*PART 2/PROLOGUE*
‘’Such a decision [to use nuclear weapons] would have to be political, and in my opinion, would be an impossible choice: if nuclear weapons were not to be used but only threatened, we would be faced with the question of how to survive a massive conventional attack that…Warsaw Pact was capable of mounting. Without timeline political guidance to conduct one form of defense or another, we would not stand a good chance’’.
-General John R, Calvin, Fulda Gap, July, 1983
LOCATION: North German Plain, Deutsche Demokratische Republik
YEAR: 1973 A.D.
DATE: October 31
Colonel General Tamerlan Maltsaev held a rustic pair of binoculars to his eyes, slowly scanning the perimeter enveloped by the orange autumnal sun. His sometime adjutant, a youthful Oberst named Huber, was obviously awaiting opportunity to insinuate his opinion on some matter or another - Maltsaev had, over the preceding 10 months, learned to detect and interpret the younger man’s subtle body language. When Huber, instinctively taciturn as he was efficient, was awaiting opportunity to address his superior, he would purse his lips and shift his bodyweight in barely perceptible rhythm from one leg to the other. Maltsaev, feeling charitable, addressed Huber directly,
‘’Speak your mind’’. Huber stared momentarily towards the enemy columns, beyond visual range without aid of binoculars or telescope. Then replied,
‘’What was the status of our forces when the Americans signaled that their command element had ordered DefCon status elevation?’’.
‘’You know the answer to that question as well as I, Oberst’’, Maltsaev stated tersely. ‘’Do not speak in riddles. What is the point you wish for me to grasp?’’
‘’Yes, Tovarisch General’’, continued Huber. ‘’The Americans have come to view the strategic situation as an accountant might a balance ledger. Their best minds have convinced themselves that a desirable outcome can always be accomplished if the correct signaling is indicated, buttressed of course by the potential destructive power and deployability of forces in being. It is a splendid Newtonian calculus’’.
‘’And what do you suggest, Oberst? Do you allege, as to the Cuban comrades in their primitive if admirable fervor, that the nuclear arms of the socialist community of nations are an instrumentality of liberation?’’
‘’No, Colonel General. I suggest nothing…nothing so facile. I merely observe that the moral conceits of the imperialists, and of their Zionist allies as we have just observed in preceding days, have corrupted their ability to reason effectively’’. Maltsaev seemed lost in thought, then replied abruptly,
‘’Your Father was a soldier, was he not?’’
‘’Yes, Tovarisch General’’.
‘’Indeed. He fell at Leningrad. I read your dossier, Oberst. I’m aware of his career and his sacrifice. Officer candidates of his generation, under that regime, developed a certain reverence for Prawdin. Have you read his biography of Genghis Khan?’’
‘’I have not, Colonel General’’.
‘’There was an understanding by the Khan that warfare is synonymous with statecraft. The will to wage war and the will to advance history is therefore synonymous. The Americans and the Zionists have a more complete grasp of this than you are allowing, Oberst’’.
‘’Forgive me, Tovarisch General…I don’t quite..’’
‘’You don’t apprehend this’’, Maltsaev interjected, ‘’Because you accept what the enemy declares at face value. Look at the war that was waged in Vietnam. The logic of the body count, of the free fire zone is on its face foolish. Deliberately foolish. The deeper logic is not unlike that of the Khan, do you understand?’’
‘’Not entirely, Colonel General’’.
‘’The essence of the American war was observed at My Lai 4. That young officer…Calley, he attested that he and his men were directed, in doctrinal terms, to eradicate the Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary idea. They set about completing this mission orientation by eradicating the vessels of that idea…the menschenmaterial within the minds of whom the enemy idea could exist. Just as the Khan understood that only by the total annihilation of the enemy, without mercy, without hesitation could facilitate the creative potentiality of historical processes.’’
Huber looked on thoughtfully, then stated, ‘’Nuclear arms are the enemy’s alibi’.
‘’Exactly, Oberst. The fact that we possess the means to inflict unacceptable violence upon the enemy is what precludes him from annihilating us. He rationalizes his own violence within this forced coexistence as deriving from that which precludes him from destroying us. He couches his moral cant in the language of an existential dilemma’’.
