricardo, was walking up and down his formation offering encouragement and last-minute instructions. He stood for a moment watching the energetic Guatemalan as he went from group to group, leaving soldiers grinning in his wake. Ricardo was Rogers stellar new battalion commander. He took command recently, his predecessor having been killed during an enemy airstrike during reception, staging, onward movement and integration. The man was young, having moved quickly through the ranks because of his natural leadership and ability to somehow understand the chaos of a modern battlefield.
“Al, I assume you got the order from Tom?”
“Yes, sir, it came through several minutes ago. I passed along the information to my commanders. We’ll be ready to go shortly. Hummingbird will be lead if you want to stop by and see him. He is over there near the front, by Bay A1,” Ricardo responded, preparing to move along to check on his additional three platoons of energy tanks to make sure they were ready.
“Thanks Al, I will. Do you have any questions?” Rogers asked.
“About the mission, sir? No. I don’t feel great about what happens after we’ve finished the envelopment though. There’s a lot of enemy units behind them.” Ricardo responded glumly.
“I know, Al. I don’t like it either. Once we’ve cut off the lead elements, I plan to shift more combat power to the east, and we will just have to hold until the air support comes and Corps has destroyed most of the cut-off units. Not much else we can do.” Rogers shrugged.
“I know, sir, I just don’t feel good about it,” Ricardo replied.
“I know. We haven’t got much choice though. If only the PRA would just join the space party, we wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore,” Rogers responded.
He was referring to the reason 3rd Western Hemisphere Army was even at the eastern border between the Federation of Europe and the People’s Republic of Asia. After the Big War, the large transnational corporations had merged and seized control of the old national governments. The Westphalian world order had fallen after nearly 220 million people died in the war. In their place, the four super states had emerged. The companies realized they could control all resources and labor rules in their entire supply chains if they controlled the entire chain. In some ways, it was a natural step of globalization. North and South America had merged, along with much of the Pacific islands and Australia, into the United Western Hemisphere. Europe had federalized, becoming the Federation of Europe and allied with United Western Hemisphere. They included much of the populated areas of former Russia, all the way to the Ural Mountains. The African Empire formed and expanded to the Tigris River and included most of Turkey, to the east side of the Bosporus Straits. The rest of Asia fell under the People’s Republic of Asia. The United Western Hemisphere and Federation of Europe alliance had worked out a deal with the African Empire on space colonization to reduce overpopulation and resource problems. The People’s Republic of Asia had vetoed the whole deal because its leaders thought it would put them at a disadvantage and wanted to unify the planet under one umbrella—their umbrella—before turning outward.
“I’ll be right behind you when we leave. We’ll do a comms check at five minutes before our departure time, so you’ve got about ten minutes to finish up here,” Rogers closed down the discussion. They just didn’t have the time to talk about their concerns more. They needed to leave in about fifteen minutes. They just had to trust that the planning models would be relatively accurate and every unit would do its part. He walked toward the front bays.
Rogers stopped to briefly go over the plan with Sam “Hummingbird” West. The guy was brilliant. He was Tohono O’odham and graduated top of his class from an Ivy League school. He had a chance for a job at the governmental corporation staff but turned it down to serve in the military. He was strapping on his sleek helmet and testing its heads-up display.
West was standing next to his command tank, which almost resembled a type of flatbed pickup. It had two tracks on each side, smaller than the big tracks of older tanks, and a turret in the front that was also smaller than its predecessors. The battery pack that powered the tank and the energy cannon ran along the V-shaped hull at the bottom, under the crew members, partially protecting them from blasts that came underneath. The flat back housed a series of mechanical arms that the automated repair system would use to fix or replace problems with the tank without the crew members needing to exit the vehicle and enabling them to stay in a battle.
The crew of three sat in the front in the turret. They typically used a camera projection system that allowed them to see outside the vehicle to drive and shoot without having the old vents or windows used to see. Those now acted as backup options in the event systems went down. These tanks were smaller and less armored than their ancestors to be more agile and harder to see, which increased their survivability on the modern battlefield. Instead of relying on heavy armor for protection, the tank had a microwave-sized box that sat on the back of the turret and functioned as an antimissile laser system and antidrone electronic warfare system. The main weapon system was an energy cannon that could fire a pulse every six seconds without need of a loader or munitions. The energy pulse itself was mostly invisible to the naked eye but was tinged in blue to help the crew track shots. The pulse killed by slamming into its target like a shock wave.
“You ready, Sam?” Rogers asked.
“Yes, sir! The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can start to see the galaxy!” West grinned. Across the brigade it was well known that his true desire was to see other planets through the planned colonization project that had led to the conflict.
“All right, be smart and go get them.,” Rogers replied before heading off to mount his command tank.
“Command, this is Fox 6, we’re in position, over.”
“Fox 6, this is Command, roger that. Stag stirred up a hornet’s nest. Launch when ready, out.”
