A Game of Drones
Communists had virtually become non-existent in the Federation. After the Christmas Day Massacre of several years ago, the Orderian people had taken the fight into their own hands, once and for all, and saw to it that most, almost all, socialists, anarchists, and communists in the country met their end in what would eventually be called the "Piano Wire Revolution," so named because the most common form of mob justice was administered with a piano wire firmly tied around the leftist's neck, leaving a gory mess hanging from a traffic light, a macabre reminder that the Orderian people were, indeed, tired of the Left's shit.
Today, things were changing. Most of the Communist governments in the -world- had by this point been destroyed by the Federation under the late Griffith Victor, at the cost of his sanity and eventually leading to an attempted murder-suicide. The Federation was running out of wars to fight. The once-feared, mighty Federal War Machine had been dormant as the Orderian State, now under guidance of Grand Commander Athena, looked inwards. Indeed, she had begun massive reforms to eliminate the already-small amounts of corruption in the Federation through liberal use of the Federal Guard's Financial Crimes Division- and so the FCD had emerged from a relatively low profile into being a household name. The Legions hadn't been in another country for years. Even the forward-deployed Marine Expeditionary groups saw little action other than occasional training with the Imperial Fascist Alliance, now seen by many to be redundant.
But the Order had much, much more to do. Though the Red Menace had been largely defeated and was now mostly a bad memory, even with the continued existence of the Gellertian barbarians, the Fasces was still under fire. Capitalism, and the more moderate democracies- once considered allies of opportunity- were steadfast in their opposition to Fascism. Activists the world over still called for the annihilation of the Orderian State, and concentrated efforts, possibly government-supported, were being made to convert Orderian citizens into liberals and other associated advocates of self-government.
The Revolution of YouTube, as some called it, was nothing like the Liberty Confederation's brutal terror in the streets. Videos depicting Orderian police violence, conspiracy theories- most completely false but popular anyways-, exposes of Orderian business atrocities abroad ranging from unsafe factory conditions to slave shipments, and manifestos against the Government had spread like wildfire, now that the Liberty Confederation was almost completely absent. The Orators, mighty in their ability to dismantle opposing views, were drowned out in endless terabytes upon terabytes of sensationalist, though sometimes valid, cries against seemingly everything Orderian.
Obviously, few had the gall to propagate these materials within the Federation. Those that did were quickly found, no matter how strong they thought their proxies were, by the combined efforts of the Directorate of Reconnaissance and Intelligence, the Federal Guard, and the notorious Commission for Vigilance and the Repression of Anti-Fascism. Even foreign activists had been disappearing under mysterious circumstances; though unprovable, many had speculated that Orderian special operations groups had been abducting them, and when bodies began being discovered in foreign countries near the cities where the activists had been taken, it was realized someone had been murdering them. The methods used were far beyond anything the Whiteshirts, the infamous nuclear-armed Fascist terrorists ("vigilantes") based in the Federation, had been capable of.
One man in particular, Tosh Greyson, had been particularly critical of the Orderian government. He had openly revealed his identity and dared the Federation's government to find him, as he lived in a high-rise apartment in the Corsica Republic ((OOC: A necessarily NPC state)), a small city-state erected after the fall of the Ryouese Empire featuring one of the densest urban centers outside of the Federation; he knew no Orderian snatch team would make it out of the city alive. Little attention was paid to him, until he had begun releasing seemingly classified materials to the internet.
Federal Guard-DRI Joint Office, Fortress Preliator, Magna Polis
"Guardsman Ulric, interlock your fingers behind your head, stand up slowly, and step back from the terminal," the command of Guard Staff Sergeant Mike Croix broke, through the silence of the 'vault'. The Guardsman turned to see an MI-P57 pointed squarely at his face, and two DRI Internal Affairs officers flanking his platoon sergeant. No further formalities were given as he was zipcuffed and dragged off to another building at the exact same base- much like the first one, a windowless 'spook' building.
Several hours later, he was officially non-existent, completely wiped from all records and databases permanently, never to be seen again.
The scene repeated itself across several DRI offices and intelligence teams around the Orderian military's establishments, occasionally with much more violent ends as Internal Affairs and Federal Guard troops sometimes deemed the target too dangerous to take, electing to execute them on the spot without warning.
