Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, Republic of China, 18 October 1911
"It was over before it even started," Colonel Michael Chen decided, now that the city was secured. "You'd think they'd learn by now."
"It's not like they had that many survivors to tell them how we fight, Mike," his friend told him, motioning to the prisoners the Army were transporting. "So the same trick seems to work every time."
"Fair enough," Chen admitted. Not that he was complaining.
Truth be told, the last week or so was almost a blur to him.
After they took Changchun, they needed a day to finally understand just what had happened and secure the city. True to their word, the Loyalists soldiers fought the Japanese on one side of the city, while the Marines and Army circled around and flanked the IJA.
By the end of it, there wasn't that much of an IJA to surrender, while the Loyalists formally surrendered, now that the IJA were dead.
Then again, it wasn't as if they had much of an option, anyways, now that the rest of the Army had caught up with them and surrounded them on the other side.
Once they were disarmed and captured, it was just a matter of having Prince Chun formally sign the abdication of the Qing Emperor, on account of said Emperor being a five year old child.
Well, there were terms to be negotiated, but then there would be a signing, and it wasn't like the Qing court (or what was left of it, now that their Prime Minister was dead in his office and his predecessor was exploded by the former).
The terms were simple: In addition to the Emperor abdicating, there was also the acknowledgement of the Republic of China as the successor state to the Qing Empire and all its territories, as well as appropriated funds for the maintenance of the several tombs and other sites of familial importance.
As for the Emperor himself, it was decided that the young boy and his family would be transported to Taiwan, where they would live as private citizens. The former Emperor himself would receive a healthy stipend, as well as admission to the best private schools on the island.
It wasn't much (and it was subject to change if it didn't work), but it should help the boy grow up better than he did in the Lost History.
All of that, in one day. Christ.
After that, it was time for the rest of the Army to catch up, along with the supply lines. Sure, they could move fast, but it had been a near-miracle that they stayed supplied with how rapidly they had been advancing.
Needless to say, they weren't planning on stretching their luck as much, this time.
Now with that out of the way, it was on to Harbin, the Russians' main (and only) stronghold in Manchuria.
Or at least it would have been, had there not been the Lalin River blocking them and only one rail bridge across it.
Now, contrary to popular belief, the Russians weren't stupid. Or rather, General Brusilov wasn't stupid. The Tsar himself left much to be desired.
Brusilov knew full well that if the Chinese were to come for Harbin, they would need the bridge. Unfortunately, he also needed that bridge if he wanted to take the rest of Manchuria and complete his orders from the Tsar. Now, this would have normally been a stalemate.
Chen wasn't about to send his men onto a bridge that, for all he knew, the Russians had wired with explosives. Meanwhile, Brusilov wasn't about to abandon his defenses to attack the same army that had wiped out the expeditions sent to Xinjiang and Mongolia.
Or at least it would have, had the Chinese Army's Engineers not shown up on the 15th with half a dozen M3 Amphibious Rigs. If Michael's math was right, those would be just enough to cross the two hundred meter wide river.
The plan was simple: Artillery would bombard the Russians on the other side of the river, while Dragon Squadron would pull double duty, destroying Russian artillery and attacking the Russian telegraph lines.
Meanwhile, the Engineers would use this time to deploy the M3s into the Lalin, give the all-clear, then signal for the 66th to cross the river and begin their spearhead.
To say that the Russians were "shocked" would be an understatement. While they knew that something was going on, they didn't know what was going on.
Then the Tanks came through, plowing the Russian trenches into a breach that Chen's men, then the Army's men, rushed through.
After that, it was like clockwork. Armored and motorized units rushed through the gap in the Russian lines, only to spread out and encircle small pockets of a thousand or so men at a time while Chen and his marines wrought utter havoc behind enemy lines.
They drove forward, charging straight towards the reinforcements, guns blazing while the bullets pinged from the sides. Only hours later would he learn that the 66th had obliterated the Russian relief force sent to fill the breach.
But the Marines kept going, with the armored well behind them, until they hit Harbin.
And then? The local garrison was expecting Russian soldiers to return from the front, either victorious or carrying their wounded. Not sixty-ton Chinese monstrosities firing at them with their two machine guns and salvos of tank shells..
By the end of the day, they were in Harbin, though General Brusilov was nowhere to be found. From the sound of it, he had retreated his headquarters from Harbin to Blagoveschensk, if not Khabarovsk or Vladivostok itself.
Not that Chen would complain. He and his men had helped themselves to the officers' baggage train they'd left behind.
