Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 10:00 pm
“Emperor. Unit. God. Family.”
-Field Marshal Alan Baarskag when asked to list what
Huskarls value most in order of importance
Huskarls value most in order of importance
December 15th, 2013
Balderburn, Principality of Zeltz
The sun of the Paloni bore down on Captain Kyl Wohar as he trudged through caked mud and snow around the stone walls of the town. His men followed closely. Wohar's steps were as brisk as the gusts of wind that swept through the plain.
“Listen up, maggots. This ain't a training exercise anymore. This is war. The Rodarions have breached the Empirian blockade. We ain't fuckin' around now,” Kyl spat at his men in gruff voice just above a whisper. They were damn good soldiers and cold blooded killers, but they didn't kill without reason unlike the Fallen. He continued, “This will be our last camping trip.”
Camping trip was a euphemism used by high command to describe specific counterinsurgency operations of military units deployed to the Zeltzian borderlands. Official manuals described it has team-building maneuvers, but, in reality, it was essentially target practice. Wohar coughed a little as a blast of wind swept ice and snow in their direction. He checked his watch, a gift from his father. The Augsburger handmade timepiece was a bit old and had been prone to breaking down at three-thirty. The spring seemed a bit worn, too, until he used his first paycheck to ensure his watch was always synchronized.
Two hours of fast marching followed by a brief stay in camouflaged foxholes dug into the foundations of the town walls. When they started out as recruits, the men were a bit dazed during more intense training scenarios, but now they would be ready to fight at the crack of dawn or in the twilight of dusk even after several hours of strenuous activity. The brief rest in the disguised foxholes steeled their resolve and strengthened their fighting spirit.
It was somewhere around midday when they rose from the earth like undead cued by a second coming. Their cold snow-covered bodies and their thin figures belied their Ascelonian origin. Fair hair smothered under the dust of the Zeltzian. The paleness of Wohar's fist concealed by his watch and a winter glove made in Arcindis. It was almost time.
“Ready yourselves, men,” his voice, a muted bark scattered by the Northern winds as they readied their weapons. Their favorite instrument of choice was the Arvaal tactical knife, which came with a handle and two detachable blades. The Korzmes, the chief staple of deep infiltration, and the Langmes, a rather long jungle blade. The former was a short blade adapted from the Fallen's use of bayonet blades in assaults. It came with a replaceable compressed air cartridge that could fire the knife for short distances.
Kyl noticed that a few of his men invested in more expensive variants of the Korzmes that came with stabilizers that extended the knife's effective range. By comparison, the Langmes looked a lot more Levantian. A few of his men equipped the curved blade. Taken from their Aarsindiin counterparts, the blade was good for throwing, easy to draw, and outranged most melee weapons. The men came armed with Vrend-7 SMGs and Makker pistols in case the situation got out of hand. Half of them carried a few nonlethal grenades each while the other half brought satchel charges and frags. All of them wore Spindel arachnofiber vests with trauma plates underneath. No identifying tags or patches, but Borderlandians knew where they came from.
An explosion erupted from beyond the city walls and the rangers looked upward at the battlements. A man peaked over at the rangers and signaled to people behind him and out of sight. Wohar stared at the man as he drew his Makker 9mm, aimed it at the crest of the wall, and barked, “Ready yourselves, men!”
“You should keep it down. You'll wake the neighbors,” a voice came down from the battlements and three ropes followed with the Ascelonian colors of blue, black, and white slapped on the end with a marker. A man in a town guard uniform signaled at them and Wohar's men proceeded to scale the walls. Kyl hesitated slightly, but joined his men as a spot opened up. Town guards in their khaki uniforms with Zeltzinger armbands helped them up.
“A wolf in sheep's clothing shouldn't have to give itself away to other wolves,” a bald man said to Wohar as he neared the top. The man wore a town watchmen's cap and tipped the cap just enough for the sun to bounce off his pores where fair hairs struggled to rise and reveal his Nordkrijger origin. He grinned wolfishly and let the cap fall back upon his head.
Wohar seemed unfazed as he climbed over to top, landed firmly on the ground, and looked at his comrade decked in the enemy uniform and asked, “Wotan's Ei?”
“A good soldier never gives away his best weapon,” the man answered. Wohar now noticed the man was wearing a Captain's cap. “Not even to a friend.”
Wohar looked impatient as he grumbled, “And what's that?”
“I guess you didn't listen,” the Captain winked and Wohar caught a glimpse of a creepy eye tattooed on his eyelid.
“Sorry, I asked,” Wohar sighed and looked about. “Any hostiles in the area?”
“Nah, we neutralized the patrols around this sector. Dor Hamer started a firefight around the West Gate, so we have the option of avoiding that area or providing support. Either way, it's Dor Hamer, so they should be fine. I suggest we proceed with the objective.”
