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[The Shrailleeni Empire]

Feminist Collective Party Headquarters

Citizens of Gloria Regis. This is your Premier, Livia Barberina, speaking to you. You elected a government; you chose people to lead you, and they have been assassinated, murdered by people who did not want to see us rule ourselves. We were abandoned by foreigners who called us friends and left when the going got tough. Our chance for freedom is all but over.

I cannot condemn you to slaughter or degradation. I urge those who do not choose to stand with us to make their way, under white flag, You will have betrayed nothing—for those who do not want to stand here and possibly die under arms, you did not choose this fight, and I cannot choose it for you.

For myself: I am what I have claimed to be—a free citizen of Gloria Regis, which should be an independent country where people are free, where we do not live under the boot heel of a dictator. Having tasted this freedom, I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. May the gods of your faith hold you and protect you.

The words carried with them a sense of grim finality that made Martha swallow despite the dryness in her mouth. Her blue eyes looked toward the ceiling as Livia made her final statements, and then darted back to Theodora.

"Yes, you're right," she whispered hoarsely, "you and the others need to get out of here. But I-we're staying."

She blinked a little, keeping the tears from welling up in her eyes.

"Us exiles, I mean. We can't run Theodora. Not again. We all agreed on what it would mean to come back here. Julianna might have...cracked, but the rest of us haven't. We might have lost, but I'll be damned if I'm leaving again."

Her voice wavered a little, but her resolution did not. Sniffing a little, her resolve fighting successfully against the bitter emotions in her heart, she produced a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out in front of her.

"We do have a plan. Before she...well, Julianna spoke with the Shrailleeni volunteers. I don't know what she said, but...well, see for youself."

An Official Notice from the Shrailleeni Office of Volunteer Coordination

To Livia Barberina, our friend and Sister,

Revent events in Sixington have taken a dark turn, and one which fills our hearts with sympathy and regret. The forces of patriarchal oppression have triumphed in the face of all that we value. Feminism, democracy, and the right of peaceful self-determination stand to be completely eradicated. As Shrailleeni, we can no longer bear to allow this state of affairs to stand.

We have heard of your determination not to submit to the will of the oppressors, and applaude your bravery. Know that should you have need of us, the doors of every Shrailleeni volunteer station will be open to every Feminist seeking shelter from the storm to come. While within our care we shall do everything within our power to ensure that no harm will come to our Gloria Regian Sisters, even if this should mean offering our reputations and our lives in your defense.

It has not been seen as practical at this time to inform the New Edomite federal government of our offer.

With our condolences, and the blessings of the Mother Goddess,

Princess Vasane Resyanna fe Shrailleen and Lady Allene Triaka
Shrailleeni Volunteer Mission to Gloria Regis Regional Coordinators

"I know," Martha said as Theodora finished, "it's not great. Hell, I don't even know why they're offering, because last I heard the Shrais had decided we were a liability."

She caught Theodora's eyes briefly.

"Had you heard that? Julianna found out that the Shrais had decided to let us rot here. Declared us criminals so they could play nice with the Boy General and his fascist pals in Constantinople. It was the last thing she said to me before she dissapeared. Only thing I can think is that something she said got through to them. It's risky enough, if word got out that the Shrais were hiding police and exiles and Feminists then the army would beat down their doors to get to us."

"But its better than anything else I can think of. I'm not leaving, and I'm not skulking in sewers and backalleys under an assumed name, hoping that noone will ever recognise me. Gloria Regis will have to return to civilian control eventually, and when it does then Goddess willing we'll come out and start this again, and do it right this time. Either that or we'll all get caught, but personally I'll take as many of them with me as possible if I'm going down."

[New Edom]

Feminist Collective Party Headquarters

For a moment, Theodora had to close her eyes, then she ran her hands through her hair. What Martha said had to sink in, she had to radically change her perspective. She looked at her with wide eyes. “Martha…Martha Martha, yes yes YES.” She embraced the woman strongly, and drew back, still holding her shoulders and drew in a deep breath.

“Oh yes. We’ll disappear. A few will leave—like Carlotta—to tell the story of what happened. We won’t tell them where we went. We’ll leave it a mystery, we’ll tell them that we’ll make our own way. But yes, we’ll hide in plain sight. Oh Martha…thank you. Yes. We won’t run but we won’t die standing either. We’ll wait. Like the cicada—we’ll wait for the right time.” Her eyes began to glow with fervor again. “And Livia too—we won’t be waiting for them to kill us or take us. We’ll have to plan and organize this…right now…I need some strong coffee and I need to focus. Do you have places, names? How did they recommend this be done?” Purpose had fired her; she felt young again. She felt strong again.

