"There he is."
Kneeling almost completely hidden amongst the tall grass and reeds on the edge of the river, Uemura Akira took aim at his unwitting target. He smiled slightly at the opportunity fate had granted him in this case, carefully centering the target to pull off the perfect shot. One couldn't wait too long, of course, or the window would close, potentially forever. So one had to be decisive, and with that, Uemura made his final decision.
Click.
Kneeling almost completely hidden amongst the tall grass and reeds on the edge of the river, Uemura Akira took aim at his unwitting target. He smiled slightly at the opportunity fate had granted him in this case, carefully centering the target to pull off the perfect shot. One couldn't wait too long, of course, or the window would close, potentially forever. So one had to be decisive, and with that, Uemura made his final decision.
Click.
UPSTREAM FROM SA KRACHOM VILLAGE
THA CHIN PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF MASUKA
The shutter quietly clicked off. Almost as though it heard his tiny man-made sound over the endlessly chirping tropical cicadas, the graceful red-crowned crane turned its head. Another perfect composition. Uemura was so engrossed in his photography that he failed to notice his partner sneaking up on him in the grass, the darker-skinned Masukan man grinning from ear to ear.
"Told you they saw one," Noppachorn Prachachat whispered, eliciting a startled jump from his Yamataian friend, who quickly turned his attention back to the rare bird, one of the national symbols of his Western Escaric homeland.
"What the hell is he doing all the way down here?" Uemura asked rhetorically, spying a pair of the more common local grey-coloured Sarus cranes skulking at the edge of the river that appeared to be avoiding their foreign cousin.
With its natural habitat usually limited to north-western Escar, the red-crowned Yashiman crane typically ranged in an area covering the Yashiman archipelago, Chisei, and the northern parts of Yeongseon. These gracefully tall, white-plumed birds were so appreciated by the people of that region that they made regular appearances in local myths and legends, and were of course were recognised as the national symbols of both Yamatai and Chisei. How this one specimen had managed to find his way so far south, all the way to equatorial Masuka, Uemura wished with every fibre of his being to find out. But of course he would likely never know.
It had been Noppachorn - affectionately called Noppa by his close friends - who had first heard the news from one of the water deliverymen, who had heard it fisherman friend who frequented this river. Apparently the locals had spotted a majestic white crane, which they were treating as a good omen. Taking some time off from their regular jobs at the Masukan Akagi Shinbun office in Lek Thong to go chasing after a bird, a little more digging and a low-resolution smartphone photo by a fisherman confirmed their suspicions, and the pair of wildlife photographers rushed to the area to document the rare sight.
"I don't know, man, but we real lucky today," Noppa sighed, adjusting the brim of his jungle hat. This was in fact the very first time the Masukan native had seen the legendary crane species in person. He had never been overseas once in his 32 years of life, a fact which shocked his cosmopolitan, Niihama-native partner when they first got to know each other almost eight years ago.
Three days of waiting in the area had finally paid off. They were bunked out in a run-down motel in the local village some distance downriver, where there was no electricity and no running water. The Yamataian conglomerate Sukimoto, which had been contracted by the government to build and operate a water purification plant in the area, had cut off the water a while back in response to one of their workers getting murdered on an internet livestream by Masukan radicals. This was also why Uemura kept his Yashiman features hidden behind sunglasses and a dust scarf until they were safely in the wilderness.
Though the locals were reputed around the world for being extremely friendly and hospitable, it certainly did not hurt to be careful. As a news photographer, Uemura had seen both sides of the Masukan coin, and in his twelve years of living here had already seen far beyond the veil that obfuscated naive tourists who never left the vicinity of safe, bustling, stereotypical Lek Thong or Khao Meng. The country really was that irresistibly beautiful, pristine, and exotic that tourists looking for a low-cost alternative to Sahil and Dai Hoa for their 'tropical Escaric getaway' continued to flock to the islands, despite the country continuously topping online lists of most dysfunctional dictatorships. There was some kind of poetic duality in it all that reflected the pettiness of the materialistic 21st century.
