The Storm Breaks: November 2056 to April 2057
The Interstellar Age, S01E05
It would be difficult to overstate the direness of the situation in which the Allies found themselves at the end of 2056. On four fronts in three theaters of war, major confrontations loomed - each of which, if lost, might doom the entire Allied cause.
The United Kingdom, the last Allied stronghold in Europe, remained under siege by Sino-Russian forces. Enough supplies were still coming through the Atlantic gauntlet to keep the island nation from going under, but just barely. While the UK continued to suffer under near-constant missile attack, it had perhaps two or three months left before it would begin to run out of defense ammunition–and food. Then, it would have no choice but to surrender, or watch its people slowly starved and bombed to death. With the UK gone, the Allies would have virtually no hope of liberating Continental Europe, even if the war should turn in their favor elsewhere.
In Australia, the PLA was advancing toward the nation’s capital region, where the majority of its population and economic capacity was located. They also had the country’s last western port, Perth, under siege. If it fell, the PLA would gain an important supply hub, and the ability to advance on the capital region from two sides. If Australia were to be lost, the last Allied bastion in the Western Pacific would fall with it, making any future campaign against the enemy heartland all but impossible.
In the Southern United States, Chinese armies had breached the US border at several places after routing Allied forces from Mexico. Texas, Arizona, and Southern California had been invaded, and the bulk of US ground and air forces had been committed to their defense. If the Southern line should break, and US forces be routed, the American industrial and agricultural heartland would be open to enemy occupation. With production here even severely reduced, there would be no way to keep remaining Allied forces properly supplied to continue the fight.
Finally, in Canada, the nation’s capital and east coast had already fallen into enemy hands. Virtually the entire Canadian Army, reinforced by the remnants of the European and Japanese armies-in-exile, had concentrated near the country’s most populous and prosperous city, Toronto, which PLA and Russian forces had placed under siege. A decisive battle loomed, on a scale the large but thinly populated country had never before seen. If the Allies lost it, Canada would fall to the enemy.
It was here that the first, and most crucial decision would be reached - for if the PLA in Canada were freed up to launch a full-scale invasion of the northern United States, the war would be lost. Pressed on two sides, the greatest of the Allied powers would have little chance of survival - and the cause of liberty around the world would be doomed.
Yet there was still some cause for hope, however slight it seemed in the moment. Having failed to prevent the Axis landings in the Americas, the Allied navies based in the United States had changed their focus to interdicting the enemy’s ocean supply lines. At the same time, Argentinian and Venezuelan forces had become bogged down in Brazil, whose rough terrain and greater-than-expected resistance were proving impossible for the third-rate Axis armies to overcome. This placed an additional strain on Chinese Atlantic supplies, which their campaign in the Southern US could ill-afford. Similarly, Allied submarines based out of Pearl Harbor were inflicting small but steady and significant losses on Chinese supplies heading to Australia, which were already hampered by the inadequate port facilities they had thus far captured there.
The same difficult logistical situation prevailed in Canada, where winter was beginning to set in. Long supply lines from the East Coast were only going to get rougher as the months wore on, both from worsening weather - including near-constant rain and strong winds in Eastern Canada, which had already begun - from the Allied naval interdiction effort, and from increasing partisan attacks. Allied planners had every intention of making use of these advantages in the battle to come.
A similar opportunity presented itself with the onset of summer in Australia. Chinese augmech forces consumed massive quantities of water to keep themselves functional. The rapidly rising heat in the desert regions only increased this already dire need, while reducing the available supply of water in the countryside. Australian forces capitalized on this vulnerability by focusing their attacks on the Chinese lines of supply - in particular their reserves of water.
The storm finally broke in February, 2057, when the Axis launched near-simultaneous major offensive operations in all three of the main battlefronts, seeking a decision once and for all.
They would get one.
