The Damoclean Thread Breaks [Closed. Attn: Gholgoth]

[Allanea]

Ruslan set a glass before him and the agent. "Now, regarding the plan, we just need to hash out the details ." He glanced knowingly at his visitor before getting up and extending his hand. "Ruslan Taylor, Propraetor of Angovin. Sounds a bit odd but my father was Londinian and my mother Vetalian. And you are?"

"My name is Max Isaev," – the Allanean agent lied glibly, although of course this would be the very name that was printed on the documents that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued him, which were genuine in the sense that they've been printed on the same paper on which all Allanean passports have been printed, and that there had been a file in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that corresponded to the name. The man's actual name, Stanislav Stern, would not be mentioned at all – not because he expected Taylor to be a Reich agent, but because there were a myriad ways his identity could have been leaked during his travels – nor was the Allaneans' trust in the Vetalians absolute for thought they did not expect the Vetalians to betray them directly, they also had the suspicion that people who had already lost everything they had to the Reich were not, perhaps, the world's best operatives. No doubt Vetalians would be offended had Allaneans said this out loud.

"The details are supremely important," – he spoke. "Is there something that I said that you find issue with?"

[Allanea]

A good secret is like an onion. Open it, and you only reveal another secret.

On official shipping manifests, and shipping industry websites, the ship was the SS Glowing Dawn, a science vessel owned by the Liberty-City Institute of Oceanography, a research-only institution housed at 6 Tenford Street, Liberty-City. Internet searches would confirm the existence of the institution, a website, photographs of its building and even some studies published by its employees. They would not reveal that the LCIO was actually only a front for the Free Kingdom Office of Naval Intelligence, through which it conducted a range of oceanographic studies – and, of course, most employees of the Institute were not aware of the fact their organization owned a ship.

Unofficially, it was actually a spy ship, an ELINT ship of the Free Kingdom Navy, on its way to a joint exercise with Xirniumite naval forces in Xirniumite waters. Its actual name was the FKS Confessor. Xirniumite authorities would confirm this, and most of the sailors on board were not aware of any other mission. Surely, they thought, the naval commandos on board their ship were also here for the joint training – certainly the commandos never said anything to conflict with that.

The ship, however, had not one, but two secret missions that only select people on board the ship were aware of. One was the fact that, sailing 30 meters under the FKS Confessor was a special mission submarine, the FKS Kris. The other one was that they were headed on a course that would - eventually, on a cold and windy night, about an hour before dawn - place them within 10 naval miles a Kraven death ship – an entirely safe distance in maritime traffic terms, and even in terms of the sort of attacks the Kraven authorities were planning for.

This, however, was not a regular ship and its plan was not a regular plan.

[Jagada]

Pax Gothica,
Outside the Vetalian District

“No.”

Captain Akdari gave his response plainly. The Reich wasn’t swayed by rhetoric or persuasion. Given that their minds were shackled to the Relay they also felt no fear, so intimidation was pointless. They followed the laws laid down by the Lords only when it suited them and arrogantly dismissed them otherwise. There really wasn’t much else he needed to say to them.

The Voss’ cycled their 40mm ammunition, its clanking drowning out all other sound for a moment. Then silence was all that met the Officer. The Jagites maintained their positions, guns raised and aimed specifically at known weak points in their Protection Armor. Custodes had backed a gradually growing crowd away, trying to prevent what was likely to be a slaughter from spreading.

Already television crews from various media outlets had begun to arrive, pushing their way forward and shouting their credentials at any Custodes willing to listen. Above the incident there were already helicopters circling, painted with the logos of media outlets, sending multiple live feeds. Some of those had come at the request of the Despoina, others had been tipped off by her. If this came to blood, she wanted to make sure the whole world saw who fired the first shot.


Pax Gothica,
Waters off the Norskan District

Encased in a reinforced concrete curtain wall the Norskan District was little better than a glorified death camp and parade ground. Undoubtedly manned by the Capitol Police with an awkward amount of coastal and stratosphere guns, certainly some hidden artillery positions that homed in on the Gothic Halls just encase. Those Troopers left behind to guard what nobody else wanted would’ve been unaware of the amount of firepower currently aimed squarely at them.

Stationed to the northeast of Pax Gothica was the majority of the Gold Fleet, under the command of Admiral Zean Anor, who had departed Sin and made for her flagship the GUS Petulant. The only ships not present were of the 77th Squadron under Admiral Sekibo, who were conducting emergency castoff procedures to join them. Zean knew her position was tenuous at best though, for no orders had come down from Fostoria to intervene to save the Vetalian Senate nor to engage the Reich. In fact, she had direct orders to the contrary. She’d already sent an emergency encrypted message to the Proctor-General of the Imperial Navy asking for clarification of orders but had yet to receive any response.

She paced nervously on the bridge of the Petulant, watching the unfolding situation through her cellphone via a live news feed. She’d already ordered every ship capable to make ready for an attack order, never clarifying what was to be attacked. If the Capitol Police opened fire, then it would be an outright declaration of war. If that was the case, there was no telling what lurked in the walls of the Norskan District.

[Kahanistan]

Fassad did not hesitate. He slammed his foot down on the gas, accelerating to over two hundred kilometres per hour towards the Vetalian capital. He still had his weapons, ammunition, two interns, and three hundred thousand shekels of the five hundred he had brought. He hoped he did not run into any more of the roadblocks, but thought that unlikely. He did not trust the GPS in his vehicle to be accurate in Kraven-occupied Vetalia, which he expected to have closed off most of the roadways to corral the population or repurposed them for military traffic. Yosef had a map of Vetalia predating the Kraven invasion, and suggested back roads that could be used to get to the outskirts of the capital before having to worry about more roadblocks, at least that they couldn't evade more easily in the rural areas.

Between three multilingual KNN staff on the crew of three different ethnicities and religions, not one of them could read Vetalian Cyrillic. The signage might as well have been in Linear A for its usefulness in navigation. Between their mistrust of the main roads and illiteracy in the local language, they were as likely to be stopped by an empty fuel tank as by a hostile force.

As the fuel tank dropped below a quarter, they began to keep eyes out for fuel stations. Petrol was likely to be extremely expensive out here, far worse than in even the most environmentalist countries that mercilessly taxed fossil fuels, simply owing to lack of basic supply...

[Allanea]

FKS Confessor, Gholgoth Waters

There were very few things distinctly off about the Confessor if one assumed it was an oceanographic vessel – and indeed, unless one was very well-versed in oceanographic vessels or their equipment, it would appear to be almost entirely normal, merely a mid-sized ship festooned with various antennae and sensors. That the name written on its side was the FKS Confessor and not the SS Glowing Dawn could be ascribed to a bureaucratic error in publication, and in any event it acted, at least for now, non-hostile.

An outside observer could not know that added to its normal complement were several platoons of commandos, waiting below decks with rifles loaded, going through the last steps of their preparation. That even its regular crew – its sailors and its spy-scientists who operated the arrays of oceanographic and ELINT gear the ship carried - were now checking their weapons.

The ship's ECM crews were now at their stations. The Captain and Navigator checked their map one last time, and made a final adjustment to the ship's bearing. It would take It very close to their target – as close as maritime safety regulations permitted, just close enough that the Kravenic captain would not see a need to fear a collision.

Of course, this was a deception. They would adjust course again later…. or so they thought.

[Emperor Pudu]

Somewhere along the coast of Vetalia

The sun was still only a reddish tint on the eastern clouds. The land it was rising over today was one bathed in enough blood to leave it as crimson-stained as the horizon was now. Even in places of catastrophic change, however, some things inevitably remain the same. Sidney Durham was one of those things: this morning he woke early, packed his bait and tackle, made himself a thermos of strong black tea and pulled on the same old pair of boots he had owned for more than a decade before setting out for the same short jetty that he fished every morning.

The jetty was accessible from a public park that residents of this little seaside town used to picnic at while they watched the boats come and go. There were fewer picnickers these days, and fewer boats. There were however still picnic tables dotting the gently sloping green, though now they were interspersed with concrete barriers and concertina wire while the ground was torn up with the tracks of heavy military vehicles. The park had been used as a staging area when the State relocated most of the town's former population; only a small number remained to service the salvage efforts that had been undertaken since then. Once a sleepy bedroom community in the shadow of the capital, now the town of Karachev's largest export was the raw material that once comprised the old burg itself.

Most mornings Sidney got out to the jetty early enough to beat the salvage crews to work and so the lack of construction noise that usually blanketed the town during daylight hours was understandable, but when Sidney passed through the seaside park he was struck by the absence of the Londinian KVF soldiers he was accustomed to seeing there. They were only a small garrison, Sidney knew, and it was possible they had been called away on some other matter this morning. With his little pail of bait and his fishing rod in one hand and his thermos and a little waterproof cushion in the other, old Sidney Durham crossed the park and began to pick his way carefully out the large slippery rocks that formed this harbor feature. He had fished the jetty for a long time and he could have found his way in the dark, today was no different. He found his way out to his favorite spot, plopped down on his cushion and pulled a likely looking night crawler from his bait pail.

With the sun rising behind him the ocean was still shrouded in the long shadows cast by the shore. Into this void Sidney pitched his line, set his rod between his knees and poured himself a cup of tea. In this country which was descending quickly into chaos, old Sidney Durham continued to slip through the cracks. That was when he looked up and saw something he didn't expect.

A small black boat was slipping quietly through the shadows on the water directly toward the jetty, and Sidney Durham. He almost choked on his tea. The boat was advancing quickly, though Sidney could not make out the sound of the little craft's outboard engine. It had in fact been engineered that way to meet the requirements of the Imperial Pudite Navy for a special mission insertion craft usable by it's marine raiders and special forces, not that Mr. Durham had any idea of any of that. As the eighteen foot rigid hulled inflatable boat neared him he could make out, squinting through the low dawn light, three figures crouched low. Evidently they had seen him, because it sure looked to Sidney like one of them was pointing a weapon of some kind in his direction.

His fishing rod still held between his knees, Sidney dropped the little plastic cup that was his thermos' lid and raised both hands in the air. As the boat drew even closer Sidney could start to make out muffled voices, “I thought he said this district would be empty,” one hissed, “Well it sure as shit ain't.” came a reply. At this point Sidney could make out the three men clearly, they were all foreigners, but they didn't look like any Reich agents or KVF personnel that he had ever seen before. Firstly, they were all wearing business suits. The clandestine watercraft pulled right up to the rocky jetty and one of the foreigners, a handsome young Pudite (though Sidney could not have known that for sure), stood and called out in Vetalian to the old man sitting on the rocks just above them, “Hey, you! What the hell are you doing here?” He was doing his best to keep his voice hushed, though the sound of the sea lapping against the rocky shore was almost certainly enough to muffle him. As he said this another of the men in the boat, the man who had been aiming a pistol at Sidney, hopped over the side of the craft and started to climb the rocks up to where the old man was sitting.

Sidney looked taken aback, and wasn't sure how to answer right away. The tall, broad-shouldered Almaran man who had leapt from the boat pulled himself up onto the rock Sidney was sitting on and stood up, towering over the seated gentleman. Sidney turned to him, stammering a bit with his reply, “My-my name is Sidney Durham, I've got residency papers here,” Sidney said as he began to shuffle around in his coat pockets, at which point the big man held up his hand, urging him to stop, “No,” the man said in a thick accent. Sidney stopped and sat quietly for a moment while the remaining two men climbed out of their boat. The young man who had first called out to him was climbing up the rocks toward him, while the other man lifted a duffel bag out of the boat and tossed it atop a nearby rock before climbing over the side himself.

The young man joined Sidney and the Almaran on the rock and held out a hand to Sidney, whom he helped to his feet as well as shook his hand. “My name is Pilgrim. Nice to meet you, Sidney,” he began. Pilgrim spoke passable Vetalian and Sidney replied in a like manner, “Pilgrim, it is very dangerous to be here, if the KVF see you...” Pilgrim looked up toward the Almaran, whose name among the Ten Heroes was Flying Tiger. Tiger had scrambled over another rock and was now laying low and looking out toward the shoreline. He turned back to Pilgrim and shook his head. Pilgrim then spoke, “Looks like we're in the clear for now, Sid.”

“Say, what're you doing out here dropping a line in the bay while the country is falling apart?” Pilgrim asked then. Sidney seemed about to answer but then changed his mind, asking “Just who are you? You do not look like Reich soldiers to me.” Pilgrim cocked his head and gave a sly grin, “Oh, don't you know, anyone could be an agent of the Reich?” Sidney raised one eyebrow, but Pilgrim carried on before he could reply, “Don't worry old man, we're agents of nobody,” he explained cheerily. Pilgrim continued, “You didn't answer my question, though. How did you come to be out here this morning. I don't expect the Vetalian State grants a lot of fishing licenses these days...”

Sidney shrugged, “As to that,” he replied. “I leave a few fillets out for the KVF troopers and they let me fish. Country has been falling apart a long time now, but I get by.” Pilgrim looked from Sidney over to the man called Tiger, then to Flowers who had just climbed up to join the others atop Sidney's fishing rock. Pilgrim switched to Pudite to address his comrades, “Is it possible this guy knows less about what's happening in this country than we do?”

Turning back to Sidney and speaking again in Vetalian, Pilgrim asked “You know Vetalia City was occupied yesterday by the Reich Capitol Police? The Vetalian State has collapsed, this is about to be a warzone!” Sidney had clearly not had this information before, but he seemed to handle it well. He looked pensive for a moment before he replied, “Your Vetalian is not very good,” at which accusation Pilgrim looked only mildly offended, as Sidney continued, “This is probably why you do not notice that mine is also a second language.” Pilgrim mumbled something softly under his breath about Vetalian being a fifth language or something, but it was in Pudite and Sidney evidently didn't share that tongue, so he kept speaking “I am not Vetalian. I am Londinian. Do you know what is the Vivicide?” Only vaguely, Pilgrim thought to himself as he shook his head no. “What is the expression?” Sidney went on, “This is not my first rodeo?”

The expression was lost in the translation for Pilgrim, but he got the meaning Sidney was trying to impart. “Alright then,” Pilgrim answered, “So you've seen some stuff. Let me tell you, there's gonna be some more, and soon. I'd find a new fishing hole if you know what I mean.” Sidney looked disinterested at the information, but nodded slowly. “I am too old, and travel is too difficult. If this is where I die, then I will go back to the fishes. Perhaps I feed them for once after they feed me for so long.” Pilgrim stopped to muse over the old man's poetic death wish, but he had a better idea.

