#naval drill halls

[artofdeductionbysholmes]

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and you fog memorized by a distant face.

-L.S

If you're going to quote something, try doing it properly instead of this scattershot recital. Entire thing, please, if it's not too much trouble.

"My dearest darling,

…Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.

I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M.

I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping.

I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl.

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.

I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try.

I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog.

I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this.

I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else — your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. — although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry — and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned.

That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

…I miss you. Who knows when I will see you?"

-Lemony Snicket (copied from here)

I never thought— that I wanted to care for someone like that. But, apparently, I do.

SH

@johnhwatsonblog

[holiday-7]

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

[beardedmrbean]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military is considering putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, in what would be an unheard of action aimed at stopping Iran from seizing and harassing civilian vessels, four American officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

America didn't even take the step during the so-called “Tanker War,” which culminated with the U.S. Navy and Iran fighting a one-day naval battle in 1988 that was the Navy's largest since World War II.

While officials offered few details of the plan, it comes as thousands of Marines and sailors on both the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship, are on their way to the Persian Gulf. Those Marines and sailors could provide the backbone for any armed guard mission in the strait, through which 20% of all the world’s crude oil passes.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP about the U.S. proposal.

Four U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, acknowledged its broad details. The officials stressed no final decision had been made and that discussions continue between U.S. military officials and America's Gulf Arab allies in the region.

Officials said the Marines and Navy sailors would provide the security only at the request of the ships involved. The Bataan and Carter Hall left Norfolk, Virginia, on July 10 on a mission the Pentagon described as being “in response to recent attempts by Iran to threaten the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters.” The Bataan passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea last week on its way to the Mideast.Already, the U.S. has sent A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes, F-16 and F-35 fighters, as well as the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, to the region over Iran’s actions at sea. The deployment has captured Iran's attention, with its chief diplomat telling neighboring nations that the region doesn't need “foreigners” providing security. On Wednesday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a surprise military drill on disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, with swarms of small fast boats, paratroopers and missile units taking part. The renewed hostilities come as Iran now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. also has pursued ships across the world believed to be carrying sanctioned Iranian oil. Oil industry worries over another seizure by Iran likely has left a ship allegedly carrying Iranian oil stranded off Texas as no company has yet to unload it.

[calliopesink]

246th NROTCU Cadets Showcase Skills at Local Annual General Tactical Inspection 

The 246th NROTCU held their Local Annual General Tactical Inspection (LAGTI) led by LCDR MAY GLICELL LAGANG PN,  Deputy Commander at the Naval Reserve Center at Adamson University last Saturday, April 27, 2024.

Amidst the scorching heat, the Corps of Cadets showcased their learned skills from a year’s worth of lectures and training— Military Science 1 to Military Science 2. Through this inspection,  the proficiency and capabilities of every ROTC Unit throughout the region is assessed and showcased in front of esteemed military inspectors thereby, assessing the quality of education provided to the cadets and cadettes taking ROTC as their National Service Training Program (NSTP). 

Following the demonstration of various special units, the first unit executed Close Order Drills in front of the Saint Vincent (SV) Facade. This was followed by  demonstration of the Raids and Ambush or Small Unit Tactics and Semaphore Flag Signalling. On the third floor of the SV building, cadets exhibited exceptional performances in Map Reading, Morse Code, Flag Identification, and Knot tying. In the SV Hall, the Comprehensive Examination Units carry out their theoretical knowledge. The Medics presented first aid and rescue procedures.

Jr/S Lowellane Anne Advento, one of the participants in the Morse Code Special Unit stated “It was such a huge privilege and great experience for me to be participating in what is known to be one of the hardest special units, as it tested the knowledge that I gained from the past training that I went through. That alone is my pride, but the overall experience was fun, from the training we underwent, the bond I built with other cadets, and also being able to learn something that I can use in case of emergencies. And to be able to represent our unit and school only makes all the efforts worth it.”

Additionally, the unit already received numerous awards in the Local Annual General Tactical (LAGTI). In 2017 they were awarded Best in Semaphore Flag Signalling and Best in Flag Identification along with others.  

Written by: Bianca Heraldo

Pubmat by: Francheska Ivana Piñon

[bookloversofbath]

Always Ready: The Drill Halls of Britain's Volunteer Forces :: Mike Osborne

Always Ready: The Drill Halls of Britain’s Volunteer Forces :: Mike Osborne

Always Ready: The Drill Halls of Britain’s Volunteer Forces :: Mike Osborne soon to be presented for sale on the excellent BookLovers of Bath web site! Leigh-on-Sea: Partizan Press, 2006, Hardback in dust wrapper. Includes: Floor plans; Black & white photographs; Colour photographs; List of abbreviations; References; 2-column text; Appendices (7); From the cover: This book explores the form,…

[dameronscopilot]

Boiling Point

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x f!reader

Summary: A spur of the moment invitation leads you to underestimate what years worth of sexual tension with Rooster will amount to when placed within the stifling square footage of your humble apartment.

Word Count: 2.2k

Rating: 18+ EXPLICIT

Content: NSFW, smut, oral sex (m!receiving), thigh riding, unprotected p in v, rough sex, praise kink, table sex

Part of you knows that if you gave Rooster an inch, he’d take it. If you softened your hard edges just enough to be pliable beneath his callused hands, ones that you can only imagine would trail across your skin with the same deft precision that he utilizes in the cockpit, he’d take you apart piece-by-piece. 

Prompt: The only two people without plans for Christmas might as well spend it together (dedicated to @frankiesbadlanding 💖)

DECK THE HALLS MASTERLIST

“You can’t spend Christmas alone, Bradshaw.”

While you’d certainly meant what you’d said to Rooster days ago as you were trudging across the base—both of you breathing hard and covered in sweat after hours of intensive drills in the air—now that he’s standing here in the middle of your living room with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he observes the collage of artwork spread across your walls, your apartment suddenly feels too goddamn small.

—too small for this.

In the years that you’ve known Bradley, the stifling air that lingers between the two of you has been taut with a simmering tension, spread far too thin to weather much more of the tightrope of uncertainty you’ve both been carefully traipsing across day in and day out. Long before you enrolled in the naval academy, you vowed not to fall into the trap of distractions in the form of tall, handsome pilots with soft eyes and easy smiles—a rule made specifically for men like the one currently trailing his fingertips over the small piano by the window. 

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw is the definition of a goddamn distraction, through and fucking through. 

For all that you’ve done to earn the designation of “Specter,” a call sign born from your uncanny ability to get the drop on your teammates with a near ghostly grace, Rooster is the one person that makes you stumble without fail once your feet are firmly planted back on the ground. Sometimes, you don’t think he’s even aware of it, the way he catches you off guard with his barking laugh, the way your nerves are set alight whenever he lowers his sunglasses and offers you a lopsided grin from across the room. The way your steady hands will tremble from a mere brush of his fingers. 

It should bother you, really, how easily he gets under your skin. 

How effortlessly he draws you into his orbit. 

How he unceasingly invades your thoughts.

It’s a testament to every adamantly stubborn bone in your body that the two of you haven’t fucked it out yet.

Part of you knows that if you gave Rooster an inch, he’d take it. If you softened your hard edges just enough to be pliable beneath his callused hands, ones that you can only imagine would trail across your skin with the same deft precision that he utilizes in the cockpit, he’d take you apart piece-by-piece. 

He’d work his way into each and every crevice of your being with a white-hot intensity that would rival the manner in which he burns across the skies. 

Bradley would ruin you for anyone else.

Later, after you’ve eaten dinner and left the dishes to soak in a sea of suds in the sink, the last frayed edges of your paper-thin charade are helpless when Rooster speaks up from where he’s casually leaning against the doorway, eyes tracking your movements across the room. 

“Why’d you invite me to spend Christmas with you, Specter?”

You come to a stop beside the kitchen table, fingers briefly drumming across its wooden surface. Too many answers flirt across the tip of your tongue, so you settle on the easiest. “Because I know neither of us have anyone left to celebrate with.”

Pushing off of the wooden frame, he strides toward you, coming to a stop a few feet away. “Is that all?”

Biting your lip, you roll your eyes as you evade the question with one of your own, “Did you really have to wear a Hawaiian shirt on Christmas?” 

He glances down at himself as you gesture toward his pink and green top, which he’s predictably left unbuttoned, aviators snugly tucked into the neck of his white t-shirt. Moving closer, he tilts his head to the side. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I think I did.”

Another step.

“Are you sure?”

Another.

“What do you want, Rooster?”

Your backside presses against the lip of the table as he comes to a stop in front of you.

“I want to know why I’m here.”

It’s a fucking loaded question, one that leaves your blood thrumming in your veins as your mind tries to unravel the implication behind it. The unspoken, shared knowledge that you’ve both traversed this liminal space of willful ignorance for far too long. 

This invitation wasn’t just about the holiday, and he fucking knows it. 

You tell him just that, your response nearly a whisper. “You know why.”

Though you try to focus on a spot over his shoulder, eyes sweeping over the strings of brightly-colored lights strung about in the room beyond, you can’t help but turn your head to meet the weight of his gaze as he replies evenly, “I want to hear you say it.”

Even with the hot caress of his breath dancing across your cheek, you still dig your heels into the tile floor beneath your feet, dizzy as you sway at the precipice of the edge you've always skirted. “Say what, Bradley?”

You swear you can hear the hitch in his breath as his real name leaves your mouth—a rare occurrence. 

He glances up at the ceiling for a moment, biting his cheek and tousling his hair. “Say you’re tired of acting like you don’t want this. Because I sure fucking am.”