Brutal urban warfare had been raging in Toronto since November, as the city was gradually encircled and rolled through by Chinese forces, while their Russian partners protected the vital northern flank of their attack. The city had been utterly devastated; hundreds of thousands of casualties had been taken between the two sides, and most of the core was in PLA hands by the end of January. Only the southwest still held out; as the urban sprawl decreased in that direction, so did the ability of the tenacious defenders to slow down their enemies.
It was as General Chang Liao’s Northern Army Group was closing in on this last urban bastion that the Canadian and Allied counterstroke finally fell. While most of the Canadian army was still engaged defending the city, Allied exile forces from France, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Japan, Finland, and Sweden launched a massive offensive against the north-eastern flank of the Axis line. The Allies achieved complete operational surprise, having masked the buildup of forces using stealth and deception methods copied from the PLA themselves; notably, they had used spoofed signals intelligence to convince the enemy that most of the Allied exile forces had either been transferred south to help the Americans, or had already been committed to the fight within the city - which had gone some way toward explaining the heavy resistance the PLA had been facing in the street-by-street battle.
Chang’s right flank was held by Russian partner forces, bolstered only by a single Chinese infantry division - but this did not mean it would be an easy target. The Russian Expeditionary Force was commanded by General Andrei Sokolov, a veteran of both the First and Second Russo-Ukrainian Wars. Sokolov had a reputation as both a solid operational planner, and a rare man of integrity in the Russian general officer corps—throughout the invasion of Canada, he had made efforts to restrain his men from committing reprisals and other atrocities against the civilian population, unlike his comrades in Europe.
While Chang had remained dismissive of the possibility of a large counterattack, believing the fight had gone out of the soft Canadians and their European allies, Sokolov had never believed his commander. He had dug in as best as he could with the forces at his disposal, which were not sufficient in number or in quality to defend the the varied terrain of a very long defensive line–a line which continued to grow longer as more PLA forces were committed to the attack on the city itself.
Sokolov dug in his one PLA division on the extreme right of the entire Axis line, at the bend of the Holland River and Lake Simcoe, placing the river before it as a barrier, while the lake refused its right flank. He then placed his best-equipped augmech forces in the center of the line, turning the occupied city of Bradford-West Gwillimbury into a virtual fortress. His hope was that any Allied attack would of necessity strike at one or both of these places, where it might be slowed enough that his considerable mass of conventional artillery would have a chance of defeating it.
The Allied offensive, when it came, consisted of three parts launched in sequence. In the first, a massive artillery barrage opened up along the entire line, with thousands of newly produced, magazine-fed rapid firing howitzers launching millions of shells toward Axis positions. Swarms of EM-disruption drones joined in the attack, confusing Chinese and Russian point defenses. At the same time a huge air operation began, with Allied planes and combat drones from both Western Canada and the United States attacking targets all along and behind the Axis front, tying up PLA air forces. Behind this intense barrage, the Canadians within the city attacked, pinning down the Chinese and attracting the attention of Chang’s command.
Two hours after this attack began, the main Allied blow fell. Exile forces, along with Canada’s only two new-model armored divisions, drove straight into Russian lines at the junction of the primary and eastern branches of the Holland River. Here, the East Branch created a barrier between two Russian divisions, a natural hinge point which, if the Allies could cross it, would immediately cleave Sokolov’s line in two. The Ukrainian Corps, augmented by recruits from the Ukrainian émigré communities in Western Canada, led the way. Its troops were eager for revenge against the Russians occupying their homeland thousands of miles away–the Russians here in Canada would have to do, at least for now.
The Russians in this sector, largely un-augmented regular forces, didn’t stand a chance. As their line collapsed, the Allies used new bridging techniques copied from those the PLA had used to such great effect in Europe and Japan to get major forces across both branches of the Holland within hours–-well before Sokolov or Chang could divert significant mobile reserves to the area. The Axis line had already been pierced; now, Allied forces surged through the gap, building more bridges as insurance against the PLA long distance strikes that now began targeting them. Chang rushed reserves to the south of the breach to prevent his siege forces in the city from being attacked in the flank.