“That's real nice and all, but I think you can do better than that.” Pilgrim jerked his head toward the little boat, “Why don't you take this off our hands? Head north, for the Kylarnatian border. This thing sure won't get you all the way, or even most of the way, but I think it beats waiting for the execution battalions to arrive. Wouldn't you say?” Sidney looked from Pilgrim, to the boat, and back to Pilgrim. “I suppose.” he answered, “Die now or later.” the old man said.

Behind Pilgrim the third man in the group, Flowers, had taken a seat on the rocks and had unfolded a topographic map which he was now studying, compass held level in one hand. Pilgrim noticed this and turned back to Sidney, “But hey, one good turn deserves another, wouldn't you say? Our maps are a little bit out of date, do you think you could give us a few pointers here?” At Pilgrim's urging Flowers brought the map over to the old man and held it out before him. Sidney scoffed immediately at seeing it and raised a finger to begin pointing out mistakes, “All this here is cleared out now, and this is a new highway,” he began tracing a line up a long valley, “This road is closed, bridges blown, but there's a new bridge here...” he went on in this way for a minute or more, Flowers and Pilgrim leaning close over the map and Flowers fumbling with a grease pen trying to mark up the map as Sidney pointed out it's many flaws.

Neither Pilgrim nor Flowers brought up the rail depot outside Vetalia City, or the hilltop estate a few short miles away, that were the team's destinations. Best not to leave this old man with any more information than he already had. As Sidney finished his brief impromptu geography lecture Pilgrim again extended his hand to shake, “It's been a pleasure, Sidney Durham.” Pilgrim produced a wad of Vetalian rubles from his pocket, some of the loot provided by Mr. Vetalia back on the freighter, “I don't know if this is gonna be any use to you, but it's the least we can do,” he explained as Sidney eyed the bills suspiciously before stuffing them into a coat pocket. Flowers and Pilgrim then helped the old Londinian down the rocks and into their boat, before handing him his fishing gear and thermos. Flowers even found and recovered the cap to the bottle which Sidney had dropped when the party had arrived.

“Bon voyage,” Pilgrim said as they nudged the craft away from the jetty, “You're a credit to your countrymen.” Sidney did little more than grunt in acknowledgment of that. Pilgrim and Flowers waved as Sidney started up the quiet little motor and steered himself north across the little bay and toward the far shore. As soon as he was out of earshot Pilgrim turned to Flowers, “So, how much gas did we leave the guy?” Flowers thought for a moment, “She's got a few miles in 'er, he's got both auxiliary tanks.” to which Pilgrim nodded, satisfied, “Well, when they find him it'll put them off our trail for a bit. Saves us the trouble of having to hide the boat, too.” he reasoned. “Unless the old man talks.” Flowers countered. Pilgrim shrugged that suggestion off, “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Took the same risk leaving him here, I think.”

The pair climbed back up the rocks to where Tiger had been laying and observing the shore. “Is the coast clear?” Pilgrim asked as they laid down next to the big Almaran atop the jetty. “Not seen a thing,” Tiger answered, “Clear sailing.” At that Pilgrim hopped up and began to make his way down the jetty toward land. “Then what are we waiting for, boys. Let's get to work!” As the trio headed for the town they spared a moment each to look up to the hill to their east that looked down over the abandoned village landscape; the hill that would be their first destination. Somewhere atop that wooded hillock was Mr. Vetalia's old estate, and hiding somewhere up there would be Veronica.

[Kahanistan]

Mustafa Fassad pulled off the westbound 19, intent on fueling his rented vehicle. The lack of other traffic was unnerving, but not as unnerving as the bodies strung up from lamp posts outside the station.

"Collaborators?" asked Amos Yosef, the older of the two interns in Fassad's crew, as he took photographs of the hanging bodies. In any occupied country, those who collaborated with the enemy were mistrusted and exploited by the occupier and hated and feared by their own people.

"I'm not sure," said Shirin Shirazi, the other intern. "It might explain this, though..." She checked the man, woman and child for pulses, finding none. "I think these are the owners and their child. If they were involved in the resistance..."

They may have strung up the collaborators, and been shot as retaliation. We would need evidence to support this idea. "We shouldn't make unfounded speculations, Shirin," Fassad said grimly. "We need to fuel up our vehicle somehow. We have just under a quarter of a tank left, and don't want to be stranded too close to the capital city when we run out. Let's go inside and look around, and make sure you have your sidearms ready for quick access."

"MG42 shell casings and capper tire tracks," said Yosef, photographing the tracks and capturing the bodies of the parents and child they thought were the family who owned the petrol station. Shirazi checked the bodies against the wall for ID's while Fassad went into the petrol station to look for anything identifying the owners. Yosef climbed the lamp posts to remove the hanging bodies. Not only did he want to check the corpses for ID, or have one of his crew mates do it, in order to support his theory that the hanging bodies were collaborators, but they deserved a proper burial even if they were traitors.

While the interns inspected the corpses outside, Fassad searched inside for anything to identify the owners. If they were alive, he would pay for the fuel, but if they were dead and he could ascertain there was nobody to pay, he would have to figure out how to unlock the fuel pumps to enable his news crew to fuel their vehicle.

[Auman]

Highway 19 Westbound, Vetalia

Teddy was strolling around the lot with his vest thrown over his shoulder. He looked casual, cool as a cucumber, but what he saw bothered him. As much as the sight of bodies dangling from lampposts and families machine gunned against walls was troublesome, watching these journalists rifle through their belongings made it worse. He rationalized it tactically, disturbing the bodies might tip off the Kravenites that people had been here... If a patrol noticed that the corpses were missing, they'd definitely suspect they'd been cut down and go searching for the people that did it. Teddy didn't have the pull with these guys to say anything, not yet, so he watched them work and was grateful for the ride.

The family, the one that had been shot, were purple and starting to bloat. Their blood had coagulated in thick pools that cloyed. Black rivulets of it had dried in the sand and reminded him of an oil spill he witnessed as a young man, balls of black tar washed ashore, powdered with thr white sand of the beach.

Teddy sidled up next to Mustafa, crouched next to the ichorous streams of cold, black, blood and said "We aren't going to find any gasoline here. The Reich would have drained the tanks the moment they finished up with these people. It's worth a look around, but I think we need to find somewhere to lay low until nightfall... And then start walking overland."

Mega Deep Sea Terminal, Molis Regnum, Pax Gothica

They banked gently to the left, which was an extreme maneuver for a plane so large. John Rian had been riveted by the experience, he never expected to ever get the chance to fly in a Dominion-Concord stratolifter. Used to be the largest nuclear powered aircraft in the world for a whole week, five times as large as a conventional commercial jet. John was always fascinated by airplanes, civilian models mostly... Military jets were boring and crude. No zazz or flair, none of the refinement of the civilian airline industry which, while sadly becoming routine, still had the divine touches of the fleeting gilded age of flight.

For the longest time and until quite recently, civil travel was dominated by the maritime transportation industry. Boats. Cramped, dirty, smelly and under serviced boats which would call to ports like this one, the Mega Deep Sea Terminal and its five hundred odd berths, on the regular. The planet was simply too large for regular international flights to be a common occurrence and even with these large nuclear aircraft, the boat and the train were still the leaders. This made John sad, but not nearly as much as the abomination he had just caught sight of... The Verne Hikurangi International Space Elevator, a matte black spire which towered over the world. An innovation which threatened to transport a human being anywhere in the world in a mere two hours. It was all too practical for his sensibilities. One mustn't embark on a journey merely to reach their destination.

John Rian was so enamored with what was transpiring beyond the window that he paid no more mind to the conversation between Subcommander Poltaur and Colonel Crerar. The men had been talking for hours, broaching intellectual subjects and making fascinating references to things that had only been considered ridiculous rumors and even conspiracies. It was long said that Remans were descended from Mars, it was a part of their Foundationalist religious philosophy, but John had never taken any of it seriously, just like most people. Remans were Aumanii, the Sons of Mars... Much like Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Not literally, but rather metaphorically. Colonel Arnon Crerar, if you listened to him, seemed to take it all literally. It was strange in a way, to see someone take their faith and transpose it upon the physical world and what he found most interesting was that Subcommander Poltaur was eating it all up like it was the gospel.

The sign came on and it was time to buckle up. The plane was coming down for a landing at the truly massive landing strip at the port, which ran for at least twenty kilometers down the length of this manmade island. When the wheels touched the tarmac, John could hardly feel a thing. In time, the plane came to a stop and the door opened, they were being discharged onto the runway itself. He grabbed his luggage, which was not much more than a backpack and a laptop, and shuffled down the stairs. The wind whipped at them all, ties, jackets and even capes blew in the wind. Off to the right was a bank of heavy helicopters. Subcommander Poltaur tapped Rian on the shoulder and directed him towards a big green tilt rotor chopper. He walked alongside Crerar in silence until a man with white hair and brilliant blue eyes, wearing a tan navy uniform, greeted them.

"Admiral Bridges!" Crerar was almost shouting over the wind as he shook hands with the man that met them.

"Glad you could make it, Arnon. Is this the analyst you were telling me about?" Bridges had an accent that he couldn't quite place. Seemed to be something from out of the prairies, but smoother. Rian spotted the wings on Bridges' uniform and pieced it together, he was a pilot.

"Yes, John Rian is the one that came up with the theory that we are working with. It only made sense to bring him along so that he could corroborate it personally."

Bridges sized John up and shrugged his shoulders, "Whatever you say, Arnon. Let's get to it."

[Kahanistan]

Mustafa had barely remembered the other man who had joined their crew. "Depends on why they were killed," he replied to Teddy. "If they were killed for the petrol, the tanks might have been drained. I'm trying to figure that out, but I can't read the manual for the fuel tanks. It's in Vetalian Cyrillic and none of us on this team can read it. Besides, we can't abandon the car, it's full of our drones and extra ammunition. We'll need them to see further ahead than we can ground bound and to defend ourselves if cornered, let alone actually reporting anything from here."

Outside the petrol station, Amos finished photographing and cutting down the hanging bodies and opened the trunk of the car, pulling out a pack of cigarettes for Mustafa and walking inside. Shirin took notes, mostly transcribing the names on the ID's of the victims. She could have them transcribed into Latin characters from Vetalian Cyrillic later.

"We should hide nearby. Not so near the cappers get the drop on us, but near enough we can catch them looking at our vehicle or the like," Mustafa continued. "I can get a drone up and see if we can't see anything coming or anything newsworthy. If we can get the petrol station's security footage we might even be able to get video of what went down here. "

[Telros]

Strategic Intelligence Bureau HQ
Fellegvár, Capital Geo-City of the Compact
11:42 AM

Smoke rose from the end of a cigarette as he stared at the screen in front of him, a scrolling list of maps, reports and images, detailing the Vetalian mainland and large, angry red arrows slowly moving their way into it. If it had been anyone else, they would be in violation of countless laws about the use of cigarettes underground; while they had plenty of oxygen reserves and vents to the outside, it was determined good policy to restrict cigarette use. There were still the above-ground portions of the cities, under weather domes to go for indulging the habit. If a siege came and they had to shut off the vents, then they can't have people lighting up and compromising the integrity of the oxygen. However, as Director of the intelligence organ of the Compact, and with what had come across his desk today, he had the full right and every damn intention to light one up.

Rejtett looked down at the folder on his desk, sweeping off a satellite map image of Fortress Arcadia, to reveal the first page of the report, in angry red letters at the top:

INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT OF REICH MOVEMENTS IN VETALIA.

“It is the opinion of this task force, from the images and data contained herein, that the Kraven Reich is in process of conducting a mass liquidation and genocide of the Vetalian people under its occupation. Large movements of motorized groups of Capitol Police, armed with heavy ordinance and support vehicles, are conducting a systematic invasion of the Vetalian mainland, civilians are being rounded up and moved to processing sites, all of which seemed to be moving in a direction towards the docking facilities, which we imagine will be filling with Reich transport ships to be moved to Reich mainland sites for mass killing, liquidations, their reproduction camps, all of the horrors we have come to know they are capable of. It is clear the Reich will be turning Vetalia into just another Fortress, or even extending Arcadia. While it is clear the Alliance needs time to finish preparations and buy time to further encircle and ready for when the Reich resorts to war once again, we cannot leave the Vetalians on their own. Something, anything, that is within the power of the Compact to do, must be done. The follow are our individual reports and those of our satellite and agent specialists corroborating what we have found.”

The rest was well known to him, for he had spent the last hour, painstakingly going over everything to be absolutely sure. And there was no denying it; the Reich was doing what was feared ever since the Vetalian government was signed away foolishly and the Reich came in and slowly demolished what was once a vibrant nation; destruction and conversion into yet more factories and camps to produce more Capitol soldiers. Something had to be done, there was no doubt, and already reports of movements by the Jagadan's and the Kylarnatians were coming in. A hand reached out and picked up another report, detailing the movement of ships and their gathering at Pax Gothica, which as not that far off from Arcadia itself, and the Kylarnatian's troops in Silvier's strait were already moving, having been prepared for so very long, to start liberating what they could. The region now hung on the edge of the knife, depending on how the Reich was going to react. Either they played their usual games, probably shoving that damned agreement in their faces or they could start the conflict now, and the Compact was nowhere near ready to fulfill their duty in this regard.

The Director's attention was drawn by his phone ringing, which startled him before he took a deep breath and looked at the caller ID.

“Huh...its the head of our district in Gothica; what is going on over there?”

He pressed a button, the call accepting and moving to speaker.

“Ambassador, what can I do for you?”

”We have a problem in Gothica. The Reich is on the move”.

His stomach tightened as it went from slightly upset to frothing ocean of pain.

“Explain.”

”There are reports of brigades of Capitol Police coming out of the Norska District and are on their way to the Vetalian Enclave. The very same Enclave that is having a meeting of the Vetalian government in exile.”

Silence reigned but only for a moment.

“They cannot be serious. They cannot seriously think they can just walk over and take the Senate in exile now, especially with what they're pulling.”

”Well, it appears the Jagadan government is in agreement with that sentiment; they have deployed a large force of their own District garrison directly in front of the Vetalian District's gate. We're going to have a standoff and possibly a shooting war.”

Fuck.