‘’The Colonel General is quite philosophically learned. How long, Tovarisch General, shall we facilitate the enemy’s alibi? How long shall we continue to deploy these obsolete soldaten and machines of the last war in array against his own set pieces, like young boys playing a war game?’’
‘’Until Allah wills a cleansing fire, Oberst’’.
DEMONIUM PEJORATIVE - ASCENDANCY
- SECE [Closed] Neuralnet TRANSMISSION (*Audio Only*) of Trappist 1b Zone Assault, November 9, 1056 AWD (3039 AD):
*Hodges: ‘‘I’ve got a reading of elevated biotoxic hazard indicators’’.
*Murray: ‘‘Its the UV flux spoofing your gear. Disregard.’’
*Hodges: ‘‘Nevertheless, Sir - I think Zartax should take point until -’’
*Murray: ‘‘NEGATIVE - ZAR-TX shall remain deployed for depth - and OpFor isn’t going to emerge from cover if they see him forward-deployed. YOU take point, Hodges.’’
*Hodges: “Sir, there’s a reading that -”
*Murray: ‘‘YOU TAKE POINT, HODGES!’’
*Hodges: ‘‘Yes Sir”.
*Moneagle: ‘‘We’ve got - movement on the ridge line. Major - major movement on the ridge-line! Thermal signature of the fucking register. Sir, this is hammer and anvil ploy - OpFor at LZ plus three clicks was not primary OpFor. What kind of - this can’t be a -’’
*Stafford: ‘‘Incoming! Incoming!’’
*Murray: ‘‘ZAR-TX (**phonetically recorded as ‘‘Zur-tix’’) execute mission orient adaptation! DEPLOY DEPLOY!’’
*Hodges: “How can they - My God its -’’ [Lance Corporal Hodges ComLink terminates]
*Moneagle: ‘‘Abandon selective targeting! Murray! Direct nuclear fire support to the ridge! OVERRIDE manually!’’
*Murray: ‘‘I’m hit - ZAR-TX DISREGARD primary salvage objective! Override..Over! Override, Murray…code zee en seven seven two! ZAR-TX target everyone at will! ZAR-TX, TARGET EVERYONE! Elminate -’’ [Armory Sargent Murray ComLink terminates]
*17 Minutes Silence*
*UnSub (Unknown Subject): ‘‘Save. Save. Servant. Death. Izzgod. Death. Izgooood.’’ [Artificially modulated voice transmission by UnSub. Final transmission].
***
‘‘I tell the squad a joke: ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot - weird but true - whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney little hide had been crushed and broken. But he laughed and said, ‘I’ve been crushed and broken before.’ And sure enough, he had the heart of a bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors. His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven thousand gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousands of miles of veins…he was a walking word of history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good’. - Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers
I
‘‘The failure of the Terran Imperium to subdue Trappist 1b - pursuant to ongoing, interplanetary Zone Assault directed by and on exclusive command authority of Senior-Most Martyr Caste SECE Acolyte LeMay Alexis HUBER [hereafter referred to as ‘‘HUBER’’] and the concomitant, absolute unwillingness of SECE and HUBER himself to disclose any pertinent information regarding ongoing ZA operations, mission orientation, and objectives continues to raise very serious concerns both within the Presidium in particular and the Terran Home Government in general…’’ - EYES ONLY internal memorandum, Bureau of Public information, DATE - Unknown, YEAR - 1057 AWD
Location: Trappist 1b
Date: February 15
Year: 1071 AWD/3054 AD
See the girl. The mind’s eye reveals what the mere witness cannot. She has never seen the world where her species originated - her race is an iteration of human biological heritage that was never seen on Earth and that has evolved an extraordinary tolerance to ultra-violet radiation. Her culture is dominated by symbols owing directly to the all consuming, enormous presence of a gigantic red sun, the proximity of which casts everything that exists as a duplicate shadow. The Shaman among her people - among the ranks of whom is her own father - knows that she is fated for great deeds. Deeds even greater than the youth whom are martyred - offerings to the Demonium Pejorative - the scourge of the Trappist 1b Spaceborne and the righteous sword and arm of God.