Two days later; Corsica Republic
Tosh was speaking with his mother through a video call on his computer. Many hours had been invested into this machine; it had some of the most expensive and advanced protection on the market. It was his window to the world. The press had been trying to get a hold of him, as evidenced by the crowd of reporters and cameramen in the street so many floors below. He had used the one appearance before the cameras he made to deliver a short, but harsh, speech against the Federation. His father was a Leistungi fighter pilot who had been killed in the naval skirmishes between IFA and ODECON almost a decade ago, his hatred of Orderians was justified and on a very personal scale, but he had an honest desire to see such a monolithic force of what he saw as tyranny brought down. It represented a threat to the self-governance of humans around the world, a direct affront to basic, fundamental human rights. The Orderian State was an entity that had killed literally billions of people through countless invasions, domestic conflicts, assassinations, and support or even direct participation in terrorist attacks around the world. It was, as he explained, utterly evil.
A degausser sat at the opposite end of the room, with several dead hard drives laying uselessly around it. While the Corsican authorities would never extradite him to the Federation, he still had to ensure he wasn't able to be charged with breaking any of his own nation's laws.
It wouldn't matter though. A massive explosion rocked the apartment, incinerating him in front of his mother's eyes instantly, and sending chunks of the building hurtling into the crowd of international reporters below, all for the world to see. A chain reaction of secondary explosions started as the gas lines were ignited, and seconds later, another object penetrated the building and exploded within, completely devastating the building's framework and sending the entire apartment complex tumbling in on itself, killing virtually everyone inside in seconds.
A minute later, miles away, a rocket screeched from elsewhere in the city to an unseen object in the sky, a tiny blooming pinprick indicating that it exploded high in the sky. Hours later, the Corsican military released photos of what they had shot down; a black, basic looking drone with the insignia of the 806th Special Purpose Air Wing of the Federal Air Force emblazoned on the side of it.
Republican House, Corsica
Prime Minister Manuel Guerin was busy, even if his country was small. The public was outraged that he, and the small Corsican Defense Force, had failed to stop a subsonic Orderian drone from carrying out an attack that had left thousands dead; the streets had been clogged in protests calling for an international response to what had been called a "terror bombing." There was significant reason to call it that. The Prime Minister had been spending the past two days calling diplomats representing countries around the world to see if he could find help in punishing the GWO for its actions.
The phone went silent. He put it down, and attempted to re-dial the man he had been speaking to, to no avail. He wheeled across his office to the radio set on his desk, only for it to be completely silent. He tried the scanner set in his closet, and it screamed an utterly unpleasant static tone at him when he tried to listen to the emergency services frequencies.
The door flew open, and several men wearing uniforms of the Corsican Defense Force Ground Forces walked into the room, suppressed FALs presented at him. "Prime Minister Guerin," one of them said in Italian- Guerin wasn't an English or a German speaker, leaving Italian as the only language the Orderians could use to communicate with him- "not a word. We're not going to hurt you, but you're not leaving here."
Suddenly, the sky became filled with helicopters bearing "FEDERAL MARINES" on their tail booms, and spurts of gunfire had broken out. Nothing had been able to detect them- virtually the entire Corsican communications system had been disrupted, graphite bombs had been used to knock out radio stations, and distant military installations had already been destroyed by massed cruise missile attacks from the Carrier Battle Group now just penetrating the maritime border of the country.
"You're going to order the surrender, or we're going to plug you, your staff, and all your families. Your military doesn't stand a chance, and you'll either live now as a ruler who acted in his people's best interests, or a stubborn politician who sent his people to their deaths. Either way, we win. You can save a lot of lives here, Mister Guerin."
That evening, dominating the international headlines, was something the likes of which hadn't been seen in at least two years:
THE GRAND WORLD ORDER INVADES; CORSICA SURRENDERS IN SIX HOURS
Back in the Federation, some protests had begun- none too major, but almost always ending up in forcible removal by the police. What the international community would do next was a mystery, but even though she hadn't made any public statements, nor had anyone else in the Orderian State, Grand Commander Athena was making it perfectly clear: hacktivists, regardless of national origin, were not to be tolerated.
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