Fury Road, part 1
Week 2
Today, we shall be taking a look into the lives of the crew of a Marine M1A2 Abrams. Armored Fury.
Our intrepid crew are found doing the things any tanker does when not fighting, fucking, eating, sleeping, or having a rare moment of fun.
Fixing the tank and bitching.
"We…" Eugine, the driver, grunted as he hauled more of the track off the back, "Are in a world where war's got a hard cap."
"What's he on about now?" Simon, the loader, moaned as he dropped his head back in the engine.
"'Gene, spit it out. You're not talking to your fellow prep-school grads, you're talking to Marines." Commander Marston lazily responded as he fiddled with a drone. "You gotta dumb it down for these other guys."
"Fuck you too, Top." The gunner's, Mack, voice echoed tinnily from within the turret. Engine and Marston ignored him.
"Every army, from the Sumerians, the Pharaohs, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Alexios the First, the Crusades, all the way up to Napoleon, all had to do local provisioning!"
"... what." Eugine fought back a wince at the unanimous statement.
"Armies have to forage, take food from the land around them as they move. They might go out with a few days of food from their home base, but it's either eaten or gone rotten within a week or so. Even with salted food and other early ways of preserving food, soldiers always had to go ask, pay, or take food from the locals."
"Hm. Ok, that kinda makes sense." Simon said thoughtfully. "No planes, no trains, no cars, no fridges, no ice, no chemical preservatives… hell, do these folks even have smoke houses?"
"So what does your big realization have to do with our deployment?" Marston was giving Eugine his full attention. The future Yale student was a bit of a whiner and overthinker, but when he had an idea, he was usually on to something. Frankly, it was only his recent posting to a driver that he hadn't been moved up to a higher rank.
"There's a system, or at least a sort of an art to it. The Roman Legions had the logistics of feeding men and animals down to a science, and it stuck around until well after the Napoleonic era. I have copies of some of it on my hard drive. If we can take that, and figure out the amount of crops and regular harvests in each area, we can know about how large an army in these parts can get."
"Show me it later 'Gene. I'll see if command will find it useful."
"Very amazing Genius, we all bow to your white, upper-class nerd knowledge," Simon mocked, standing at the front of the tank with a large wrench. "Now stop gabbing and get that track over here!"
Week 4, Day 3
"F platoon, we got our orders."
Major Marston called his platoon to order. Three of the four tank commanders with him were Lieutenants, and men he knew or knew of, from Iraq and Afghanistan. They'd been pulled from their original units with the expectation that they'd likely to take command of the rest of expeditionary force's vehicle assets after the first wave of mass-casualties. That was the expectation everyone had going through the portal: That they'd be going out in a blaze of glory to protect their soil from invasion. The latest iteration of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade wasn't expected to last a month.
'And yet, here we are.' Marston thought. 'About to be construction workers.'
"The engineer and drone geeks just finished mapping out our road network early this morning. The rumors are true. We're going to be filling in where the engineers and Seabees don't have the numbers to go. We've got the dozer blades, and we're getting both an M88 and a couple squads of assaultmen to go with our escort. The boss is expecting us to do with SMAWs and eight-thirties what some of you back home did with chainsaws and concrete mixers. It's bullshit, but it's what we're doing.
OK, briefing over, any questions?"
"Sir, permission to speak freely?" Marston wasn't surprised Lieutenant Johnston spoke up first. Nor was he surprised by the barely-contained anger in the man's face.
'I told him he needed to get his shit together.' He thought. 'Hell, he'll probably be the one to break first. But he'll say what's on a lot of others' minds.'
"Johnston, you know you can say just about anything to me and I wouldn't give much of a shit."
"We're glorified road crew?"
'You said it, not me' Marston sighed inwardly. "If we were construction crew, we'd have the proper tools for the job. But we're Marines. When the hell did we ever get what we needed?"
The chuckling from everyone, even the bitter laugh from Johnston, show you'd lightened the mood a bit.
"It ain't all bad Johnny." Robb, ever the 'carefree' individual, ruined the moment. "We get to drive around, blow stuff up, and no IEDs! That ain't work, that's a paid vacation!"
"And we get to meet more locals!" Jay piped up excitedly. 'More like he wants more monstergirl pussy'. Marston grumbled inwardly. The guy'd been one of the frequent 'customers' to the local brothels. He made Genius look downright polite.
"This isn't the fucking Playboy Mansion!" Johnston's temper was at its limit it seemed.
"Just because you don't get to kill shit no more doesn't mean you get to take it out on the kid." Robb snidely added.
"ENOUGH! Q&A session over!" Marston barked. Everyone went quiet. "Review the rosters, get your shit in gear, and make sure you've got your APDS traded in for HEAT in two hours. We're on a schedule, and I'll be damned if we're behind on it. Dismissed!"
*****
Week 4, Day 4
"F Platoon, Fury Actual, stop, stop, stop, over."
With four choruses of 'Roger', four Abrams, an armored recovery vehicle, and their same number of accompanying Humvees ground to a halt. Five hundred yards in front of them, the tall brush of the plains grew into a massive, thick forest of trees. 'How many hundreds of years of pristine nature are we about to blow up?' Marston momentarily wondered.
"OK, we've got the first forest line we have to blast through. Hold up while the infantry give it a shot first, out."
The Humvees rolled forward closer to the treeline. Marston watched as the detached Assault Section disembarked and took up a firing position with their rocket launchers. A few seconds later, the line of men was briefly obscured by smoke and fire. After observing no trees falling, he keyed the short-range.
"Fury Actual to Rocketeers, confirm no effect on target, over."
"That is correct Fury Actual. It'd take all of us to knock one of these down. We'll pack up, they're all yours, over."
"Roger that, out."
Marston keyed his mic for his own platoon again. "We're up, fellas. Set first two shots' detonation for the first row of trees, then send them out every twenty-five yards, over."
Marston heard four confirmations, then gave the order. "FIRE AT WILL!"
Old growth yielded and splintered under the barrage of fused explosives. Roughly every ten seconds, a new round roared out, and a group of ancient trees splintered and fell. Eventually, Marston felt the route had been sufficiently softened.
"All Units, Cease Fire!"
The rolling thunder of the four tanks' guns fell silent.
"F platoon, let's roll, out."
As the line of armor advanced, bulldozing the shattered remains and stumps under their weight, a lithe, stern figure with a spear and a quiver of arrows watched intently. At his side, a small girl clutched his leg in fear. She looked up to him.
"Croo jaku bakar sor dun Gron Sa, Aka? Srar peli."
What are those metal things destroying your sacred grove Brother? I'm scared.
The man stroked her hair, but his gaze never left the sight before him.
"Tierar caun srar sor, Bka. Lao ko meli ne umina. Sulalum ko meli ho, rag noka."
Let your fear temper your caution, sister. We shall learn more about the new people. And when we do, there shall be a reckoning
So yeah. We're covering the leadup to week 12 now. Gonna be a bit of jumping around time-wise, we'll probably get chronological order in the threadmarks in the future. In the meantime, meet my end of the cast.