Perhaps that could be the foreword of the Masukan nature photography book Uemura planned to publish when he returned to Yamatai next year. He had offered to bring Noppa to move back to Yamatai with him; in Uemura's opinion, the man was an excellent photographer, and his talent was wasted out here endlessly covering one failed government project after another for the Akagi Shinbun. In the end he'd only managed to get the man to promise to come visit once in a while.
Suddenly, the crane began to spread its wings, stirring excitement in Uemura. He had taken photographs of these magnificent birds before, though of course that was back in the ice lakes of Saramosir in Chisei and the snowdrifts of Shiba Province in Yamatai. But here the composition was completely different, with the pure white avian a stark contrast against the vibrant greens and earthy brown tones of the tropical environment. This was truly a rare sight. The crane dashed through the shallow water, wind catching its wings, powerful wingstrokes pulling it into the air. Half of its audience was not impressed, the two sarus cranes nonchalantly.
Uemura smiled to himself. The bird was a Yashiman outsider in a foreign land, just like himself. Though he had come to appreciate, even love, this place and its culture, so much more laid-back than the World's Largest Metropolis back home, the 34 year old photographer always knew he would one day spread his wings and soar off. And that time was probably coming soon.
"Well that's it," the local man sighed, lowering the expensive SeiKen digital-SLR he carried, a gift from his wife on his 30th birthday. Uemura personally preferred Nikko cameras, which were the only things he spent substantial amounts of money on; that and alcohol.
"Yeah. Successful mission," Uemura reached out for a fist-bump from Noppa, who responded in kind. For the eight years since Noppa had been hired by Akagi Shinbun, the two formed the self-proclaimed 'B-Team' of the Akagi Shinbun station's photography department, often going on wild adventures into the countryside chasing after the perfect shots instead of doing their actual job of providing illustrations for the news articles. But they won numerous awards for Akagi Shinbun and specifically the Masukan Station, and Station Chief Ota loved it when his department won awards. So it was all ก็ดี, as the locals said.
"Let's head back to town. Maybe get some shots of the place before we head back," Uemura gestured to the back, creeping silently in the grass to avoid spooking the sarus cranes. He already had more than enough shots of those to fill volumes. Noppa nodded, a smile still plastered on his round face as he slid backwards into the grass, disappearing into the wall of green.
"Told you they saw one," Noppachorn Prachachat whispered, eliciting a startled jump from his Yamataian friend, who quickly turned his attention back to the rare bird, one of the national symbols of his Western Escaric homeland.
"What the hell is he doing all the way down here?" Uemura asked rhetorically, spying a pair of the more common local grey-coloured Sarus cranes skulking at the edge of the river that appeared to be avoiding their foreign cousin.
With its natural habitat usually limited to north-western Escar, the red-crowned Yashiman crane typically ranged in an area covering the Yashiman archipelago, Chisei, and the northern parts of Yeongseon. These gracefully tall, white-plumed birds were so appreciated by the people of that region that they made regular appearances in local myths and legends, and were of course were recognised as the national symbols of both Yamatai and Chisei. How this one specimen had managed to find his way so far south, all the way to equatorial Masuka, Uemura wished with every fibre of his being to find out. But of course he would likely never know.
It had been Noppachorn - affectionately called Noppa by his close friends - who had first heard the news from one of the water deliverymen, who had heard it fisherman friend who frequented this river. Apparently the locals had spotted a majestic white crane, which they were treating as a good omen. Taking some time off from their regular jobs at the Masukan Akagi Shinbun office in Lek Thong to go chasing after a bird, a little more digging and a low-resolution smartphone photo by a fisherman confirmed their suspicions, and the pair of wildlife photographers rushed to the area to document the rare sight.
"I don't know, man, but we real lucky today," Noppa sighed, adjusting the brim of his jungle hat. This was in fact the very first time the Masukan native had seen the legendary crane species in person. He had never been overseas once in his 32 years of life, a fact which shocked his cosmopolitan, Niihama-native partner when they first got to know each other almost eight years ago.
