The Cradle of Civilization (Closed, Anterra, Mature)

[Tippercommon]

Trigger Warning: Abuse, Kidnapping, Sexual Assault

27 Feb. 2017 - 1700 Hours - 34 km S of Isari, Naseristan

LCPL Rutherford Blaze, No. 3 Battalion, 93rd Cavalry Regiment, Tiperyn Realm Defence

---

The Lieutenant heaved himself off of the bed, grabbing lazily for his trousers. The room was dank. The smoke from several hookah pipes loitered, sticking to the ceiling. A whore, pale in complexion and laden by thick, black, nappy hair laid on the stained mattress completely exposed. Her body was bruised from the abuse. Her dealers had shaved her to make her more appealing for the market, but they had done a sloppy job with a dry razor. She was a very cute girl, but was left traumatized by the whirlwind of events she was swept up in. She was unconscious; a hefty blood red bruise ran across her forehead. LT had giv-en her a blow to the head to "stop the screaming." Visibly young, she was likely an innocent Taihei who lost her way in Ngartse and ended up being processed as human cargo in Anterra’s despicable human trafficking network. The squadron had taken to calling that particular whore "Loni" after the alias of a popular Taihei porn star. She couldn't be more than eighteen years old, and even then none of the troopers questioned it. She was the favorite of LT, although he never hesitated in sampling the other girls. In the depths of our safehouse in the middle of Naseristan’s arid wastes, our platoon was guarding two dozen whores owned by a slaver who owed the LT a lot of money. They were a six-month long project. Since September, we had been helping a man they called "Slime" kidnap natives and tour-ists from the metropolis that surrounded the capital of Isari. The deal which was about to go down was payday for the LT. Along with the whores, fifty cases of Sweet Alloquia Red bourbon whiskey were stacked in the cellar ready for transport. The buyer? The leader of some Arab gang known only as “The Lion.” As supposed men of honor, the Realm Defence was not in the distribution of slaves. However, given the fallibility of man – especially the corrupt hearts of your average savage company-grade officer – it never seemed like a more prime time to get into the business.

"Blaze, Roy," LT grumbled, pointing sloppily at us. "Dress her, bind her, and throw her with the rest. We gotta move."

Roy lazily stood up. He had been leaning against the wall for the whole five minutes LT and Loni had been going at it. After placing his rifle against the wall, he and I walked over the bed. We picked Loni's clothes up off the ground. We were probably the most wholesome squadron. We were the only ones who did not sample the buffet during their time as human traffickers. But we weren’t absolved of our sins. We would be a dead man if he didn't go where the money was. We’d succumb to the agony of death or that of perpetual boredom. We had lost our humanity in our fear of agony.

After dressing her, we propped her up, binding her hands together. Her wrists were already purple with permanent rope indents from months of “storage” and “transport.” She flung her head up, groggily mumbling a few words in Daiwa. Roy reached for his pocket to grab some morphine, and she suddenly collapsed in his arms. She was sobbing, and began crying, "Mama! Mama!" She was covered in a thick film of sweat. She had obviously not been allowed to shower since she had been brought to the com-pound. Every slice of her humanity had been taken from her, but she still retained memories of her moth-er.

Roy propped her up against the headboard, holding the back of her head and staring into her eyes.

He said softly, "You're going to be okay."

Empty words. We were complicit in her suffering. No amount of sympathy or gestures could detract from our guilt. He put the two morphine in her mouth and washed it down with water from his canteen. Even in our faint moment of humanity we only contributed to the girls’ dependence on narcotics.

The LT marched into the room, barking, "Blaze, Roy! Get the fuck up and get her the fuck out! We're leaving this shithole!"

And so we did.

We dragged Loni outside of the decrepit structure out into a compound bordered by gabion bastions.

A torrent of coarse dust carried by the cool morning breeze assaulted my face as we emerged from the monster’s den. The sun was low in the sky, not more than an hour from sunset. The golden rays swept over the river valleys of the Isari province – one of the last beauties in this troubled place. The midnight blue sky began to march west as the sun retreated below the horizon. Her fiery stream of gold piped by a cotton candy pink aurora receded as twilight sunk in. A few low lying clouds partially shrouded the bot-tom edges of the sun; her raging inferno lit up their fringes with an almost blinding brilliance.

Three technicals, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, and one box truck sat outside of the compound on a dirt road. The technical were armed with towed 23mm anti-aircraft cannons bolted to their beds while our own Tiperyn made CV90s towered over us with their 40mm cannons. In the back of the box truck, all two dozen of the women and fifty cases of liquor were stashed, guarded carefully by the muzzle of the rearmost technical.