Which brought them to today.
They had captured the last (and only) Russian stronghold in Manchuria, but the war wasn't over. After all, it wasn't like Brusilov was offering terms of surrender, at least as far as he knew.
And the Japanese? Knowing them, he figured they were trying to raise another army to hold Korea, if not invade Manchuria again.
"So," Li asked him. "What's the plan?"
"I dunno. Chase them to the border? Wait, we're already doing that."
"Yeah. Plus, the Army's mopping up for us right now."
"Great. Um… Liberate Korea?" His friend shook his head. "I thought so. Long as the Russians are still here, the military's split between holding the Yalu and watching the Russian frontier."
"Short of taking Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, and Blagoveschensk, we're stuck holding the line until news hits St. Petersburg or the Japanese finally give in."
"Yeah…" Michael mused, before looking at his map. "Think we could do it?"
"Do what?"
"Take those three cities," he said plainly. "They're not as large as they were in our time, right?"
"I don't think so?" The historian-turned-agent told him. "The data's all in Russian, but HISTINT did say there's only about half a million people in what we would call 'Outer Manchuria," mainly concentrated in the areas of Khabarovsk "
"Plus, the bulk of their army has been encircled and captured over the last few days, right?"
"Yeah…" And then it finally sank in. "Christ, Mike. Are you serious?!"
"Yeah? I mean, we probably have more manpower in the region than the Russians have people. At least around here, anyways."
"Oh boy," Li sighed. It wasn't so much that he was worried about his friend's safety, but that he was worried that this would actually work. "I'll go get Huang on the line."
"Great. So, you think you can pitch it to him?"
"Hell no. You tell him. It's your idea."
"Hey, it could be worse. We could have tried invading Korea."
"I don't think anyone's that nuts. Even you."
Tokyo, Empire of Japan, 19 October 1911
To put it mildly, Katsura Taro was not a happy man. Not when his troops had suffered defeat after defeat in Manchuria, to the point that they'd even lost Kwantung itself.
"Can somebody," he asked exasperatedly, "Anybody, tell me one single fucking detail of good news about the campaign in Manchuria?!"
"Governor Terauchi Masatake," War Minister Ishimoto began, "has informed us that Choson is still under our control-"
Finally, some fucking good news.
"...Though there has been an increased unrest ever since the bulk of the garrison moved north."
"Damn it." It had been driving the Prime Minister to his wits' end. "Even if we control Choson, we will have lost territory to the Chinese, Ishimoto. This war will have been a failure, at the cost of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives! And for what? Losing our Chinese holdings?!"
"We cannot hope to take Manchuria with so few men," Ishimoto said as straight-faced as possible, undeterred by Katsura's wrath. "As of now, we may be able to hold the Chinese at the Yalu River and suppress any rebels if we move every professional soldier we have into Choson. And even then, we would still not have enough to take back Kwantung, let alone take Manchuria."
"And what would you do, then, Ishimoto," Katsura asked him. The man's voice reeked of venomous frustration as he questioned the War Minister. "I want options. Plans."
"One option that is on the table," Ishimoto said calmly, "Is to mobilize the country for war, conscripts and all."
"Then we will do that," Katsura told him. "Send the order for conscription."
"Prime Minister, are you sure about this?" Ishimoto couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What I have proposed is an option, but I ask you to reconsider! Tokyo is already undergoing unrest after the detention of Mayor Ozaki Yujio. If we enact conscription, that would almost certainly inflame-"
"Do we have a choice, Ishimoto?" the Prime Minister was almost shouting at this point. "We have already lost so many men, and I will not let their sacrifice be in vain."
"If we lose Kwantung to the Chinese, I- we will be disgraced. Japan will be disgraced, turned into a laughingstock for the world. Decades of progress we've made on the global stage will vanish overnight, and that is the best case scenario where the Europeans do not take advantage of us!"
"Like it or not, Ishimoto, we have no option but to press forward. Now you can either give the order, or you can resign in disgrace while I find a new Minister of War who will do what needs to be done. Have I made myself clear?"
"Clear as day," the Minister of War told him. "Then consider this my resignation."
The Viability of Liberating Korea, by Major Martin Li
It is no surprise that Korea is a vital area of importance to us. While it isn't part of China in any sense, we do have Korean soldiers within our ranks. Which, coupled with the fact that it is a Japanese colony home to hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops, means that neutralizing it is in China's interest.
However, our current forces would be at a severe disadvantage if the National Revolutionary Army were to invade the Korean Peninsula due to two factors: Terrain and Manpower.