Your skin prickles with heat, his words dragging down your spine and reverberating in your ears. Without blinking, you let go—

“I am, too."

Rooster goes entirely still for a moment when you finally relent, eyes widening a fraction in something like surprise, and then his mustache twitches at the behest of the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“Good,” he murmurs, before leaning in and capturing your lips in a long overdue kiss. 

Your body relaxes into Rooster’s solid form as he slots his mouth against yours, and while one of his hands comes up to cup the back of your head, the other slides down to grasp at your hip, steadying you as your limbs go pliant under his scorching touch.

There’s no uncertainty in the way he holds you, no awkward fumbling of limbs—rather, there’s a deliberate familiarity in the press of each finger against your skin, a whispered reminder of the trust you already share. In the air, there’s a peculiar harmony to be found in the way the two of you fly side-by-side, rhythmically anticipating one another’s moves through the clouds. And here, now, with your feet planted firmly on solid ground, you’ve finally come to realize that this will be no different. 

You tilt your head, and his nose nudges your cheek while his tongue flirts with the seam of your mouth, beckoning you to part your lips for him. When you do, Rooster deepens the kiss, pressing his body firmly against yours and splaying a hand across your lower back. You melt into his body heat, a keening sound escaping your heaving chest at the thrill that runs through you when you press into the muscled thigh he’s planted between your legs. 

Rooster’s fingers slide lower, grazing your ass, and he breaks the kiss, muttering against your lips, “You like that?”

He adjusts his leg, the denim of his jeans rubbing against the apex of your thighs, and you can’t help but nod, letting your head fall against his shoulder as he uses his grip on your backside to increase the pressure. 

“You look so pretty like this,” he observes, kissing your cheek softly as you arch your back, your fingers digging into his shoulders. “Keep going.”

And so you do. Pulling him in for a needy kiss, hands tightly grasping the hairs at the back of his head, your teeth clash as you drag your clothed cunt down his leg.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and the thumb that’s fluttering across your jawline swipes across your bottom lip. 

There’s something innately shameless about riding Rooster’s thigh in the middle of your kitchen, like you always knew it’d come down to this somehow. There’s no time to waste being shy at the feeling of the sticky pool of arousal gathered in your underwear, and when you reach down to hike your dress up, Rooster’s hands swiftly slide up your thighs and bunch up the skirt, his thumbs digging into your hip bones.

“Bradley…” you whine as you chase the sparks of pleasure with each thrust—it’s not enough, and he knows it.

He groans into your mouth as you say his name again, taking your bottom lip between his teeth when your hand trails over the erection straining against the front of his pants. You make quick work of the button and zipper, slipping a hand inside, and he rolls his hips into your touch when you wrap your fingers around his hard, throbbing cock. His lips messily slide off of yours and run across your cheek as you pull his shaft out and begin to stroke it. In turn, one of his hands leaves your hips, tugging aside your soaked underwear to swipe two digits through your slick folds. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out when he realizes just how wet you are, the tight walls of your cunt easily giving way when he begins to slide his middle finger into your entrance. He quickly inserts another as his mouth finds its way to your neck, nipping and lapping at the sensitive skin there while he begins to pump his fingers in and out of you. 

At the feeling of you eagerly rocking your hips into his hand while tugging at his dick, Rooster chuckles, grazing his teeth over your earlobe. “You want more, Specter?”

“Please.”

“Right here?”

“Yeah, on the table.”

“Tell me how you like it,” he croons, crooking his fingers inside of you as he runs his tongue along the underside of your jaw. 

You pluck his sunglasses from where they’re still dangling precariously from the neck of his shirt, dropping them onto the table. “You don’t need to be gentle.”

No sooner than the words have left your lips, he spins you around, and you find yourself bent over the tabletop, your cheek pressed against the cool wooden surface as Rooster’s hands trail over the globes of your ass. 

He folds his body over yours for a moment, his cock nestled between your cheeks as his mouth hovers near your face. “I should have known you’d like it rough.”  

When stands back up, he nudges your legs further apart and teases your dripping folds with the head of his cock, wiping your arousal along his shaft. He notches himself at your entrance for a moment, and just as you go to take a breath, he plunges inside of you without warning. Both of you moan in unison at the feeling of your walls stretching to accommodate him as he buries himself inside of you, your cunt both weeping and tingling at the thick intrusion splitting you open. 

“You feel so fucking good,” he groans as he pulls his cock almost completely out of you, only to slam it back inside, his balls smacking against your ass.

A choked out sob of pleasure leaves your mouth in response as your muscles tighten at the feeling of Rooster’s shaft massaging your inner walls while he begins to set a punishing rhythm pounding into you.

“Harder,” you pant out.

The feet of the table grunt in protest, skidding a few inches backward as he drives his length into your pussy with fervor, recklessly rutting into you at a brutal pace. Your fingers are in the midst of reaching out to grasp for purchase along the smooth surface of the tabletop when you feel both of your arms being tugged behind your back. Rooster wraps a hand over your wrists, pinning your hands against your lower back as he ravages your hole. 

Sounds of wet, smacking flesh fill the room, and you squirm in his grip as the growing ache between your thighs begins to spread. Noticing the way your legs have begun to tremble, he leans in, using his free hand to toy with your swollen clit. At the feeling of Rooster’s fingers rubbing circles into your sensitive bundle of nerves, the tight coil of pleasure writhing in your gut explodes, your cunt clenching down on his shaft as your orgasm washes over you.

As you relax slightly, Rooster releases your hands, grasping his cock as he slips it out of your hole. You push off of the table, turning around to find him fisting his length, and you drop to your knees, taking him into your mouth.

You hollow your cheeks as you take him deep into your throat, his length coated in your juices. Rooster’s hand comes up to cup the back of your head, and he groans as you suck his cock, one of your hands planted at the base as the other cups his balls. His imminent climax finds him between one breath and the next, his shaft pulsing on your tongue as you swallow down the hot, thick ropes of cum he spills down your throat.

Breathing hard, you pull your lips off of Rooster's spent cock and plop backward onto the floor, stealing a glance up at him to see that he's already on his way down to meet you on the tiles. And even with the lingering traces of his release still lingering on your swollen, spit-soaked lips, he takes your face into his hands and kisses you hard. 

A burning smell begins to fill the kitchen, and you belatedly realize you forgot to set a timer on the oven after tossing in the pie that he'd brought over.

"Shit, the pie—"

Rooster makes a sound of protest as you pull your mouth away from his when you turn to look at the stove.

"Fuck the pie," he mutters, turning your chin back to face him and capturing your lips with his once more.

—

Comments, reblogs, and/or asks are always appreciated!

» BRADLEY BRADSHAW MASTERLIST

[ice-fire-or-clear]

Further On The Edge, I.

Tom “Iceman” Kazansky x f!Reader (callsign Siren)

Word count: 1.6k

A/N: Ah yes, first Top Gun fic, let’s gooo. Before there was Hangman, there was Iceman. Not enough Ice fics out there so I decided to give it a try. The timeline is the same but more stretched out than in the movie. This will be the first in a multi-part series, so enjoy :)

masterlist I part 2

CW: Sexism, alcohol, Ice being a dick, secondhand embarrassment because Maverick, etc, etc.

—

“The uh, plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies’ room.”

You focus your glare resolutely down at your notebook, ignoring the jeers of the surrounding aviators as they twist in their seats, gleeful to see your reaction. You will your face not to flush as you stand up, reaching for your bag, carefully to avoid any eye contact or show any hint of a reaction. Unfortunately, it all goes to shit when one of your fellow classmates bumps your elbow on their way up the steps, and startled, your head snaps up, allowing him to catch your eye.

Iceman stares back at you with an expectant smirk, fiddling with his ever-present toothpick with his tongue. He flashes those pearly whites at you, eager to see you rise to his bait.

Luckily, you’re saved by shrieking, hysteric laughter. You turn your head to see Goose at the top of the classroom with his pilot, Maverick, at his elbow, possibly the only two people in the room that Ice has more disdain for than you.

Iceman’s gaze slips away from you to glare at the two of them, the moment forgotten. You take the opportunity to make your exit, weaving through the crowd of dispersing pilots on their way to the cafeteria hall. Swimming upstream, your mind floods with snarky comebacks to iceman’s remark only five minutes too late. Part of you wishes you could see his face when you hit him with, “Spending a lot of time in the ladies’ room these days, Ice?” or “Well, if that’s the only way you can get women to notice you.”

Arrogant, cocky assholes aren’t anything you haven’t already dealt with in your years in the Navy. But something about Ice always threatens to snap your guarded, unbothered persona.

Fuckin’ Kazansky.

-

Several hours later, after a frustrating afternoon of uncoordinated dog-fighting and sloppy fieldwork, you hunch over the desk in your assigned dormitory, pouring over your copy of the F-14 NATOPS. It’s not like you haven’t read the document cover-to-cover many times before, but you’re still looking for something. Anything to help you better understand what went wrong on your last run, and how you can prevent it tomorrow.

You knew the other aviators were out enjoying their evening, sinking a few beers at any number of the local bars, or engaging in a game of ill-advised, jean-clad beach volleyball, but that didn’t faze you one bit. Even if you wanted (or trusted) their company, you would still be in the same place you are now: trying to find something that could give you an edge, because God knows being able to fly as fast and steady as the rest of them wasn’t enough to acknowledge you to actually being one of them.

