Prologue

In 2019, yet another 'war to end all wars' began suddenly along the northern border of North Korea as Russian troops surged across in force. The unexpected assassinations of Kim Jong-un and his family over the previous summer months had left the isolated communist nation, surprisingly without support from the Chinese, in the hands of a brutal general, a man whose vocal denunciation of recent Russian aggression in Ukraine and Georgia led him to threaten nuclear attacks should North Korea's northern neighbor so much as "spit in our direction." The Russians took the offensive, invaded North Korea, and within weeks had crushed the shocked and disorganized North Korean military, securing the nuclear armaments and proclaiming North Korea as a province of the new and emboldened Russian empire.

Arrogant and feeling confident, Russian pilots regularly overflew Chinese air space, and when China's demands to respect its sovereignty were ignored, Chinese forces collided with the Russian bear over the skies along their northern border in September, 2019.

The world reacted by reinforcing allies in the Eurasia, including South Korea, Japan, Poland, and Turkey, but most didn't send troops to support either side in combat, preferring to watch with concern while the two powerful military nations began to escalate their fight. India and Pakistan mobilized millions of men, and Israel, Iran, and Egypt started new and frighteningly aggressive wars of words over centuries-old squabbles.

Russia and China soon pulled back into defensive stances, fighting small skirmishes through the winter of 2019, largely in the air and on the seas, the world watching and wondering which power would trigger the nuclear war everyone expected.

Instead, in January, 2020, the first nuke detonated in Pakistan. It wasn't clear who was responsible, but the tinder box which had smouldered for decades along its border with India sent both sides into a frenzy. A second nuke went off in northern India two weeks later, and the two countries committed hundreds of thousands of troops to bloody battles which finally drew in supporting allies on both sides.

During that Spring, Mexican revolutionaries orchestrated a surprising and effective coup, overthrowing the corrupt and lazy Mexican government and, with firm control of the nation's military, instituted martial law. Inspired by events in Mexico and encouraged and supported by the new Mexican regime, revolutions exploded in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica, leading to an unlikely and tenuous alliance called the New World Empire (NWE), led by Mexico City. It wasn't clear at that time to what ends the new Empire was working.

The world gasped when Israel preemptively attacked its enemies in May, 2020, firing nuclear weapons into Iraq and Iran, battling Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a large breakaway army of Turkish forces. The Israelis used the confusion, both nearby and in Pakistan and India, to secure territory in neighboring countries before stopping their attack and building extensive defenses around Israel's new borders, threatening new nuclear attacks should anyone dare cross their lines.

Military units from the United States were far flung and spread across the globe, stationed in force in support of allies in Poland, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Japan, and a dozen other nations. While the United States and its brethern controlled most of the oceans and major seas, the Russians and Chinese navies were large and threatening that control, though at the time, there had been no direct confrontation with the US or its allies.

It became difficult to sort rumors from truth for most of the world's citizens, and many in Texas were growing concerned about the swelling ranks of the NWE armies. Militia groups in the state began to actively guard the border while the regular and guard units of the US military were distracted across the globe.

Rumors that the US was willing to abandon Texas should the NWE invade grew from little more than shadows and ill-informed conspiracy theorists. A militia unit in Killeen traded a few shots with US Army troops stationed there when the militia demanded access to arms and heavy weapons to use in defense of the state. Other militias moved into towns along the border with Mexico and declared martial law, fighting skirmishes with police and Guard units who were shocked and ill-prepared. It had the makings of a serious insurrection when a Texas Special Guard unit joined a consolidated militia group and held much of Houston for two weeks before US Army troops took back the city.

Martial law was declared across Texas by the governor, which further fueled conspiracy theories. It became an open rebellion two days later when insurgents blew refineries along the coast and, independent of each other, bombed court houses and police stations and assassinated public officials.

Ironically, the chaos in Texas offered the NWE an opportunity it had desired but never believed might present itself. Secretly being heavily-supported, separately, by both Russia and China, and fueled with the fervor of revolution burning up from Panama and the Central American nations, the NWE massed troops along the Mexico-US border near El Paso and south of Sierra Vista in Arizona.

US intelligence fired off desperate warnings of the movements, but the government was slow to react, still unable to believe that the upstart revolutionaries were capable of an invasion of American soil. Over a period of fourteen hours, either Russian or Chinese forces destroyed military and civilian satellites, severely disrupting communications and observational capabilities. Two days later, in February, 2021, the NWE moved in force across the border.

