Tomorrow: We need more maps!

ATL – 1882

The Atlantic War was heating up. Britain and Canada formed one side while France and the United States formed the other. As a sideshow to the current battle, Spain went to war with the Confederacy alongside the Mexican Empire. This, however, brought Austria and France into the war against the CSA. The USA, meanwhile, was eager to jump its southern neighbor and bring it back under its control, but the land campaign in Canada was keeping it busy. The British Empire was not able to field as many men as the United States, but they had technology on their side, including powerful railway artillery. Despite this, they were unable to prevent the Yankee seizure of key territory. With French assistance, Quebec was shorn from the rest of Canada and propped up as its own country. This put the remainder of Canada in serious jeopardy.

Down south, the Confederates were making great gains against Mexico and her Spanish ally. Cuba had been taken by amphibious assault, and the British West Indies provided naval support that kept Spain from retaking it. On land, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila had fallen and the CS Army marched further southward. French naval assaults on ports such as Norfolk and Charleston kept the Confederates from receiving too much material help from Britain.

Meanwhile, in the American West, the Tsar launched a (rather stupid) attack from Alaska into the Northwest, while Confederate propaganda and some oppressive laws caused the Mormons to revolt and declare their proposed state of Deseret to be its own country. The USA, unable to fight on three fronts at the same time, was forced to temporarily ignore these new threats to deal with the one it judged to be more serious. Canada, even with Quebec torn off, was still a formidable threat, especially with the British armies still using it as a base of operations. And plus the Russians were botching their invasion, while the Mormons had next to no military capacity (though they were changing that).

Mexico, somewhat anxious to reclaim some territory, took California behind the shields of Deseret and the new Russian colony they were setting up, outraging the USA but not really doing much else. The US drive through the Canadian heartland ended up smashing into Ottawa, and the victorious US carved off most of western Canada as well and declared that the free state of Manitoba. Manitoba then seized Montana territory from the Russians.

The now-called American War resulted in the formation of the Republic of Deseret, Republic of Quebec, and the Federation of Manitoba. It also resulted in Confederate acquisition of important islands in the Gulf of Mexico (not least of which being Cuba) and of most of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. The Dominion of Canada was reduced to a fraction of its former size, now mostly being restricted to Ontario. The Russians kept their territory and named the new colony Pacifica.

Tomorrow: The Workings of the World

With the return to the 1800s, the Confederate States succeeded in their bid for independence. Now that the two countries had separated, they and the United States pursued their separate goals. The Yankees provoked an incident on the Great Lakes and used it to invade Canada, bringing Britain down on their heads as well. A ruinous naval blockade was imposed by Britain, in particular semi-ironclad warships such as the infamous 16-gun HMS Huntress, which made a name for itself by almost single-handedly shutting down Boston Harbor. France jumped on the Yankee wagon, eager to attempt to separate Britain from her massive empire.

Down south, the CSA was rebuilding after the war. To obtain more land for their slave economy, they planned to seize Cuba and run canals through Panama and Nicaragua. At the moment this was not practical, but a fleet of ironclad warships was being constructed for the purpose of protecting these endeavors from the Yankees.

Britain and France duked it out on the high seas, while Prussia began to seek to gather the myriad German states under their control. On the Italian peninsula, Rome began gathering its power with dreams of becoming influential again. Japan continued their own industrial buildup, determined to get their own empire to rival the foreigners who still could largely order them around.

American forces in Canada pressed forward, capturing New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. It declared these to be territories by the same names, largely to avenge the loss of the CSA’s territory. Dakota was admitted as a state in the meantime.

On Europe, Holland applied its trading power to begin maintaining an army, wary of the growing influence of Prussia, Austria and Russia to the east. Britain seized enough African territory to begin building their Trans-African Railroad, and Spain and Portugal began to suffer from turmoil caused by agitation by nationalistic groups. South America was largely quiet short of a small war in which Paraguay obtained Uruguay and the southern tip of Brazil, about doubling its size and obtaining a coast line.