LT was in the last armored vehicle, likely napping after the brief session of "love" making he had just endured. We mounted up and moved out. Roy and I sat in the armored sanctuary of the lead vehicle, watching over Loni and two other girls. We would do just about anything to accomplish the mission – no matter how nefarious – but we wouldn’t overcrowd the back of a truck with sex slaves. When the girls asked for water, we gave it to them. We offered cigarettes and rations, but they just scowled or, in the case of the ones who had just undergone some “sampling,” cowered.

The truck plowed through a pile of stones, jolting the cabin and raising the left side slightly. It launched Roy's head up high enough to see out the gunhoes. It was desolate; nothing in sight but the badlands. He turned to me.

"So," Roy prodded. "Where the fuck are we going?"

"Al-Rabk," I replied. "It's a drug traffickers haven a couple hours south of Isari. Delivering the goods to some fuck named “The Lion.” Got nothing better in the brief. Probably one of them hairy, dark as fuck goat fuckers who lynches anything darker than a paper bag that isn’t an Arab."

"Why the fuck are we not going to Yariyda? We were put here specifically because there are baddies in Yariyda

"Well, shitbird," I chuckled. "If you had listened to the op order, you would have known that some big shot cocksuckers called the 90th Cavalry Regiment are razing that shithole. The rest of the Battalion has pulled out and will probably be relocating west at Isari after the POGs are done twiddling with their assholes."

"Why is this shipment so goddamned important? We could be up north right now, joining the 90th in their fun."

"We need friends out here. From what I overhead between the LTs conversation with Captain MacGreg-or, this place is an oil piñata waiting to be cracked open. Now there's no existing infrastructure to make that happen. So that means one of three things. Either Tiperyn is going to get shit back in order, Asharistan is going to roll in, or the limp dicks at MoS are gonna pull out. If it is anything except option 1, you can bet your ass everyone from Jumieges to Belfras will be all over this place and we ain’t getting shit."

"Ya know," Roy said quizzically. "We could have just reported in when the Treasury called on us, gotten a cushy desk job working at some bank or maybe become a firefighter or . . . or! Or we could’ve gone to uni and partied every Thursday night."

"Yeah, well, those weren't the cards we were dealt."

The driver switched on the red cabin illuminators. The sun had set and they were closing in on al-Rabk. He called over the comms, "Ten minutes out!"

[Tippercommon]

Trigger Warning: Gore

27 Feb. 2017 - 1740 Hours - 57 km S of Isari, Naseristan

LCPL Rutherford Blaze, No. 3 Battalion, 93rd Cavalry Regiment, Tiperyn Realm Defence

---

Loni sat across from me in the cramped confines of the fighting vehicle’s passenger compartment. Bound, gagged, and half naked in a noisy and oily beast surrounded by armed men and other slaves, she had somehow managed to fall asleep. I yawed my head over my left shoulder so I could look out a gunport. The crimson glow of the cabin light had made my eyes sensitive to the night sky’s rich blueness. The luminescence of the crescent moon was enough to expose the silver clouds against the stars; to paint midnight blue over the blackness of outer space. Reina Luna was the only source of light for dozens of miles. There was nary a soul along the dirt freeway. Only the telephone polls and the occasional stretch of cattle caged in by a barbed wire fence broke the monotony of the nothingness that flanked the road. Our trucks and armored carriers sped down the interstate with impunity, racing towards the commune of al-Rabk.

Hardly communal in any sense of the word, al-Rabk was a hub for the state-sponsored scum in Naseristan. It was the turf of an Arab gang that liked to refer to itself as the, “The Pride.” And, of course, the Lion was their leader. They had committed all the sins; human trafficking, drug dealer, extortion, murder. Back in Hawkreath we hung, drew, and quartered scum like this. In Naseristan, it was the cost of maintaining control. Al-Rabk was just a distribution center of sorts. The town itself was a shell. It was something you’d expect to see on an army training grounds to simulate urban combat conditions. Poorly constructed mud huts, plywood fences, bullet holes peppering every surface, and no sign of life. The top dogs would never live there; they only crawled down from their penthouses in Isari to do the deals we refuse to do with their low level thugs. The word was al-Rabk used to be a sanctuary for Persian Christians among the primarily Arab Muslims of northern Naseristan. That was, of course, before the Pride rolled in.