“Right,” Wohar agreed. “Sounds good to me.”
“Alright, boys! We're gonna need most of you to spread out along this area and defend this perimeter. If you're with Wohar, there's some enemy uniforms in the watchtower over there!” he gestured at a stone structure rising from the wall further down. Then he pointed at one of his men and continued, “Josef will guide you there if you need directions. Of course, your equipment will be guarded and available when you return. I'll need ten brave volunteers and, hopefully, one of them will be Herr Wohar.”
“Alright. I'm up for it,” Wohar stepped forward.
“Excellent,” the Captain grinned as he offered his hand. “For reference, you can call me Henri.”
“Just one thing though,” Kyl looked a bit suspicious and shook it carefully. “How do you know my name?”
“I told you. A good soldier keeps his best weapon to himself,” the Captain winked exposing his tattooed eye.
~~~
December 25th, 2013
HIMS Wagnaria, Straits of Badarak
“Status report!” snapped Kristaan as he looked out from the bridge of the HIMS Wagnaria.
Field Marshal Leo Gates, a fairly young commander risen from the elite core of the Kampatka Academy, emerged from the cramped lounge plastered with maps. An adjutant followed closely at his side carrying a clipboard filled with indecipherable scribblings. A couple envelopes and a pen were tacked on via clip.
“Oblige him, Mr. Upak,” Gates ordered and his assistant approached the Emperor slowly. His presence alerted the Emperor almost immediately.
“Well? Spit it out. Haven't got all day,” his eyes cast its gaze over the sea and in the vague distance, the Waldenburg landmass sat obscured by the curvature of the earth, the greatness of distance, and low hanging clouds.
“My liege,” he began and presented a vanilla envelope to His Imperial Majesty. “I think you'll want to see this.”
“Alright,” Kristaan turned, took the envelope, and removed its contents. Upak began discussing each paper individually as the Emperor paged through it. Not much more than “satellite imagery”, “news report”, and “dossier” escaped the man's mouth as Kristaan rushed through each document before tossing them back in the envelope and returning all of it to the young adjutant. “Tell me something useful. Don't bother loading me up with all this useless garbage.”
“We're estimating that the Rodarions have about an army group in Sälitz. We're not sure about exact numbers,” Upak almost sighed, but caught himself. He was in the presence of the Emperor, after all. “In fact, they could be exaggerating their size by boosting radio chatter or downplaying it by maintaining radio silence. We're sensing a lot of traffic there, though.”
Kristaan stared out into the distance and his eyes captured the beauty of the sun striking a shimmering, seamless blue into the ocean, “So, you're not certain?”
“No, sir.”
“Mykolans to the North, Rodarions to the South, and here we are stuck in the middle. Fantastic,” he chuckled softly. Kristaan turned back at Upak, who looked like a promising young man. Ascelonia was always full of potential in his mind's eye. “Anything else?”
“Our ETA to Port Helgan is 3 hours 40 minutes. Aside from that? No, sir,” he turned but then remembered the second envelope in his clipboard. “Oh, and there's this. Unmarked letter. Strange seal. I've never seen it before. We had some lab technicians go through it to make sure it wasn't dangerous. It was originally encrypted, but we had some people look at it.”
“Give me that!” Kristaan took it from the young adjutant who scurried away quickly. “Only two people should see this message.”
Dear Crystal,
Mead apologies for the informalities and wristed trouble krauts. Ivy fallen under the suspense that someone house Ben redding my snout knowing communists. Nevertheless, I circumvented stand shard procedures. Shore leave, you'll understand.
I must say that this letter comes with rather strange timing. Don't you think? Flowers already think their mother is in red with an ass. Not the best time for them to make it literal. Regardless, I find this a bit out of character for an ass end. Desperation?
~~~
December 24th, 2013
Fort Aldithold, Kingdom of Saxe-Missern-Blomburg
Two men stood in a stone watchtower overlooking a ghost town. It wasn't quite a town, but it had been home to a town sized unit of fresh conscripts. Now, most of them were all on leave. They were warned that a tank formation would be training in the area, but they saw nothing for miles save for the sparsity of conifers, the crest of a hill to the north, and the border with Sälitz a dozen miles or so down south.
“Did you hear?” Captain Alex Seewulf coughed a little before taking a drag on his cigarette. A little label on the pack read Made in Laysley, but he knew better. Even here in old backwater Blomburg, the word of the Yallakian invasion had spread. The country wouldn't be manufacturing much of anything for a while, but what did he know? Ascelonians rolled through Blomburg and got their factories running within weeks after peace was made.
His First Lieutenant blew smoke rings and replied, “Hear what?”