“Get the word out to our own garrison, your most veteran and experienced forces, have them arm and ready up and make their way over to support the Jagadans. Send word to the Vetalian government, they should already know, but they need to be informed. In fact, prepare everyone as well. We need to contain the Capitol Police but we need to make sure we get everyone out. The Reich has to either be distracting us or planning more than a simple walk up and arresting; they're too smart not to know how we'd react. We need to be able to counter.”

”Already called the Vetalians and the garrison is gathering; however, I'll need confirmation that the Anax support this gesture.”

“I'm calling them next, Ambassador. If they don't already know, they will and if I know Adon, she'd want this contained and the Vetalians secured as soon as possible. I just need to call the Jagadans and see if we can coordinate.”

”Very well. And Director? Good luck.”

“I should be telling you that, seeing as you're right in the middle of it.”

Rejtett put the phone down again and then picked it up again, dialing a number. After the dial tone, a voice answered on the other side.

”Yes?”

“This is Director Rejtett, Strategic Information Bureau, Telrosian Compact. I understand there is a developing situation in Pax Gothica that I would like to speak to the Despot about please.”

***********

Pax Gothica, Telrosian District
District Military Base

From the outside observer, it was clear that when the Reich moved, others followed, out of necessity or ideology. Like ripples from a rock being dropped in a pond, movement could be seen, and while the Jagites were first, they were not the only ones. Soldiers of the Pax Gothica Telrosian District were gathering, slipping on their combat armor and doing checks of weapons and gear before lining up before four APC's, one man talking into a phone as they were gathering.

“...Yes, Governor, I understand, as long as you understand what it could mean if we do this. War with the Reich now instead of later.”

”Yes, I am aware, Lieutenant Gordon, but we have little choice in the matter. The Vetalians cannot be abandoned to the Reich, not when we have the strength to do something about it. And the Jagadans have been informed and are welcoming our aid in this endeavor. I'll take responsibility; I'll be in conference with the Anax's while you are deploying. What have you prepared?”

“First Platoon, they are the ones I can get on site the fastest. Second and Third platoon are mobilizing, 2nd will be joining as soon as they are able and Third is going to remain on standby in case of the Reich pulling any fast ones on us.”

”Understood Lieutenant Gordon. May the Ninth Son watch over you.”

The call ended and the Lieutenant pocketed the phone before turning to face the platoon, having just finished assembling and standing ready for orders.

“Alright, soldiers of 4th Company, 1st Platoon, here's the down and dirty; the Reich has been on the move, targeting places in Varathron, this much we have been briefed on. However, it would appear the Reich is not done antagonizing all of Gholgoth. There is a substantial force of Capitol Police marching from the Norska District straight for the Vetalian District.”

The soldier's discipline was such that they didn't start having conversations but they did look at each worried, worried and confused looks, as the Lieutenant continued.

“Now, we have been getting reports of the Reich doing something in Vetalia, however that is currently higher up the chain than you and I will ever get paid to deal with, but what is important is that they are clearly coming for the Vetalian government in exile. The Director of the Bureau and the Governor, and I imagine the Anax once they are informed, are all in agreement; this cannot be allowed to happen. The security forces of the Despotate have already moved in, and we are to support them; it is hoped the Reich doesn't want a shooting war yet, but be prepared to if they do. We have been trained to handle situations like this, the Kylarnatians have been good to give us equipment and training to handle such a situation. Keep calm, trust your buddy and follow orders and we'll get through this alive.”

“Now mount up! We don't have much time!”

Orders began to be shouted and the troops dispersed, going into each of the APC”s and securing themselves, with the Lieutenant going into the command vehicle and in short order, they rolled out into a column, making their way to the Vetalian District entrance.

Shortly after the DSF and the Capitol Police began their standoff, the tension rising from the refusal of the Jagites to bow to the treaty being displayed, the sound of vehicles could be heard and from one or the roads to the side, and four APC's and a command vehicle came through, three APC's forming a line of cover and deploying the troops, who took cover behind the vehicles and nearby objects that could fit, the mounted guns swiveling to target. After they all deployed, a loudspeaker clicked on and the Lieutenant could be heard speaking.

“Reich Capital Police, your actions here are in violation of the treaties and agreements governing Pax Gothica. If there is a matter between the Vetalian government and the Reich, there are proper diplomatic channels to voice them, this is not one of them. I am warning you once to stand down and return to your district so this can be handled through proper channels. If you attempt to breach these gates, then I will use the channels available through me to end this little adventure. I suggest you choose wisely.”

And that was that, the Telrosians readied themselves, extending their battle net to the DSF so they could coordinate should the Reich choose to push their luck.

[Auman]

Mega Deep Sea Terminal, Molis Regnum, Pax Gothica

The party had settled into an observation deck situated in the base of the MDST Space Elevator, a massive structure which curved at an impossible angle southward, towards the equator. The thick braided carbon nanotube cabling that tapered off into orbit comprised the massive bulk and pistil from which the various berths extended like petals. They stood behind a seamless window, made from transparent metal, the stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Below them, outside, was the great causeway, nearly a kilometer wide, which stretched fifty kilometers east to Molis Regnum, Remus' contribution to the glory of Pax Gothica and the honor of all Aumanii Goths.

In the distance, beyond the hard and unpainted brutalist structures that comprised Molis Regnum, that had begun to turn gold in the dying light of the evening, were the other great cities of their peers. Sin, with its vibrant lights and haughty architecture that challenged the world to shrug off its morality, was by far the biggest eyesore of the bunch. Though, to its credit, it owned the night... Where the others were confident and looming, their own self assured greatness a testament to the dignity of their nations... Sin, like the Jagadan people, shone through in spite of the darkness.

"Things are about to kick off, big time... Though I'm not sure if it will necessarily happen today or even here. Not even the Reich has the nuts to throw down under these conditions." Admiral Bridges was chewing on sunflower seeds and fiddling with a pen to keep his hands busy. He was trying his best to quit, but with everyone else smoking around him it was hard. Still, he enjoyed the acrid smell of the tobacco and breathed in deeply when a waft of blue curls came his way.

Arnon Crerar, Colonel with Remus' sister nation and representative of their Diplomatic Corps, lifted his brow with a little hint of incredulity, said "I'm not so sure about that. If history has taught us anything, it's that armies fight where they damn well want to."

Bridges spat a mouthful of shells into a styrofoam coffee cup and shook his head, "Not so sure about that either, friend. The Kravenites are efficient, ruthlessly so. They have to know there's no way to win this fight, it's all a bluff."

"Why then," Subcommander Poltaur interjected, "would the Reich attempt this action if they didn't think they could win?"

"Is there something you're not telling us, Poltaur? Something we should probably know?" Bridges asked, turning his head suspiciously towards the spymaster. The Intelligence Community was always holding on to things, turning information into a form of currency to the hoarded and bartered away sparingly.

"Nothing concrete, just my gut hinting at their motivations." Poltaur took a deep drag from his cigarette, "We all know what sort of defenses there are in the Norskan district. They've made no effort to hide them. Dozens of Stratosphere guns, hundreds of machine gun towers and God only knows what else lies behind their walls. This force they've sent out to pinch the Vetalians... It could be the bulk of their forces, or merely a fraction. We let the Reich build a military base here and for all we know Pax set itself up to become Fortress Gothica."

Bridges popped another mouthful of seeds into his mouth, his steely blue eyes now dragging their gaze along the craggy form of Norska's skyline. Massive guns were clearly outlined by spotlights that searched the nearby waters for saboteurs or escapees. A notion came to him suddenly as he wondered which would be treated more harshly.

It seemed so naive now, that people, important ones in positions of power, once thought the Reich could be reformed. If only we showed them fraternity and kindness. If only we loved them enough, which seemed so uncharacteristic for his beloved Gholgoth, but was the most correct observation of the very nature of this region. Bridges' memory wasn't so tainted by hindsight. He was there when the Reich was admitted into the alliance and the hope was genuine. If only we showed them the true meaning of humanity and what it meant to be a free Goth, proud and noble, then the Reich would become like us. Afterall, our unique cultures and the superiority of our way of life were so obvious that to spurn them would be unthinkable.

That was really stupid, but that made Admiral Lester Bridges as much a fool as any of the Lords of Gholgoth, because he too believed it at the time... And now, the entire region was locked in a nightmare that not only threatened their existence, but something far more important.

Their honor.

For it was now, as Jagadans and Telrosians prepared for battle in the midst of the Gothic Peace, and that hundreds and thousands of ships staged here to launch for Vetalian shores to liberate their brother from those who were their brothers... It was a bit much for Lester to take. He swore an oath to his Overlord and she swore to defend the Gothic Lords. Her words, her commitments, were as good as his own. His honor depended on this premise of fealty... And so, as his honor was bound to Alexis Villa and hers to the Lords, he could not help but feel gutted by the prospect of waging a war to put down the Reich. Wayward as they were, by blood and honor they were as good as kin.

But what alternative was there? He would have to kill the Kravenites to save the Jagadans, Vetalians, Kylarnatians and Skyans... Brothers all, threatened by those who should be brothers still. Necessary yet heartbreaking. An experiment in love and fraternity, turned aside by the inherent and brutal nature of the Reich.

"Before you all arrived," said Bridges, looking into his cup at the mound of black shells, "I took the liberty of briefing our allies. They know everything that we know. It's taking some time, but the intelligence is being shared and we're all working together to build a bigger picture."

"I figured about as much." Crerar stomped out his cigarette on the rich crimson carpet, "If Remus is going to do anything, it won't be doing it alone."

[Vetalia]

Allanea - Closed - Secret other than disinformation

"My name is Max Isaev," – the Allanean agent lied glibly, although of course this would be the very name that was printed on the documents that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued him, which were genuine in the sense that they've been printed on the same paper on which all Allanean passports have been printed, and that there had been a file in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that corresponded to the name. The man's actual name, Stanislav Stern, would not be mentioned at all – not because he expected Taylor to be a Reich agent, but because there were a myriad ways his identity could have been leaked during his travels – nor was the Allaneans' trust in the Vetalians absolute for thought they did not expect the Vetalians to betray them directly, they also had the suspicion that people who had already lost everything they had to the Reich were not, perhaps, the world's best operatives. No doubt Vetalians would be offended had Allaneans said this out loud.

"The details are supremely important," – he spoke. "Is there something that I said that you find issue with?"

"Pleased to welcome you, Max...I'm sorry for my demeanor but you know how it is these days, you can't be too careful. It hasn't been easy for any of us since the troubles back home and of course it has interrupted our trading profits quite a bit, especially on the routes we typically lead out of here. Reich agents and State agents all over the place, it's hard to keep However, we have by and large kept ourselves out of it here in Jagada. The customs officers keep anyone not welcome well at bay!" He laughed and reached again for his cigarette case.

"However, some things do get through. We just received a shipment of cigarettes from our enclave in the Confederacy that are some of the best I've ever smoked! Would you like to try one of these babies? Just look at the filling on them, they don't make them that thick anywhere!" It was obvious at this point that he was motioning towards one of the cigarettes in the case that had a message written on it in neat print.

take one - found out office bugged -> lie + follow me after 2nd smoke

He lit his cigarette and continued. "So, what are your plans for Vetalia, Mr. Isaev? Certainly our enclave can put its resources at your disposal but the most important thing is knowing where, when and how we are going to make this all happen."

[Allanea]

The Allanean closed his eyes for two seconds, and nodded almost imperceptibly, before he began to speak.

"Grand plans, yes. I can't tell you very much - for a range of reasons, one of them being I'm not told very much myself - but not all of the senior actors the Reich has in place are as loyal as they think they are. A lot of their own officers are actually working for us - naturally I can't give you names, but let's say we have some people very high up in the system. We will be using those people for both passive and active measures - collecting insider information, passively speaking, and diverting resources to false alarms... you know, away from where our actual direct action will be."

He paused. "Of course your people will play a key part."

He was, of course, lying, or at least he was lying regarding the idea that the Allaneans had senior Kraven officials on their payroll, they had no such thing.

[Vetalia]

Blue - Allanea - Secret as Before

The Allanean closed his eyes for two seconds, and nodded almost imperceptibly, before he began to speak.

"Grand plans, yes. I can't tell you very much - for a range of reasons, one of them being I'm not told very much myself - but not all of the senior actors the Reich has in place are as loyal as they think they are. A lot of their own officers are actually working for us - naturally I can't give you names, but let's say we have some people very high up in the system. We will be using those people for both passive and active measures - collecting insider information, passively speaking, and diverting resources to false alarms... you know, away from where our actual direct action will be."

He paused. "Of course your people will play a key part."

He was, of course, lying, or at least he was lying regarding the idea that the Allaneans had senior Kraven officials on their payroll, they had no such thing.

Pausing to take a drag off of the cigarette, Ruslan nodded. "Really? I thought the Reich was incorruptible from top to bottom but it just goes to show you they're as human as anyone else when you get down to it. Kind of ironic that more of them are on the take than anyone we've found out on our side. Not only that, but the ones they have are amateurish at best - just this past week, a 'contractor' came by to check the smoke alarms when I was out of the office. Turns out the company they worked for didn't exist, and when I decided to do a little digging I found they'd bugged the smoke detectors! I ended up finding four of them, one in each room. All the names on the sign-in sheet were found out to be locals, but when we checked up on them none of them matched the looks of the guys on the security cam footage. They even bugged the one in the toilet, I don't really get the point of that one though!"

Ruslan laughed and eyed Max at this point making it clear he knew the bugs placed in the smoke detectors were decoys. He took another drag and coughed a bit when exhaling.

"Man, those Confederate cigarettes have a kick! He took a drink of water before continuing "Back on topic, I also checked the computer to see if they did anything to it and I had the IT guys check out the hard drive and they said everything was fine. Getting into the computer doesn't mean a whole lot unless the Reich really wants to look at some budgeting spreadsheets or print off coupons for a free sub. Anything that applies to our situation back in the mainland is mailed to Pax by Vet Post and then couriered over to our people in the State."

He took another drag and extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray built into the case. "Speaking of subs, I don't know about you but I'm starving. How about you give me a quick rundown of how you want us to be involved and then we'll head out and grab some lunch? We can take my car, I know some great places around here."

Again eyeing Max, he pulled a second cigarette from the case and lit it.

"I've also got some files on hand that were sent over last week about important installations in the State that we'll want to target, we can go over those some more when we get back from lunch. I don't like taking anything about the mainland away from the office since you never know who's listening when you're out in public. I could keep rambling on all day about this stuff...back to you, Max."