Despite having near-total air superiority, bombing troop locations and command-and-control centers deep in Mexico, the US was unable to give the NWE forces serious pause for almost two weeks. The invading army fought loosely, units working in concert with each other, but distributed, following the successful tactics and strategies which had overthrown a half-dozen governments just months earlier. Bombers could destroy units which bunched up, but NWE soldiers scattered, minimizing the casualties, using the terrain to hide when the bombs fell, and using Russian-supplied low-light equipment to move and fight effectively in the darkness. The Texas militias fought ineffectively and yielded quickly to the invading forces.

The US finally understood the dire situation too late. The loss of communications and observational satellites was debilitating, and until the Battle of Magdalena, in New Mexico, on March 3, 2021, the NWE had moved without serious opposition across a front of several hundred miles, spreading out across Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas.

The United States recalled all deployed troops, the invasion of home soil overriding the threats to its allies. The chaotic process involved moving hundreds of thousands of men and women, millions of tons of materiel, from dozens of countries. They arrived in company and battalion strength, often without supporting artillery and armor, first on cargo jets, then, more slowly, on naval vessels. Martial law was declared across the US. The draft was immediately reinstated, though was not initially necessary as millions of civilians volunteered to fight in the defense of the United States. Millions of reserve and retired soldiers, sailors, and Marines were recalled to duty. The military bogged down trying to find a way to give its green recruits a minimal amount of training before sending them to the front lines.

The Russians moved into Alaska and secured the coastal areas and oil fields in less than three weeks before landing forces in British Columbia and in northwest Washington State. The Chinese took Guam and Hawaii the next month.

NWE forces swelled, continuing to receive enormous support from Russia and China, the two nuclear-armed neighbors determined to do less fighting at home and to take advantage of a bloodied super power for a time. It meant both had resources to spend to press hard on a shared foe.

The NWE pushed deeper into the US despite the growing troop levels from the US Army and Marine Corps. Raids on NWE supply lines helped slow the spread of the invasion, but by Fall of 2021, the NWE largely controlled much of New Mexico, Nevada, parts of eastern California, and western Texas and Oklahoma. Russians continued to move down the west coast and secured Seattle and the surrounding environs by the end of 2021. Loss of effective civilian communications networks made it very difficult for local militias and resistance groups to coordinate, and one-by-one, they were crushed and silenced.

The US finally began to push back in January, 2022. The chaos of the command structure had been smoothed out and generals were better able to assess the battlefield and commit troops capable of producing victories. Some NWE and Russian advances were halted and slowly being rolled back in June 2022. For unknown reasons, the US nuclear arsenal was not brought to bear.

It isn't known how many devices were set off, but the nation's capital effectively dissolved when several suitcase nukes detonated on July 2, 2022. It was the only city hit, but the fallout, both figuratively and literally, was devastating. The timing was deliberate and it was clear that the attack was orchestrated to decapitate United States leadership. Millions were dead or dying, including the President, Vice-President, hundreds of members of Congress, several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and hundreds of other key figures. It sent the nation into utter disarray.

The military pressure which had been pushing back invading armies didn't immediately fall apart. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines kept up the fight, killing and dying while their superiors tried to figure out what to do. The head of the nation's most powerful democracy had just been blow into a fine, red mist, and it wasn't clear who, if anyone, was then in charge.

The NWE exploited the chaos to land troops in Florida and along the other Gulf states. They pushed north, encountering only disorganized local resistance until the 1st Marine Division defeated three divisions of NWE soldiers at the Battle of Crane Hill, in Alabama. A surprisingly effective force of local militias, state and local police, and former Army and Marine Corp veterans managed to bog down two divisions of NWE in the swamplands around Savannah, Georgia, for nearly two months before finally being decimated when the latest Chinese-made artillery and bombers arrived to terrorize the battlefield.

It was both death by a thousand cuts and by a butcher's cleaver across the southern and western parts of the US. No matter how many men and machines the United States poured into the war, it seemed that the NWE had more. With Russia and China supplying arms and equipment, and eager recruits from the southern parts of the new Empire arriving daily by the hundreds and thousands to fight against the imperial Americans and to grab a share of the bounty sure to be there for the taking, the NWE continued to push against the weak points and force north division after division.

It was in this time that the schism happened in what remained of United States leadership. A new government seat had been established in the Fall of 2022 in Chicago, and representatives flooded in, each wanting to establish his or her position of power in the reboot of the American franchise. It was utter chaos, and before much could be accomplished, fighting started in earnest, leading, in the Spring of 2023, to a splinter group establishing a new state seat in Minneapolis, calling itself Free America.