This was not the Allied plan. Instead, their forces drove east, aiming for two major north-south highways that would take them deeper into the Axis rear. As Chang realized the threat, he committed the remainder of his reserves in the region to halting this drive.
But this Allied flanking force was not alone. Before the other two attacks had been launched, the third had been set into motion. Now, it finally began. Finnish and Swedish mobile forces, along with Canadian special forces–all well adapted and trained for winter combat operations–had spent days slowly circumnavigating Lake Simcoe, hiding from Chinese reconnaissance all the way. Now, they attacked south along Highway 12, headed for the city of Oshawa, miles behind the Axis front line. The minimal Russian forces placed to the east of Lake Simcoe as pickets were routed almost without a fight by the small, but far superior Allied flanking force.
This last maneuver finally threw the Axis commanders into a panic. Chang had no more reserves to hand to block the move, and his defenses in Oshawa itself, considered a safe rear area until now, would not be sufficient to stop the combined Allied force from cutting off the city to the east, if not taking it entirely. Doing so would pin virtually all of Northern Army Group, and the REF, against Lake Ontario. The raiding forces which had been sent into Maine, New York State, and toward Western Canada were now recalled–but it was clear they would not make it back in time to prevent the encirclement.
The math was inescapable. At the end of February, Finnish and Swedish detachments reached the shores of Lake Ontario east of Oshawa. Chang and Sokolov were surrounded. The brutal fighting of the last month had left the Chinese augmech forces low on fuel and ammunition. Most of Sokolov’s units had virtually dissolved, with the Allies taking over fifty thousand Russians prisoners in February alone. Chang immediately ordered breakout offensives both to the east and west, but these attacks were costly failures. It was clear that cut off from resupply, Northern Army Group lacked the strength to break out on its own. Chang’s only hope was that the forces recalled from Northwest Ontario and from the United States would be able to breach the Allied cordon in conjunction with a last breakout attempt from within. Failing that, his comrades on other fronts, particularly the Southern United States, would have to find victory in order to save him from total annihilation.
Unfortunately for Chang, as February turned to March, the news from that front was no better. On February 24th, the Chinese advance through Texas was stopped cold at the Battle of Dallas. General Langworth’s 2nd Army used the same tactics that had won him the Battle of Austin the previous year, modified by what he had learned in that earlier engagement. This time, the PLA would not get the opportunity to isolate and advance beyond the urban stronghold. On March 2nd, US forces launched a major counterattack near Abilene, caving in a section of the Axis line held by Venezuelan troops. US armored divisions and augmented special forces drove through this gap and toward the thin Chinese supply lines supporting the attack on Dallas. General Bao Gong’s Western Army Group had no choice but to retreat from the city, or be cut off and surrounded like its Northern comrades.
At almost the same moment, disaster struck on the third battlefront: Australia. General Zhao’s main advance toward New South Wales was forced to halt due to a lack of water at the beginning of March. While he waited for resupply from the Darling river to the north, the Australians counterattacked, cutting Zhao’s thin supply line and surrounding his forces in the middle of the desert in mid-summer. Zhao’s augmech forces refused to surrender; within days, tens of thousands had died of dehydration while trying in vain to break through Australian lines. Zhao escaped back to Darwin, but the entire army he had been leading south was destroyed. At a stroke, the eastern flank of the invasion had crumbled.
The western flank was soon to follow; receiving word of the destruction of Zhao’s main force, and of the disaster in Canada and the retreat from Texas, the PLA corps at Perth lifted the siege of the city, then in its six month. As much of the civilian population as possible had been evacuated the previous September as enemy forces approached; nevertheless, throughout the siege it had only been possible to resupply the garrison and the remaining population via submarine, and both were on the verge of starvation when the PLA finally retreated.