[Allanea]

Blue - Allanea - Secret as Before


Pausing to take a drag off of the cigarette, Ruslan nodded. "Really? I thought the Reich was incorruptible from top to bottom but it just goes to show you they're as human as anyone else when you get down to it. Kind of ironic that more of them are on the take than anyone we've found out on our side. Not only that, but the ones they have are amateurish at best - just this past week, a 'contractor' came by to check the smoke alarms when I was out of the office. Turns out the company they worked for didn't exist, and when I decided to do a little digging I found they'd bugged the smoke detectors! I ended up finding four of them, one in each room. All the names on the sign-in sheet were found out to be locals, but when we checked up on them none of them matched the looks of the guys on the security cam footage. They even bugged the one in the toilet, I don't really get the point of that one though!"

Ruslan laughed and eyed Max at this point making it clear he knew the bugs placed in the smoke detectors were decoys. He took another drag and coughed a bit when exhaling.

"Man, those Confederate cigarettes have a kick! He took a drink of water before continuing "Back on topic, I also checked the computer to see if they did anything to it and I had the IT guys check out the hard drive and they said everything was fine. Getting into the computer doesn't mean a whole lot unless the Reich really wants to look at some budgeting spreadsheets or print off coupons for a free sub. Anything that applies to our situation back in the mainland is mailed to Pax by Vet Post and then couriered over to our people in the State."

He took another drag and extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray built into the case. "Speaking of subs, I don't know about you but I'm starving. How about you give me a quick rundown of how you want us to be involved and then we'll head out and grab some lunch? We can take my car, I know some great places around here."

Again eyeing Max, he pulled a second cigarette from the case and lit it.

"I've also got some files on hand that were sent over last week about important installations in the State that we'll want to target, we can go over those some more when we get back from lunch. I don't like taking anything about the mainland away from the office since you never know who's listening when you're out in public. I could keep rambling on all day about this stuff...back to you, Max."

"The difficulty which the Reich hqas," – Max said, as he was becoming inspired with his own lie, "is that their idea doesn't match reality. And you know what they say – you can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. Now, of course, you can feed people rationed food bricks, and you can ban alcohol and drugs and gambling and porn and chocolate and cheese… and what you'll achieve is that everyone is poor, and everyone wants something that will elevate them from the drudgery of life – and of course, while Reich officers get slightly better food and better shifts than the average slave toiling twenty-five hours a day in the munitions factories… I'm certain I'd rather be a factory manager in Allanea than a slave overseer in the Reich. " – he pondered for a moment as he puffed on his cigarette. This story was plausible – at least plausible enough, he thought, that whoever was listening on the other side of the line would consider it. "Consider those people – they have power, yes, power over thousands of slaves, but it is difficult to parlay it into the sort of luxury that you'd associate with a position like that."

"Therefore… smuggling. Food. Wines. Paintings. Can you imagine what half a pound of brie will fetch once it crosses the border? If you somehow got into the Reich with a few bars of dark chocolate, or a few wheels of cheese, they would be increasing in value with every mile you make towards the big cities. If you were in the capital – and if you survived your route there – they'd probably be worth their weight in silver, perhaps even gold. And now suppose – suppose – a Reich port official was blackmailed by the man who supplied his fine Xirniumite wine? Oh, he would then himself be a slave to his blackmailer. In some cases we do not even need to blackmail – sometimes the man who supplies the illicit good manages to plant a bug in his client's car, or their home or office. It's even possible to place a tracker inside your victim if you get them to swallow it. There are people in the Reich who think themselves perfectly loyal to the authorities, or at least who think of themselves as lawbreakers rather than outright traitors – but they are supplying us with all manner of secret information."

"Come now. Let's go get a coffee," – said Isayev, feigning nonchalance. "You said it yourself, they're incompetent. We'll likely spot it if anyone is tailing us."

If a Kraven agent were listening, they'd probably be laughing now. Of course, Isayev intended to have the last laugh.

[Vetalia]

Allanea and Reich Ears Only

"The difficulty which the Reich hqas," – Max said, as he was becoming inspired with his own lie, "is that their idea doesn't match reality. And you know what they say – you can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. Now, of course, you can feed people rationed food bricks, and you can ban alcohol and drugs and gambling and porn and chocolate and cheese… and what you'll achieve is that everyone is poor, and everyone wants something that will elevate them from the drudgery of life – and of course, while Reich officers get slightly better food and better shifts than the average slave toiling twenty-five hours a day in the munitions factories… I'm certain I'd rather be a factory manager in Allanea than a slave overseer in the Reich. " – he pondered for a moment as he puffed on his cigarette. This story was plausible – at least plausible enough, he thought, that whoever was listening on the other side of the line would consider it. "Consider those people – they have power, yes, power over thousands of slaves, but it is difficult to parlay it into the sort of luxury that you'd associate with a position like that."

"I'll go a step further, I'd rather be living on the street around here than a slave overseer in the Reich, not even whoever they call their leader! At least it's warm most of the time and you can do what you want, not shuffle around on food bricks. The worst part is they banned cigarettes in the State, at least in my mind," Ruslan laughed casually, but carefully avoided going too far out of character despite his burning desire to use his full vocabulary of profanities to describe the Reich. He took another deep drag and exhaled towards the ceiling.

"But you're absolutely right. Except for the Capitol police they're human, hell, more than a few of their overseers were probably taken from the State and the rest of the region. I've heard there's been trouble in Norska with this sort of thing, And the State..." He paused as Max continued.

"Therefore… smuggling. Food. Wines. Paintings. Can you imagine what half a pound of brie will fetch once it crosses the border? If you somehow got into the Reich with a few bars of dark chocolate, or a few wheels of cheese, they would be increasing in value with every mile you make towards the big cities. If you were in the capital – and if you survived your route there – they'd probably be worth their weight in silver, perhaps even gold. And now suppose – suppose – a Reich port official was blackmailed by the man who supplied his fine Xirniumite wine? Oh, he would then himself be a slave to his blackmailer. In some cases we do not even need to blackmail – sometimes the man who supplies the illicit good manages to plant a bug in his client's car, or their home or office. It's even possible to place a tracker inside your victim if you get them to swallow it. There are people in the Reich who think themselves perfectly loyal to the authorities, or at least who think of themselves as lawbreakers rather than outright traitors – but they are supplying us with all manner of secret information.:

Ruslan laughed again, happy to that Max knew more about Vetalia and the Reich than he let on and decided to feed some actual information mixed with disinformation to the listeners to send them on a wild goose chase. "Funny you say 'brie'...do you know what the most smuggled items are into the State? Dairy products, alcohol and cigarettes. And what are the most exported From what I've heard the Reich types love them even more than we do..."

"Now how do they get it in? Ever seen a Vetalian-made MG-42 for the Reich? Wood stock and top-quality manufacture, best in the Reich...except one minor issue. The butt can be hollowed to form a small cavity and filled with whatever you want, in small quantities. Our people in the State supply chain for the guns request the right alloys for the fasteners to make the weight within Reich manufacturing tolerance. Just pop it open and you've got the goods. Now, that's not going to bring in a wheel of cheese but it will bring in some smokes, some drugs or a mini of hard liquor. We send most of those guns south to the Peninsula, the Reich likes its rum down there. If we can't beat 'em, make 'em wasted." Ruslan laughed and extinguished his cigarette.

"Come now. Let's go get a coffee," – said Isayev, feigning nonchalance. "You said it yourself, they're incompetent. We'll likely spot it if anyone is tailing us."

If a Kraven agent were listening, they'd probably be laughing now. Of course, Isayev intended to have the last laugh.

"I hear you, let's head out."

Ruslan led Max out the door and down the hall to the elevators, letting Masha know they would be heading to lunch. He pressed the button and then turned to Max, motioning to take the stairs. After descending several dozen flights they reached the lobby and Ruslan again greeted the security guard and headed towards the walkway to the parking garage. They then arrived at his parked car and Ruslan placed the keyfob between the tailfins on the back of the car. He motioned again to the garage exit and after walking away from the car for a distance spoke again to Max

"Let's walk over there Max. I tipped them off about the car before knowing they did something to it already. After our last chat they might have sabotaged it....or not. I'll have my guys from the MOS take a look at it just in case. Either way, it's a lot safer out on the street." Ruslan greeted the parking attendant and exchanged small talk before he and Max entered into the bright sunlight and heat of a Vetalian enclave experiencing the Southern Gholgoth summer.

[Allanea]

As the pair walked down the street, Maxim appeared to be unusually comfortable – for an Allanean at least – with the hot weather. Having lived for years in the Allanean Southern Isles, he was quite familiar with what a Liberty-City native would have called soul-withering heat. This, of course, made him perfect for assignments in hot climates.

As they paced the street, Isaev took care to ensure that they were not being tailed, but he allowed his counterpart to pick the route, speaking only when he was certain they were not in earshot of anyone.

In actuality, we need an in. We need to start building a network with branches and salesmen throughout the country. The businesses we spoke of are a good start.

It would be immediately obvious to the Vetalian that the Allanean was referring to spy matters – but to a random passerby it would appear he was merely a businessman talking about business affairs.

[Auman]

International Waters, somewhere off the coast of Vetalia...

The tide of human misery that washed off of helicopters onto the through-deck Cruiser RMS Vulture was a depressing sight. The pathetic state of these people, having spent days at sea in overcrowded conditions aboard the Aquila Sunshine was almost too much for the boatswains and Marines could bare. You could hardly imagine the smell... Sweat, fear and death commingled together in a cacophony of despair and grief.

Sergeant John Rand stood back from the scene, overseeing his men on security detail. They stood to, their Molands loosely shouldered, keeping watch over the refugees as they were ushered into tents where they were stripped, washed down with pressurized water and sanitized before being handed paper tunics. More pressing was the concern of disease than that of disorder, a ship was a terrible place to get sick. John saw a man, wild eyed and covered with grime, clutching a limp baby to his chest. He was yelling, demanding help for his child. The Corpsman came to him and appraised the child's vitals, shooting a fertive glance over his shoulder at the Sergeant. Rand made his way to the Corpsman and they spoke in hushed tones for a moment. The baby had passed, the father was agitated already and the Corpsman didn't know how to break it to him. Rand looked the father dead in the eye and said "We need to take your child to the infirmary. We're going to do everything that we can!"

Rand was shouting, struggling to be heard over the rotars of the helicopters coming and going from the flight deck. The father searched his face with panicked eyes, he couldn't hear him if he wanted to. Dried blood ran in streams from the father's ears, same with the baby. He was deaf. Rand put a hand in the father's shoulder, consolingly, and the Corpsman gently pulled the baby away. The father collapsed to his knees, overtaken by tears. Rand crouched next to the man, patting him on the back and the father said "She's dead, I know that! You don't think I know that?!"

Rand wasn't much for outward displays of emotion, but this almost moved him to tears. Instead, a sigh caught in his chest as he lifted the father back to his feet and helped him over to the boatswains running the decontamination station.

"We're going to make this right!" Rand said as loud as he could before returning to his men. He continued to watch as refugees stepped onto the Vulture, dazed and confused. He waved over the Corpsman from before and asked "What happened to these people?"

The Corpsman slipped out of a soiled pair of latex gloves while saying "We're evacuating the most vulnerable refugees from the Aquila first. She is a big ship, but so many people crammed aboard her that they ran out of room, quick. These people crowded into the engine deck. Every single one of them is deaf from the noise and vibration. God knows how many died in there."

Rand had served on ships all his adult life. Going full steam sent such a shake through a ship that you could feel your skeleton separating from your body. Hell, guys working in the engine room had to come up every hour or so to avoid chronic injury... And these people were there for days on end.

"My God, man."

"Tell me about it. I'm not even sure we have room for all of them." The Corpsman lit a cigarette and watched the relief nurse attend to a man with broken ankles, retrieving a fresh set of gloves from his vest pocket.

"We'll do what we can to take the pressure off of Aquila. The rest of the Fleet is on the way, son. Just have to do our best until they get here."

[Aldarminia]

Written in Collaboration with The Kraven Reich

The grainy video illuminated the darkened room as it began play the contents to the assembled room of trainees, distortion flicked across the screen every few seconds, apparently a by product of interference caused by the fighting that ensued and the sheer level of heat generated by the white phosphorus grenades used by the Capitol Police, the video was silent, which matched the room, serious stares watched the video with an intense scrutiny, many knew what was on the video, everyone had heard of the Tsakarhelm incident but this was the first time many had actually seen the footage, this was first hand evidence of what happened in the Aldarminian consular building in Vetalian City.

The CCTV cameras from outside the building could clearly see the large eight wheeled APC’s pull up and disgorge soldiers from the rear compartment who without hesitation take up position along the walls surrounding the consular’s large compound.

The figure of an Officer steps out of the lead APC, he positions himself at the gate and uses a loud hailer to speak at the staff of the consular building, the students can’t clearly see who he is, but the air of authority is obvious, staff within the building can be seen moving around in a hurried fashion, until the Officer begins to speak, everyone in the consular building is still, almost as though for these few moments they are holding their breath.

There are a few moments, it's unclear whether the consular staff are responding or the Officer is waiting for a response, but that question is soon answered when a group of around ten civilians are brought up to the gate of the consular building, it is now obvious to the trainees what soldiers are, their red glowing optics can be clearly seen as they man handle the young and old into position, some being dragged by their arms others by their hair, the Officer can be seen raising his loud hailer before another pause and the obvious report of gun fire, ten dead civilians drop to the floor, small murmurs creep out from across the room of trainees one clearly heard vainly invoking the Commoner God “Jesus…”

“The Undying won’t help us against the Cappers,” remarked the elephantine presence in the room with the weight of words to match, “No. He has given us Kraven to hone us. There will be no intervention more divine than our own.”

The Hammer spoke through pauses in the video; this time, it was as the edited compilation of footage clipped to the interior cameras, showing the panic and chaos that ensued inside after the slaughter of the negotiation team. The video paused on the shattering of glass from various windows sending shards of twinkling material flying across the room followed by the insidious form of grenades...

"Grenades, be ready for grenades, they will bombard you with grenades until the earth literally shakes. They want to mash your head up so fucking hard that you can't remember the last time you took a shit.”