Regardless of how I felt about them - or how the regimental commander felt about them for that matter - we needed them to maintain control. We had kept the Arabs in our back pockets since we landed on this rock in the 17th century. Without them, the Persians and Uzbeks to the south would have unraveled our supremacy within a couple of years. It was a questionable strategy, especially considering we were now dealing with a Persian insurgency that had killed over 50,000 people since 1981. The militants themselves were fractured in what they really want. Some wanted parliament to gain full control and for Naseristan to be its own independent state. Others wanted the various ethnic groups of Naseristan to split and form their own nations. Probably the most dangerous were those who wanted to unite all of Anterra’s Persians under the banner of Asharistan. They were only the most dangerous because they received financial and military support from Asharistan - although we could never prove it. Civils wars we can handle - we had been fighting them since the cradle - but with our current strength levels and national security threats back home, Ashari intervention would more than likely spell the doom of Tiperyn’s puppet.

Just as well, at least going back to guard against that Sieuxerrian filth back home or dying at the hands of an Ashari tank was noble. I had no qualms with the idea of Tiperyn losing its foothold. What we were doing now - acting as the transportation network for an Arab gang peddling innocent girls and other substances - was not in my conception of what soldiers of God did. If this is what being an empire meant, then I’d rather be an insignificant piece of dust on the face of Anterra.

“Blaze!” Sergeant Able shook me out of my thoughts. “Wake the fuck up. We’re 30 seconds out. Go condition 1.”

I closed my gunport and grabbed the rifle slung at my hip. I yanked back on the charging handle and let the spring shove a 6.5mm cartridge into the chamber. Across from me, Roy and Corporal Elliott shook Loni and the other girls awake. The others were visibly frightened, but Loni remained sluggish and groggy from the drugs Roy and I had given her when we left. We all leaned in as the vehicle got off the highway. There was obviously no ramp, as we were shaken around the cabin as the driver took us over a bluff and through a tilled field between the road and al-Rabk. After about 20 seconds of being banged against the walls and ceiling and the girls being thrown around in the center walkway, we came to a halt. Sergeant Able slammed open the back doors, launching out as if we were about to walk into enemy fire. Roy and I grabbed Loni by either arm, slowly easing her out of the carrier. We had parked in the town square of al-Rabk, flanked by dozens of dilapidated building. One 2 story building - what used to be the village chief’s hut - was where we were supposed to meet the Lion.

Something was off, though. By now we had normally been surrounded by the Pride’s gun totting degenerates. The low level guys always liked to inspect the cargo after all. Right now, though, we were completely alone. The only sign of life was a light emanating from the second floor of the chief’s hut. Nothing else. Even the other smaller huts surrounding the square that were normally used to house the Pride’s gunmen year round were lifeless. By now the LT had dismounted his jeep and made his way to our vehicle. Although he was a pig and a terrible line officer, even a complete nitwit could smell something sour.

“Able, Blaze,” the LT pointed at the sergeant and I. “You’re with me. Everybody else, punch out like 30 meters and give me some goddamn security.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, hurriedly following the LT as he marched off towards the light.

It was quiet; too quiet as clichéd as that is. Even with the hum of our IFVs’ engines, we could have sworn we were in a church. We stepped past the doorless threshold into the common room of the hut. There was no furniture, no gunmen, nothing. The ting of cordite and rank meat filled the air. I recoiled a bit, nestling my nose into my handkerchief. Able and I raised our weapons while the LT looked forward wielding his torch. The ground floor was pitch black, but a incandescent ray of light reflected down the stairway from the Lion’s command center.

“Able,” the LT called back, noticeably worried. “Get 2 squad in here and have them clear the ground floor. We’re going up.”

“Yes, sir.”

As 6 other soldiers stormed the first floor and began clearing rooms, the three of us made our way up the stairwell. The half rotten wooden planks creaked under the weight of our boots. The LT stowed his torch and unholstered his service pistol, aiming it cautiously at the doorway. We quickly met the edge of the opening. The smell of cordite and rot was now almost overwhelming. There were bullet holes through the wall, letting narrow streams of light through. They fanned out as they crossed the stairwell, illuminating what looked like framed silverplate photographs of Persian townsfolk hung on the opposite wall. There was no brass on the ground - in itself troublesome.

“Alright,” the LT looked back. “We’re clearing this room. I take the lead. Able, you’re on my left shoulder. Blaze, you’re on my right. On my go.”

We nodded. We huddled in tight, readying to launch ourselves into the room.

The LT put his left hand up with three fingers extended. The three became two. Before I could see the one finger we had already assaulted the room. A cloud of rotting flesh stink wafted over us. We scanned the room. No hostiles, but what laid on the floor and painted the walls left us aghast.