When the girl was born, her mother wept with joy - the Shaman could not hide his disappointment that his wife had not borne him a male heir, but the girl’s mother had been beside herself for the duration of her long and difficult heaviness with child, terrified as she was that she would give birth to a boy who would then be availed to the Selection Lottery. She was and remains terrified of the Demonium Pejorative - it haunts her nightmares and waking thoughts. During the short harvest season, Janiya (the Shaman’s wife) runs to their modest, but immaculately maintained, homestead at the first sign of dusk - she insists that she can hear the Demonium’s mechanical scream as it emerges from its repose at approach of the strange evening cycle on Trappist 1b. Janiya is not ordinarily a fearful woman, but she is too terrified of the Demonium to even contemplate it. Even the fact that she shall bear no more children and the child she does have is a girl on the cusp of womanhood, she cannot overcome her singular terror of the Demonium.
When it first arrived, the Trappist Spaceborne believed that it was the DEMIURGE itself - displeased by what they (the Spaceborne) had created. The Demiurge is the great architect - and like all great architects, he hates imperfection and will destroy even that which he himself has lovingly and laboriously created. Only the Demiurge has seen perfection, so only he can judge imperfection so harshly. He takes no pleasure in this however - and that is how the girl’s Father (the shaman Harald) knew that the Demonium Pejorative was not the Demiurge: Before Harald had bargained with the Demonium to spare the Spaceborne in exchange for the sacrifice of one male youth - on the cusp of his warrior’s trial - each and every month by lottery.
Harald had explained to the girl - out of earshot of Janiya, as to even hear the Demonium Pejorative discussed puts her into a state of terror - that he knew it was not the Demiurge, but rather the messenger and scourge of God HIMself. ‘‘How do you know?’’, the young girl asked of her father, the Shaman.
‘‘The Demonium Pejorative likes to devour men because he is hungry - and the Demiurge is never ever hungry, he merely desires perfection because imperfection is what he cannot stand. The Demiurge was here before everything - which is why he has seen everything, little one…the Demonium Pejorative has seen nothing, because he has no eyes. Do you understand, little one?’’ Replied the Shaman interrogatively.
GUERRILLAS
I
‘’You’ll like it here my man...just like me, you’ve found a home’’.
-Sympathy for the Devil Anderson, Kent
‘’I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thais to support the Khmer Rouge. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.’’
-Zbigniew Brzezinski
LOCATION: Phu Quoc, Cambodia
YEAR: 1975 A.D.
DATE: May 1
In the end, there was Sang Nam Wong. A man without a country - without nationality - fated to die in a matter of days in a country that was ceasing to exist, merely because it could only exist in situ - like a skeletal mummy that had deteriorated fully at molecular level into granular dust, yet had retained its form perfectly ensconced as it was in a splendidly sealed sarcophagus. Upon an instance of slightest vibration, the mummy would crumble into sand, before eyes even laid upon it. Such was the case of Cambodia in its final years.
It was incidental that the process by which it was being eradicated was being facilitated by the most brilliantly engineered war machines then in existence. It could just as easily been any iteration of historical processes and any instrumentality of the tectonic movement of epochal motion, be it careless missionaries introducing strange foods, poisonous to indigenous bellies, a Vesuvian catastrophe of nature’s accidental cleansing of entire races, or a strange bacteria carried across oceans on the backs of vermin.
Sang was not a Nung Chinese - that hapless and remarkably stalwart martial race that had, in spite of the most ruthless efforts to eject them from the land and the territorial borders encompassing it (the most recent - and arguably most sadistic of such measures -being carried out by the People's Army of Vietnam and their National Liberation Front cohorts) all ended in abject failure. The Nung remained somehow, against all probability and expectation, as they always had. The current maelstrom was no exception.
It was no longer accurate to simply refer to the Indochinese situation as a War any longer when one (even the most dullard layman) considered the sheer scope of the territories, political stakes, psychologically symbolic and emotional investment of the civilian populations (to say nothing of their leadership castes) of the states party to the violence and of course the willingness of all the combatants to escalate already catastrophic levels of violence, and to do so in the most formal and deliberate terms.
Sang Nam Wong was not a Nung Chinese by birth - nor was he of the storied Montagnard of the Central Highlands, although he spoke flawless Cantonese and had mastered a number of Montagnard dialects - at least adequately enough (although his own genius for violence and controlled addiction to bloodlust helped endear him to the younger man among them as well as their elders) to earn their trust to such degree that Sang had no doubt that he could rely on them to accompany him on direct action operations - operations which, considering the immediate political situation, the horrifically sanguinary gameness of the targeted OPFOR and his own status as a ‘’traitor’’ (or in the most charitable view held by these mountain-man and Nung allies of convenience and necessity a ‘’mercenary’’).