Tomorrow: Back Again

The aliens, now dying of some mysterious disease, sabotaged their equipment to prevent human use of their technology. Meanwhile, the humans continued to try and destroy each other. The Americans, quickly shifting resources to deal with the new Japanese threat, employed the new Bell Strikers, the first attack helicopter worthy of the name. The Strikers were able to stop the Japanese advance in Washington, Oregon and Idaho in its tracks, though poor weather conditions in Canada meant the invaders enjoyed safety from such aerial assaults for the time being.

In Europe, Hitler’s Kriegsmarine participated in a three-way battle between itself, the Royal Navy, and the Red Navy, ending in a decisive victory for the British. The US Navy defeated the Spanish Armada off Cuba and began shipping their soldiers onto the mainland. In desperation, Hitler turned to a rare piece of captured alien technology, which happened to be a time machine. Here we go again…

A group of SS soldiers was sent back to the 1860s, where they virtually annihilated the Army of the Potomac. The Army of Northern Virginia, its way open, smashed into Washington, D.C. and burned it to the ground, killing Lincoln in the process. Its capital and president thus martyred, the Union was forced to accept a British offer to negotiate a settlement to the war. The Confederates were able to secure West Virginia and Kentucky, the former by military conquest, the latter by the choice of its inhabitants.

Thus disrupted, the timeline unraveled back to about 1863. A large quantity of ruined alien technology was also transported back, in Africa, the main site of alien control, sparking the beginnings of semi-industrial countries. The CSA had succeeded in its attempt to leave the Union and the United States summarily withdrew its troops from the now-separate country. A rapidly industrializing Japan seized Hawaii as a farming colony. And thus the world entered the 1870s…

Tomorrow: Invasions

With the new alien threat landing in Europe, most of the countries there were forced to fight only on that front. The Americans, applying their massive industrial capability (which remained formidable), began to shove enemy troops out of their country. The aliens were surprised that the humans almost entirely stopped fighting each other to fight them, and initial gains were slow, though Italy and almost all the area around the Mediterranean were captured almost immediately.

The aliens did make one mistake – they had no way to deal with space-based weaponry, which the humans had not fielded up until that point. As such there had been no need for it. However, the Russians were the first, launching their Kometa 1 kinetic bombardment satellites. Though flimsy and with limited uses (the Russians had no way to resupply them once they fired all the projectiles) they gave the USSR the ability to strike with devastating power at any point within enemy lines. As much of the aliens’ gains had been made in Nazi Germany and France, they weren’t concerned with collateral damage in the slightest, allowing for the destruction of important alien, Nazi and French bases at the same time. This resumed war between the human blocs on the Mediterranean, while the aliens turned southward towards the vastly weaker Africa and Middle East.

Kometa 1. Note the four tungsten rods – they were used as kinetic projectiles against ground targets. The Soviets, displaying a remarkable amount of foresight, made sure they developed a reliable way to target where the rods would fall before using the weapon on actual fighting.Japanese forces, having captured Hawaii and southern Alaska early in the war, used that territory to launch an attack on Vancouver and Seattle. With American and Canadian forces concentrated in the south and east, the invaders gained strong beachheads on the West Coast and shipped masses of troops and materiel across the Pacific to North America, having previously annihilated the Soviet Pacific Fleet and Chinese navy in a chain of battles around Korea and Formosa.

Tomorrow: Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...

Year 1962 - ATL

With virtually every nation of consequence at war with each other, much of the planet was now covered by blasted wastelands, pockmarked with craters and rendered toxic by chemical weapons. Still the belligerent nations refused to back down, continuing the war even though it would almost certainly devastate life for a century or more after the cessation of hostilities.

The civilian populations of the globe (what was left, anyway; attacks on civilian targets had become quite a common practice) were a grim lot, with no hope for relief from the conflict that threatened their every living moment.

But all that was about to get much worse...

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They had long awaited this moment.

Their time had now come to strike.

Their people would once more have a planet to call their own.

Earth.