Three days of waiting in the area had finally paid off. They were bunked out in a run-down motel in the local village some distance downriver, where there was no electricity and no running water. The Yamataian conglomerate Sukimoto, which had been contracted by the government to build and operate a water purification plant in the area, had cut off the water a while back in response to one of their workers getting murdered on an internet livestream by Masukan radicals. This was also why Uemura kept his Yashiman features hidden behind sunglasses and a dust scarf until they were safely in the wilderness.
Though the locals were reputed around the world for being extremely friendly and hospitable, it certainly did not hurt to be careful. As a news photographer, Uemura had seen both sides of the Masukan coin, and in his twelve years of living here had already seen far beyond the veil that obfuscated naive tourists who never left the vicinity of safe, bustling, stereotypical Lek Thong or Khao Meng. The country really was that irresistibly beautiful, pristine, and exotic that tourists looking for a low-cost alternative to Sahil and Dai Hoa for their 'tropical Escaric getaway' continued to flock to the islands, despite the country continuously topping online lists of most dysfunctional dictatorships. There was some kind of poetic duality in it all that reflected the pettiness of the materialistic 21st century.
Perhaps that could be the foreword of the Masukan nature photography book Uemura planned to publish when he returned to Yamatai next year. He had offered to bring Noppa to move back to Yamatai with him; in Uemura's opinion, the man was an excellent photographer, and his talent was wasted out here endlessly covering one failed government project after another for the Akagi Shinbun. In the end he'd only managed to get the man to promise to come visit once in a while.
Suddenly, the crane began to spread its wings, stirring excitement in Uemura. He had taken photographs of these magnificent birds before, though of course that was back in the ice lakes of Saramosir in Chisei and the snowdrifts of Shiba Province in Yamatai. But here the composition was completely different, with the pure white avian a stark contrast against the vibrant greens and earthy brown tones of the tropical environment. This was truly a rare sight. The crane dashed through the shallow water, wind catching its wings, powerful wingstrokes pulling it into the air. Half of its audience was not impressed, the two sarus cranes nonchalantly.
Uemura smiled to himself. The bird was a Yashiman outsider in a foreign land, just like himself. Though he had come to appreciate, even love, this place and its culture, so much more laid-back than the World's Largest Metropolis back home, the 34 year old photographer always knew he would one day spread his wings and soar off. And that time was probably coming soon.
"Well that's it," the local man sighed, lowering the expensive SeiKen digital-SLR he carried, a gift from his wife on his 30th birthday. Uemura personally preferred Nikko cameras, which were the only things he spent substantial amounts of money on; that and alcohol.
"Yeah. Successful mission," Uemura reached out for a fist-bump from Noppa, who responded in kind. For the eight years since Noppa had been hired by Akagi Shinbun, the two formed the self-proclaimed 'B-Team' of the Akagi Shinbun station's photography department, often going on wild adventures into the countryside chasing after the perfect shots instead of doing their actual job of providing illustrations for the news articles. But they won numerous awards for Akagi Shinbun and specifically the Masukan Station, and Station Chief Ota loved it when his department won awards. So it was all ก็ดี, as the locals said.
"Let's head back to town. Maybe get some shots of the place before we head back," Uemura gestured to the back, creeping silently in the grass to avoid spooking the sarus cranes. He already had more than enough shots of those to fill volumes. Noppa nodded, a smile still plastered on his round face as he slid backwards into the grass, disappearing into the wall of green.
SUPHAN CAMP, SUPHAN CITY
THA CHIN PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF MASUKA
Corporal Nakanishi Daigo dabbed at the sweat on his forehead with his left sleeve. Walking through the formation of local soldiers, the Yamataian non-commissioned officer wore a sweat-soaked Yamatai Imperial Army mottled camouflage uniform, the blue brassard of the YOCHIBU affixed to his left bicep. YOCHIBU - the Crosswind Region Security Assistance Force - was a multinational coalition headed by the Heian Cooperation Organisation states that aimed to assist Masuka with getting back on its feet after decades of oppressive communist rule and internal violence. After the 2010 invasion that deposed the old regime, YOCHIBU had been working tirelessly for the last 10 years as an omnipresent force to aid internal security, advise the local government in various matters, and generally to improve the livelihoods of the Masukan people.