Three bloated, purpled corpses were strewn about the room. A swarm of flies hammered down on them as fat white maggots slithered over and fed off of them. What looked like entrails were piled on top of them, but we couldn’t find their home. Only a small plot of the white carpet was not soaked and crusted with their blood.We all looked to our right simultaneously as if we were one. The Lion’s severed head was impaled on the ornate bed frame in the right corner of the room. He wore his signature red beret and aviators, although his features were barely recognizable from untold days of decomposition. His blood coated the elegant mahogany scepters mounted at the corners of the mattress and it stained the beautifully embroidered quilt that covered it. It would almost be a shame if it had not been where hundreds of girls from the four corners of Anterra had been brutalized.

“Blaze,” the LT gurgled. “Tell 3 and 4 squads to clear the buildings around the square and set up security.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I immediately clamored down the stairs; I’d take any excuse to get out of that horror show. My legs were almost out the door when a shockwave tore through me. I was suddenly engulfed in a fleeting inferno and was blasted out into the square. Blackness.

I could hear the cries and explosions, but I could not will my eyes open. The monstrous thub of our vehicle’s 40mm cannons shook me awake. Only as I was being yanked, dragged back towards the vehicles by one of our men did I get a glimpse. The building I had just been in, the dungeon, was completely on fire. The roof had been blown off and windows shattered. There was no sign of the LT, Able, or the other poor souls who had been clearing the downstairs rooms. Muffled gunfire erupted all around me. All I could see were the muzzle flashes unleashing a hail of lead all around us.

Our soldiers laid dead all around me, lifeless under pounds of gear and their camouflage uniforms. They all looked the same to me, and that sent a chill through my body. I had been with these guys for 2 years, they’re dead, and I can’t do anything about it. The rage and depression that would have normally animated failed to move my limbs. I scraped by several dead girls. I was too unfocused to acknowledge their features; I hoped somewhere deep down - futily - that Loni was not among them. Funny. I had been a cog in the apparatus that tore out her humanity. Only now did I have the stomach to care; now that nothing could be done.

The double bang of an RPG being fired caught me ear. Suddenly, the box truck that had been parked behind our vehicles flared up into the air. Another rocket skimmed the ground at most 3 meters from my feet, impacting the armored hull of an IFV. The gunfire softened and my view faded to black.

[Tippercommon]

Unknown Date and Time - Naseristan

LCPL Rutherford Blaze, No. 3 Battalion, 93rd Cavalry Regiment, Tiperyn Realm Defence

---

A downpour of cold water blasted my face. The veil that had been secured around my head for as long as I could remember was torn off. A burst of blinding light concussed me and made me cower in my combat shirt. I acclimated to the glare and three figures appeared. Two men armed with assault rifles and wearing blue bandanas draped around their foreheads stood besides me. One was holding an empty bucket, dripping from the brim, and the other a soaked burlap sack. I was sitting at one end of a cracked, unfinished table. An assortment of knives and machetes were laid out neatly over blue banner. My chair sat in a pool of my blood and the dried blood of others before me. Across from me sat a man donning Tiperyn combat fatigues, but wearing a blue beret, aviators, and sporting an unkempt beard. He sat there, examining a piece of cloth in his hands. As I came to, he slowly looked up. His emotionless expression twisted into a half smile.

“Blaze, is it?” the man said.

He tossed the piece of cloth at my face like a frisbee and it landed in my lap. I looked down. It was from my blouse. It look like it had been cut out with a serrated knife while I was still wearing it. The edges were ragged and fibers protruded unevenly. My name was embroidered in black on the blood soaked digital desert camouflage imprinted fabric. The threads attaching the nametape to the sheet were frayed and its corners were hanging off as if they had been yanked.

“My name is Qabal,” he said. “How are you feeling Blaze?”

I raised my head slightly. My neck was stiff. I had spent what felt like days in a stress position with a burlap sack over my head. I had not slept, and only now could I feel the blood trickling down my forehead into my eyes. I opened my mouth, but the pathetic breeze I pushed through my seared vocal cords produced little more than a rasp. I dropped my chin, gave a little cough, and tried again.

“Blaze, Rutherford, Lance Corporal, Cain-Edward-Nine-Six-Six-Two-Nine-One-One.”

Qabal smirked.

“We know who you are, Blaze,” he said. “We know you were selling kidnapped women - our women - to the Pride. You had the fewest stripes of anybody who we didn’t eviscerate, so I am operating under the assumption that you were just doing what you were told. Who ordered you to contact the Lion?”