Australian forces attempted to harry the Chinese withdrawal, but being outnumbered and low on fuel, they stood little chance of reaching the PLA home base at Port Hedland before the Chinese. The PLA reached the port two weeks later and established a fortified beachhead. Now, the tables turned, with the Australians placing the Chinese under siege. On the other side of the country, the PLA stronghold at Darwin was not so lucky. Zhao ordered an evacuation, which was completed just before the Australians arrived to liberate the city at the end of April. This did not save Zhao, though. He returned to China, only to be dismissed from command, tried for treason, and executed on the personal orders of Chairman Shang that June. He was the first PLA commander to suffer this fate–but would not be the last.
After the withdrawal from Texas, Bao was forced to halt his advances into Arizona and California, then withdraw to more defensible positions rather than risking encirclement. The new defensive lines on this front ran from San Diego to Tucson in the west, and effectively along the southwest border between Texas and Mexico. Here, the lines stabilized; for now, both sides were prepared to halt for resupply and reorganization after months of brutal fighting, which had inflicted heavy losses on the Americans as well as on the Axis.
In the north, the thin hopes of the encircled Northern Army Group quickly evaporated. Bolstered by freshly raised units, US forces attacked the detached PLA corps in the northeast as it turned and drove toward Buffalo, attempting to relieve Chang from the south. The Americans in this region lacked the strength to destroy or encircle the Chinese, but they were again forced to retreat–this time, headlong back into Eastern Canada, ending the threat to the Northeast United States. Similarly, the PLA force recalled from around Sudbury in Northern Ontario attacked the north of the Allied cordon in the Battle of Coldwater from March 14 - 17, while Chang focused his remaining mobile strength in an attack to the north to meet them.
This desperate play had little chance of success. With insufficient air support, the relief force all but destroyed itself in repeated, suicidal attacks. Expending the last of their fuel reserves, Chang’s resource-hungry augmech forces drove as far north as Newmarket, then ran out of steam. The breakout attempt had hastened the end of the massive siege, but only by ensuring that the Chinese and Russians would more rapidly lose the ability to keep fighting. Their fate was now sealed.
The Authoritarian Axis had committed a fatal error the previous year–that of overconfidence. Allied forces had folded even more easily than Chinese planners had expected in the first two years of the war, and followed these crushing defeats by completely surrendering the initiative in 2055. These events seemed to confirm what the Chairman Shang, General Fang, and their authoritarian partners already believed: that the world’s last remaining democracies were weak, decadent, and chaotic; that they lacked the will and ideological purity for a life-and-death, global struggle; that their divided houses were rotten to the core, and were one swiftly kicked-in door away from collapse.
They should have studied their history more closely–or perhaps, should have studied actual history, rather than the propaganda they called history. Despite some stunning and demoralizing initial setbacks, the Allies’ fortress doctrine had been vindicated–but only because they had proved more than willing to fight for their homes and their freedom. Rather than eroding it, each enemy victory, each atrocity committed against occupied populations, had only increased the democratic will to resist.
The PLA had simply not committed enough forces to each of its three massive invasions to overcome this iron resistance. Indeed, any rational estimate of the strategic and logistical situation in early 2056 would have predicted what early 2057 had proved: that the Axis could not have committed, and then supported, sufficient forces to achieve these objectives, because it did not have the capacity to do so. Only a dangerous underestimation of–indeed, a contempt for–their enemies convinced the Axis that the rules of war did not apply to them.
Despite being the target in China’s backyard, the invasion of Australia in particular had been an unnecessary overreach. While the island nation could have provided a springboard for future attacks against the Chinese heartland, should the war elsewhere turn in the Allies’ favor, it could not by itself challenge the Eurasian might of the Authoritarian Axis. Conversely, if the United States had been defeated, the war would have been over, the Axis victorious.
Thus, the only sensible strategy would have been for the PLA to commit the ground forces and–even more crucially - the naval and air resources required for the Australian Expedition to the titanic invasion of North America. Given how close that campaign came to victory in October-November 2056, perhaps this commitment would have tipped the balance in favor of the Axis, and won them the war.
Perhaps not. Fortunately, the world would never find out. By the beginning of spring, 2057, the Authoritarian Axis had finally lost the initiative in the war they had begun four years earlier. The Allies were now determined to seize it.