I sighed, watching as the generals slowly filtered through the office. I glanced over to General Muller. "Is Ponatoski still sick?"
She bit her lip and nodded. I sighed. Maybe I'd been too harsh with the words I'd used. After writing a note I stood and walked into the cic. A wall of screens displaying mountains of information, real time positions of thousands of troops, planes and ships.
This was the hub, the central nervous system of the Soviet military. It had come a long way from a bunch of maps with red colored pins stuck in it. I could watch in real time as deployments were being altered, as hordes were reported and when and what engaged them.
I'd gone over with the big three, Erik, George, and Joseph about the intent behind their commands and the scope of their area of operations. I'd blindly given Ponatoski and Roman a blank cheque and they'd advanced further north and south than I'd intended when I'd said advance no further than the Colorado river…
Erik and his 1st army group would focus on re-clearing the Bay Area, the last thing I wanted to find out was there was some massive nest we'd missed and have the area cleared for civilians and hordes of zombies came spilling out.
George and the 2nd Army group were tasked with guarding the Colorado river and clearing Las Vegas. the 3rd army group under Joseph was being tasked with slowly pushing south into Baja California. There was talk of turning it into its own republic. The Soviet republic of Southern California. Of course… that was going to require a whole new round of elections and then creating a level of state above the two republics.
That was a currently ongoing argument between the civilian government and Ivanov. I wasn't interested in weighing in. Just the level of politics I'd had to get involved with already was mentally draining, let alone keeping my moral compass.
"Sir, S7 reported an unknown surface ship approximately 300 miles southeast of Hawaii…" Ivan walked up to me. I nodded as I read the report. One, possibly two tracks were detected at 0153 local time…
That could be the 'envoy' that that Australian based user had mentioned a while back. Gena would dispatch a few ships to investigate, pending a large berth around Hawaii. Didn't want the Hawaiians to get antsy and think we were gunning for them.
I glanced at the fleet deployments across the pacific, frigates and destroyers operated along the coast with the leviathan hunter groups based around the San Diego and San Francisco, those Moskva aviation cruisers weren't good for much, but at least they had made finding those monsters easier.
The largest cruisers of the fleet, the Stalingrad to my knowledge was still in San Diego under repair while the Quiero Amor was filling its role, and far better according to reports. Though that might have more to do with the fact the Stalingrad's air group is handicapped by its Yak-38s, that aircraft's performance so far was well below subar, it made the outdated air group of the Quiero Amor look fantastic with its complement of MiG-23s and Ko-45s.
I looked further afield to the trio of Kilo class submarines lurking to the east of Hawaii. I'd have gotten a better sub, maybe an Oscar or a Victor. But the system was keeping nuclear submarines out of my grasp for now, the Kilo was the only available sub. I wondered if my next promotion will unlock all nuclear subs or merely the nuclear powered ones.
I mean… My promotion had given me access to 'small' fleet carriers, whatever that meant, it only really meant the Admiral Kuznetsov, and claiming that train wreck was going to be an improvement over the Quiero Amor… now, the other ship though…
The Kirov class. Its main missile battery was tempting enough, but conversation with Gena had put that purchase on hold for now. Unveiling something like that would no doubt set off another round of fighting with Hawaii, and while we could win, our missiles were simply out ranged by the super hornets and bombers on Honolulu. We'd win any fight, I could easily supplement any losses taken, it was simply easier not to, to give the illusion that we were weakened after the war for California.
So while Admiral Gena and I played mind games with Admiral Reichert, I was focusing more and more on the army and Airforce. I should probably bring up the possibility of sending an intervention force to Panama…
Yeah, I'll bring that up with Gena later. That would save almost two weeks of travel. Only god would know what kind of leviathans would make the straits of Magellan their home, and the ones off the US pacific coast were bad enough.
The Air Force was doing quite well. It was entirely stationed in LA between Los Alimitos and LAX. Might have to look into spreading them out, might even be useful to see about using those Airforce bases across the state. They'd adapted quite well to their new fighters, I wasn't really sure what to do with the old MiGs though. They were perfectly good airframes at present, most had less than six hundred flight hours.
The hinds were getting work out in though, from flying cargo to vip and passenger runs… darn things were turning into a workhorse. And best I could tell it wouldn't be getting replaced anytime soon, the Russians never really built a helicopter that could move a squad and still carry a gunship's worth or armament. They had made some gunships, but… the hinds did well enough in that role, and it was easier when the helicopter fleet could also move hundreds of soldiers too.
I paused, several large contacts were popping up on the screen. Vegas… I had the tech zone in. That was a massive horde… There were only two regiments currently in Vegas, both from 1st tank division. I turned… scanning the generals behind me… oh, she was sick…
"Ivanov, take over command here. Ivan, get me a gunship to the roof." I stood from my seat, grabbing my hat as I started towards the stairs.
"George, I'll be assuming command of the Poles until General Ponatoski is well enough to return to work." I stopped next to General muller and lowered my voice.
"Please let Regina know to not push herself, I'll handle this until she is ready to return to duty." She nodded as I left.
It had been quite some time since I was a divisional level commander, this might be fun, a chance to ignore the higher headquarters for a while.