Centuries ago, a space-faring race had been nearly wiped out by a gamma ray burst that wiped out all life on their planet. With no other choice, they took to the stars in a massive fleet of ships. Since then, parasitic diseases, attacks from hostile races, and the natural hazards of space had whittled their numbers down until they were about half the population of Earth at the time of the Armageddon War, as it was called. When this race found Earth, they immediately, as they had done countless times before, ran a sensor sweep to compare the atmosphere, water levels, etc. with their homeworld. It passed. Excited preparations were quickly made for their conquest of the world; the humans had not gone unnoticed. They were outnumbered two to one, but made up for it with the sheer power and sophistication of their technology. This and their superior intellect would destroy the scatterbrained and impulsive humans.

As their ships descended through the atmosphere over the Mediterranean, the Many prepared to seize this planet for their own.

Now even the home of the human race, its birthplace and its nurturer, was under attack.

Tomorrow: No end in sight

Year 1958 - ATL

The World War was in full swing, dwarfing the Great War [WWI to us] forty years earlier to a mere skirmish. Battles raged across Europe, Asia, and Africa. The worst of it was along the Russio-German border, where great swathes of the landscape had been rendered desolate and unusable. Australia and the Americas were as yet untouched.

But that was soon to change. The USSR was already at war with the United States and it would only be a matter of time before American troops were on their soil. So they decided to enact a preemptive strike against them. The Red Navy was rather short on anything not covered in guns, but a quick overhaul of a few of their battleships turned them into quite excellent troop carriers.

The hammer fell in January of 1959. Red Army amphibious attack units arrived near-simultaneously in California and Alaska, catching the US almost completely off-guard. Germany and the Axis had been pressuring Latin American nations, Mexico in particular, to attack the US to keep them out of the European war. With this bold move by the Soviets, the Mexican government was suddenly much more open to this and accepted a financial contribution from Germany. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru assisted Mexico with troops and ships and on February 19th they entered the war, catching the Americans off-guard again.

In North Africa and the Middle East, Arab countries rallied to support Turkey against Bulgaria, which had attempted to seize parts of Turkish territory. Shortly thereafter, an incident along their border with the Soviets led them to declare war on the USSR. In Scandinavia, Norway switched sides to the Allies when German subs sank Norwegian merchant ships that had strayed into captured Danish waters. Finland received assistance from the Fascist bloc as they rebelled against Russian rule.

In the Americas, Australia and Canada had sided with the US against the belligerent Latin American nations. Large gains were made by the Soviets into Alaska and Canada, while the Latin troops marched up through Texas and into the Great Plains. However, the United States was soon able to put a stop to their advance and the American front gradually settled into attrition.

With the entire world aflame with war, the future looks quite bleak...

Tomorrow: Thunder and lightning

Year 1955 - ATL (alternate timeline)

As the exchange of threats between China and Japan continued, with each nation poised to invade Burma and start a war, the League of Nations rushed to resolve the conflict before it sparked into violence. The fascist nations pledged their support to Japan, mainly out of hatred for the communists, while the Soviet Union and Korea backed China. The Western powers attempted vainly to restore peace, but Japan issued an ultimatum to China to pull its forces out of Burma or it would attack. China responded scornfully and Japan was quick to declare war.

Of course, the massive array of alliances between the nations quickly brought others into the war. Soviet and Nazi armies smashed together along their border, while Japan and China traded air strikes and substantial assaults along the Burmese front. The now-impotent League of Nations threatened to use British and French forces to break up the fighting, but it was largely ignored by the warring power blocs. When Norway was dragged into the war by a Soviet offensive from former Finland, Sweden [alllied with the Western power bloc] became alarmed that its borders would be violated. These fears proved valid when the fighting spilled over onto Swedish territory. Sweden responded by attacking both sides, earning itself war against both Norway and the USSR. Britain, France, and the US were quick to come to aid Sweden.

The war quickly spread throughout Europe and South and East Asia. The African colonies were forced to develop industry to meet demands for raw materials from their parent country, and also fought wars between each other. Soon Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe were all embroiled in war. American industry helped to support the Allied forces, while the USA built up a strong military force to serve on the European and African fronts.

However, this left the Pacific coast largely undefended, most of the Pacific Fleet having been relocated to the Atlantic to prepare for overseas combat. Japan, China and the Soviets noticed this, but only the Soviets were preparing to act on it...