The video continued as the Hammer, taking the role of instructor, also continued to speak, as great clouds of gas and smoke now filled the screen showing the panic and confusion as security personnel tried to direct the civilians in a rapidly disintegrating situation..

"What can you see of note in those last few frames?"

"The civilians Sir, they are without protection, the gas grenades the cappers have used has left them blind and confused, they keep getting in the way of our guys,” spoke Olav Doshsvyn, directing the younger trainees.

"Yes, exactly, the Reich will seek to disorientate you. They want you to feel like the situation is hopeless; they want you to give up without a fight, break your will to fight. There is nothing worse than trying to concentrate on your task at hand when you have civilians screaming and crying over your shoulder. You must be prepared for this. It's not a matter of if it will happen, just when."

The CCTV didn’t cover the roof, the CCTV hadn’t spotted the VTOL approach from a deadzone, it hovered over the building totally unnoticed by the defenders who could barely hear what was happening over the noise of screaming civilians and the gunfire that now erupted from outside the compound, through the smoke and the haze of confusion several security personnel were seen thrown from their feet as expertly placed MG fire took them out, the CCTV flicked back to the outside of the building as Capitol Police now moved up in formation, it was a tight grouping with each trooper moving to cover the others weak points, it was fluid, rapid and without hesitation as though these machine men had been drilled in this form of war since birth, within seconds they were already upon the front door to the building…

Each trooper primed a fragmentation grenade, before one placed a solid jackboot against the wooden door practically launching it off of its hinges, a stream of grenades followed one after another, the CCTV footage flicked back into the inside of the building, where almost instantly the grenades went through the front door did several formed of Capitol Police appear crashing through the glass feet first, their MG42’s ditched in favour of smaller arms, submachine gun sized weapons, designated MP-66’s their bark causing the room to light up with each flash of muzzle flare, downstairs, the Capitol Police had moved in, they had already grabbed one civilian and a Trooper was dragging them out, their hands had been zip tied behind their back and a black bag placed over the head, within a few seconds of the assault starting a civilian was already incapacitated and laying outside.

Pausing again, Dalikharl noted, “A lot of heads rolled for Tsakarhelm.”

Glancing around the room carefully and slowly, milking the simmer of his words, the Hammer finally spoke again through the deafened air, “Mine will not be one of them. All valuable asset properties will be fixed with anti-airs by the time I’m done with them. However, you can’t rely on those, especially not in a Tsakarhelm scenario in its first place. If the Cappers are getting to your front door, then you can assume we have lost the air superiority we need to stop them from landing on your roof.”

The video resumed, and vicious hand to hand combat had erupted upstairs, as a security personnel struggled against the overwhelming frame of a trooper, unable to match the strength of the Capitol Police Trooper it was only a few moments before the 18 inch bayonet was driven through the side of the man's skull, without pausing, hesitating or looking at the kill the Trooper moved on..

The Hammer paused the video, pointing out yet another thing he thought important to highlight…

“D’ya see that? He never fucking stopped. The Capitol Police are absolutely focused one hundred percent on their objective. They don’t care that they have just been in a life or death struggle in hand to hand combat. That security guard? Just another obstacle on the course. A wall to be vaulted or a door to be smashed down. Never forget that where you are slow and unfocused, the Capper is going to strike…”

The screen flickered off for a second before transitioning to a very different scene. Here, at a smaller building, secondary to the main consulate, the defenders were much better prepared. An MPDADS team had made it to the roof in time to set up position and destroy the VTOL approaching them. Since this was more like a safe house, no negotiation team was sent, and the Reich had not asked for one. Whereas the main consulate was easily stormed, the Capitol Police here were unable to approach the building without provoking anti-material sniper fire capable of piercing their thick battle armor. Before the ritualistic saturation of grenades and machine-gun fire could even be made by the Cappers, the defenders here were using grenade launchers to herd the Troopers into a kill box where the defenders’ own machine gun emplacement could slice through the invaders’ ranks. It was a perfect defense…

Some of the students were applauding and cheering, but the Hammer and his partner-instructor Olav were sullen in the temperament of their gazes lunged at a few of these students individually. These would calm themselves and ponder in silence, often with hands to scratch at chins or heads, why their instructors were nudging them toward more thoughtful attention rather than celebration. The video paused on a shot of the VIPs huddled in the apparent safety of the building, waiting for their exit route to be cleared and secured.

Olav took the lead here, “Which of these two defenses resulted in successful escape of the VIPs present?”

The class went silent. The reality of what they knew rather than what they were seeing slapped them in their face. There had only been one surviving VIP from the Tsakarhelm consulate, the place a few moments ago was being overrun on screen by the Capitol Police. Something failed to sum in their minds before a select few suddenly recalled, shooting their hands upward to indicate they understood. Instead of calling upon them, Doshsvyn nodded and resumed the video.

On screen, the civilians seemed to stop moving and look up all at once for a hair’s width from a second, and then the video ended with a crackle of static and fire and smoke.

Olav elaborated, “The secondary campus of the Tsakarhelm Consulate was lost to artillery bombardment. Everyone inside was killed by the shelling if not mopped up when the Capitol Police combed the premises of debris.

“So what the fu-,” someone started to blurt out before recollecting themselves and their words, “What exactly are we supposed to do when faced with this scenario?”

One student slapped their forehead in epiphany. One about stood up out of her seat. Olav chuckled and called on her, “Yes?”

“We let them storm the castle!”

The Hammer smiled, “Oh?”

The student continued, “If we let them think they can win one way, they won’t use the other way. It’d be less--”

“Efficient,” the Hammer clapped his hands, “Yes. Less efficient to shell the building if you can just storm it and secure it.”

“So that means,” the student carried on, “Our defense cannot be static.”

Doshsvyn and Dalikharl nodded, “Yes.”

“So there is hope after all!” one blurted.

The class laughed nervously but the Hammer just said, “March!”

Olav stomped his foot and affirmed, “We’re running this exercise until his Majesty doesn’t die, troopers! Get moving! On the double!”

The student-cadets hurriedly collected their things and got up out of their seats. It was time to run the Tsakarhelm Scenario again. They had been running it for two weeks straight now. Every time, the simulated consulate and the VIP had been lost within five minutes.

This time, it was seven.

The next time…

---

The siren shot adrenaline through Hanna’s ear and into her brain. She sprang up from her napping sprawl inside the harbor barracks dorm. As she hastily donned her gear, she listened to the timing of the siren’s ring.

Rnnnngh! Rnnnnngh! Rnnnnngh! … Rnnnngh! Rnnnnngh! Rnnnnngh!

“Better not be a fucking drill,” she muttered, she thought, under her breath, but her roommate responded, already in full gear, “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Why,” turning up her head to take into view the television screen whose sound was drowned out by the blare and the flash of the klaxon, “Holy fuck”


The screen showed the nightmare scenario all over again, but this time it was in Pax Gothica and it was live.

[Marquesan]

---

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne

---

24th Air Command, APF-DDR Airfield, CAFOC Dragon Princess, 145 Km from the Vetalian Border.
City of Vanuam, Bertaut Prefecture, West-Central Marquesan States, Gholgoth. 0355 Hours Local Time.

"All I'm saying is that we've been drilling like this for months. It's been bullshit every time before, why wouldn't it be bullshit now?"

A young Caporal D'Angelou said as he pushed up the rolling steel door on a snow-covered bunker, built into the side of a hill.

"Because, this time the mag-track is heated up and ready. You know the new guy, Laurent? They had him out here two hours ago brushing snow and ice off the whole damn length."

"What in the hell do you suppose Command's fetish with getting us up at the ass-crack of dawn is?" D'Angelou said, as he flipped the light switch on the cold concrete wall of the bunker.

Instantly, the hum of electricity could be heard as red-colored overhead lights switched on, one by one, down a long black corridor that seemed to stretch on forever. Under the lights, set diagonal to each other with their noses pointing inward toward the center of the room, was a fleet of twenty HAS.R48 Meduza drones, looking like massive black arrowheads, more like a re-entry vehicle than an airplane.

"The hell does it matter, Caporal, Orders ought to be enough for you, right?" Sergent Apres said, with an annoyed sharpness in his voice. Apres took a long last drag of his cigarette before pinching out the cherry and flicking it off into the snow-covered ground outside. He held his breath for a moment and exhaled through his nostrils, before he walked over to the first drone in the row and hooked a tow bar to it.

The two of them walked back to their old steel tug with its old-school headlights and an unmuffled old flat-four engine sputtering along, stinking up the night air. "Let's just get this thing over to the track, okay? It's the real deal this time, I've got the explosive bolts right here in the box. Besides, we've got five more to launch this morning, and orders are to have all birds up before sunrise."

"Shit, really?" Said D'Angelou, looking back and watching the drone fall into line behind the tug as Sergent Apres drove down smooth concrete tarmac, the wheels of the tug crunching down tracks on freshly fallen snow, a few falling sprinkles looking like stars in a Sci-Fi film passing by.

"Was that rhetorical, or do you need sick leave to get your ears cleaned again?" Neither of them spoke again until they arrived at the launch terminal. Set into a concrete pad and stretching off into the distance was a perfectly level metal Mag-Lev track. Hovering on the magnetic rail, a launch sled was waiting to accept the first ever Meduza drone to be launched over the land border into Vetalia. The tug pulled up to the track, rolling forward, and then cutting backward until the tail of the Meduza drone was lined up with the sled. Sergent Apres, Caporal D'Angelou and Caporal Laurent took a moment to look over the alignment before moving the drone into position.

"Hey, Laurent, smokes?" "Oui, here." Caporal Laurent handed the other two a cigarette, lighting Apres' first with an old Zippo before lighting his own, and then D'Angelou's. "You two ready for this?" D'Angelou said. "I don't think the Cappers on the other side are, at all." Laurent said.

"That's not for us to decide, Caporal. We just have to get these birds in the air." Apres said, gruffly.

"Don't be such a hardass, Sergent. You're welcome for the cigarette, by the way." Laurent clapped back, sharply. Nobody said a word but all three of them moved in unison.

They must have practiced this sequence six hundred times by now, and it showed in the way the three of them moved. D'Angelou on the left, Laurent on the right of the drone holding it steady and Sergent Apres manning the hydraulic controls on the Meduza's trailer, which whined to life as the drone first elevated in its hydraulic cradle, then moved back, first shuddering a little in the cold, but then smoothing out, the drone rolling backward from its trailer carriage to the launch sled. The drone thudded into place as Laurent and D'Angelou secured the explosive bolts that would hold it to the electromagnetic sled during launch.

"That's it. D'Angelou, you're driving, move the trailer away. You two go get another one. I'll get this one in the air." Said Apres, taking another long drag and blowing it out into the night sky. Overhead, the cloudcover had started to break, letting pallid moonlight stream through the snowy night air. Apres went through the startup sequence on the drone, checking the ring-tabs on the solid fuel engines one last time this crew had spent the last three weeks installing on all the Lance's drones. Ever since the trouble in Vetalia, suddenly everybody cares about what's going on in Bertaut, he thought to himself. Getting stationed to Vanuam used to be a cakewalk, but the tensions had been escalating and now, it seemed the world was teetering on the brink of war, and it was close enough to hear. Sometimes, you could hear the sound of the Reich's guns in Vetalia, especially under cloudclover like this morning. Lately, it had been all the time. *BEEP BEEP BEEP!* The Initialization Uplink Complete chime snapped him out of his train of thought.

"Connection made, good." Apres said to himself, taking another long drag of his cigarette to try and calm his nerves. He keyed the microphone button on the launching station. Kilometers away in a bunker, the drone pilot's speaker clicked to life. "Good luck up there, Sergent-Chef Audibert. You've got this. All looks good up here on ground level. She's ready."

"Thank you to you and your team for all your hard work, Apres. If you can get these six up before dawn, you all have Liberty until Monday. Understood?"

Sergent Apres looked at the horizon. Couple hours at least, he thought to himself. "I hope you can manage without us until Monday!" The speaker connection went dead.

Apres flicked the FIRING SEQUENCE START switch on the panel, and along a track length of several kilometers, huge, rotating yellow sodium arc lamps began to shine, and klaxons sounded to send the local wildlife fleeing. The drone and launch sled made a whistling sound as they hummed to life. A deep, bassy humming sound was heard from the battery packs deep underground below the launcher, increasing in pitch gradually at first and then more rapidly. The launch sled began to move. Slowly at first but then accelerating down the launcher track. The few flakes of freshly fallen snow that had landed on the Meduza fell away as the wind whipped around the sleek arrowhead-shaped black body. Faster and faster until the wind was a roar, the track continued to accelerate the Meduza drone.

At a point far downrange, the deafening cacaphony of the sound barrier being broken would be heard, shaking the snow from the trees for kilometers around, sending deer scattering and birds flying into the air. Shortly after, the explosive bolts on the launch cradle detonated in a shower of sparks. At that instant, the drone flew free of the cradle. Now, in his underground bunker, Sergent-Chef Audibert pressed the IGNITION SEQUENCE START button on his own console. Onboard the drone, the intake of the drone's scramjet engine filled with supersonic air and the solid fuel rocket engine onboard roared to life. The air that both cooled the rocket engine and mixed with the exhaust to provide thrust made a terrific screaming sound as the scramjet gulped up gigantic quantities of freezing cold night air. From the moment of ignition, the drone accelerated up, and away on a brilliant plume of white and green rocket exhaust, streaking up to over 20 kilometers altitude in only seconds.

Laurent and D'Angelou made it back to the launch pad with another drone. It was going to be a long morning.


City of Digora Granitsa, Occupied Vetalia, East-Central Border Region,
Stratosphere Gun Central Barrage Control Station. 0415 Hours Local Time.

This was the first real test of a foreign power's military in years. Since the bloody civil war that had brought hundreds of years of Regal Supremacy crashing down, the Marquesan States had been quiet, but now, no longer. The Kingdom of the Sleeping Dragon had woken to the rumble of Koenigsjager tracks on its western hinterlands and the deep boreal forest that made a nearly impenetrable physical barrier between Vetalia and Marquesan. Far above in the freezing cold December air, something that had never happened before was happening and it was coming without the faintest whisp of a warning.

