[natehale1971]

Hi everyone, I need a little help. I've been wanting to write a story that is based upon concepts from the 1st Edition of T2k, with DC Working group (especially Webstral's 'Black Winter' explaination for how the Soviets where able to hold onto their hegmony in Eastern Europe with some of my own ideas tossed in to make the WP economically more stable)...

The working name of the story is 'Twilight of Innocence' and deals with a male soldier and female embedded journalist trapped in the middle of Poland after the last major offenses of the war failed and left both sides knocked out of the fight (basicly 'Death of a Division' and 'Escape for Kalisz' type of thing)...

I'm posting the first part of the story that is to set the stage, and I'm asking for help in making it sound better. I don't know if i should explain more of what the world is like in the opening description, or just add more descriptions during the the story. I had thought of 'flashbacks' every now and again showing how the two main characters dealt with certain things occuring during the war...

Any constructive advice is greatly appreacated.


'Twilight of Innocence, Prologue'

When did the world die? This is a question many people have asked over the past three years since the first nuclear exchange that changed very shape of the affairs of the world. The year is 2009, and the world has been locked in a horrible world wide war that many would like to say got it start back in 2000 when the USSR and PRC had gotten into a border dispute in Central Asia. But others with much better memories say that it had actually started back in 1989. Back when it really looked as if the Cold War was about to end with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe…

But that was not meant to be. A coup in the middle of 1989 saw the Gorbachev regime brought down, and the end of the Sinatra Doctrine when the Red Army units garrisoning East Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe put down pro-democratic protesters and reformers. During that horrible winter of 1989 the West watched in horror as the Soviet Union reinforced its hegemony with a brutal iron fist that would inspire the Peoples Republic of China to follow its example in 1993 to put down nearly three hundred pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. In comparison, the world would say that the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) who went missing during that 'Black Winter' that saw the gentle thaw of the Cold War turn once more into a new Ice Age.

Thanks to the 'Black Winter', the first half of the 1990s had become the tensest time during the history of the Cold War. Even tenser than the period that necessitated the Berlin Airlift, a feat that NATO had to repeat throughout the three months of what historians and the media had called the 'Black Winter'.

In August of 1990 Saddam Hussein's Republic of Iraq invaded the Emirate of Kuwait without the approval of the Soviet Union, whom did nothing to stop the US-led coalition of forces to liberate the small oil-producing Persian Gulf country. In fact the Soviets had assisted the Coalition Forces, providing permission for the use of Soviet and Eastern Bloc airspace for the Coalition forces to launch their attacks on Iraqi emplacements. The presence of Soviet Obeservers on both sides of the war allowed them to learn many lessions that they would later use to modernize their armed forces throughout the 1990s.

The election of Bill Clinton as President of the United States in 1992 saw the continuation of the 'Peace through Strength' policy that had originally been started by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. But President Clinton also pursued a policy of economic engagement with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Trade with the Eastern Bloc allowed limited capitalist economic and cultural reforms that greatly benefited the communist countries behind the Iron Curtain.

During the early-1990s saw the creation of a grassroots political organization in the United States based upon progressive populist beliefs that would become known as the Union for a Progressive New America sponsored by an extremely wealthy international financier. Throughout the 1990s and the first years of the early 21st Century the Union for a Progressive New America rapidly grew in power and scope allowing the new political party to win many local and state elections by 2004, including the election of several prominent members to the United States House of Representatives.

NATO found itself spilt over how to deal with the Black Winter, something that had long lasting effects and saw the birth of the Mediterranean Alliance in 1992 during the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm by the French Republic, Italian Republic and Hellenic Republic. These three nations would be joined by Portuguese Republic in 1994, Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria and the Tunisian Republic in 1995, the Kingdom of Spain in 1998 and finally the Peoples Socialist Republic of Albania in 1999.

While initially allied with NATO, the Alliance would slowly start to develop a much more distinct foreign policy. Especially with their policy with the continent of Africa. The African states and the order they joined the Mediterranean Alliance; the Republic of Chad in 1994, the Equatorial Guinea in 1994, the Central African Republic in 1994, the Republic of the Congo in 1995, the Kingdom of Morocco in 1996, the Somali Republic in 1997, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1998, and the Great Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 2000. It was the rapid growth of the Mediterranean Alliance in Africa prompted the United States to create the African Unified Combatant Command.

By the end of the 1990s, luxury goods such as McDonalds, Starbucks, Pepsi, Levis and even Victoria's Secret could be found in stores throughout the Eastern Bloc. But the prosperity of the 1990s led to decadence in the East as well as the West. A brewing border dispute between the USSR and PRC spurred on by leaders dissatisfied with the changes and reforms exploded into the Sino-Soviet Border War in August of 2000. The Sino-Soviet War would end up drawing the rest of Warsaw Pact when the fighting turned against the Soviet Union mid-2001. By early 2002 the Sino-Soviet War had become a meat grinder for the Pact forces (especially the units of the NVA der DDR) whom where finding themselves being used as cannon fodder.

