BAPTISM BY FIRE Once we got to Alpha, there was some idle time where I got to chafe under the command of Powell some more. Before too long, however, I got the call from the commander in chief of all of America’s prehistoric forces, General Ronald Harrison. Ron, who I was later to be become friends with, promoted me to Captain, and put me in command of Gamma base. Although we had to make Gamma overland, it was good to actually be doing something again. I’d had too much time at Gamma base, and all that I could do was think of Joan... At Gamma, I was taking over for Second Lieutenant Jeff Brown. He let me know that the Russians were to the south, and that they knew of our oilfields; which meant that we were going to be taking a lot of fire in the near future. Gen. Harrison contacted me while I was out checking the perimeter around the oilfields. He said that the Russians had deployed to the southeast, and that, most likely, was the direction that the attacks were going to come from. He promised me some reinforcements, but he couldn’t tell me when they’d be there, so I had to act as if they weren’t coming. I had the engineers build a lab and an armory first, and then sent them out to scout for resources off west of our position. We were under-gunned, so I had the engineers add a weapons lab to the basic lab we had built. After they had produced the plans for a oil burning power-plant for the workshop to build, I put them to work on making us some plans for heavy machine guns. Once the plans were done, we revamped the workshop into a factory capable of creating vehicles, and started to produce some vehicles with mounted machine guns. While all this was happening, the first wave came, straight into the face of my troops, who were freshly rearmed with some spin-offs of the weapons research. They weren’t expecting opposition so heavily armed, so they were done for almost before they had fully come in range. After a while, we started really hurting for the materials that were promised us with our reinforcements, but 2ond Lt. Lucy Donaldson, the commander of our reinforcements had had her path to us blocked by the Russians, so it was taking much longer than expected, as she rerouted her group. To make due in the interim, I had the scientists scout the area for new reserves of oil. We got lucky and found one not too far to the east of the base. We had to take it, although I didn’t like the way that it stretched out my lines. I got a call from Donaldson, saying that she was close, but that she had gotten pinned in between two major concentration of Russian forces. Since she needed extraction, and needed it now, the only option was for us to attack the advance base to the southeast immediately(I.). I told her to stay put at her current position(II.) so her troops wouldn’t be spotted, and that we would be there soon. Once we had enough forces readied, we attacked. We were able to destroy some enemy vehicles that were similar to our own, and then we took on the foot soldiers who ran out to defend their base, though they were no match for our heavy guns. We played hit and run with the Russian turrets until they were destroyed, doing field repairs when needed, as we couldn’t afford to lose anyone. Once we had finished the advance base off, we retreated for fear of retaliation from the stronger Russian base to the south, and just in time. As we reached the safety of our lines, we saw that there were enemies right on our heels. Thankfully, more vehicles had been completed while we were out on our raid, and we were able to stop the attack.That done, we retrieved Donaldson and her troops. Gen. Harrison called me during the this time with the report that this area held some special strategic significance for the Russians, and that they would attempt to take it at all costs. My task, then, was to try and weaken the Russians here now, by driving them completely out of the area, so that they would not have time to resupply and reinforce and overwhelm us later on. Pursuant to this goal, Harrison promised me more troops, and I silently wished them better luck than Donaldson’s group. After preparing my troops and vehicles for a sustained assault, we went off to give it our best. Since it rapidly became apparent that a direct assault could only end in disaster, we decided to worry away the Russian forced by hitting their perimeters to draw off vehicles, and thus weaken them. After that it was simply a matter of taking out the Russian static defenses point by point. When the Russian base was on it’s last legs, the remaining men there ran off and abandoned it in a panic. I took a moment then to relax and savor our first important victory at that stage of the war.

Introduction Mission 1 Mission 2 Mission 3 Mission 4 Mission 5 Mission 6 Mission 7 Mission 8 Mission 9 Mission 10 Mission 11 Decision Mission 12 Mission 13 Mission 14 Mission 15