I looked up at him. “Rutherford Blaze… Lance Corp…”

The right side of my face cracked and my vision suddenly turned white. I recoiled back and to the left, barely being held onto the chair the rope that bound my hands behind my back. Dazzling spirits fluttered across my field of view. The man to my left shoved me back into place. To my right, the other gunman stood over me, clutching his rifle’s stock and barrel like a quarterstaff. He yelled something at me in Persian. It fell on deaf ears.

“Now, Blaze,” Qabal said. He had mounted a cigarette in his mouth and was attempting to ignite it with a gold plated lighter. It caught, and he gave it a couple good puffs before looking back at me. “You can keep playing games, but I can assure you’re gonna win some pretty cheap prizes.”

I stared at him. I could not get a read on him, but I wanted to display some modicum of resolve. I argued back and forth in my mind whether I would snarkily respond with my name, rank, and serial number again just to let him know I did not give one solitary fuck. However, I could not bring myself to do it. Maybe it was the breathless fatigue, or maybe it was the brute with the rifle towering over my right shoulder. We sat there for some time.

“Blaze, I know you saw what we did to your lap dog, the Lion,” Qabal remarked nonchalantly. “He whimpered like a cub when we tore his colon out and strangled his drones to death with it. Sure, those gluttonous pigs in the capital will replace by next week. Your masters may even find someone else to help enable your tyranny. But, I’ve always been one for theatrics.”

He pulled a long breath of smoke. The flame advanced down the length of the cigarette, its warm glow quickly consuming the edges of the paper and leaving a column of fractured char in its wake. Qabal blew a cloud of smoke in my face and flicked the butt over his shoulder. It did not bother me; it was almost delicious. I could not remember how long it had been since I had had a smoke, but Qabal’s taunt offered me a little excitement. Something to stay awake for.

“Your friends are dead, Blaze,” Qabal said in an “as a matter of fact” tone. “We wiped out your entire company. We only saved you because you dropped your weapon first.”

“There are more of us,” I coughed, reaching down for any guff I had left. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Oh? Honestly, I was hoping the rest of your compatriots were too busy frequenting the brothels and wreaking havoc in the city streets to continue resisting us. Do you not think that working as lackeys for pimps is work below that of a soldier?”

“Good soldiers follow orders,” I replied.

“You are no soldier,” Qabal barked. “You are a dog. And you will be put down like a dog.”

Qabal motioned to the thugs flanking me. They grabbed me by the armpits and launched me out of the chair. I was thrown on the ground. My face scraped across the dirt floor for at least a meter before coming to a stop at the feet of another man. He held a machete and a black balaclava shrouded his face. After looking up at him for a moment, I was grabbed again and brought to my knees in front of him. Rocks from the earthly deck were lodged into my cheeks and I could feel the sting of the cuts and scrapes. In front of me was a camera mounted on a tripod. Now that I was not the subject of several lights, I could see the details of the room.

It was made out of cinderblocks. Persian tapestry and the flag of the Golden Tide - a black flag with gold script reading, “There is no god but Allah,” in Persian - were the only adornments frilling up an otherwise bare room. The windows were boarded with what looked like plywood. They were mostly covered, but a few small gaps let in a little sunlight.

It was day time. It must have been at least half a day since we were ambushed if not longer. The QRF would have been deployed long ago. I didn’t know where we were. For all I knew, we could have been across the border in Asharistan. No. I’d be getting interrogating by Asharis. These were definitely Naseri Persians. It had to be.

Qabal clicked a button on the camera and walked over to us. He stopped and executed an about face, obviously putting on a show for the viewers back home. He began with his diatribe.

“Tiperyn. You have subjugated my people since you invaded our shores almost 300 years ago. This man - your errand boy - was captured when our revolutionaries stopped a plot to kidnap and sell our sisters into slavery. He has no remorse, so we will have no remorse. Now, we will have justice…”

Qabal stopped and looked towards the door. There was a muffled commotion outside, punctuated by deadened grunts and yells. Suddenly, three gunshots rang out. Qabal and the executioner behind me stepped forward, yelling at the other fighters in Persian. Muffled commands were audible from outside the building. It sounded like English, but I could not make out the words.

The plywood door burst open and the room exploded. My vision was bleached and a piercing whistle punched me in the ears. I could feel that I was now on the ground. I tried to get as small as I could, but there was no cover around in. My vision and hearing started to come back, but reality remained a blurred, garbled mess. By now, I could see four gunmen, but they were not the same thugs who were just seconds away from lobbing my dome off. They were in Tiperyn combat fatigues and wielded what looked to be our assault rifles. One of them ran over to me and grabbed me by the shirt.

“Wax! Hard drives!” the man yelled. “Booker! Help me get our man out of here! We move in 2 mikes!”