The DDR and other Warsaw Pact countries started to turn against their Soviet masters, and covertly opened negotiations with their counterparts inside NATO. Seeking assistance in breaking away from being controlled by central planners in Moscow.

In 2003 the Soviets demanded another round of reinforcements from their Warsaw Pact allies, who balked at the thought of even sending more troops into the Sino-Soviet War fronts in Central Asia and the Far East.

On 9 September 2003, three nearly bloodless coups where carried out by high ranking military and political leaders seeking to allow their people a chance once more to choose their own destiny. While they had been able to overthrow the Soviet sponsored governments that controlled the German Democratic Republic and Hungarian Peoples Republic, the coup in the Polish Peoples Republic failed thanks to the Soviet KGB intercepting the majority of conspirators allowing the majority of Poland to remain in the hands of the Polish central communist government and Soviet Occupation forces plunging the country into chaos as local uprisings go off without central authorities while government opposition maintained a cohesive control that nearly stomped out the rebellion.

If not for the successful uprising in the DDR with the aid of the Federal Republic of Germany (and having the support of nearly every level of the East German government) pushing the occupying Soviet Forces in Germany out of the nation, the Polish uprising would have been a total failure.

Dispite the fact that popular support for the war in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, they had a greater fear of the possible reunification of the two German states. Thus renewing their continued allegiance to the Warsaw Pact, and prompting them to launch a major offensive to support the beleaguered Soviet forces in East Germany. It was the entrance of Czechoslovak forces into East Germany that prompted both the US and British forces garrisoned in West Germany to launch their own counter-assault against the Czechoslovak and 'loyalist' Polish forces that where currently engaged in combat there.

The Peoples Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Republic of Romania mobilized to reinforce the Soviets and Czechoslovak forces fighting against NATO and the turncoat East German and Polish forces in the German Democratic Republic and the Polish Peoples Republic much to the dismay of their neighbors.

After the mobilization of their Balkan neighbors to enter into the conflict in Eastern Europe prompted the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia joined NATO alliance. Which along with skirmishes between Bulgarian and Turkish forces would prompt the Mediterranean Alliance to at first to enter a state of armed neutrality that would become a state of war when they refused to allow NATO to reinforce the Republic of Turkey in the early part of 2004 after the Soviets started to appear as if they where going to prepare to launch an all out offensive into Southwest Asia in an effort to cut NATO's access to Middle East Oil Fields.

Thanks to this, the war in Europe and Central Asia had spread to the Middle East and Africa prompting the United States Congress to authorize the reactivation of the Draft and the creation of the wartime Army of the United States to defend the country. All throughout the later years of the 1990s political pressure had created the Evaluation of Female Combat Personnel Program to test the possibility of American women in combat or combat support positions that had proven successful. Thus when the Congress passed the new Draft legislation in 2004 both men and women between the ages of 18 to 35 had found that they were eligible for the draft equally. This gave a grassroots support for both protestors and political pundits whom where associated with the 'Union for a Progressive New America' to speak out, support and organize groups whose only reason to exist was to resist both the war and the draft.

By mid-2006 the first uses of nuclear weapons was reported during the Sino-Soviet conflict in Central Asia and quickly followed when the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan went nuclear when the two states decided to finally end the nearly-half century state of war that had existed between them that left both states desolate wastelands that would soon be mirrored in other parts of the world. The use of nuclear weapons in the Western Hemisphere was much more limited, with the unspoken agreement between the three superpowers limited themselves to the use of only tactical nuclear warheads on the battlefields.

In mid-2007 the first and only use of strategic nuclear weapons occurred on the early morning of Wednesday 4 July 2007 with the launch of a surgical strike by the Soviet Union in an attempt to knock the United States out of the War. The surviving media would call this surprise nuclear attack that hit Washington DC and select military targets in the Continental United States as the 'Independence Day Massacre.'

Throughout 2008 the war continued in sporadic offenses and counter-offenses that occurred between attempts by the participants in an effort to regain internal control over their homelands. Back in the United States the Union for a Progressive New America had launched an attempt to overthrow the surviving federal and state governments using the distraction of the nuclear exchanges of the 'Independence Day Massacre' as cover for their attempt. Many elements of the surviving media conglomerates at first ignored the activities of the 'Progressive New America' but would soon find themselves even focus of the organizations attempts to assert complete and total control over every aspect of the day-to-day lives of the areas under their control.

The Federal Government attempted to keep the fighting between it and the 'Union for a Progressive New America' from getting to much coverage fearing that it would weaken its ability to maintain control over those areas still within its sphere of control and influence. But after reports of the atrocities that where being carried out in the seat of the Union's power (Seattle, WA), the Federal Government had to go public with the covert war that had started in the aftermath of the 'Independence Day Massacre'.

By mid-2009 the war had finally ground to a halt on all fronts as all of the participants where just too over extended, and incapable of even keeping their own homelands secure from domestic outlaw elements. Thus when the final offensive of the war fizzled, and many found themselves cut off and stranded as strangers in strange lands having to find their own way home.

And this… This is the story of two such people.

One is a soldier, and the other a field correspondent of one of the last operating international news agencies.