Being the only woman in room full of male aviators and instructors put a target on your back, and that didn’t even begin to describe what went down during training drills. It had been that way for your entire career, and you weren’t naive enough to think simply being a good pilot would be enough to shake it. There was no room for error; no allowances for natural flaws or weaknesses. The simple fact of your gender worked as a magnifying glass, amplifying any faults and diminishing any merits.

The clatter of your pen on the desk snapped you out of your reverie, making you scowl as you realized you had been twirling it between you fingers. That simple action reminded you of Ice, who had been threatening to throw you into a mental tailspin ever since your arrival at Miramar.

You had heard of him long before your actual introduction; the world of Naval aviation wasn’t so large after all. He was the best of the best, and he knew it. He prided himself on the way he flew- ice cold, no mistakes, hence the callsign. Originally you held a sense of respect towards him, given that you had been trying to cultivate those same attributes, albeit for very different reasons. You had actually been looking forward to flying alongside him during your time at Top Gun, excited to be working with a like-minded pilot. Of course, that had all evaporated the moment you actually met him.

--

Weeks earlier, you had spent your first full day in North Island unpacking your belongings and acquainting yourself with the base that you would be calling home for the next five weeks. After reaffirming your belief that all bases were more or less the same, you decided to visit The O, one of the local bars that you had heard was popular among the on-base aviators. After years of exposure, you already had a good idea of what the other pilots would be like, but that didn’t stop you from holding out hope that maybe the best of the best would be different.

Leaning against the bar, you absent-mindedly flattened the cuff on your shorts with the hand not occupied with your drink. You sipped it slowly as you took in the lively scene before you, sailors, civilians, and pilots alike swirling together. you had lost count of all of the smirking white uniforms dancing, buying drinks, and attempting to dazzle all the women surrounding them. You had always found it a bit too… self-important, wearing summer whites to a bar that was bound to be full of civilians. Hence, your high-waisted denim shorts and oversized white button down. More exciting than your service uniform, but casual enough to indicate you weren’t exactly interested in company.

Jostled out of your internal monologue by a brush against your left elbow, you came back down to earth in time to hear the bartender say, “What’ll it be, Ice?”

Involuntarily, your head snapped towards the tall man who had materialized at your side, the length of his right bicep resting against your left. Here he was. The best pilot in the Navy. After glimpsing enough of the letters on his name tag to confirm it really was him, you lifted your face towards his. Taking in his broad-shouldered form up close, you almost wanted to retract your earlier statement about the uniforms. Cocky, sure, but it worked on him. For once, you dropped your untouchable demeanor, smiling as you started to introduce yourself to the pilot you had heard so much about.

Of course, that just would have been too easy.

“Hi, sweetheart.” He flashed you a grin, looking down at you. You could feel his gaze travel almost imperceptibly down the length of your body, almost as if you had imagined it.

After pausing on your face for another half-second, his smile widened a fraction of an inch. He turned back to the bartender just as the other man slid a few beers over the counter. “And another one for the lady, please.”

“What? No, that’s not what I-“

Iceman chuckled, taking a sip of his beer. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I won’t tell your boyfriend, okay? Our little secret.” The arrogant bastard had the nerve to wink at you before disappearing back into the crowd.

What the hell?

It took you the rest of your first drink to fully process what the fuck had just happened. The best of the best, the legendary Iceman, blatantly hitting on you without letting you get a single word in otherwise? Iceman making the pigheaded assumption that you were just so enamored with him that he should buy you a drink without even getting your name? And what the hell was he doing buying drinks for women that were supposedly “taken” anyway?

Shock gave way to indignation, anger, and embarrassment as you downed the last drops of your drink. You stared at the untouched beer on the bar top in front of you, condensation visible on the glass. You half-debated not drinking it on principle, but no. If Iceman was so self-important as to buy you that beer, then you were gonna let him waste his money and take advantage of the free alcohol.

By the time you set the empty bottle back down on the wood, your head was spinning every so slightly in that pleasant way and you felt untouchable once again. Your own sense of aviator pride and self-assuredness began to work it’s way out of you, as it always did after a few drinks. You had just started to stand, clutching the bar top, when you heard the music cut out and someone start singing- badly- over the speakers. Swinging your head to glance over at the other side of the bar, you watched as more of the white uniforms began to surround the singer, focusing their attention on a bewildered snd slightly embarrassed woman. You decided that you definitely didn’t want to know, and took that as your cue to leave.

As you made your way back to your dorm that night, you thought about what would go down when Ice first saw you on the tarmac with him. At first, you imagined the scene that would play out with dread and a sense of embarrassment, but then it struck you that you hadn’t come this far in your career to be put to shame by a man who couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Absolutely not, you decided. Instead you vowed that you would never let any of them, but especially the Iceman, get to you like that again. You would let your hard-won skills speak for you, and there would be no goddamned room for anyone to say anything else.

--

masterlist I part 2

A/N: Stay tuned for part 2 and let me know what you thought, I suppose :)

[walterdecourceys]

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

lemony snicket - the beatrice letters

[im-tempted]

for @mamie-eisenhower

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

[e350tb]

Red Alert - Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen: Game Plan

The Liberty Day Thirty-One

For more than a week, the Liberty had been operating under radio silence.

US High Command in Omaha was, quite wisely, hesitant to use radio communications - after all, nearly all their ciphers were in the enemy’s hands, signals intelligence had been nearly completely compromised, and there was the very real threat of the PsiCorps listening in on the airwaves. The new system of dispatch runners, augmented in some cases by pigeons and even heliographs, would have been recognisable to the commanders of the First World War - even if the helicopter had replaced the horse and the motorbike.

Command at Omaha, led by a committee of general officers such as Townes, Fuller, and even the octogenarian General Bradley, would draft an order that would be encoded by a Vigenère cipher, which would be divided into three separate parts. These three parts and the code phrase would be dispatched individually by four separate messengers in light helicopters, who were under strict orders to take an indirect route to their destination, and to destroy their messages in the event of the capture. Once they reached their destination, the message would be translated and put back together and then delivered to the officer commanding the destination unit.

This meant the Soviets couldn’t decode the entire US cipher - even if they intercepted all the fragments of the message and the code phrase, they had only cracked one order. The downside was that it meant a significant lag between orders dispatched and orders received, and thus commanders in the field had to learn very quickly to be as self-sufficient as possible. This had already invited disaster - a delay in orders, combined with Dugan’s announcement and a shaky commander who had taken over from his wounded superior had led to the surrender of Mobile, allowing the Soviets to link their Southern and Texan fronts and cut the Americans from the Gulf of Mexico. Only New Orleans and Baton Rouge now held out.

The situation was bleak in the east - nearly a third of the United States forces, willing or otherwise, had now surrendered to the Soviet Union. Some governors and state legislatures in the midwest were clamouring for an armistice, lest their states be ravaged next, and there had even been civilian protest against the war. Yet there was cause for hope - the Soviet offensive in California was still going poorly, and before his promotion to senior command in Omaha, Fuller had rolled up the Soviet beachheads in Seattle. The Americans liberated a ruin, but it was considered a victory regardless. There was even hope of reinforcements - after one ‘accidental’ airstrike over the border too many, the Canadian Army was starting to mobilise.

It was impossible to hide a flying carrier like the Liberty, but it was possible to keep it out of harm's way. For the past three days it had rested on a field in central Minnesota, quietly waiting for Gunter and his team to return - and for any orders Omaha might send their way. The crew and troops aboard had had little to do for a while now, and morale was starting to fray.

“Your men need something to do, Biggs,” said Hawthorne bluntly.

“I beg your pardon?”

Biggs had just walked into the Colonel’s quarters, where he had been met by Hawthorne and a large, stern-faced naval petty officer. The latter’s arms were crossed, and his square jaw was set in a frown - he didn’t look amused.

“Chief O’Hanlon?” said Hawthorne.

“I’ve had to break up sixteen fights between my crew and your men this past week,” snapped O’Hanlon. “You need to get the dozy bastards out of the mess hall and into work. Ain’t you ever heard o’ drillin’ or anything?”

“We do drill,” replied Biggs testily. “Daily. Drill and exercises. I’m doing the best I can here…”

“Well it’s clearly not good enough,” said Hawthorne. “I’ve had to put twenty-three men on charges this past week alone - six confined to quarters, one in the brig. Your men have been restless and churlish, and it won’t stand.”

“Ma’am, what am I supposed to do?” demanded Biggs. “Apart from the Cowboys, none of my regiment have fought a significant action in two weeks. The only thing they ever hear is bad news. They can’t exactly call their families because there’s a big Soviet Army in New York, and…”

“They’re your regiment, Major Biggs,” snapped Hawthorne. “I don’t want excuses for them. You might have noticed that everyone aboard this ship is operating under the same pressures, yet the 69th Regiment has accumulated more incident reports than the rest of this battlegroup combined. You will clean this up.”

“Major, I-”

“Dismissed, Major.”

Biggs gritted his teeth, turned and marched away.

“Chief O’Hanlon, cancel all leave for the 69th Regiment,” ordered Hawthorne. “Officers included.”

“Yes ma’am!” O’Hanlon saluted. “I have three outstanding arrest warrants, by the way - there was a fight in the mess hall again. Should I place them under arrest?”

Hawthorne pondered for a moment.

“O’Hanlon,” she asked, “are they all soldiers?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Have you ever charged a sailor for one of these fights?” she asked. “Or an airman?”

“No ma’am, it’s always the GIs.”

Hawthorne nodded.

“Let it go this time,” she said. “We don’t want the men to believe we’re singling them out.”

“Yes ma’am, of course ma’am.”

“Dismissed, Chief O’Hanlon.”