“Queen's visiting,” Seewulf puffed again, observing that the cigarettes tasted like shit unlike the Manganese 'Imperial Elysian' or the Arcindin 'VoorStyx' that a rare few Ascelonians brought with them. They were health nuts. Indoctrinated from youth, Seewulf thought. You would have better luck asking the higher ranked Blomburger commanders for those brands. Or maybe not, these days. The higher ups were the first to fall under Ascelonia's influence.
“Little Carol?” First Lieutenant Sauerbach dropped his cigarette in disgust and stomped it out with his foot.
“Yeah,” Seewulf confirmed. Another drag and the rough flavor proved his suspicions. Definitely a knock-off brand. “Fuck these cigarettes.”
“Heh. I bet some starving Angzasi boy rolled them,” Sauerbach sighed sadly. He put his hands awkwardly in his pockets before noticing that the cotton enclosures were also fairly cold since he left them unattended. The middle-aged lieutenant withdrew his hands and blew on them a little before stuffing them in his coat pockets. Supposedly, new uniforms with wool lining would be issued, but most of high command's promises had been backlogged.
His older superior chuckled as he sucked down the last bit of the cig. “Well, that black boy could put a better army together than the Ascelonians.”
Seewulf smoked every now and then with his men, but he restrained himself. He noticed some of his boys could suck down an entire carton in a day and he hated the idea of all the time wasted smoking. Health propaganda didn't scare him, but losing a few precious moments did. Sauerbach sighed. “Probably. What the fuck are we doing here?”
“Feeding our families,” the grizzled Captain replied tersely. He came from a family of navy men, but the Ascelonians had obliterated the few boats
“But still, c'mon. It's Christmas Eve. We should be with our families,” Sauerbach complained as he shifted his weight back and forth to generate some heat. A cold breeze rolling over the fort disagreed with his efforts.
Seewulf smiled softly at the old excuse he had heard when he sat out the last Christmas with a younger stock of officers. “You volunteered for this. Besides, you're not married.”
“You and I both know that a good pint of lager is family enough,” Sauerbach quipped, landing a light, well-timed elbow to the Captain's side. They both laughed.
In the distance, a formation of AZ7 Protector tanks rolled into sight. It took a bit of concentration to notice them at first, but the outlines were unmistakable. Seewulf noted the engines were a lot quieter than the tanks the Blomburgers used. However, once they slipped into view one of the men climbed out of a tank hatch with a large stereo blaring loud music. The faint words of the song managed to filter its way to the two.
“He's an enemy of the state,”
“Fuck those obnoxious assholians,” Sauerbach leaned on the railing along the viewing platform and spat down the side. He was about to comment on the particularly loud stereo when a cargo truck fitted with large speakers came into view over the crest of the hill north of the fort. Now, the words were crystal clear if the crystal was caked with calcium, but the words were more distinguishable.
“And then he sealed his fate”
“Shh...” the old veteran replied and pointed at the approaching formation. “Watch.”
“When he gave himself to hate
He's an enemy of the staaaate!”
A booming yet raspy voice echoed the gruff lyrics. Tanks rolled up closer and closer to the fort as the guitar solo kicked in with such intensity that even Sauerbach could imagine some burly, muscular man with a massive mustache that occupied the most unwholesome fantasies of young harlots digging into metal strings with his thick, sausage fingers.
“ENEMAYYYYYY!”
Yes, in spite of his instincts and preconceived notions, he could picture the man's primal hunger for music. Those large fingers searching the struts, combing for the right notes. Sauerbach had shared a similar hunger for wurst and sour cabbage.
“Hey!” Captain Seewulf slapped the back of Sauerbach's helmet. “Are you paying attention?”
He answered a bit unnerved, “Y-yes, Captain?”
“Look down there. If you haven't noticed, they have supporting infantry,” Seewulf said gesturing down at the field in front of them. “Lots of them.”
“Lord, there are enemies at our gate”
Upon closer inspection, he saw a swarm of regulars in winter uniforms with a few ski troops here and there backing the tank formation. “What in...”
“Let our rounds fly true and straight”
“You got anything white we can wave?” Seewulf asked half-jokingly as he pulled out his cigarette pack again.
”Now we're hauling iron freight”
“Snow? My boxers?” Sauerbach laughed as the music stopped. The tanks' advance halted and the troops began lining up around the fort. One Protector sat at the front, closest to the fort walls. Its cannon raised and lined itself up with the watchtower until they both saw the barrel perfectly aligned. Sauerbach and Seewulf were staring down the barrel of a really large gun.
“I'm guessing we can't use your boxers anymore,” the Captain jested, thinking it was his last. Then it went off like one of those popguns in children's cartoons. The hatch swung open and a Blomburger flag came out with it. The truck with the loudspeakers pulled up closer and a man popped out of the tank's hatchet. A man in a Blomburger uniform. He drew a loudspeaker up to his lips and cried, “I heard you could use some company. Ascelonians and Blomburgers can wait out the snow and spend the yuletide season together.”