The fact that the Nung - and the Montagnard before them during Sang’s first years in-country - followed him into battle and executed his orders without hesitation or reserve owed to the fact that Sang was adept as a shaman in mirroring the soldier-congregants under his command. Be them Korean, Han, Malay or Nung. It mattered not.
Nevertheless, Sang’s aptitude for violence and, concomitantly, his ability to not inspire loyalty bordering on rabid zealousness was a characteristic that Sang would pass on to his son - young Bui Fang - and their common descendants over endless temporal oceans.
LOCATION: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (‘’Stasi’’) Hochschule (‘’College’) Potsdam, Deutsche Demokratische Republik
YEAR: 1969
DATE: March 11-September 15
The headquarters of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, a comparatively massive complex conspicuously situated in Berlin-Lichtenberg, despite its size, and subtly brutalist structural features (effective in intended purpose of generating an ambiguous unease and discernible stripping of any sense of meaningful individual agency within the person traveling - doubtlessly on orders - through its corridors, appeared far more purposefully subdued than its Moscow counterpart (and obvious model) that housed the, equally dreaded, Soviet KGB.
It was not, however, these structural features that attracted Sang’s attention - Sang had spend his childhood under occupation of the Empire of Japan - and no experience before or since, no matter how eloquently contrived by monarch or conceitedly ‘’modernist’’ officialdom to inspire fealty and terror had come to equal the psychic imprint of the Showa’s instantiations of absolute, sovereign authority. Rather, it was the complete, uncompromising and total belief not merely in necessity of mission and purpose but of the inevitability of ultimate victory that was characteristic of every MfS officer - young and old, newly recruited or of ancient tenure - that impacted Sang so profoundly.
MfS headquarters was not a police station or an intelligence agency campus - it was a temple to the telluric religion of Bolshevism - a religion of armed prophets and apocalyptic longings, served not by mere border security guards, special commandos, savant analysts, and trained assassins, but veritable priests and acolytes of a modern age - the presence of whom, far from ironic or anachronistic, was somehow essential to the mission of the institution they served.
So it was that, in the fall of 1967 (approximately two years previously) Sang Nam Wong - North Korean passport and temporary emigration paperwork in hand and in perfect order - was invited to study civil engineering, a subject area that Sang’s alleged country of origin had desperate need for men with expertise of, at Karl Marx University in Leipzig. Sang however never attended a single class there. In fact, he had only visited the campus on two occasions, the purpose of both being to seduce a German girl whose parents had come to be viewed by the MfS as ‘’politically unreliable’’. The fact that she would so quickly, and without reservation, welcome sexual liaison with an obvious auslander of course did not improve the perception of her family’s loyalty to the Sozialistische Einhietspartei Deutschlands.
The girl’s father, a mid level policy planner with a mathematics background who worked for a textiles Kombinate and had, despite considerable relative autonomy, had condemned in the strongest terms the reliance upon Soviet derived Gosplan data in determining the wisdom, efficacy and (although unsaid) profitability of the loosening of central controls on production of consumer goods had shortly thereafter been dismissed from his post and was, as far as Sang knew, subsequently employed as a machine operator under the nominal authority of the National Volksarmee. In other words, Sang had impressed his masters with his commitment to the mission he was being trained for within weeks of his arrival in his (second) adopted country.
Sang was one of only three true foreigners in the training class - held at the Stasi college [Hochschule] that he was recruited by and convinced, or perhaps more accurately press ganged and ordered depending on one’s perspective, into joining. Of the other two auslanders, one was a sullen Ethiopian who Sang learned (years later when deployed in the Republic of Vietnam) had been killed in action while on operations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command during the 1973 War; a conflict that, more than any other single purely military event, set in motion the decision making process that culminated in WARDAY a decade subsequent.
The other man was older - at least in his 40s - and a Pole. He had apparently defected immediately upon invasion of his homeland by the Red Army in 1939, for which he was rewarded with being unceremoniously shipped to a particularly notorious Gulag. The constant glare of the northern sun on the ice and snow in the frozen Hell that was his home for nearly four years had destroyed his vision. On account of this, the (prematurely) aged Pole wore dark sunglasses at all times, even indoors.