Which was what the propaganda and the media would tell the world. After ten years of hard work and lots of money from Yamatai, Chisei, Yeongseon, Dai Hoa, and various NGOs, the organisation had not succeeded in over 75% of its goals, operating on a timeline that was repeatedly pushed back over and over. Oppressive communist rule had simply given way to oppressive military rule under a borderline-nutcase dictator that proved increasingly difficult for YOCHIBU to work with, and internal violence never really receded despite constant efforts to battle insurgents and constantly-sprouting rebel groups. The local government increasingly seemed to want to do its own thing without YOCHIBU supervision, but at the same time relied so much on YOCHIBU assistance that they could not ask the foreigners to leave.
Only after recent events had occurred did the controversy surrounding YOCHIBU and the continued HECO involvement in Masuka attain enough public opposition in the various HECO nations to cause a general decrease in YOCHIBU's aims and military presence since 2018. As President-for-Life Kriangsak tightened his grip around his own nation's neck, the people of Western Escar naturally wanted their governments to have nothing to do with it. Even so, over 30,000 coalition troops still remained in Masuka, operating the over 200 YOCHIBU bases and installations, training the National Army of Masuka, and protecting the substantially larger civilian component of YOCHIBU, which still provided government consulting, free healthcare, water purification, and other such services throughout the poorly-developed country.
In Nakanishi's view, life as a coalition trooper in Masuka was simultaneously mundane and nerve-wracking, with equal potential for one to end up endlessly training the hapless conscripts of the National Army or getting into firefights guarding civilian doctors at some aid station in the ass-end of nowhere from ethnic rebels. Even the R&R would become mundane after some time, every third-world village looked the same, the resort city of Khao Meng only had a finite amount of bars and nightclubs, and Lek Thong was the stereotypical smog-filled metropolis that had lots to do - if one could speak Masukan. Eventually, every coalition soldier would ask himself the question; 'is this shithole really worth it?'
As he got the sixteenth Masukan soldier of the day to put his damned finger on the trigger when he wasn't intending to fire the weapon, Nakanishi found himself asking that question once again.
"<No touch. Only when shoot,>" Nakanishi chided the local soldier in broken Masukan, which he had slowly picked up over his fourteen months here. With the 27th Imperial Guards Infantry Battalion just three weeks away from packing up and getting on that chartered flight back to Edajima International Airport, the agreeable climate of Yamatai and everyday food that was not spicy or a type of fried insect were almost in grasp. Just a few more weeks of this bullshit.
The National Army of Masuka was fed by a constant stream of conscripts from all corners of the archipelago, with only a medical screening in place to weed out those truly unable to serve. What the training camps ended up with were a motley bunch that required a lot of training to learn proper military discipline and skills, but this was exceedingly difficult as a lot of them were illiterate and most had a preconceived idea of military life based on pirated Gyunghwan action films. Sure, they wore the same generic woodland camouflage uniforms, and at least this batch had all of their own helmets, but Nakanishi found the soldiers rowdy, unskilled, and highly unprofessional. Quite a few liked to wear aviator sunglasses for some reason, and the amazingly lacking official regulations did not prohibit this, so the YOCHIBU advisors could not do anything about it.
"<Target up!>" The Masukan officer leading the lesson yelled at the front of the training shed, the man looking too fat to pass the Yamatai Imperial Army's basic PT test. The soldiers yelled and raised their Yamatai-manufactured and YOCHIBU-provided Arisaka Type-29 battle rifles from the slung position to the standing-shoulder firing position. Most of the soldiers clearly needed more work to improve their reflexes. Constant drilling was the key.
"<Target down!>"
Constant drilling of the fundamentals, such as not putting the finger on the trigger when not firing.