Regardless of reply, she had a general plan now. They would move out in small groups the places that would shelter them, under the cover of darkness; they would make use of the blackout to their advantage, using only line of sight, messages and the few encrypted radios they had, and they would thus vanish into the crowds.

Livia had been so ready to stay and die that she took some serious persuasion; she agreed only if she would be in the last group to leave. It grieved her to think of leaving home—she had not, as the Exiles had—ever been forced to, and she had been so ready for a last stand. But life called to her, as it did to the others.

She sat in a nearly empty building, hearing the sounds of firearms and explosives in other parts of the city, the building that had once rung with the sounds of arguments, invective, rhetoric and sorority now nearly silent. She ran a hand over her desk, got up with her old grace, touched the pictures on the wall, and then turned as a figure, silhouetted in the door, said quietly, “Premier. Livia. We have to go now.”

Livia smiled faintly, and turned that way, and left the office behind.

[The Shrailleeni Empire]

Feminist Collective Party Headquarters

Theodora's enthusiasm was infectious, even for Martha. Despite everything, the losing, the leg wound that nearly killed her, limping all over the city, finding her best friend in a drunk and pathetic wreck, she found herself rekindling from the other woman's energy. The cloud of defeatism was still there, but with Theodora's reaction she could suddenly see the silver lining more clearly. Maybe there was still hope after all. Maybe she should have more faith in the Shrais and their fickle empire.

"Hey, don't thank me. All I did was wake up in bed with my leg in a cast," she said with a dry humor. "But, yeah that was my idea too. We aren't running, we aren't dying, and people are still going to need us when all of this blows over. It's not like we're invaders, lots of people here honestly believe in us. The army can't crush that, no matter how much they want to."

She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen as she spoke, and began writing furiously as she continued.

"They didn't have much in the way of planning on their end, except these locations," she indicated the dozen or so addresses that she was putting down from memory. "These are all of the Shrai volunteer centers that are actually based in buildings. They're pretty well scattered across the city, but most of them are in our areas because they've had the most luck with us. If we split into small groups, we can get to these places pretty easily. A lot of the exiles are already in their main HQ, thanks to their injuries."

Her face darkened for a moment at the memory of the warehouses, but she continued, meeting Theodora's eyes.

"That's the short-term. The army isn't going to bother the Shrais much, since they have no reason to, at least not yet. If they do start to get suspicious we have a few other options. After a few days we can move people around to the outdoor camps as well, no one should think twice about one or two people and it will help us spread out. Should be plenty of food and water, or at least enough. And they can't push the Shrais too far without risking an incident anyway, not that they wouldn't."

She paused for a moment, thinking about something that had been bothering her.

"Plus, between you and me, something was up with them. I'm not sure that the Imperial City knows about their offer. But I'm sure as hell not letting that stop me either, and I know how they work. Even if this isn't officially approved, the Mother Empress would rather risk war than admit that she can't control her own people. It's genius in a way, but I'm pretty sure that our Shrai friends' political careers will be over after this."

[New Edom]

Sixington, Gloria Regis

Part of why General Romain preferred not to use treaded vehicles was not merely that they could damage roads badly and be too bulky and vulnerable to attacks by infantry. It was also that they announced their presence too much. It was fully possible to do an ambush by wheeled vehicles.
Nevertheless, the M20s, M28s and Pseudonjas were heavy enough vehicles ad shook windows and rattled doors as they invaded the city, accompanied by armoured infantry with riot masks and gas masks who dismounted swiftly either from doors or from rails to cover the advance; helicopters thundered overhead, their searchlights blinding people.

The Rover Team units’ job was to hole up among the wrecked buildings and pick off the militias at long range, killing their commanders when they could and randomly killing their people to sap morale and drive them out.They had done this in several actions before.

Romain didn’t like them much. Their commanders made her think of the horrors that had taken place among the 18th Light Troops in Bara; turning to rape and selling prisoners into slavery. Would they go the same way? She kept them on a tight leash and didn’t really trust them, but what they were good for was killing. However what she didn’t want was more of the Council Police at her ear complaining that she wasn’t doing enough. Her fears were many, among them displeasing the President.

Most of the hunter-killer teams worked in groups of four, but some did not. Sergeant-Major Silva preferred to work alone. A patriotic ethnic Cornellian, he particularly hated the traitors in Gloria Regis. He was a lifelong hunter and was used to working alone; he was tolerated largely because he was part of the Sniper School, one of their best instructors, and the Rover Team Commander felt they were very lucky to have him.

