Kansas Cities
City: Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas
Population: 100,000/700,000
Controls: Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas
Government: Strongman
Problem: Unrest
Heroic Opportunity: Technology
City Aspect: Extremely tense.
Kansas City, Kansas managed to get through the first few months better than Kansas City, Missouri: there were more people in the Missouri city, which meant more chances for cholera to rip its way through the population. The city fathers of KC-Missouri compounded their problems by planning a raid on the granaries KC-Kansas had barely managed to keep safe during the first bad year. Their sneak attack did manage to kill most of the elected leadership of KC-Kansas, but that simply allowed one Corporal Theodore Bronson, to effectively and decisely seize power in the confusion. The invading Missourians were first turned back, then defeated, then conquered outright in the spring and summer of 1946.
Now ‘General’ Bronson, supposed ‘military governor’ of the region, rules both cities in the name of the USA — although he shows no signs of subordinating Kansas City to California, or even Texas. However, Bronson is a very popular despot, as such things go. He keeps as a light hand on the city as he can manage without being a fool about it; unusually for a city under martial law, there are almost no restrictions on speech, religion, the press, and assembly, as long as there are no riots. Or attempts to re-establish a democratic form of government. Backing up Bronson is a fleet of four B-25 bombers (Kansas City produced the airplanes during the war). They don’t have much gas at any time, and the bombs are homemade, but it’s a brave — and suicidal — bandit band who will venture within twenty miles of Kansas City these days.
There is, of course, a resistance movement among the conquered parts of Kansas City; it’s led by former USN pilot W.W. Smith, who himself seized control of what was left of the KC-Missouri military during the final days of the fighting. His forces, along with some savants from the University of Kansas City have retreated to the sewer system, where they are rumored to be working on wonder-weapons that will allow them to take KC-Missouri back (and presumably conquer KC-Kansas themselves). In the meantime, they mask their aboveboard operations using a local sect of Methodists for cover.
Oddly, Kansas City is not precisely about to explode from all of this. Neither Bronson nor Smith seem to have much of a taste for atrocities. They’re hard men, the pair of them, but not cruel; and they take care to keep the struggle for Kansas City away from the places where regular people live. But all it takes is one bad operation on either side to make the fragile understanding in place disappear. And pretty much everyone in Kansas City knows it. All in all, it’s an unsatisfactory situation, and not one that will likely end in a satisfactory conclusion. For anybody.
Theodore ‘”Woodrow Wilson” Smith’ Bronson, by any chance?
Mayyyyyyyybe.