Ever since the Marquesan Diet had recalled all its diplomats and expelled foreign state workers from the country due to the outbreak of widespread violence, the secretive country had refused diplomats and had only recently built a mission at Pax Gothica. The Marquesans had always been willing to do business with the Reich, the Ordenites and whomever else as long as tactical lines never crossed and the diplomats didn't need to be informed. Secrets were kept, deals were done and the silence could be deafening if you didn't know how to work around it. The Marquesan States made it their point of pride to be a hard target; perhaps this was why it had been strategically avoided by the Reich even when Cappers built walls on the Marquesan borderlands to keep the Vetalians in. Up to now, the timing wasn't right, the Reich hadn't been slaughtering neighbors by the thousands, but as the tides of war turned from bad to worse, the time for action had finally, at long last arrived.

Streaking across the border at three times the speed of sound and 20 kilometers altitude, the Meduza drone's cameras recorded in precise high-definition boosted thermal vision everything going on the ground below. The route would penetrate Vetalian airspace making a more or less direct line for Silvier's Strait along the Kylarnatian Liberation Line, making a left turn to skirt down the Vetalian coastline, near the border with Fortress Arcadia and then making another sharp left turn just south of the Vetalian Navy's 7th Fleet Drydocks to fly back across the Marquesan border near the Vetalian city of Perevoz Granitsa in just over an hour and a half, covering 6,000 kilometers. That morning, five other drones would penetrate Vetalian airspace, no larger than a small fighter and extremely stealthy, the drones would automatically respond with evasive maneuvers to detected fires on the ground from missiles or guns, but leaving only seconds for the Stratosphere Gun's sensors to respond to the incursion before the Meduza drone would be overhead and then out of range, trailing a powerful supersonic shockwave behind it, flying at 85,000 feet above the ground. Five more drones made the incursion flight before the sun came up that cold December morning.

The die had been cast and the wheels were in spin. With data streaming in from the Meduza drones, in far-off Nuku Hiva, there was a final decision of immense weight to make.

[The Peninsular]

Somewhere in the Arctic
Cafeteria A-3

Boop. Boop. Boop. The comms unit in Generalmajor Plisker's hand kept giving off the same, monotonous tone as he walked up the aisle to the beverage section. As he got to the replicator, it was still doing it - signalling that whoever was on the other end, had not picked up yet. He sighed, ending the call, and put in an order for several cups of hot Breu into the machine. Just then, he noticed a small puddle of red-ish fluid at the bottom of the replicator. It was blood, though not Peninsularian - for that it was too thin. Besides, he could smell the bourbon it was mixed with. Ugh., the middle-aged officer thought. Really gotta tell him to not spill his cocktails all over the damn place.

At this time of night, the cafeteria was empty. Every now and then, some people from the sector's night shift walked in to get a quick bite or drink. Plisker himself had had several metaphorical stacks of paperwork to work on, and had thus decided to stay up for a few days. Drugs really were a useful thing, especially when one stood no chance of developing an addiction to them. As the cups came out of the replicator, he placed them on his tray and moved onto the food section.

The new food replicator, a Dornalian design, had been programmed with virtually every single military menu the Federal Defense Forces had ever used. The Generalmajor picked his favorite, what a few people (mostly him and some of the NCOs) considered a timeless classic - cheesy seal stew MRE. The way it looked, coming out of the modern machine, was decidedly more appetizing than the original he'd known from his Lieutenant days. Hurray for modern technology.

Sitting down at a remote table, he was about to dig in when his comms unit rang. "Yes, Generalmajor Plisker here?", he picked up, not even looking who it was. The voice on the other end immediately sounded familiar. "Generalmajor, Oberleutnant Lamber here. You were calling me, sir?", the young officer's voice came over the secure connection. Plisker could hear the fatigue in his voice. "Yes, Oberleutnant. I just got a few reports regarding launches in the region. We're looking at fastmovers over Vetalia, suspected Marquesan. One of the sats picked up launches from the very edge of its sensor cone while surveying the waters west of Fortress Arcadia, but we couldn't confirm where exactly they came from."

On the other end of the call, Oberleutnant Lamber rolled out of bed. "And I assume you want my opinion on this?" He was tired as all hell, and it was supposed to be his first free day in over two months, so he felt more than a little reluctant. "Of course. You assessed the Marquesans yourself not long ago, didn't you? Question is, are they the type to do this sort of thing? And if yes, why would they do it?" Lamber shuffled over to his uniform rack. "Short answer, yes and 'I don't know', sir. Forward the data to my desk, I'll throw an assessment report together."

Plisker shook his head, although no one was there to see it. "Negative, Oberleutnant. Report directly to Orbital, bring your tablet. I'll be there in a bit myself and I want an expert on hand." Lamber sighed inaudibly. "Yes, sir. I'll be there in 15 minutes." With that, he hung up.

Plisker shook his head again. The Oberleutnant was capable, but his time abroad had made him a bit hard to deal with at times. Nevertheless, and even though he dreaded the incoming shower of cultural information, the Generalmajor had to admit to himself that the lad knew how to do his job well.

He was about to start eating when his comms unit rang, again.

--------

Pax Gothica
Torch Building

"Have you called Plisker yet?", Chief Analyst Ferdi Kaller asked across the room, his eyes still firmly glued to the row of screens displaying everything about the unfolding situation. Behind him, one of the pilots stumbled through the door into the situation room, now in full flight gear. He squarely cut off Leutnant Klaus Xavier, who simply nodded to Kaller instead.

"Blue flight is reporting ready, Hauptmann.", he told the third figure in the room, Hauptmann Zacharias Pram. "Excellent.", Pram responded. "Get up to the fighters and pretend like you're doing something else until I call you." The pilot saluted, and stormed out again, almost knocking over one of the 'priceless' Skyan vases (it was beyond anyone in the embassy why a vase would be considered priceless, but there was no sense in possibly offending their hosts, so they had been tended to with relative care).

"And what are they saying?", Kaller asked Xavier. The officer shrugged slightly. "They're trying to get detailed directives from Liaso, but Plisker's putting everyone on high alert. Looks like we'll be getting orders the second the shooting starts. They're moving one of the F frigates - F-14 I think - into international waters not far from here, with a few drones. A sub's also underway, should we need to make a fast exit." Kaller rubbed his chin.

"What about the Skyans?", Pram asked. Xavier and the Chief Analyst both shrugged. "We're not sure what they're going to do yet. I've given the order to notify them of our alert state, but we'll have to see what they do."

[Allanea]

No war is over until the enemy says it is over. ~ James Mattis.

The water was cold. It was always cold that deep down, and even the rubber suits that they wore did not shield them from the bone-biting cold. They gripped the handles of the small machines that carried them forward through the darkness, the cold only bringing them to hold on tighter, clenching the handles as if their fingers had been welded to the machine. They had done this hundreds of times in training, and some of them had done it in real assignments. They practiced for this mission a dozen times, and now they knew precisely what they were doing.

There were three groups of sixteen, moving in at different points on the coast. None of the groups knew about the location of the others, nor did any of them know precisely how many groups there were – only that they were not alone. Were they to fall prisoner, they would of course resist interrogation for a while – but nobody was under any illusions about the ability of these men and women to resist the work of Kravenite interrogators. And thus, they had simply not been told certain secrets they did not need to know.

The teams ascended – but the water did not become transparent. They deployed at night, of course, their diving suits midnight blue. Intelligence analysts had studied photographs of the beaches to chosoe the safest place and the time at which the men would be least likely to meet the patrols. And now they were ascending – a hundred feet under water, fifty, ten. They breached like shadows, dragging their gear out on the beach, one after the other, to make sure they left as little tracks as possible. They changed to dry clothing, they buried their diving gear, and they went inland. This would establish a pattern – move in the dark, hide and rest during the day.

They observed, of course, the movement around them – the trucks, the men, the Kravenites moving like wildfire through the land. Sometimes, on the horizon, they could see the blood-red of actual fire.

There was nothing these men – trained though they were, armed though they were, brave though they were – could do about any of this. A pebble cannot stop an avalanche. To try and act in such a direct way would mean the sacrifice of not only their lives, but also their mission.

As they moved, they realized they were hiding not only because they did not want to be discovered and killed. They hid, also, because they were ashamed, despites themselves. Nobody could blame them for not acting – they were, in fact, acting, in an indirect way – but in their hearts they felt as if, through inaction, they had contributed to the brutality that seemed to be all about them, poisoning the very air, the soil itself.

Soon enough, however, they would do their duty.

The Kraven forces imagined they had already won the war. Their actions were terrible not only because of what they did, but because of the scent of impunity about them.

Although the men and women that had come from the sea were hidden still, they were already longing for a breath of fresh air.

[The Master M]

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
― Jim Morrison

Joint Command Council Headquarters
Undisclosed location under the Scotian Highlands
Northern Master M
3:48am Standard Paraiso Time

Several kilometres beneath the Scotian Highlands, forty nine members of the Mian Joint Command Council sat in a spacious briefing room festooned with floor to ceiling wall displays. Tired, and annoyed by the urgent summons which had brought them here in the middle of the night, some made no effort to disguise their contempt towards the young officer who had opened the briefing, especially those whose distance from the headquarters had necessitated transport via sub-orbital rocket.

“... which we feel supports the earlier analysis provided to this council.”

Seemingly oblivious to the mood, the young officer paused for what to some seemed like an obscene amount of time to sip from a glass of disappointingly lukewarm water.

“Which brings us to last night,” the man began, raising his bionic hand towards the largest display behind him. A false colour map of western Gholgoth filled the screen, before enlarging an area near Fortress Norksa. “These images were taken by radar satellites several days ago, and as you can see here,” the officer said, as the image enlarged on a concentrated area of orange and red, “a large concentration of vessels departed port. Reconnaissance satellites took several images over the next several hours, until the heading of the fleet was determined to be east, away from the strategic ocean area.”

“The fleet was designated a lower priority, and was picked up again nineteen hours ago here,” he said, as the map zoomed back out, “and again four hours ago here.” The screen changed to show the marked positions of the fleet, and its projected destination – Vetalia.

“A pair of F-32Cs flying from the 12th Fleet were tasked to take high level photographs of the fleet. Before they were warned rather strongly about the immediate short term consequences of approaching further, they managed to gather these images.”

The screen went through a series of slides, showing a number of Kravenite naval vessels.

“And now, the main point of this briefing. Few of you will need to be advised of the significance of this,” he said, as the screen changed again to show a different ship, “but allow me to explain for posterity.”

A murmur erupted from the crowd as the ship filled the screen.

“A 'Death Ship' of the Kraven Reich. At least sixteen, in fact,” the officer sighed, as the screen cycled though several more ships, “and potentially hundreds more.” The screen showed the map of Gholgoth again, with highlighted areas showing increased naval activity at several ports across Kraven controlled areas. “Anticipating the wishes of this Council, the Working Strategy Group has prepared a number of intervention packages for your perusal”.

The murmur became a cacophony as admirals and generals started shouting and waving at each other, the heavily polarised crowd unable to contain their feelings any longer. The men and women that constituted the majority of the Joint Command Council were roughly divided into three opposing camps: the largest group, those who wished the Most Serene Republic to take military action against obvious threats like the Kraven Reich; the next largest group, almost equal in size, were those who wished the nation to maintain a policy of armed neutrality, out of fear of the horrendous casualties that fighting a war against the Reich would entail; and the last group, making up almost a tenth of the assembled, were steadfastly against interfering in what they viewed were the sovereign actions of a technically allied nation.

For years the tensions between the factions had undermined the Most Serene Republic's stillborn attempts to participate in the efforts taken by other Gothic nations to contain the seemingly endless

Eventually, the briefing officers managed to calm the shouts of "traitor!" and "warmonger!" and other infantile insults being thrown around the room. A vote was called; the motion, to intervene militarily against the actions of the Kraven Reich. No quorum was reached, and another vote was held. And another. And another, and another. For 9 hours the generals alternated between lobbying each other for support and voting fruitlessly, neither camp able to generate enough votes. The arguments raged into the night, draining the patience of the officers and the headquarters of its whisky.

Shortly before midnight a wave of silence rippled through the heavily divided room as an eager sounding voice announced that the elevator doors at the back of the room would open momentarily. The voice belonged to SAMPSON, an 8th generation Artificial Intelligence Construct, one of the three AICs responsible for the running of the Headquarters. Described by some as marking the cusp of a technological singularity, the 8th generation AICs were a massive evolution over their predecessors used in the SAIR infantry combat robot program, and remained one of the Most Serene Republic's most well guarded secrets.

An excited murmur broke out as the elevator doors opened to reveal the missing members of the Council. Hamish Douglas, head of Clan Douglas and Supreme Commander of the Army of the Most Serene Republic, swaggered out of the lift resplendent in his full dress uniform. Popular among many of the northern clans and states, and considered the leader of the intervention faction, The Douglas had joined the Army of the Republic as a private at 17 when it formed in the opening months of the Mian Civil War. Loud, irreverent, and obnoxiously charismatic, Hamish was a natural commander and easy friend – but when crossed he showed the apoplectic aggression famous of Clan Douglas.

The Douglas took to the stage with a speed not often seen from septuagenarians, and disappointed many of the assembled that he forewent the expected jovial insults and jumped straight to business. His speech berated the Council at length for being unable to make what he felt was demonstrably the correct decision, that any true follower of The Way was honour bound to defend the defenceless, and that allowing the Reich to harvest the population of Vetalia would be allowing the spirit that the republic was founded upon be irreparable eroded. As he was comparing the southern clans to a species of mountain snake, the Supreme Commander paused mid sentence. The crowd watched as he talked quietly to himself, though none found it strange – like almost all of them, Hamish had been implanted with a neural interface, a small device allowing direct communication with certain AICs. Those closest to the stage strained to listen, but were unable to get anything useful from doing so, though they could see an unmistakeably massive grin on their commanders face.

"Sam, stick that on the big screen please." As the Supreme Commander's voice boomed over the raptly attentive audience, the large viewscreens came to life. Several videos were playing showing military vehicles moving en-mass, in different locations and in large number, while others showed drone and satellite footage of a much wider area. "Right Sam, fill them in."

"Thank you Sir. Seventeen minutes and thirty four seconds ago our ambassador to the Imperium of Kylarnatia was informed that said nation was launching an immediate incursion into northern Vetalia for humanitarian purposes. Earlier reports from the special forces regiment stationed in the Imperium's enclave about the massive build up of military forces there – wrongly assumed to have been undertaken for the purpose of a military exercise – show that this operation has been planned for some time. At the moment, we know almost nothing more than the information now available on your terminals, though there's not much more there than what we've just told you."