“I have some rules and they have kept me alive so fire. I only ever fire one shot. This takes them by surprise and gives them no idea of where my position is. times I have lain there, looking through my telescopic sights and play Angel of Death, the cross-hairs moving from face to face as I decided who should live and who should die. They never know how close they had come to death, how their faraway wives had nearly been widowed.” He would say, speaking seriously but in the tones of a man explaining how to make a good sauce for barbecue. He was considered a good instructor

He was in a good position; they were dangerously near what was called the Refugee Zone. Blackout or no blackout, they had been warned that some foreign journalists or aid workers might have satellite phones or uplinks and might capture imagery; they had to be careful, and so only the best of the best had been moved here under cover of darkness to help cover the arrival of the ground forces who would establish a cordon here. The house he was in was abandoned, as were several others in the area, evacuated during the fighting downtown. There were still some bodies down there—Fascist and Communist alike. Birds had pecked at them during the day; now he could hear a few stray dogs among them, growling and worrying at human flesh. There’d have to be a cull—you couldn’t tolerate that sort of thing. He felt it was as a shame. He liked dogs; he felt it was sad when animals had to pay for human sins.

Here and there naked civilians, most wearing sandals by their gait, moved with meager belongings towards the refugee areas; they were clearly unarmed and wary, moving in the shadowy night, now and then tripping and stumbling over bodies and debris in the streets. He had no orders to fire on them, though he held the scope over one or two. A woman with a good strong Cornellian body, good hips and decent breasts, and he felt restless for his wife. The woman walked with a group of others, their hands touching one another now and then in the dark, using a flashlight that seemed to be damaged, carrying a suitcase or bag here and there, her eyes caught in the scope flashed like an animal’s. He could see no threat, and turned his sights away from the little group.

He was not focused on properly naked civilians; he was focused on Sam Love leading what appeared to be a company of militia to reinforce a number of buildings; he saw the man clearly in the crosshairs, could see him standing tall in the back of a pickup truck painted camouflage, waving to a group of armed men and women as he rested on hand on the ammo can of a .50 cal. Silva decided; Love died, his body collapsing, astonished horrified faces around him, and then Silva was quietly relocating. Rounds smacked against the houses seemingly randomly, no one knew what they were shooting at, since he was gone. Another textbook kill He wondered what the man’s name had been.

Communist Part of Gloria Regis Headquarters

Sergeant Abner Dale and Private Abomi each threw a grenade into the entrance, drew back, and then fired a burst each as they led the way for the platoon to enter the building. The rebel stronghold was theirs at last; the advance squad using short controlled bursts made their way in, glass, wood and metal torn up by their rounds and the grenades’ fragments flying. Smoke, cordite, and the stink of blood and human waste created a choking soup of the air.
A fish tank was draining rapidly on the floor, flopping goldfish gasping and flashing gold and cream. A man was sliding to the floor grimacing as though he had a bellyache, an MP-5 falling from nerveless fingers. Two others, and a woman, lay farther on among upturned and damaged office furniture. There were battery powered lamps here and there, one had flashed out with its battery compartment shattered.

Outside an illumination flare lit up the place through the windows like slow lightning It revealed posters on the wall, some half hanging down like old rags, some barely touched except for a scorch mark or a bullet hole. GENERAL STRIKE! JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GLORIA REGIS—THE PATH TO PROGRESS! RESTORING Y OUR COUNTRY, REPAIRING YOUR ECONOMY, FIGHTING CORPORATE CORRUPTION!

Stairs going up in the center of the room, a hallway past that. Kittim’s squad had arrived; Dale motioned for him to take the hallway, while he would take the stairs. Kittim made an affirmative sign; Dale ordered quietly for two of his people to check the bodies in the room, make sure they were dead. As they were heading for the stairs there were two pistol shots in quick succession upstairs; everyone tensed and lowered themselves, but Dale held up his fist before anyone could fire. “Hold it,” he whispered. He had a funny feeling about this, and he had learned to trust his funny feelings. He motioned for his squad to be ready to follow him on three.

He threw up a flash bang instead of a frag, and rushed up, he and the first two covering their points of entry, but it was all over, as he had suspected. Two men, smoking pistols in their hands, fallen on the floor, clothed as all the traitors and rebels were, dressed not as militia but in their Sunday best, suit jackets, ties, shirts, pants, shined shoes. Communist Party pins on, each had shot himself in the mouth. A banner behind them with the full name of the party in the large meeting hall that this had clearly been. The rest of the room a wreck, windows shattered to pieces. Dead men and women at the reinforced windows where they had made their last stand. Their faces were distorted, but Dale recognized them, and whistled.

“Someone better tell the General her son’s dead. And that we got Macro. We got the bastard. It’s over.”