O’Hanlon saluted and marched out - as he did, Jackson and his colleague entered.

“Colonel Hawthorne,” said Jackson evenly.

“Jackson,” nodded Hawthorne. “Agent Hudson.”

“Von Esling just returned,” said Jackson. “The defector, unfortunately, did not make it, but he handed us some… interesting documents.”

“They match pretty well with the latest message from Omaha,” added Jackson’s bald colleague - Hudson - “The Russians are up to something big in Chicago.”

“I would recommend calling a council of war,” finished Jackson.

Hawthorne pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I wish you’d told me that before I disciplined Major Biggs,” she sighed. “Very well, gather the senior officers and tell them to meet me in the war room in ten minutes.”

------

For all the technological advancements of the Liberty, the war room looked to all the world like a regular boardroom.

The ship’s officers and various unit commanders were gathered around a long rectangular table, Colonel Hawthorne standing at the end. The lights were dimmed, and a projector had been set up on the table before her - she stood to the side to allow it to project onto the grey wall behind her.

“This is the Lazar Kaganovich,” said Hawthorne. “It is the command ship of General Anatoly Cherdenko. Until today, the Kaganovich was only of interest to us due to its position as a mobile Soviet headquarters, an intelligence nexus, and it’s unofficial position as the Soviet Army’s largest unofficial brothel.”

Biggs’ eyebrows shot up. “Largest what now?”

“Cherdenko’s headquarters is a hotbed of hedonism,” said Jackson. “His staff swim in prostitutes, drugs and liquor. It’s had a marked effect on performance - when we ranked the various staffs of the Soviet commanders, we put Cherdenko’s last.”

“But Cherdenko’s good at the political game,” Weathers added. “More to the point, Vladimir likes him. Otherwise this job would probably have gone to Khabarov.”

“Based on Major Kyrylenko’s information and the recent dispatch from Omaha, we now believe that several high value prisoners are being held in the brig of the Kaganovich,” said Hawthorne. “Including - potentially - the President.”

There were whispers around the table.

“Do we know for certain?” asked Biggs. “This did come from a Ruskie.”

“Kyrylenko gave his life to give us this information, Herr Major,” said Gunter. “He was Ukrainian, he had no love for the Russians. Why would he play along with some kind of spy ruse - especially one that required his death?”

“It doesn’t really matter if we believe him, Biggs,” Weathers shrugged. “This one comes from the top.”

“CENTCOM has ordered a hit and run raid on the Kaganovich,” said Hawthorne. “We’re to get in, take the prisoners and any sensitive information we can, and then we get out.”

“That includes papers on this Chicago Project thing?” asked Tanya, leaning in.

Hawthorne and Jackson exchanged looks.

“Chicago Project?” Colonel Nicholson’s lips pursed together.

“We’ll discuss a little thing called OPSEC later, Agent,” growled Hudson.

“Jackson,” said Hawthorne. “Brief them.”

Jackson frowned, but did so.

“Until now, the Soviets have been using a network of Psionic Beacons to exert control over American minds,” he said. “This system is imperfect - the beacons must be constantly operational, and even a short interruption of power could free thousands of… ‘thralls,’ we’ll call them. Kyrylenko’s intelligence, corroborated with U2 flyovers of the city of Chicago, indicate that the Soviets are building a larger psionic weapon - the next generation, as it were.”

“So it’s bigger?” asked Biggs. “Affects more people?”

“The Psionic Beacons control minds,” explained Jackson. “But this… Psychic Dominator works at a deeper, fundamental level. It effectively rewrites the human consciousness. Once it is activated, it will not matter if we shut it down or even destroy it. It’s effects would be… quite permanent.”

An eerie silence fell over the room.

“So,” said Eva at last. “They’re in control of those people for good?”

“With the Psychic Dominator, they could seize America,” said Jackson. “Mind, body and, if you’d like, soul.”

“Our game plan going forward is to make sure Ivan never turns that thing on,” said Hudson. “Whatever it takes. That means taking risks.”

“We can’t infiltrate the Kaganovich quietly,” added Hawthorne. “We will need to put our men, our resources, even this ship at risk to pull this off. We need to hit them quickly and violently. I need everyone to be playing at their best. Am I making myself clear?”

Her gaze turned on Biggs. The Major snorted and crossed his arms.

“Crystal, ma’am,” he replied.

His eyes narrowed at his commanding officer.

“Crystal.”

[starfull-m]

I Don’t Think There’s Ever Been A More Beautiful Love Letter Than “The Beatrice Letters”

Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

[esotericakit]

“Hey yeah I’d like to order a pizza for Erin please. It’s spelled E for elephant, R for root beer, I for I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way. And then N for noodle.”

[fennecshandgf]

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors.

I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends.

I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess.

I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.

I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform.

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.

I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious.

I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M.

I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them.

I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza.

I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer.

I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.

I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping.

I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.

I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms.

I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl.

I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes.

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house.

I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.

I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment.

I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world.

I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen.

I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V.

I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try.

I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog.

I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go.

I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this.

I will love you if you don’t marry me.

I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned.

That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

- Lemony Snicket's The Beatrice Letters..

[warsofasoiaf]

The Celtic Tiger - A Kaiserreich Ireland AAR Chapter 4: Soldiers Are We

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” -W.B. Yeats

---

4 January 1939 - Economic Session of the Dail, Dublin, Ireland

Michael Collins had been debating initiatives to help smooth things over with the Ulster Unionists in the North. He had already revitalized plenty of the region’s industrial base, Harland and Wolff and the Short Brothers Aerospace PLC were employing plenty of people in Belfast, but the new American refugees had caused a great deal of cultural friction. The Unionist Party was never particularly quiet about their opinions on the state of affairs, but things were actively getting worse in Northern Ireland. 

“We should expand the steel initiative.” Collins had addressed the Dail in the annual IEAA meeting. “Producing steel domestically will allow us to better manage supply shortages in the event that our trade is cut off, and domestic steel production will be invaluable to the factories and shipyards. Belfast has made a compelling point, they have a significant amount of steelworking knowledge and experience that would meet the target goals faster than they would in other regions. Belfast will reclaim her old mantle as our very own Steel City. The Open For Business Initiative has put us significantly in the black this past year, we can afford to invest heavily in steel production in Ulster along with zinc mining in our rural provinces. That should keep us in boom times and diversify our economic base, in case any post-Black Monday bubbles pop.” 

Privately, Collins was more concerned with placating the Unionists. They had been complaining that Dublin was largely favored over Belfast, and that the Open for Business Initiative was an attempt to lure away the young workers of Northern Ireland to Dublin where they would lose their culture, and their voices, largely swallowed up by the Catholic voters. Violent crime was steadily rising in Belfast, the victims being either Catholics or American refugees, or reprisal attacks by Catholics. If there was a war, he could not reliably count on Ulster, even in the face of aggression from the Union. That was a pity. That had been the British strategy against Ireland, divide and conquer. Something would have to give very soon, no amount of economic bandaging was going to resolve the core tension within Ulster - they did not see themselves as part of an Irish Republic.

An aide burst into the meeting hall, causing a minor clamor and it took some time to restore order. The aide burst out breathlessly. “The Union, sir, they’re steaming out of port. The RMS Rebecca is going full-speed at our destroyers in the Irish Sea.” The poor fellow could barely complete a full sentence, his stammering professed an almost lack of belief in what was happening.

“Have they declared war?” Collins asked. The Union and Ireland did not have normalized relations, but that did not mean no information passed between the two countries. G2, the Directorate of Military Intelligence routinely monitored diplomatic intentions within Mosley’s government. Of all the espionage work performed by the Directorate, the Union accounted for almost fifty percent of its foreign operations, perhaps even more. 

“No, sir. No word.”

What was frightening about Mosley’s intentions was how much sense it made to Collins. Mosley and Deat, despite their opposition to each other, had stressed the urgency of the revolution at their electoral campaigns, and had prosecuted an aggressive foreign policy to export syndicalism to the world.  Both had turned inwards, Deat had been particularly violent in his purging of Blum and Gamelin, and they believed now that without dissent, they would not have naysayers and fifth columnists betraying their governments. By all accounts, their countries were ready to stand at the forefront of a global transformation. Yet the results were not successful. France and Britain  had been completely humiliated in the Second American Civil War, with Reed about to face a war crimes tribunal. The Commune of France had threatened to annex Savoy only to have Switzerland seek German support and membership within the Reichspakt, and Deat had backed down. A defeat, militarily, within Europe, would be a disaster, evidence of endemic weakness of the Internationale’s new leadership. 

Ireland would have been Mosley’s choice for a target. The stunning growth of the Irish economy and rise in the Irish standard of living would be an ideological foe, proof perhaps, that another way would be better. It was close to Britain and far from Mosley’s foes in Germany, Canada, and the United States. Its army and navy were tiny, compared to the Union’s. If they hurried, it could be a fait accompli no matter what any of the other great powers would do.

Collins thought for a moment. Ireland had benefited significantly from its neutrality between Entente and Reichspakt, not the least of which because it hadn’t been drawn into Germany’s wars as it had in Ukraine. The Open for Business Initiative never would have succeeded had Ireland been fully within the German sphere, and trade with the Entente had pacified the Anglophiles in the Centre Party. It was a natural pivot point that Ireland, as the middleman, could profit from. But an invasion of Ireland would see Ireland severely outnumbered in manpower and industrial capacity. 