He flicked the radio to his internal brigade net. “Lightning 6, this is Fox 6, they’ve passed Phase Line Hattak. Let’s go.” Lightning was Rogers’s first battalion.
“Fox 6, Lightning 6. We’re on our way.”
* * *
Blinding light burst through the tunnel opening before the auto-dimming features corrected the lighting on the screens as Rogers’s tank whirred and rumbled out at high speed. As he crested the tunnel, he quickly surveyed the space, taking in readings that flashed in front of his face and showed his and enemy forces disappearing off the 3D visual as units were annihilated. His driver zigzagged around hunks of steel and smoldering carcasses of tanks, quad pods, and aircraft. Constant movement was the key to survival.
Blue energy pulses flashed back and forth, tossing tanks dozens of feet aside and bending them like they’d been swatted by a giant invisible hand. Dust kicked up all around Rogers’s tank and he heard a faint buzz as his vehicle’s defensive electronic warfare kit engaged the enemy drone, which tumbled heavily to the ground.
“Lightning 6, status report!” Rogers tried to keep his voice calm amid the chaos around him.
“This is . . . 6. . . . The . . . too many . . .” came the broken reply.
“Say again Lightning 6, they’re jamming your transmission. Change wavelengths.”
“Fox 6, this is Lightning 6. The penetration is almost complete but they’re pushing around our flank. There’s too many of them to hold. We need support on the flank!” Ricardo reported. His transmission was clear this time, having switched his comms system to a new wavelength to avoid the jamming.
“Roger. Help is on the way. Fox 6, out.” Rogers spent the next moments relaying information back and forth, helping to ensure all his subordinates had a good understanding of what was happening. That was difficult because his formation had created a chokepoint halting the progress of the enemy formation. As the enemy forces looked for a way around his formation, Rogers’s unit was in danger of being surrounded like a rock in a flowing river if air support didn’t arrive soon.
“Command, this is Fox 6. Do we have an ETA on air support? Over.”
“Fox 6, this is Command. They are departing in two minutes, over.” Rogers breathed a sigh of relief. Their air support was on the way and the two ground brigades would no longer be facing multiple enemy divisions alone.
Moments later the comms system came alive again. “Fox 6, this is Command. We’re still working on trying to destroy the cut off forces, I need you to hold the rest of them back.”
“Roger Command, we’ll do our best.” Rogers glanced at an alert that flicked across his screen indicating his second battalion command group had been eliminated and shifted his map to show his left flank disposition. The live feed report showed the battalion’s combat power was down to 67 percent and dropping rapidly. The unit’s position was barely visible among the swarm of red icons overwhelming it. He ordered his third battalion to reinforce the position, hoping the two battalions together could hold until air support arrived.
A massive explosion was followed quickly by three more and slewed Rogers’s tank to the right. It crashed into a rock formation and barrel-rolled to a stop over forty feet away. Miraculously he stayed conscious and the emergency systems detached the turret and enabled him to crawl out. Blood dripping from his ears and his left leg useless he dragged himself to the side of his tank. A quick glance back at the tank showed him that the rest of his crew was not so lucky.
“Command, this is Fox 6 on foot. The tunnel exit is blocked. Air support is going to have to find another way. We need another path back to friendly lines too.” Rogers groaned as he propped himself up.
“Fox 6, this is Command. You’ll have to push through and pull back with Stag. We will try to send air around that way. I need you to buy some time. Keep them busy at all costs!”
He switched his radio back to the brigade net. “Lightning 6, this is Fox 6. We need to drive through to Stag and exfiltrate with them. Our tunnel is blown.”
“Fox 6, this is Lightning 6. That’s a negative, they just sent another division between us and Stag. We aren’t going to make it.” Ricardo stayed calm despite the desperate situation.
“Command, this is Fox 6. We can’t make it to Stag, we need air support.”
“Fox 6, this is Command. Understood, just hold them back and we will send help.”
Rose removed her headset as Major Neil ran into the command bunker, out of breath. He had sprinted from his own operations bunker after losing communications with his brigade commander. Neil watched as Rose turned to the battle captain next to her. “Tell them to blow the tunnel and bring the air support back to the final defense of the mountain line.” The entire command bunker went silent.
“They’ll all die!” Neil gasped.
Rose turned toward him, her piercing eyes burning with emotion at having to give the brutal order. “I know,” she replied soberly. “But we’ve done our job.” She walked out of the command post into the tunnel. Once out of sight her shoulders slumped, and she leaned against the wall and wept for the loss of her beloved division.
* * *
Over three thousand kilometers to the east the largest amphibious landing force that had ever been assembled stormed ashore along the Artic coast in northeast Asia. Deep behind enemy lines, the assault that would end the war had begun. The defense in the Urals had pulled most of the enemy forces into a bloody fight in the mountains as a deception that would allow an invasion to succeed. But it came at the cost of the best unit in the United Western Hemisphere Army. That was the price of victory.
Garrett Chandler is the brigade execute officer of 4th Combat Aviation Brigade and a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.