De Facto: Liberators: Version I: Part I

Chapter VI: The Battle for Quang Tri Province

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They walk to the central elevator across from the hall, other soldiers following fully geared.
The soldiers seemed mindless. Sirius had mentioned their frontal lobes being destroyed, whatever its function was, and it surely changed their behavior. They reminded Thomas of sheep.
Thomas had also wondered about the civilized part of this United States. Where's the media? He remembered about CBS in Vietnam covering the action on the ground. He had hoped it wouldn't be like what he has seen.
"Where are you from?" Sirius caught him off guard.
"Umm.. Missouri. You?"
"Oklahoma." Oklahoma? Her name seemed from elsewhere. It didn't matter.
"O.K. When we get to the hallway, where we met, take to the hangar. You and I are going to provide air support, then we'll drop in on our side. The F-81 will be in our reach for emergency."
"Like the Hydrogen Bombs they'll drop on is?" Sarcastic, he expected an explanation.
"They will. Which is why we have an airplane on standby."
Thomas thought for a moment. The Battle fixing to take place seemed crucial for the war. As it stood for whether Russia advances or whether they are repelled. For what reasons they fought for Quang Tri.
"Why Quang Tri?"
"Oil. That's all this shit war is about. Oil. As if hydrogen power isn't enough. Our aircraft's fuel is hydrogen and our electrical plants are fueled in hydrogen. Even the Russian's aircraft are powered in hydrogen and I think they're ahead of us on the technology. It's all about the oil for the markets around the world."
Around the world? As there were more countries alive.
"Around the world? I thought the other countries were al...."
"SHHH!" Sirius cut him off after springing forward and closing his mouth with her hand while the other held an index finger vertically to her mouth.
"Later." She whispers.

Hurrying with the other soldiers until the hangar hall, Thomas and Sirius climb aboard a two-seater variant of the legendary F-81 V-naught X.
The B-model consisted of larger fuel tanks and two seats, instead of the standard one-seater variant for the fighter aircraft.
Sirius, smiling while taking off her backpack and opening it, takes out some "extra snacks" as she had called it, meaning it would be a long flight to and back. The WWD simply didn't feed the soldiers as well as Sirius was fed, and now Thomas.
Thomas smiles back, and gives a laugh. "When did you get all of that?"
Sirius laughs back. "Just before we were all geared up I snatched some from our kitchen."
Crackers, whole chicken and turkey, MRE's (Company of World Wide Defense Nutrition Administration), and a whole load of oysters. She was quite clever, yet it's her very nature to be.
"Very clever!"
"Let's get going!"
Sirius loved flying. She couldn't wait to fly everyday.
They arrive at Quang Tri in its southern region, with no sort of aggression in the air, and land behind the battle line. This was no longer the Border, as it was yesterday, Sirius had thought.
They land and Sirius dismounts the plane and accesses its cargo hold and pulls some weapons out.
"Take your pick." She says so, then pulls herself out an assault rifle, the SRA-15 (Supersonic Round Accelerator).
Thomas takes a simple rifle, one like he used to shoot as a kid, the MR Series 12.
"The clip on yours holds fifteen rounds, Thomas."
"What about yours?" Sirius pulls a drum mag from the compartment just to the left of the cargo hold.
"All I need." She smiles, and Thomas found her even more clever than he'd originally expected, and in that matter, also very attractive as her eyes met his in the moment.
They had landed in a valley, without hills to their north, where the line was ahead of them.
"Follow me." She whispered over her radio. Thomas followed.
"How long until we group with our own?"
"Five minutes."
He wanted to get his mind off of the closing battle, artillery, he thought, and constant thumping of the air from large calibers which hit his heart with pressure, he wanted to start a conversation with her. Learn more about her.
"So, back in your time, how much different is it than mine. If it's changed at all."
Sirius, without turning her head to him, replies.
"It depends on what you mean by change. Today isn't much different than since humanity, them and us, ever fought battles or wars. Or to where our culture was demeaned or theirs was. Or where only certain things bothered a society a world away and thought of intervening, only to find it a mistake. No. Nothing's changed."
'Nothing has changed.' She thought, almost angry now, though she didn't expect Thomas to understand. Her love for him helped to erase the world she didn't want to be in, the world she is in.
"I don't understand how I've gotten here, or why this is our fight, but what I do understand is that something has certainly changed. Can you please tell me." The blasts become louder.
"Technology. And sides. The world has changed sides. America is now a dictatorship and its opposing superpower is democratic. I've always felt it's gone beyond politics. Like it's their bare nature to do so, is fight."
"Like it isn't ours either."
"It is like ours. I know that. Thomas, this isn't our war. We don't have to be here."
"I promise we'll get out. Together."
"I promise, too." Sirius did indeed promise. Thomas smiles to himself.
They arrive to the line, just over a hill, and find dead soldiers from both sides. The Russians being in simple combat attire and sparse armor while some of the WWD's forces being fully protected, dead. Though some still live reinforcements wouldn't arrive until another twenty minutes. The Russians seemed infinite.
"My God. Thomas, we have to hold this area."
"Let's take position."
"I'll send you the local map. It contains positions the helmet has deemed tactically smart." A beep, which sounded a lot like what Thomas use to hear when he watched the early Apollo missions on television. The map opens.
From east to west, Alpha Rex, Charlie Fox. Those hills provide supporting sniper fire, Thomas and Sirius took to those hills while the main ground force took the southernmost part of the map, Bravo Rex, and the north being the Russian, Delta Fox.
"There's one, get 'em!" A soldier yells.
Thomas takes aim, squeezes his trigger and a jolt is sent through his shoulder following a deep-tone crack. The bullet hits the Russian in his right shoulder, just low enough to where it hits the tip of his heart, blood running thick down him. There were more, and turret fire surely took them down. Sirius couldn't watch, tears rolling down her eyes and embarrassed.
She had never killed anyone. The pilot she had shot down was her first air kill, the day she met Thomas. The pilot ejected. She made sure he made it.
Turret fire and Thomas laid out plenty of men, blood splashing out of them in the sun and staining the surrounding leaves. Red glimmers on green. Then, after seventeen hours of this, the Russians halt their attack.
'They've stopped? I'm exhausted. My ammunition... I need more'
'Oh, Lord. Forgive me.'
From the hill, Thomas could see that some soldiers of the WWD were still alive and dusk was arriving, the sun also tired from the earth's turmoil.
Sirius speaks, shaking with the aftermath of adrenaline hype and panting frantically with occasional sobs. "We are going to be here for awhile." Her voice was rasped.
"How long." Thomas, shaking the same way, indifferent of his killing, though unknowing if it.
"Days. Weeks maybe." Her tears hadn't stopped rolling since the battle started. "They'll send more until they give up and drop the bomb."
"Unless they only give up. This is our chance to push forward."
"We aren't on the offensive. We never have been." She pants between her sentences. "We push forward to Laos we invade their country."
"It's just us against the Russians?"
"The WWD is like a US Embassy, and the United States is still where it was."
It feels all the same to him now, despite the technologies.
This battle is over. But until they push forward, there'll be more.
The more blood merely doesn't make you win, but by which side's will is stronger than the others.
This was, seemingly, war.
The Vietnam Offensive ended, and it was onward towards China.