“Get ahold of Admiral O’Muiris, have him mine the Irish Sea. Conduct a full investigation of the radar stations and anti-aircraft batteries, I want them in perfect working condition yesterday. No more drills, our men must go immediately to battle positions. See what we can learn about any invasion plans, put G2 on it; if they’re planning to land, I want to know where so we can put enough guns to turn their landing craft to splinters.” Collins spoke as if it were 20 years ago, as if he was that same man, ready to fight the last time the British refused the demand of Irish independence. “Also, let’s see if there are others as willing to fight for Ireland as we are, start with the Kaiser.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“We look farther then. Look to Canada if you have to.”

“Are you going to invite the Windsors back in?”

“Not for a moment, but sometimes you must deal with devils. ”

---

25 January 1939 -  Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, Ireland

It was the worst possible news. 

The Kaiser had been unable to provide support for Ireland. The Vozhd was threatening the Baltic Duchy and White Ruthenia with his goal of one land for all the Russian people, and Wilhelm II would not abandon them for a western war, especially not one who was not in the Reichspakt. Canada too, could not commit to protecting Ireland, as they were engaged in a large-scale war in India with the Princely Federation. The United States was still deep into Reconstruction, President Garner would not deploy the badly-battered US Army into a foreign campaign when there were still cholera outbreaks and people dying of exposure. They were all perfectly reasonable excuses, but it led Collins to an inescapable conclusion: Ireland was on its own.

No doubt Mosley was jumping for joy. His ambitions would not be curtailed by the major anti-syndicalist factions. Protests certainly arose, even within the Union itself, but Mosley had been able to quell them with daily speeches against Ireland, lambasting the nation for its capitalist economic policies, its embargo of British goods, and the ethnic tensions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland, which Mosley alleged to be inspired by Stephen X and a precursor to the establishment of a Catholic theocratic state. He had harshly criticized Dan McKenna, accusing him and the Thunderbolts of war crimes, summary executions of British volunteers, and torture of Union prisoners; a pointed criticism given that McKenna was soon to return to the United States to give his testimony on Welfare Island and the atrocities that had taken place in the Mississippi Delta.

Collins had established the Mosley Gan Mosley program on 2RN in response, with Irish comedians regularly mocking Mosley’s wild proclamations and providing evidence against his more spurious claims. Collins ensured that the broadcasts were transmitted on a wide band toward the British Isles, focusing on Scotland and Wales as the Autonomists had chafed under Mosley’s centralization and embrace of British nationalism. Collins directed the program to emphasize Mosley’s speeches as expressions of old British imperialism in the hopes of creating public unrest at home. He wondered if it was working at all, or if he was simply trying to give everyone a laugh before the end.

The days after the German and Canadian refusal had been a tense form of limbo. The An tAerchór only had a few fighter planes with limited training, nothing compared to the British Republican Air Force. Sending up pilots would be risky, and casualties would be high. The An tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh was only slightly better off. The cruisers and destroyers were unlikely to match the British Navy in naval combat, but the submarines could pose a serious threat, and advances in naval mines would help cause further casualties among the landing craft. There was no getting around it, the Irish did not have the ability to contest the seas and so would be forced to repel the invasion with their ground forces. Civilians had been preparing for the coming disaster with air raid drills. Last-minute preparations for war were almost all that Collins could hope for, war would come, and Ireland would be alone.

“To ensure the liberation of the working class from the chains of oppressive and exploitative political and economic systems in the pursuit of global peace has been the compelling and continuing mission of the Socialist Union of Britain. To cultivate friendly relationships with nations likewise dedicated to the emancipation of those enslaved peoples and continue to progress toward the prosperity of mankind has always been the foundation of our foreign policy. 

Wherefore the government of Michael Collins has engaged and continues to engage in an economic and political system within the Republic of Ireland that deprives the Irish Worker of the fruits of his labor and depends upon his continued shackling to the dictates of Capital in violation of the Internationale Declaration of Human Rights. In pursuit of its goals against the working class, the Irish Republican government has illegally prohibited the Irish Worker to establish a political party to advance their interests in violation of the 1925 Irish Constitution’s declaration of freedom of association by banning the Labour Party.

The Socialist Union of Britain, in defense of the Irish Worker, therefore demands the reformation of the Irish government to that of a Regional Provincial Workers Council to be directly administered under the oversight of the Trades Union Congress and in accordance with the laws and principles of the Socialist Union of Britain.”

Yet, instead of an immediate declaration of war, Mosley had elected to send words, much to Collins's surprise. For a moment, the Taioseach wondered why Mosley had even bothered, such was the extent of his demands. Perhaps it was to spare himself a war while the Internationale conserved their fighting strength for other targets, or perhaps it was a compromise asked by France. Maybe Mosley thought that Ireland would surrender and he could one-up Deat who had failed to have his ultimatum obeyed. As he had read the words, Collins had almost torn the paper in anger, and among the ministers he had invited to the closed session, he had seen similar expressions on their faces. They may have disagreed on everything else, but not on this.

“The Republic of Ireland will not submit to the colonial dictates of Oswald Mosley. We consider these demands completely illegitimate and a violation of the sovereignty of the independent Republic of Ireland and the government recognized by the Irish people. The Irish Republic is a free and independent nation, and shall not surrender to the British yoke that has for centuries defined the history of Ireland with cruelty and deprivation. We demand the unequivocal cessation of all hostilities against the Republic of Ireland, the immediate removal of British ships from Irish territorial waters, and the abrogation of all demands and claims against the island of Ireland. We also call on the Third Internationale to condemn such a demand and reconsider their relationship with an aggressive nation dedicated to a mission of subjugation.”

Collins was sure that would get Mosley’s anger up. His support of the Anti-Colonialist movement could not abide a direct challenge by naming him the colonist that his government had spoken so long about overthrowing. The Union fixated upon proving that they were not the old British Empire, that they were a modern, just triumph over backward authoritarianism. Questioning the Union’s place in the Internationale was sure to cause some stir as well. South America had long spoken against European colonialism, and Chile had considered itself a bastion of colonial liberation within the continent. Even though Chile had not joined the Internationale, their success in Latin America and their support of Britain and France’s mission had mattered greatly within left-wing intellectual circles; it was their testament against accusations of colonialism. Robbing Mosley of Chilean support could cause unrest at home and with other syndicalist nations like Burma, and perhaps end his expansionist ambitions on Ireland.

Collins was only half-right. None of the major syndicalist nations saw fit to criticize Mosley, neither Chile, nor Burma, nor France, nor the Socialist Republic of Italy in Torino had seen fit to condemn Mosley’s action, nor was any independent comment from the Third Syndicalist Internationale forthcoming, at least not any that Collins had seen or heard. What was true is that Mosley was furious. He had read the Irish response out loud in the Trade Union Congress, and had immediately moved for a declaration of war. It had not been a request, not that any would oppose him after his centralizing purges in ‘37 and ‘38, but the British people were fired up. The declaration of war had been delivered, and almost immediately, planes began flying overhead, and the air raid sirens gave their low bleak wail. For a moment, Collins was certain that he could hear them as a banshee’s wail, and wondered whose death warrant he had just signed.

---

28 March 1939 - Command Bunker, Dublin, Ireland

It had been months since the declaration of war, and bombing missions had been flown against Ireland daily. The anti-aircraft guns and radar stations did their part, but the Union still commanded the skies. They had prioritized strategic bombing, hitting factories, port facilities, and coastal fortresses, but any target would do in a pinch. Each day, Collins made sure to hear the casualty counts, and each day he would address the nation by radio, encouraging them to continue to fight on. Every man, woman, and child had been doing their part. The Union had done a good job choking the imports of steel in an attempt to starve the Irish industrial machine. Air raid shelters had been a regular part of construction during the massive push for industrialization, and for that Collins had been grateful for what foresight he had. Even one life saved was worth it, but thousands had been spared being killed or maimed in a night raid or building collapse. That was small comfort, because fewer people dying still meant people were dying on his watch, soldiers and civilians alike.

G2 had conducted countless missions against the Union. Infiltrating the Army and Marine Corps were a top priority, any landing or invasion plans were a high priority for their agents. It had been a difficult endeavor, but Nancy Stewart, a Union turncoat who had lost her family members in Mosley’s purges and had been recruited to G2 as a local asset, had outdone herself. She had spoken to an overworked member of base security, stolen his keys and identification card, and had snuck it to her colleagues after drugging the man’s gin and dragging him home posing as his girlfriend. From there, Nancy and Rachael O’Brien, who had been recruited from the Cumann na mBan as part of Collins’s efforts to recruit sabotage experts for the Irish intelligence services, had been able to copy the plans all night before sneaking out the next morning, returning everything that they had left before their victim recovered from his night. The plans had been scheduled for late June, to land in the Clew Bay and Killary Harbor, on the west of Ireland.

Surprise was the Union’s primary goal, the territory in that region was a difficult landing, but if the Union soldiers were able to land and fortify, they could use the terrain to repulse an attack, perhaps even establish a breakout while forces had to cross the River Shannon and potentially seize Irish fortifications. The Republican Army was not concentrated in County Mayo, the likely destination would be on the east coast and it was there that they fortified with machine guns and artillery. The Union elected to launch from Cornwall, with a diversionary operation from Liverpool and the Isle of Man. Admiral O’Muiris elected to keep a defensive posture in a double-bluff; he didn’t want to risk any of his few ships on pursuing the Republican feint but kept his ships close to make it seem that he had not known about the Galway-Mayo landings. He didn’t like it, but if they could push back the attack, it might force Mosley to abort his attempt.

