8-The Invasion Begins

The Invasion Begins

General Lyn Wag, in the cargo hold of the massive freighter ship addressed the ranks of soldiers. If there was any irony, it was  only that most of the ballistic armor and riot gear the troops wore were manufactured by Walmart. The rest of it felt like righteousness. Walmarts slogan was, “Providing jobs of the future. “

He spoke of the subjugation they had suffered under the Japanese.

America had backed them over Taiwan. Natural resources were there for the economic prosperity of the collective, he said to the room. There was the huge unpaid debt; America had filed decades of grievances with The United Nations about the treatment by the communists of certain minorities and that had been a constant annoyance. There was a feeling of wanting payback, the financials arrears notwithstanding.

There was revenge.

There was destiny.

Swarms of little drones buzzed in figured eights and circular loops above that cargo hold and the ranks of soldiers, each one no bigger than an owl, but in numbers in formations hundreds, and thousands big. Wag was higher hierarchy enough to have known of the solicitations of the One Worlders. They had learned well enough, at least their uncles and grandfathers had, what it means to be a socialist; the poor give up their possessions in the delusion that the rich will give a share of theirs as well.

It was to be a time of conquest and empire. The subjugated had found a path to rule their own subjects, or so they imagined.

They all knew that they were on a mission that was in the same spirit as the national mission to Mars; those peoples had been beyond quick resupply and when they were unable to establish the solar cells that would power their shelter and energy the whole world got to watch on a live stream as they suffered starvation, madness and death; the highest rated television and internet spectacle of all time.

This mission depended upon establishing a self-sustaining beachhead and assuming the reins of any un-illicit industry, because food and ammunition would not be forthcoming from command and retreat was not part of the vernacular. All supporting goods and materials would have to be procured from the front lines and the interior.

It was do or die for these soldiers, and they were highly trained and motivated. They had objectives and waypoints. The people would have two choices; comply or die. This was not to be a war of extermination, as the Japanese had waged against them. This was a war to usher in regime change, a well-worn phrase the population knew well from their own president’s adventures. The Chinese felt that the Americans were weak and dispirited after the greatest political disaster of recent times in the ill-fated American invasion of Iran and the only suicide of a sitting president in modern times with the death of Barrack Obama.

This was to be a conquest with courtesy. The people may react adversely at first, but within weeks they would see the The Peoples Army was a better choice of governance, command promised.

The word was given and the tanks and armored vehicles poured out of the shipyard to the cheers and shouts of support troops. The soldiers were professional and the orders were clear; no civilians were to be harmed unless they offered violence.

In that case, mortar teams would flatten a square kilometer around the area and all traces of resistance would be sterilized. It was all plotted out in advance; resources mapped and areas where resistors would be expected to be concentrated planned for.

The first few days went better than command had expected. The population was all but totally disarmed and so hateful of their government some actually cheered the Chinese troops as they marched in formation into the city center of Los Angeles. Above it all, camera equipped micro-drones recorded the scenes and sent the information back streaming to headquarters unnoticed to most all of the population, in real time.