He was said to have an I.Q. that had tested in the 170 range; this may have been a rationalization (the Warsaw Pact apparatchiks in every role, bureaucratic, military, or political were unfailingly prone to mythological apologetics). The Pole was without a doubt highly intelligent - but he was also likely the only truly reliable man who could be poached from that particularly recalcitrant country, and the SED was not about to admit that Socialism was failing to point of crisis in Poland (a country essential to the Warsaw Pact’s ability to deploy in meaningful depth).
Sang excelled at tests of physical prowess and intellectual aptitude. It was the psychological ardours that proved the only challenges to truly test his mettle. During a classroom seminar on the nuances of chemical assisted interrogation - in particular, the purported utility of Lysergic acid diethylamide as a as a means of diminishing a human subject’s capacity to resist interrogation and conventionally applied stressors, Sang was summoned by the instructor to approach the front of the briefing room - at which time the portly Swabian - the one instructor at the Stasi college who unfailingly carried out his assigned duties in civilian clothing (a subdued, three piece suit of Yugoslav manufacture - the conspicuous donning of which, Sang bemusedly contemplated, derivative of a Swabian tendency towards social protest born of real and imagined grievances) - pointed towards the doorway leading out into the hall.
Upon exiting the room, as directed, Sang was greeted by an Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung Hauptmann, accompanied by a Volkspolizei non commissioned officer, informing Sang that his wife and son had been murdered in their apartment in Pyongyang. The Hauptmann’s tone and annunciation had softened, slightly although perceptibly, as he explicated (in perfectly affected earnest),
‘’Your son did not suffer - the boy expired in his sleep of apparent asphyxiation by way of being smothered with a pillow and simultaneously strangled. Your wife however was - she was very badly raped; and endured extremely severe pre-mortem injury. It is possible that a sex maniac targeted your family for unknowable reasons, Herr Wong. It is however just as probable that your family was targeted owing to your activities on behalf of the Party and the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. You have our sympathies - however this unfortunate tragedy must not compromise your commitments and your responsibility to the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands and the Socialist Community of Nations’’.
Betraying no obvious emotion, Sang returned to his classroom studies and field exercises. His outstanding resilience to emotional and psychological stressors of the most extreme degree were noted by his superiors at the Stasi Hochschule for the entire nine day period before Sang was informed that his wife and child were in fact alive and well. He was merely being tested for frailties of character or emotional constitution. More challenging ordeals were yet to come. One such test was conducted on August 13.
Sang was roused from his dormitory bed at several minutes past two in the morning by a squadron of eight uniformed Volkspolizei, flanked by a National Volksarmee Oberst (Sang recognized the man from the tour he and his class were afforded of the Mfs campus in Berlin during his first full week in the country. He subsequently was informed that the man - name of Wiegand - was a career Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (Directorate of Reconnaissance) officer, at that time assigned to Abteilung A X (responsible for ‘direct action’ measures) and was liaising with headquarters for one reason or another. As Sang contemplated the man’s fearsome resume, the Oberst abruptly shouted at him in German (of no discernible regional dialect) that Sang was under arrest for espionage.
After a thorough working over by the uniformed Polizei, a hood was placed over Sang’s head, his wrists were cuffed tightly behind him, and he was kicked and stung by electrified cattle prods to a waiting truck (clad in nothing but his undershorts), which rapidly shuttled him to an interrogation center. Despite his near total disorientation, and mounting, desperate anxiety, Sang reasoned that owing to the approximate time spent in transit, approximately two and a half hours, that at average speed for a military vehicle, even one traveling on a dedicated access roadway, they had likely traveled roughly 120-140 miles.
The realization prompted a wave of physiological agony - a sharp pain as if Sang’s bowels were being pierced from within, accompanied by a wretched nausea and rush of bile and evil-tasting stomach acids rushing into his mouth. Less familiar than this physical agony was the unrelenting mortal terror that overtook him, in those moment in which Sang discerned the solidly structured, armored truck precipitously slowing in speed. Sang was about to arrive at Bautzen II Prison. Colloquially, the ‘’yellow misery’’. As certain as Sang Nam Wong had ever been of anything in his relatively brief and violent life, he was certain that he would die within the walls of this penological tomb, his remains merely ceasing to exist as would autumn leaves through the onslaught of following winter.