Tom Barry had stationed his men in Sligo and Galway city, waiting for forward observers to spot the landings on the western coast. The 1st Armored Division and the 2nd ‘Spearhead’ infantry would strike from Galway, while a mobilized force of cavalry Gardai would strike from surprise from the northeast. The 1st Thunderbolts were given the most difficult position, to fight a pre-dawn attack against the northern landing. Once they had attacked and cleared the beaches, they would march south and attack the main landing zone where the beaches were longer and flatter, supporting the most landing forces. Collins had hoped that he could bombard the beaches to oblivion, pinning the British invasion force soon after it had landed, and destroying their landing craft so they could not retreat. 

The landings were commanded by Thomas Wintringham, who had decided to primarily use regular army forces. He had petitioned Mosley for more men, but as that would have compromised the Welsh and Cornwall defensive region, so he was forced to call upon the West Lowlands Home Guard to fill out the invasion. In the middle of the night, the British had attempted to make the landings, but the currents had taken several of the landing craft off course to Galway, where a general alarm had been sounded and the landing craft subject to a heavy barrage. The anti-aircraft turrets weren’t able to be redirected toward the sea, but the river defenses on the Claddagh had utilized static artillery and machine gun pillboxes to create killzones, and the ports within Galway city had been blockaded. 

The mobilized Gardai Síochána and the 1st Thunderbolts moved to their northern position, and Barry began to push with a combined infantry and armor push toward the main landing zones. As it was a night landing, the Republican Air Force was unable to provide air support to its invasion zones. The Thunderbolts had marched all night and shot the Mayo landing forces to pieces as they arrived, keeping in contact with radio and light signals, before turning south to attack the main landing point. The 1st Armored advanced rapidly with light tanks before abruptly turning. Ground forces commanders, thinking that the Irish attack had been aborted because the tanks had outpaced their infantry, had attempted a shock charge to attack the Irish armor when they were out of position. Having advanced quickly, Barry closed the net, attacking with the South Mayo Flying Column and the 2nd Spearhead Division as the light tanks returned to repair the damage they had sustained during the light engagement. The ambush had taken the Union forces completely by surprise, and they were scattered, allowing Tom Maguire to push forward with his native Mayo forces and the Dublin Rifles toward the beach landings.

Continuing his hard push, Barry repeatedly probed the Union lines on the beaches, following up weakpoints with infiltration tactics and strongpoints with a withering suppressive barrage of artillery fire. Admiral Richard Boyle, commanding the U-Boats, attacked as the sun began to give visibility, sinking supply ships and troop transports. As the British Republican Air Force began to fly to support their mission, they had found the beaches to be a disaster area, littered with dead Union soldiers and destroyed Union equipment. The Union soldiers had fought tenaciously, but ultimately could not break out of the beachhead. As the hours stretched on, eventually the divisions surrendered. The first invasion of Ireland had been successfully repulsed.

Collins hadn’t been able to sleep, and paced in his command center the night of the march no matter what he tried. Mulcahy had opted to handle the long wait and let Collins try to get a few hours of sleep on a cot, but neither man believed that such a thing could really happen. When the news had come, Collins had listened to Maguire’s report almost dumbfounded, as if he expected to be woken up at any time. A complete success on all fronts, the British invasion had been foiled, and Irish casualties had been exceptionally low. Killed and wounded, Ireland had suffered just short of 3,000 casualties, roughly evenly split among the divisions in theater. The Union had suffered over 111,000 killed or captured in the failed raid, and what few weren’t captured were isolated and fleeing for their lives in the Irish countryside. It had been an overwhelming victory.

“My God, we certainly gave them a bloody nose.” Mulcahy, just as stunned as Collins himself, nodded approvingly.

“Then let us hope all it takes is a bloody nose.” Collins replied glumly.

---

“To conclude, what I witnessed in my almost-two years of volunteer service within the Second American Civil War was commitment in its best and worst forms. The Federal government, armed forces, and civilians of the United States had acted in devotion to their government and their mission, preserving their country and Constitution. Its reverse was true of its foes, a commitment to the annihilation of those who did not fit within their vision.” -Daniel McKenna, closing remarks, Denver Trials

McKenna didn’t belong here. Mosley had tried to invade his homeland. Every man was needed to fight. It was only a direct order from Michael Collins that had sent him to the United States. “We need foreign support more than we need one more general. The Thunderbolts will be well-led, you have my word. If the truth can come out about what had happened in New York, then we can push for further support. Your actions may help the war effort far more than back here in the homeland.”

McKenna thought the idea was sound, but he wasn’t seeing it pan out. Foreign support wouldn’t be pouring in, what had happened in the United States was already known and rationalized away. It was closure for the Americans, perhaps, but abstract notions of justice being punished hardly mattered when real Irish men and women were dying from British bombs. He had gone because he was a soldier and that meant obeying the orders of his commander-in-chief. McKenna had hoped that he could give a quick testimony and return, but he had been approached by the Irish-American Aid Association to give speeches to raise funds to donate supplies for Ireland. The United States was still recovering, but there were plenty of descendants from the Irish diaspora who were willing to donate food, money, and weapons to the Irish cause. That was something at least, some good had to come from this excursion.

McKenna remained in Denver as the tribunal judges deliberated their verdict. Reporters had hounded him the second he stepped out of his hotel until the second he stepped back in, even preventing him from enjoying any meals, calling them a bunch of cicadas in private. However, he was surprised to meet the reporter that he had met in New York covering the Denver Trials. Ruth Sofer had become a minor celebrity for her coverage of Welfare Island, and had resolved to write about the victims and perpetrators of the Second Civil War. “In my view, anything less would be cowardly, and I’ve been told I have an ironclad heart.“ Over dinner, Sofer interviewed McKenna, not only asking him further about Welfare Island, but telling him what she had learned in interviewing members of the Union State and Combined Syndicates who had been guilty of categorical atrocity, and what could have motivated them to do such a thing. It had sickened McKenna to his stomach, but no battle was too difficult for a soldier, and he obeyed his orders.

McKenna had wanted to return to Ireland quickly, but felt compelled to stay to help Sofer until she had finished her manuscript. Her book, Superfluous People, was a chilling examination of the systems of the two rebel movements within the Second American Civil War, their conceptions of a new transformation of reality in a form of secular millenarianism. Most of the second section of the book detailed the rationalizations regarding those to be left out of the new world, and the philosophies of the movements that originated these rationalizations, and the appeals both real and imagined that gave strength to these movements. The third and final section detailed the jump from theory to practice, exhaustively compiled through interviews of ground-level commanders that oversaw these eliminations in action. Notably, Sofer expounded at length on the Federal government in permitting Jim Crow legislation in the South as the foundation for groups like the Silver Legion.

Once the manuscript had been completed, only then did McKenna, hitching a ride on a supply ship from the Irish-American Aid Association, return home, to take up the command of his Thunderbolts once again.

---

12 June 1939 - Forward Command Post, Carrick-On-Shannon

After the failed invasion of Connacht, Mosley had blamed the militia system of the Trade Union Congress, finding the failure of the invasion to principally be the fault of the militia system’s poor organization. To Mosley, the inability of the Union Army to probably organize into a coherent and effective fighting force prevented them from successfully managing the Irish counter-attack until the greater numbers of the British army could land. Mosley dissolved the militias and established a more formalized military with an established central command structure. Officers could no longer be elected by fellow soldiers, Mosley had instead integrated soldier assent via the promotion board and mandated promotion in part on merit and ability to accomplish objectives. 

Mosley also reached out to the Communards across the Channel. Deat had not supported Mosley’s invasion of Ireland initially, but he was eager to demonstrate the prowess of the Communard Army. He had anticipated Mosley seeking help, but had thought it would have been more for occupation duties, and had planned for landing from Brittany to land in County Cork on the southern side of Ireland in the middle of August. The initial attacks were mere probing attempts, to see the Munster defenses and better analyze how best to invade Ireland. The weather conditions were right on the 15th of August. Unlike the earlier British invasion, the Communard elected on a daylight landing so their airpower could support the ground invasion. The increased visibility meant the Fenian Rams were able to find the French landings, sinking several troop transports and escort vessels and sinking before the destroyers and naval bombers could attack. Despite the navy’s efforts, French forces were also able to land at Baltimore and in a pasture in County Wexford after being shelled by Irish Republican forces in Waterford. The Dublin Rifles and 3rd ‘Black Badgers’ Division attacked in the Battle of the Sheepfold, where the lack of cover led to high casualties on both sides. The Baltimore landings fared little better, the rocky and open ground provided little cover, and the Irish forces were hard-pressed until reinforcements were trucked in from Limerick. 

The landings had similarly failed, though Deat had committed few forces and his troops were far more successful than Mosley’s initial foray. Deat had demanded that Wintringham coordinate with the Communard army for a joint invasion of Connacht. Collins had been able to repulse the Communard landings because his forces, not pressured on multiple fronts, had been able to relieve each other. Overwhelming numerical force would be able to do what smaller forces could not. As Ireland was considered Union territory and the Commune required most of its divisions along the border with the Kaiserreich, the Union would supply most of the manpower for the invasion, although the supreme commander would be from the Communard Army. Union and Communard planes and ships would combine for the endeavor, to support landings from County Claire to Sligo. 