Hundreds of officers voraciously consumed the scant intel on their personal terminals, drawing audible complaints (much to the amusement of the AIC). The arguments started again, a return to the normalcy of the past nine hours. After a few minutes of pointless back and forth, somebody asked what actions were being taken to gather further information.

"Sir, I can advise that we have followed all standard operating procedures as outlined under section twenty-one of the International Incidents Response Codex. We have also prepared a response outwith the parameters of the Codex for your consideration."

Hushed tones passed between a handful in the crowd, whispers mostly concerning this most recent hint that the 8th gen AICs were able to act beyond their programming restraints and other anecdotes concerning this – "I heard they talk to each other on the back channels, like completely unrelated sites", "Dr. Morrison suspects that the trio at Site 42 have been accessing the internet, and the crazy old duff is claiming that between them they're responsible for over sixty percent of the memes created since they went live".

"Sampson, what response have you prepared?"

"Well Sir, rather than wait for the Imperials to volunteer us full details of their operation, we could take it. ARTURUS would like to preface this with our belief that were we to reveal this ability, there is a high probability that the existence of the 8th Generation Advanced Intelligence Construct would be revealed and that the target would rapidly develop countermeasures. VERONICA has calculated a high percentage probability that we could successfully breach Imperial operational encryption and obtain full access to their communications networks. Such an operation could be undertaken im-"

"You will do no such thing, Seven Six One!" The AIC rankled at the usage of its service number, though knew better than to express this verbally. The interloper had entered the room inconspicuously some time earlier, though had remained unnoticed by the equally shatteringly tired yet raptly attentive council members. As soon as he spoke however, every single pair of eyes in the room were fixed upon him. The man was of medium height and slim build, and he walked carefully towards the stage with the aid of an ornate ebony cane. A crimson beret sat on top of his bald head, his hair having tactically withdrawn many years previously, adorned with several cap badges which had been polished so much that they had lost much detail. His dress uniform was black with red and white facings, though its patches were of the long defunct "Army of the Republic" and while it had clearly been looked after it was starting to show its fifty year age.

The man was Tiberius Vastera, the last Monarch of the Mian Empire, one of the key instigators of the Mian Civil War and founder of the Most Serene Republic's most recent incarnation. After the founding of the Most Serene Republic the first Joint Command Council voted Tiberius to the position of Master M (much to his chagrin), a position that they persisted in electing him to every six years. While the de facto leader of the Most Serene Republic (if such a thing could be said to exist, given the amorphous political state of the Republic), Tiberius on principle refused to use his executive powers outwith the most dire of circumstances. Such a situation had not arisen, and many believed that even if pushed he would go no further than exercising a veto. A veteran and hero of what was widely known to Mians as "The War", Tiberius had decades of education and experience in all matters diplomatic and military, and had spent his youth under the expert tutilide of Dux Imperator Georgius Silvanus in the Imperium of Kylarnatia. His advice was respected among the council as no others was, something which again gave him mild discomfort. "Too many of the old guard are gone, and too many of the new have forgotten the tuition that we paid for in blood" he was often heard as saying.

The seated officers rose as one, snapping smartly to attention. Hundreds of salutes formed with almost robotic synchronicity. The Master M limped quickly towards the stage, the hollow clack of his cane echoing in the otherwise silent briefing room. The wound had plagued him for longer than it hadn't.

***

1989

Three weeks before the end of the Mian Civil War, a joint Mian-Kylarnatian battle group was racing across the seemingly endless Crombie Plains chasing a Monarchist Theatre Group which had been fleeing at full speed for four straight days. During a joint planning session attended by Tiberius and his long time friend Kain Silvanus - the son of Georgius and leader of the Imperium's expeditionary force – a daring and ultimately suicidal Monarchist counter attack penetrated deep into the allied lines. The command group was cut off for nine hours, during which time it was under almost constant air and ground attack, and suffered a casualty rate of more than ninety percent. Twelve hours into the siege, Tiberius led a squad to counter-attack a forward position which had fallen minutes earlier, a task they accomplished at the cost of half of their lives.

Tiberius was shot through the upper chest and thigh during the Monarchists own counter-attack, and was staring down the barrel of the gun as it pointed towards him to finish the job. A squad of Royal Guardsmen moved into the bunker, finishing off several of the wounded Republicans between them and the son of their King. Their leader, a grim looking captain, laughed as he raised his pistol, looking right at the bleeding traitor that lay in front of him.

Gunfire roared. The Guardsmen hesitated for a second, which was all the time it took for the unseen marksmen to mow them down with rapid precise fire. A group of Kylarnatian soldiers pushed into the bunker, silver armour and Horus helmets of the Caesar's Guard shining as they prepared to receive and repel the inevitable next attack. A strong hand gripped his shoulder, its owner a Horus helmeted medic who injected him with something. An unseen but familiar voice spoke with a badly imitated and exaggerated Mian accent. "Och aye loddie, check out the state of yoo! Nae burds will want to set intae yoo lookin like that!". Despite the pain in his leg, Tiberius couldn't help but laugh weakly as Kain stepped into the dim light of the interior and helped the medic move him onto a stretcher. A wall of noise erupted from the weapons of the troops behind them, the light of their gunfire casting light on the vibrant animals pelts adorning their otherwise near-spotless armour.

"You've brought the fucking bullet magnet with you," the Mian pointed behind Kain to a Guardsman carrying the standard of the Caesar, resplendent in purple and gold and with the sigil of the man he came to regard as a father.

Kain grinned, "Well, you know how terrible our foes are with finding their targets. Had to at least make it a fair fight!" He said with a genuine excitement in his eyes as his Guardsmen exchanged a volley of shots with the enemy.

"And it gives them reason to fear." Another, much deeper voice spoke as a giant shadow loomed over the scene. Hyperion entered just behind Kain's remaining Guardsmen and women as they fanned out deeper into the zone of engagement. There seemed to be a genuine pause in the enemy fire as the champion of Caesar came into view, before they all resumed, but seemingly more erratic then the last volley.

Tiberius again couldn't help but laugh, which quickly turned into a coughing fit. A small rivulet of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

"Hah, and what happened to a fair fight?" Tiberius tried to laugh again, but just coughed more blood.

"Well, I never did say it'd last for long. I thought giving them a few seconds would be generous enough." Kain retorted with his usual wise-cracking attitude, seemingly nonplussed by the danger that surrounded him. Yet when he looked back at his friend and saw the dire state he was in, his tone turned far more serious. "Hold on in there, you mad bastard," He said reassuringly to his friend, as he loaded his own assault weapon with his gold-gauntleted hand. "That's two you owe me now."

The concern on his friend's face was the last thing Tiberius seen before the morphia kicked in, and pain melted away into sweet oblivion.

***

2035

Tiberius walked onto the stage where he snapped to attention and returned their salute, inviting them to relax and take their seats. Relaxing himself, the reluctant supreme leader stood patiently as an aide ran on to give him a microphone. Laughing quiet, Tiberius refused it and simply pointed at a point on his neck slightly below his left ear.

"I want to start by thanking you all for doing your duty today to the Republic which you represent," his voice boomed out of the speakers around the room, routed to them via his neural implant, "I know many of you have been here for over twenty hours at this point, and it doesn't look like we're going anywhere soon. It gladdens my heart to see almost every Council member present for this debate, especially those of you who, like myself, travelled from outwith the region. It takes a little less time these days, I'll grant you." Tiberius chuckled, as did many of the seated.

He had been visiting MSNB Sanctuary, the old headquarters of the now defunct alliance known as the Conglomerate. It was almost on the opposite side of the planet, tens of thousands of kilometres away in the dead husk of the region once known as Azhukali. Nominally, the Most Serene Republic was 'keeping the lights on', hoping that one day the alliance would rise from the ashes and march forward once more, however in reality almost none on the council expected this to happen; Sanctuary had excellent air and naval facilities, and offered a secure forward operating base located in the opposite hemisphere. Tiberius had made his first trip to Sanctuary as a newly-minted Rear-Admiral many years previously, a trip which took almost three days via aircraft. His trip today, courtesy of an Mian Space Command T-14 orbital transport rocket, had taken less than three hours.

"Gladened as I am, I can't help but feel a little... disappointed in what I've seen here today. Yet again we find ourselves unable to agree to take a reasonable course of action to contain what any sane person must see is the biggest threat to our Republic since the end of the war." He paused for a few moments, though to some in the crowd it seems like minutes as they shifted under his gaze.

"I walk the pathless path, seeking the gateless gate. With my death I am as a shield for the Republic and it's people. With my life I am as a sword against the tyranny of oppression. With my blood I defend the defenceless and free the unfree. With my suffering, I know all sentient beings to be my comrade." he paused again, for slightly longer this time.

"The Code of the Master M, as laid down more than eight hundred years ago by the man himself. An oath each and every one of you swore when you joined the military. An oath a great number of you appear to have forgotten." Some murmurs erupted, but nobody had the courage to speak out.

"Again, this council meets to discuss the growing threat of the Kraven Reich. Again, this council is presented with evidence that action is necessary. Again," Tiberius was growing louder with each point, looking more and more angry as he did, "this council looks on passively as murder, pillaging, and enslavement are perpetrated on an industrial scale, and does nothing? Are these the actions of one walking the true path, or are they the actions of cowards?"

Tiberius was almost shouting at this point, and many shouts of agreement were heard, mostly originating from the interventionists. A few of the more moderate officers assembled were understandably rankled at being called cowards, however a majority of the abstainers couldn't help but feel shame at the truth (however biased) in their leaders words.

Giving them what seemed like an epoch to ruminate over his last question, he paced around the stage like a hill tiger stalking its prey, limp almost forgotten.

"For twenty years we have told ourselves "we're not ready, now is not the time". A pragmatic approach, but after so many repetitions it is beginning to look dangerously close to appeasement. We know that our comrades in other some other Gothic nations are willing to take a stand against the metal and flesh monstrosities of the Reich. Are we to stand back and watch as others unknowingly uphold the oaths that we have taken? No! Now is the time! We are ready!" Tiberius was animated now, and the officers watched on transfixed as the years seemed to melt away from their supreme commander.

"Brothers! Sisters! Comrades! Mians! The time is now! We must again be the shield and the sword, and live by the Code, or else I fear our Republic will be swept away like flotsam on a windswept shore." He sighed, gathering himself before continuing loudly.

"I propose that with immediate effect the Joint Command Council grant me, in my capacity as The Master M under Article 3 of the Codex Republica executive powers to prosecute whatever action is necessary to contain the Kraven Reich." Cheers and grumbles erupted from different sections of the room. "Those assembled know the reluctance I have in proposing such measures, and my dislike of executive power is not hidden. I will not hide my intentions; I will not use these powers to begin an avoidable war, however I will also not stand by while the people of Vetalia are butchered and turned into chattel. If the motion is passed, I will travel to Kytopia in the hopes of forging an alliance of like minded nations against the greatest danger this region has ever seen, and I will pledge our full strength. If the motion does not pass, I will make the same trip, where I will pledge myself and my men. Any who wish to follow me in doing so will be welcomed. Now, do your duty. We will recess now, and I'll be speaking to a number of you via link. The vote is in four hours. Dismissed!"

The room was ablaze with conversation as officers stood up and filed out to various recess chambers. Rising wearily, The Douglas nodded to Tiberius with a wry smile, and wondered if the speech had been enough. He would find out in four hours.

***

Four hours and fifty-two minutes later Tiberius Vastera, The Master M, took his seat in the suborbital transport vehicle that had brought him here the previous day. Alongside him were his personal guard of ten Republic Special Commandos, who had (after much debate) eschewed their normal power armour and were wearing their dress blacks, and a multitude of intelligence officers and liaison staff. GLADYSS, his personal AIC, announced that lift off was in three minutes. Tiberius slipped off his shoes, loaded a suite of intelligence reports to his link and leaned back into his chair.

The T-14 Orbital Transport Rocket ignited its twenty one engines and rose painfully slowly from the launchpad, gaining speed as it roared above the endless Scotian Highlands. Simultaneously, four similar but smaller shapes reached skywards, forming a distant four-point escort around the transport. These were X-002 Orbital Denial Vehicles, orbit-capable military drones armed with an array of advanced sensors and weaponry, which would escort the transport carrying their nation's leader. The T-14 was fully automated, though both a human pilot and GLADYSS were ready to take control at a moments notice. The drones were slaved to the transport, though prior to take-off the AIC had uploaded fragments of her core programming into the (in her opinion) dumb machines, thus allowing her complete control over them if the situation required it.

The thrust felt by the occupants of the transport lessened as the rocket rose, the thinning atmosphere requiring less thrust to push aside. They felt a jolt as the first stage separated from the upper, and had there been windows to look out of the passengers would have seen it veer slowly to one side before boosting off in the direction of travel (because of the relatively short distance required for intra-regional travel, the first stage was able to detach with more fuel than usual, and so, free of the heavy upper stage, boost itself to the final destination. First stage would land shortly before second stage, where they would be mate and refuelled ready for the return trip.

As the transport was descending, the ship's AI plotting the trajectory needed to land at the authorised location, an urgent intelligence report was forwarded to Tiberius. He was informed of the situation developing in Pax Gothica, and shown video footage of cappers marching out of the Reich's District.

"Gladyss, open me a secure channel to command. Maximum encryption." As a pair of Seraphim air superiority fighters arrived on station to escort the rapidly descending rocket, it connected via satellite with Command Headquarters.

Code: Select all

THE MASTER M

Under executive order 19:

SDI now active. Execute with prejudice.

THE MASTER M

SDI was an acronym used publicly by the Most Serene Republic, typically to refer to the Saorsa Defence Initiative, the plan for the defence of Saorsa District and Pax Gothica from military action. Among the Joint Command Council, however, it referred to the Sea lane Denial Initiative, a plan agreed only minutes after they voted to grant Tiberius executive powers.

The plan detailed an extensive program of interdictions to be carried out by the Most Serene Navy against ships suspected of being used in the transport of slaves. Submarines already at sea were to be redeployed to find and shadow any death ships of the Kraven Reich; carrier air groups, which were present in the seas between the Reich and the Republic in vast numbers, were ordered to assume battle formations and prepare to defend against any aggression; drone carriers and small patrol groups of destroyers and frigates across western Gholgoth were to interdict any Scandinvan or Reich ships suspected of engaging in hostile actions towards third parties.