Regarding terrain, it seems that Korea's terrain is hostile to our own forces in almost every sense. While I'm sure that the locals would be willing to work with us over the Japanese, the fact remains that Korea, outside of the West and South, is a largely mountainous region, allowing for the Japanese to minimize the manpower required to stall our forces multiple chokepoints.
Moreover, the terrain itself allows for the Japanese to launch a guerrilla campaign against our forces, even if we fully occupy the territory. This, I would argue, is due to, for lack of a better term, the Japanese not being stupid. They will adapt to our tactics, and it would be foolish to expect them not to, when the terrain is practically suited towards hiding from our aircraft and armor.
Of course, we could systematically root out the Japanese forces in Korea, but that would require us to dedicate a significant amount of manpower and resources that we need to garrison and administer China itself, even if we are rapidly recruiting local troops in liberated areas. Or to put it another way, this will be much more costly than chasing them down in Humvees across open plains.
Which brings me to the second problem we would face: Manpower.
While we have almost every force multiplier on the planet, from air superiority, to superior firepower, to maneuverability, to a hundred years of tactics and strategy (just to name a few), and those are the only ones I can think of, off the top of my head.
And sure, we could probably beat them in almost any battle out in the open, but the fact remains that we are going to be heavily outnumbered. If we look at the number of Japanese troops mobilized for World War I, we're looking at almost a million men mobilized for the war effort, and the vast majority would be deployed to Korea, and that would be a low estimate..
In contrast, our armies number about two hundred thousand Taiwanese troops, one hundred and fifty thousand New Army Defectors, with several hundred thousand more in training. While we could, in theory, match the Japanese man-for-man, the vast majority of these new troops would be infantry, lacking the armor, motorized vehicles, and air support that the modern NRA troopers enjoy. Factor in all the territory that we have to occupy (even if said occupation goes as seamlessly as it currently is), and we could field two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand troops to invade Korea.
This, of course, does not factor in casualties. While we have, in theory, a near-infinite amount of manpower, guns, bullets, and shells, we have a finite amount of tanks, trucks, and artillery, not to mention aircraft, the latter of which will need to be maintained or replaced, sooner or later.
Sure, I doubt that the Japanese can shoot down an Apache, but they sure as hell can explode an M60 through trial and error. And that's before we get into all those precision guided munitions that we are already using sparingly. Not to mention all the munitions that we have in storage.
While I don't think we could run out of bombs and rockets, invading Korea against a well-entrenched IJA fighting a war of attrition could actually do it.
Could we win? Definitely. But it's going to cost us dearly. Ammunition, equipment, and manpower would be lost in larger quantities than we've ever experienced so far. And those last two are pretty hard to replace.
In short, while we can invade Korea, the IJA's advantages in sheer manpower and terrain would cause heavy losses in terms of manpower, ammunition, and equipment on our side. While we do have a significant edge when it comes to technology, force multipliers, and local support, such a campaign would be costly, at best.
As such, almost any alternative would be preferable to an outright invasion, and we should look into them accordingly.
Tianjin Air Base, Tianjin, Zhili Province, Republic of China, 20 October 1911
Shannon Wu could only look in awe as the cargo jet unloaded its massive payload.
That was all she could do, anyways, with how tight the security had been on the runways. Whatever this was, it was important. That much she knew.
"I thought I'd find you here." Shannon turned around to see Rachel walking up to her. "It's important. Trust me on this."
"I do," Shannon admitted. Not like she had much of a choice, since the MIB agent before her definitely did know more than she did. "Do you think it will work?"
"Honestly?" the Major told her, turning towards the secret cargo. "I don't know for sure."
"Yeah… What are you doing here, anyways?"
"It's classified. You?"
"Re-arming. Apparently we're headed east, now. Michael's got us pushing towards Vladivostok."
"Really?" Shannon could hear just the slightest shift in her voice. "Then we're headed in the same direction again."
"Oh?" A small smile formed on the agent's face. "It's better than Korea, at least."
"Yeah." Try as she might, Shannon wasn't exactly looking forward to fighting there. "Too many mountains. Plus, the Japanese actually have people there."
"Exactly. We may have to resort to… 'unorthodox' methods to deal with the Korean issue."
"Is that what's being unloaded?" Rachel's face was dead-serious, almost emotionless. "Figures. Was worth a shot, at least."
"What I can tell you, Shannon, is that whatever's in there is not a nuke."
"Wait… Do we have nukes?"
"No."