The larger invasion force did succeed in its goals. Mosley’s centralization efforts had restructured the militias into an effective and organized fighting force. By standardizing equipment and radio procedures, the Union had been able to break through at Clew Bay, getting off the exposed beach. The Donnelly Division had been scattered, and the French were able to land in County Mayo and attack Sligo after a ferocious onslaught of terror bombing. The initial objectives only sought to reach the River Shannon, as the fortifications made crossing the river a daunting task. The Union took Galway after three days of fighting, Irish Republicans had retreated to the forests and hills outside of the urban centers. After five days, almost the entire province of Connacht was under Communard control. In Sligo and Galway, the Irish tricolor was lowered from the city halls and replaced with the hammer and torch of the Union of Britain, and the Internationale was sung. 

The Internationale also executed Irish Republican prisoners. A captain of the 1st Thunderbolts was singled out as a particularly grave offender, accused of having committed war crimes against Union volunteers in Philadelphia during the Second American Civil War. During his impromptu tribunal hearing, he loudly denied the charges against him, demanded hard evidence be presented instead of “self-serving lies from a nation of cowards,” and accused the Internationale of being mass murderers, imperialists, and “the bootlicking spawn of Oliver Cromwell,” disrupting the impromptu tribunal to the point where it was impossible to convene any proper hearing. During the occupation of Connacht, hundreds of civilians were executed. Some were executed for supporting Irish Republican partisan activity or giving supplies to holdout forces, some were members of the Catholic clergy, some others for not turning over foodstuffs to the Internationale army, and yet others were executed after being identified as business owners or landlords by native Irish socialists. The accused were given drumhead trials, their property seized, and hanged from lamposts.

When the news out of Connacht reached Collins, he ordered an effort to retake the lost province. That night, Richard Mulcahy, Hugo MacNeill, and Tom Barry outlined their combined plan to surround and eliminate the invaders, called Operation Execution Ground. A night march along the Atlantic Way from Derry to Sligo led by Barry and Maguire, a march north along the River Shannon toward Sligo for Dublin forces, and the main force pushing up toward Galway from their previous positions in Munster led by MacNeill. The Thunderbolts and Black Badgers, the elite infantry units of the Irish Republican Army, would bloody the Commune in Sligo, while the 2nd Spearheads would seize and destroy stockpiles and command posts that led from Sligo to the Mayo landing points, preventing resupply. Police volunteers from the Gardai offered to help encircle the Communards while the Union forces faced the main infantry force southeast of Galway. It left Belfast and Dublin critically exposed, only their naval minefields and garrison forces would protect them.

Cathal Brugha, already getting old, volunteered to lead any home guard for Dublin. Unafraid of any invasion, he insisted that regulars and volunteers support the Irish Republican Army. With a pistol in hand, he gave a stirring speech, that he would defend the Four Courts by himself if it meant that the interlopers were driven from Irish soil. Collins and Brugha took a photo of themselves, pistols in hand, standing on the steps of the Dail, saying that all Irish citizens young and old can do their part for the fight. 

Liam Lynch commanded the infantry coming from the south. When he had seen the bodies in Galway, he told the troops under his command that they were not obligated to “be kind to those who have shown us their cruelty.” Both in Sligo and Galway, the Irish Republican Army ordered heavy shellings on enemy positions followed by aggressive charges. The cavalry forces and the Spearheads moved along the shore, attacking supply lines and cutting off avenues of retreat. To complete the encirclement, the Thunderbolts moved to the west, hoping to break the Communard forces first so that they would flee east into hostile territory rather than west toward the Union.

A G2 agent, masquerading as a sympathetic Irish turncoat, made contact with the Communard forces in their forward positions by the River Shannon. Carrying mock orders, G2 successfully tricked the Communard forces into believing that the Irish had seized radio equipment and were attempting to trick them into thinking that they were attacking their landing sites in an attempt to move them out of their defensive positions and ambush them. The Communards didn’t leave for several hours until communications were severed entirely, exposing the ruse. The extra time proved invaluable to the Irish Republican Army, who were able to complete their encirclement before ordering an attack from all sides. Without radio communications, and surrounded on all sides, the Communard forces were shot to pieces. Only the units hunting the partisans to the west were able to successfully rendezvous with Union forces, the rest, after a ferocious battle, surrendered en masse.

The Union forces opted to abandon Galway early, and establish a strong position near their landing zones with Communard forces that had been ambushed in the forests to the west of Sligo. Lynch continued to push aggressively with his infantry, issuing Pervetin rations to the infantry under his command to sustain the attack. As Lynch turned to support the French encirclement, the Union returned to attack the city, revealing their earlier retreat as a ruse to attack while the Irish before their armies could get into position. The Donnelly Division, who had tried to hold Galway, were almost completely destroyed as a fighting unit, losing almost half of their fighting force. A relief effort from the Spearheads was the only thing to save Galway from being overrun. 

Only after the Communard Army was defeated did the army regroup and push toward Clew Bay. In the same position that the previous invasion failed, the Union and Communard forces fought a desperate defense. Eventually, the Internationale’s forces were ground down as they began to run out of ammunition and wounds began to take their toll. The news of the murdered civilians and POW’s had enraged the Irish Republican Army, and the Internationale’s landing zone was subject to intense bombardment that, in the words of one private: “seemed to be the devil’s own hand reaching out with one fell swoop to wreak his evil upon the world.” With little in the way of functional radio equipment, surrender was only possible at night when a desperate signals operator flashed Morse code using a spotlight to communicate surrender. 

The aftermath of the invasion of Connacht was tragic. Prisoners were marched in chains to prisons in the center of the country, and many officers and enlisted both were sent to firing squads if they were found to have had a hand in executing Irish civilians or in stealing food from non-combatants. Confessions were broadcast around the world about what had happened in Connacht, with the Internationale virulently denying the charges, accusing the Irish of fabricating war crimes to inflame public support and justify their unjust executions of prisoners of war. Collins had barely heard the figures - eight thousand Irish soldiers had been killed or wounded, while the enemy had suffered 179,000. Most of them had been Union soldiers, about 115,000, while France had taken around 75,000. The numbers were one thing, but his people were executed by a foreign power on Irish soil. It was the subjugation of Ireland all over again. Even if they had taken back their territory, how much more would it cost? The Internationale had six times the industrial capacity and fielded far more men. Even now, there had been no indication that Deat would abandon the fight or Mosley call for a truce. Perhaps they would drown Ireland in blood, if they couldn’t have it for themselves.

---

30 June 1939 - Special Joint Session of Congress, Washington D.C., United States of America

“If you will not fight for the Irish, help the Irish fight.” -Eamon “Dev” de Valera

If there was one good thing to come out of the failed invasion of Ireland, it’s that the world finally seemed to wake up to Ireland’s plight. Eamon de Valera had gone to the United States to lobby for more support, and he had been received warmly by President Garner. Warm regards, however, hadn’t translated to what Dev had actually sought, a threat from the United States to back down or face war. The Gallup polls had been encouraging: 47 percent of Americans favored unqualified economic and materiel support to include shipments of food and oil to Ireland, which went up to 57 percent when the responses included “provided it does not enter us into the war.” Most opposition had come from the thought that America still required all of its strength to rebuild, but estimates had been heartening, support for Ireland wouldn’t threaten American recovery, or so the economic analysts had said. There had been much pain suffered by the United States, but it was on the road to recovery. Major Longist guerrilla networks that were uncovered in the Lousiana bayous had been broken up, and the last remnants of the socialist resistance had been killed or arrested among the factory wreckage of Chicago’s industrial district. It was heartening to see America recovering so quickly. 

Food and medical supplies, unarmed and flagged as humanitarian aid vessels, had already sailed to Ireland mostly without problems. The Union Navy demanded the right to search the ships, but Collins had threatened that if humanitarian food aid to Ireland was cut, the first people to starve would be the prisoners taken during the failed invasion. Dev had hoped to acquire more significant war support than mere food aid. Even basic equipment was starting to run bare in the depots, and bombing raids had started to take their toll on the factories. America had the industrial capacity needed to supply the Irish war effort, if it could only turn on the taps, an endless river of artillery, planes, and ships could flood the Irish Republican Army with everything it needed to fight the war.

Harry Hopkins had drawn up a bill with considerable bipartisan support, one that he hoped could both provide vital jobs for a recovering America as well as helping Ireland. Ireland could receive oil and war materiel on credit, to be returned when the war was concluded unless “the return of the equipment is made impossible due to use or damage.” Dev had asked Hopkins just how anyone was expected to return spent ammunition or artillery shells after they had been fired, answered with a simple chuckle. 

Dev gave a rousing speech in the halls of the US Congress, and had specifically asked for the German and Canadian ambassadors to be invited to the session as well so that he might be able to address the Entente and the Reichspakt together. The pictures of what had happened in Connacht had risen the ire of many Americans, and shouts of “Remember Welfare Island” had frequently been shouted at pro-Ireland rallies.

“We are a small nation, and in our young history as an independent republic we have never once acted with aggression toward another nation, whether stronger or weaker. In our history we have been the victims of aggression, not its perpetrator. We have now come to yet another chapter in the long history of struggle, a new foe empowered by an industrial war that far surpasses the Weltkrieg. We have stood strong, taken with calm courage and confidence in our people, that our nation will endure. We know full well that we cannot demand any other to stand beside us, or ask that their fathers, husbands, or sons do so in their stead. We ask only that you remember Ireland, a land who with tearful hearts had her sons and daughters leave her fleeing the horrors of famine and destitution, and who welcomed many of America’s sons and daughters fleeing the horrors of war and deprivation. We ask that you remember a land with blue rivers choked with blood and oil and green fields burnt and stained red. We ask you, America, such a vast and mighty nation, to remember a nation that could be swallowed by most of your own constituent states. We ask that you remember the injustice being wrought upon her, and we ask that you remember the words of your Benjamin Franklin, about how a great nation may be reduced to a lesser one. We know firsthand how difficult the path of justice is, but acting justly has its reward.”