As these orders filtered out to the tens of thousands of recipients, the full logistical might of the Most Serene Republic was grinding to life. Within a week tens of millions would be mobilised, in the greatest flexing of strength seen by the Republic since its rebirth forty six years ago. Time would tell if it was enough.

***

Saorsa District
Pax Gothica

Less than fifteen minutes after their orders came through, twelve Wildcat helicopters took off from Naval Air Station Saorsa carrying one hundred and twenty heavily armed and armoured Republic Marine Commandos. The grey aircraft flew low over the rooftops of Saorsa District, the Mian enclave in Pax Gothica, the noise from their rotors failing to drown out the blaring alarms that urged military personnel to report to their assembly points and civilians to head for the nearest public shelter. Across the district, hundreds of military police struggled to gain some semblance of control over the panicking crowds, herding them off of the main roads in an effort to clear them for the inevitable military tactic. Fear was rife. The initial complacency that most, assuming that it was yet another drill, had treated the alarms with had faded quickly when faced with scared soldiers shouting at them to move. Only the older civilians, those who couldn't forget the horrors of the war no matter how hard they tried, had the wherewithal to move quickly and calmly to the designated safety areas. For them, the old lesson of speed meaning life and panic meaning death had been learned through blood and fire.

Fighters roared overhead, some escorting the helicopters while other raced off to distant objectives. The Commandos on board the helicopters readied their weapons, half of their transports moving off to link up with the Jagites and Telrosians, while the others were to be dropped at different locations in the cappers path. Orders had been given: do not shoot first, except to prevent civilian casualties.

The die had been cast, and the Master M had placed its bet.

***

West of Vetalia
Gholgoth

SSN 9039 MMS Vicious Bastard, a Culoden-class nuclear attack submarine, moved slowly underneath the waves. It had recently ended an exercise in eastern Gholgoth had been heading to Pax Gothica for rest and resupply when an urgent ELF signal had ordered it to enter the sea lane west of Vetalia and shadow a death ship of the Kraven Reich. The captain had almost sent a message to ask for confirmation, however was wary of transmitting and potentially revealing his position. With only six live torpedoes and four anti-aircraft missiles on board (the rest being dummy practice munitions), the Vicious Bastard set off on the hunt. It didn't take long. The sonar operators were confused at first, and had to ask the computer to analyse it. When the computer proved unable to decipher the noise, the first mate had a go, and went white when he realised what it was. What sounded like thousands of voices crying out in agony, forming a wall of noise that chilled the men and women in the sonar room to the bone. The Vicious Bastard had found her prey, and moved in to set up a firing solution on the death ship.

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”
― Mark Twain

---

Parts of this post were authored by Kylarnatia

[Marquesan]

La Citadelle des Etoiles, Nuku Hiva Capital Island District,
Remire Prefecture, Coastal Marquesan States.
Local Time: 10:00 AM.

The spire chamber was so silent, you could have heard a pin drop outside the closed door.

Inside the room stood the full collection of all twenty-six Commandants-Supérieur representing every branch and echelon of the Forces Marquises aux Armes, every eye transfixed on a massive wall-mounted projector screen, through which the pictures recovered by the morning's Meduza drone mission were panning slowly from important shot to important shot. High definition video taken from the drones overflying the border had been playing all morning since the first streams had come in. The doors had been shut and guarded from the outside since just after sunrise, with the entire cabinet summoned in secret to the capital to convene. The island of Nuku Hiva belonged to a tiny archipelago off the southeastern coast of the mainland; these home islands represented the first lands the ancient Marquesan nomads settled instead of simply putting them to the torch and sword. Nuku Hiva had been one such island, formed from the cinder cone of an ancient, dead volcano. Its long-since quiet lava tubes had been hollowed out from the towering basaltic structure formed into a labyrinthian network of twisting hallways, four elevator shafts drilled straight down the center, with a wide spiral staircase wrapping helically around it to the very top chamber, called the Spire. The spire was typically fifty meters over the cloud level, affording it light that flooded in from its glass and steel roof, but today heavy cloudcover obscured the top of the mountain, leaving the Spire chamber awash in dark, heavy grey snow clouds that beat out the sunlight so that a ring of LED lights around the circular room had to be lit so that the senior military officials could all see their hands in front of their faces.

Along a scrolling marquee at the bottom of the screen was being fed a steady stream of foreign intelligence in text format, detailing the movements of the Death Ship that had left Fortress Norska hours ago. The ashen expressions of the men in the room said what they didn't have to: the Marquesans must again raise their banner and march off to war. Not as before for land or plunder or military dominance, but for the survival of a whole nation and the wider region, in defense against a common enemy.

"The civil war taught us all something valuable, ladies and gentlemen." Archard Delphine, the current head of state representing the civil government was the first to speak in the better part of an hour. He was a slender man, handsome and fit, with broad shoulders and a nicely-groomed reddish blonde beard and a thick head of hair cropped short, all shot through with grey. "When Shogun Akane went to war, against Crontor, and Mahdah, and then again during the Crackdowns, she took us to war for all the wrong reasons. We can not be mired in causes that are unjust, ever again. This, though? This affords us no ambiguity. These signals are clear, the dangers are present. Those Koenigsjagers can all reach our western border on the largely abandoned and intact Vetalian highway system, unobstructed. That death ship is not the only one the Reich owns, surely they will come for us next." He paused to sip red tea from a thick stone half-cylinder cup, made from the same polished black granite as the floor, and set it down on the wooden round center table. He sat, and the Commandants sat with him at their respective seats. The lights brightened and the screen brightened with them. "We can no longer afford to toe the line of appeasement with the Reich. We have been quiet internationally too long, and I know there have been struggles..." His voice tapered off a moment as he glanced the faces of the men and women in the room, reading their expressions before he continued. "But this is the clearest sign that we are directly threatened. Only four of those drones made it back, people. We were relatively certain their radars would not pick up the drones, and it appears we were right, they had difficulties targeting the Meduzas, and the accuracy of their Stratosphere guns was, as you suspected, Commandant Duverger, lacking." Delphine nodded to the Echelon commander of APF-DDR, the branch that had launched the drones earlier in the morning. "The drones we lost..." Archard began typing at his console for a moment and brought up a map of Vetalia. "Were lost here, and here." He pointed with a small handheld laser pointer to two points on the screen." Just south of the Vetalian Navy's 7th Fleet Drydocks. We clearly did not expect the massive reinforcement of the wall fortification between Fortress Arcadia and Vetalia; the heavy air defenses at Staritsa took down the A and B positions; it was necessary to reroute the other four over the drydock to avoid the extremely heavy high-altitude box barrage. I never even knew such a thing was possible." Delphine shook his head with amazement.

"If I may, Primus..." Commandant Renard Perigeaux of the Dragons Voltigeurs, or Dragoons spoke. Perigeaux was of shorter stature, but built like a brick wall, with massive shoulders and Ta Moko tattoos in bluish black on his face, neck and hands. Highly decorated and tenured, Perigeaux was a veteran of four combat deployments, and the deep scar on his face said more for him than the Order of Valor the Shogunate had bestowed upon him before it fell could. The cabinet respected his opinion as one of the most senior members of the military general staff and as someone who had seen the rigors of war firsthand, as had they all.

"Absolutely, Commandant."

"As heavy as those fortifications are, they are completely within range of land based missiles in Bertaut prefecture, they are all within strike range from the sea. That peninsula can and must be breached, simultaneously, from north and south, and I am certain everyone in this room understands what I am about to propose." Commandant Perigeaux typed on his console, and highlighted the Vetalian Navy's 5th and 7th Fleet Drydocks, still in allied hands. "Staging from here, and here, I propose a massive bombardment of the static defenses, especially those damned guns... while we place beachheads here, here, here, and here." He indicated four points on the Vetalian coastline labeled "SPEAR" "PIKE" "SWORD" and "MACE", just east of the line between Fortress Arcadia and Occupied Vetalia, the first two just south of the city of Kondrovo, the other two northeast of the city of Staritsa. "I intend to use Dragoons to hold this inner line, while Hussars and Grenadiers land at the further beachheads where we find from drone imagery that there are suitable civilian docking facilities for Prosperines that appear to have been abandoned after the occupation. When the Hussars move forward to reinforce, Grenadiers will set up Iron Palace batteries near the beachheads, that should provide consistent ground cover for air assets across the entire peninsula."

"Commandant, I'd like to ask the room a question." Commandant Castor Matzelle spoke. Matzelle was now in command of the Marquesan Hussars, but once upon a time, he had shared the same Hellcat flight into Occupied Mahdah with Commandant Perigeaux on a top-secret deployment.

"Certainly, I will yield to Commandant Matzelle."

"Are we to then wait for the Kylarnatians to reinforce us? Hold that line against whatever the Reich can throw at us until the rest of the alliance gets there on the ground?" Matzelle spoke, his eyes transfixed on Perigeaux.

"Sirs, that is exactly what he is proposing." Primus Delphine spoke up. "I agree with him. Of course, your men won't be alone. In the coming hours, we must formulate a plan to protect the ground force from air and sea. This is our task, ladies and gentlemen. From here, there can only be one thought for us, this liberation of Vetalia. We must promise to the Vetalians that we will see every square centimeter liberated, from Balashov to Yelets Granitsa, without exception. We cannot allow the Capitol Police to have Vetalia, we really should have never let it get this far, but that is another story." When Delphine stood, the room stood with him. "I am going to leave, to inform our allies, and draft a declaration. You will report tomorrow morning which units you would order to war and the plan you've conceived. Shade and sweet water to you, Commandants." Delphine strode from the room. When the doors shut, the twenty six of them were left to decide among themselves which units to send into the hazard. The pivotal moment had come to draft a plan the Primus could take to the civil government, to ask for the funding to be drafted for war.

Again, silence filled the chamber like the clouds surrounding the Spire, and the mood was as heavy as the snowfall landing on the sea around the island, and Nuku Hiva's famous black sand beaches.

[The Peninsular]

Frigate F-14
200 km east of Pax

"TS-23 is reporting nothing to report, sir.", one of the other officers in the CIC reported to the commander of the frigate. "Contacts are holding steady." The vessel's captain, a (for a Peninsularian) tall, lanky man with pitch black hair and an unusual three-day beard, leaned back in his elevated chair in the middle of the room and crossed his arms. The CIC of the vessel seriously reminded him of those on the warships he had served on before, with the commanding officer sitting on an elevated position in the middle and his officers at stations all in front of him. The most prominent feature of the whole CIC was the massive main screen, currently displaying a strategic map of their situation.

In its middle, four blue markers were present: One square for the frigate and three triangles for the submarines, of which one was speeding west and already a respectable distance away. TS-23, loaded with equipment for the upcoming fighting in the Gothic capital, had detached from the force an hour before and would arrive there in less than 2 hours. TS-12 and TS-07, the two other Abgrund-class hunter submarines, were busy prowling around the frigate's perimeter like hungry sharks, ever alert. The reason for this became obvious when one looked to the right side of the screen: Rows upon rows of blood-red symbols dotted the sea, indicating the presence of an entire Kraven Naval Arm far east.

A small, yellow symbol popped up on the captain's own console, indicating the arrival of a message. "Is it the signal?", he asked the communications officer, a short woman at a station to his left. "Yes, sir.", she confirmed. "Blue flight is prepping for launch. They want the drones." The captain simply nodded, and gestured to the weapons officer.

From the outside of the ship, it would've seemed like a panel had just fallen off its immaculate grey hull; in reality, the stealth plating had simply been withdrawn, revealing several launch containers behind it. A number of bangs and three seconds later, the plating moved back into place, although its smooth grey color had been tainted with some black burn marks. Already some distance away and rising quickly, four M2 and two M5 UAVs engaged their primary engines, shooting off towards the lights of Pax in the far distance.

"UAVs away.", the weapons officer reported calmly. "Control transferred to local units. We're good to go." The captain, again, simply acknowledged with a nod. He punched some commands into his console, rearranging the main screen. The map now excluded Pax, instead showing the situation in the entire sea. He pointed at a group of green symbols, some distance north-east. A label identified the group as part of the CIN's 2nd Fleet, stalking the Kravenic forces, ready to strike.

"New bearing, 055. Accelerate to flank speed.", the captain ordered on a flotilla-wide channel. The frigate shifted its course, gunning its engines, and deep below, the submarines fell into a wide escort formation. "Shoot the Kylarnatians a message. We're not going to take on Naval Arm North alone."


Flight decks of Torch Building
Skyan district, Pax Gothica

Principal Lieutenant Hellmacher stared out into the distance and took another long drag from his small water pipe, ignoring the annoyed glances from the two pilots of Blue flight standing next to him. "Do you really have to smoke that thing so close to people?", one of them - another Principal Lieutenant whose name Hellmacher couldn't remember - asked, closing his helmet's lower visor to keep the steam away from him. "You're pretending like it's going to poison your lungs.", Hellmacher commented, putting away the pipe and picking up his MPSGH rifle from where it was leaning against one of the fighter maintenance ladders.

"Not pretending.", the pilot retorted. "It wouldn't worry me normally, but with the stuff you put in there-" Hellmacher cut him off with a gesture. "I'm the one who has to go up against cappers, probably. You'll be flying around above all this, so quit complaining.", he asserted, adding a 'Navy buttonpusher' below his breath that the pilot pretended like he didn't hear. The latter seemed to want to respond something, when both their comms units made themselves known.

"All ground forces report to floor 9 for briefing and armaments.", the voice of the platoon commander sounded over the infantry net. "Affirmative, be there in three minutes.", the infantry officer replied, shouldering his rifle and lidclicking his personal scout drones, which had so far been busy making sure none of the civilians walked in on them all of a sudden, to return. The four tiny ball-shaped apparati settled into the armor's back neatly, closing up their storage ports so that it looked like nothing was there. Hellmacher hurriedly left their corner of the flight deck, leaving the pilots to make start preparations.

Blending in with the other Skyan guards, he hurried for the personnel elevators, managing just to fit inside one. The other men inside shuffled around quite a bit - despite being made to look as best as possible like the armor of Torch Building guards, the Peninsularian suits were still rather more bulky. In Hellmacher's opinion, removing such useful things as the reactive shield and reducing the armor thickness had been a stupid decision, but apparently it helped them arouse 'less suspicion' - as if that was something Federal infantry was good at. "That sub better bring some good equipment.", he cursed under his breath.