Transcripts of the speech, personally written by de Valera, were delivered to the Canadian and German ambassadors, with slight modifications. Instead of referencing Benjamin Franklin, Dev had referenced British and German liberal thinkers. The Canadian speech had omitted about how Ireland had a long history of oppression, instead focusing upon Union aggression wishing to expel people from their homeland. These speeches were eventually collected together, with the German Foreign Minister secretly praising de Valera for the craft of tailoring his message to his audience. The response had been beyond what de Valera had hoped. In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm had declared the German Empire recognized the plight of Ireland, and had promised shipments of materiel protected by the Kaiserliche Merchant Marine. In Canada, the Tories were emboldened, accusing the sitting Prime Minister MacKenzie King of not doing enough to support the effort to reclaim the Home Isles, and that Ireland was fighting the Union just as the Entente had been fighting against the Totalists in the Bharatiya Commune in India. With overwhelming support, the Canadian Parliament authorized shipments of weapons to Ireland, emboldening the hawks in the Entente to push for Reclamation Day. Argentina, preparing for its own war with Chile, had independently recognized Ireland’s plight, and offered several large field guns every month to help keep the Irish in the war effort. 

The shipments were invaluable, and protected by convoy systems, most of the promised aid had landed in Cork and Galway. A reporter was on hand and took a picture of marching Irish soldiers wearing the German stahlhelm and carrying the Lee-Enfield rifle. The quartermasters had difficulty initially in supplying troops in the field, as German and Canadian rifles used different calibers and parts were often not interchangeable. Eventually, units were marked as “Grey” or “Blue” by the nationality of the loaned equipment. Speaking for the cameras, Collins was in high spirits, stating: “This is the turning point in this war. The Internationale knows that it has not cowed us. While we seek a just peace and an end to hostilities, we are capable of fighting this war forever, and this commitment proves it. Neither the Reichspakt nor the Entente would provide supplies to a nation that was doomed; they would not extend credit to a nation whose defeat was inevitable. We are committed as ever before, because we know that we have already won this war.”

Privately, Collins was less enthusiastic, but he had to keep the faith. Every soldier was doing so, and Collins could do nothing less, because he was still a soldier through and through.

---

17 August 1939 - G2 Headquarters, Dublin, Ireland

The new supplies were put to use almost immediately, as the Union had attempted a quick invasion at Leinster before the Irish Republican Army could field an effective response. Army engineers had not been idle, the An Balla program had established an extensive array of coastal fortresses facing the Irish Sea. Fielding only 10 divisions, the Union attack only achieved anysuccess at the earlier French landing sites in Wexford, but an aggressive counter-attack by Richard Mulcahy had achieved great results. As much as Collins didn’t like it, ceding the landing grounds to the invaders and then attacking them after they had landed was far more productive than attempting to engage them at sea. Poorly supplied and out of place, they could be driven back to the sea, and the landing crafts weren’t able to pick many back up, if at all. The casualty counts had to be discouraging for the Internationale. 2RN had made sure to broadcast the figures of killed and captured every day toward the Union, to help spread fear and discouragement among the Union’s public. They didn’t have the strength to attack the Union directly, if they were going to win they had to make the cost unbearable, and prayed that the enemy called it quits first.

G2 had launched their most audacious campaign yet in an attempt to deter the Internationale’s invasion of Ireland given the new shipments. The new Argentinian cannons had included several decoy pieces meant to be installed on mock forts to draw fire away from real artillery pieces; a technique that was invaluable in their conflict with Chile to cause the enemy to expose their position for no gain. G2 had opted to go further, and opted to make an entire phantom army. The radio office had highlighted that the expanded conscription laws, increased volunteerism in support for the war effort, and new shipments of equipment from the Great Powers had finally allowed Ireland to double the size of their armies. Dan McKenna, freshly returned from the United States, would lead this new army with the 1st Thunderbolts at its head. Taking advantage of young, patriotic artists, G2 designed inflatable tanks and prop equipment to be used for staged photo ops. To properly seed the information, G2 designed the ‘public’ news to be disseminated through the public radio waves in Ireland itself and friendly countries, including a few foreign divisions signing on for adventure and the chance to fight syndicalism. Ireland couldn’t directly claim to receive foreign volunteers, that would undoubtedly run afoul of their foreign partners, but “expatriates” would be invaluable, drawing on the formation of the United States Refugee Brigades during the Second Civil War. G2 had expertly designed one division of British emigres in Ireland electing to “fight the syndicalist menace that the crown itself would not” called the Blue Lions, and a division of German emigres called the Iron Wolves whose goal was to secure “a peaceful future for the Irish Republic and the German Empire both.” McKenna had drawn upon his experience with the Volunteer Brigades to help design the false brigades, combined with the intelligence division’s Army Department to establish a formalized command structure complete with unit patches, fake pay records, and even a speech given to the new army by McKenna himself.

To make sure that the Union got it, Ireland elected to release a few wounded POW’s back to the Union after ensuring that they had overheard the information while they were in convalescence. Not sure of how much each man could remember, G2 had made sure to release multiple POW’s. Collins himself had made the offer, suggesting that as a humanitarian gesture, certain prisoners who were well enough to be moved could be released in order to free up hospital beds for other wounded individuals. Collins had instructed his negotiators to push for a payment in gold, but to back down if pressed. Mosley had thought he had secured a win, but Collins was the man with the last laugh. The news of the new Irish army, primarily stationed in Leinster, gave Mosley reason to pause, and instead he focused his attention upon County Kerry, hoping to secure Munster and establish a secure foundation to offload more Internationale troops with a short naval trip after a successful invasion.

The trap had worked perfectly. Collins had ordered general evacuations to ensure civilians would be able to flee, and had ordered the armies to wait until the enemy had landed in order to attack. On the day of the attack, Collins had ordered the An tAerchór to fly and contest the skies from the Internationale with the new delivery of fighters and close air support aircraft from the United States. The Irish pilots were not well-trained, but had been drilled extensively on formation flying for air superiority missions. The surprising attack blindsided the Republican Air Force, who had grown lax in their patrols due to their dominance over the skies since the beginning of the early war. Now with the aircraft to match the Communard and Republican Air Forces, the Irish were able to wrest control of the airspace over the Irish island and attack enemy bombers. Casualties were highest among the Air Force, many of whom were outmatched by the more experienced enemy pilots, but the surprising victory and establishment of further control had further enraged the Commune of France, who elected not to pursue “any Irish ventures” further. They had returned to focus on their Alpine Warfare program, and reinforce their borders with Germany and Spain, recalling their forces from the British Isles and reminding Mosley of the greater mission against the Reichspakt. Half a million casualties in a short campaign, multiple failed invasions only useful for teaching lessons on how to repulse the Entente when the French had elected to cross the Mediterranean; a true waste in every sense of the word. While the war was not ended, the Internationale had decided on other priorities. With Ireland in control of her skies and her territorial waters, they had held on, and they had won.

---

23 September 1939 - Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, ireland

According to the poets, autumn was the time of loss, from the possibilities of summer into the chill of winter. The poets had not seen fit to think of Ireland in that summer of 1939, where the possibilities of summer were to be bombed by a Syndie plane or executed for failing to turn over their food and valuables to an invader. Yet Ireland’s salvation was no balm, an end to war. On the 9th of September, Deat’s Communard government demanded the return of Elsaß-Lothringen, calling it Alsace-Lorraine, and flew over German airspace to drop leaflets in both French and German detailing their grievances. The Kaiser had refused the audacious demand, claiming that the territory had been German territory for over fifty years. The next day, the Commune of France had declared war on the Kaiserreich, with the Union of Britain joining. The Socialist Republic of Italy, already in a border war with the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, joined the Internationale, and King Ferdinando II responded by joining the Reichspakt. On the 10th of September, Savinkov, declaring the necessity to liberate the Russian people from German subjugation and second-class citizen status, declared war on White Ruthenia, the Baltic Duchy, the Polish-Lithuianian Commonwealth, and Germany itself. On the 15th of September, the Entente declared war on the Union of Britain, the Commune of France, and the Socialist Republic of Italy, citing the illegitimate nature of the governments there, and prepared their invasions. Finally, on the 20th of September, the Empire of Japan, citing pan-Asian ideals and the need to liberate the Far East from Western Dominance, declared war on German Indochina in addition to their ongoing wars in China.

Ireland was no longer the focal point on the world stage, but the rest of the world would feel the fires of war that the Irish had borne, and the fires would burn hotter and brighter than any the world had ever seen. Collins wondered who had been listening to his wish

---

Diplomatic Moves in Ireland

Show of Force

Ireland Abandoned

Britain Demands Annexation

Mosley Declares War

Infiltrating the Army

Come Weal or Woe!

Ambush in Connacht

Casualties - First Invasion

French Landings in Southern Ireland

Casualties - Second Invasion

French Forces Encircled in Connacht

Casualties - Third Invasion

Irish Soldiers with Canadian Rifles and German Helmets

G2 Invents a Fake Army

Casualties - Final Count of the Irish War

Alsace Ultamatum

Alright then, 1939 is down. It’s the longest chapter so far, with the Second Weltkrieg having begun, all the Great Powers (except the US) at war. It’s a more successful tale of Czechoslovakia in 1938 combined with some Battle of Britain and some Operation Fortitude. Let me know what you think

[pocolocapotterhead]

I Will Love You

Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

By Lemony Snicket

Beautifully ugly, no?