"<No touch. Only when shoot,>" Nakanishi repeated again to another local soldier, who nodded and gave him a toothless grin. Poor soldiers they may have been, but at least they were willing to learn, and were exceedingly friendly and hospitable. Training them and working alongside them in the field provided small pleasures, even if they tended to do ridiculous things like drink-driving, setting up cooking-fires anywhere they pleased... And randomly abandoning combat situations.
Nakanishi proceeded down the file, giving a wry smile to Superior Private Kudo Nariakira, who was stalking around two rows over. They immediately knew what the other was thinking of; three more weeks until they were back home, two more days to R&R, or forty-five more minutes before this lesson was over. Everything about the Imperial Army was about counting down to the little things that mattered.
"<Five minute break!>" The Masukan officer barked. Almost immediately, any semblance of order was lost from the shed as the formation collapsed. The local troops immediately dropped their weapons to hang loosely on the slings or haphazardly left them around on the ground in a breach of basic weapon safety that Nakanishi had seen far too many times here - though the local NCOs did not seem to care, despite being trained to do exactly that. Most clustered in small circles and sat down, chattering away. Some immediately lit up noxious hand-rolled cigarettes.
Sighing with mixed emotions at it all, Nakanishi made his way out of the training shed, linking up with Kudo, who gulped the water in his canteen.
"Nakanishi, Kudo!" A familiar and shrill voice sounded from behind them. Their platoon commander, Lieutenant Iikubo Shizuko, called out to them as she made her way around the edge of the training shed in that dorky power-walk she was known throughout the battalion for.
"Yeah, ma'am?" Nakanishi tugged at his load bearing vest to let some air in.
"An emergency came up, I need to task you two to do checkpoint duty at Tsu-7 like right now," Lieutenant Iikubo tapped at her smartphone, "apparently some Chiseian cunts in the next detail got ridiculously bad diarrhoea, so we need to top it up ASAP."
"Fucking mainlanders," Kudo grumbled, clipping his canteen back to his webbing. Though they were cutting them down somewhat after the recent draw-down of troops, YOCHIBU still operated a series of random checkpoints along roads across the countryside in an effort to cut down the internal drug trade, something the local authorities were doing frighteningly little about. Sometimes Nakanishi wondered what happened to the majority of the troops he trained, and what the National Army was even doing with al this manpower if it was still so chaotic out there.
"Shit, where the hell's Tsu-7?" Nakanishi asked, wiping the sweat on his forehead again, "who else's on the detail?"
"It's about an hour's drive out. They got like Ichioka and Haga from our platoon, I think I saw Sasaki, Funaki and some other guys from 1st Platoon. The rest is Chiseian guys. Some new Chiseian sergeant's in charge," the bespectacled officer slipped her phone back into her middle magazine pouch, "the convoy's leaving, like, right now in fifteen, so go get your shit. Non-negotiable."
"Yes, ma'am," Nakanishi sighed, slapping Kudo on the back. Kudo just gave his usual wry smile, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
Which was what the propaganda and the media would tell the world. After ten years of hard work and lots of money from Yamatai, Chisei, Yeongseon, Dai Hoa, and various NGOs, the organisation had not succeeded in over 75% of its goals, operating on a timeline that was repeatedly pushed back over and over. Oppressive communist rule had simply given way to oppressive military rule under a borderline-nutcase dictator that proved increasingly difficult for YOCHIBU to work with, and internal violence never really receded despite constant efforts to battle insurgents and constantly-sprouting rebel groups. The local government increasingly seemed to want to do its own thing without YOCHIBU supervision, but at the same time relied so much on YOCHIBU assistance that they could not ask the foreigners to leave.
Only after recent events had occurred did the controversy surrounding YOCHIBU and the continued HECO involvement in Masuka attain enough public opposition in the various HECO nations to cause a general decrease in YOCHIBU's aims and military presence since 2018. As President-for-Life Kriangsak tightened his grip around his own nation's neck, the people of Western Escar naturally wanted their governments to have nothing to do with it. Even so, over 30,000 coalition troops still remained in Masuka, operating the over 200 YOCHIBU bases and installations, training the National Army of Masuka, and protecting the substantially larger civilian component of YOCHIBU, which still provided government consulting, free healthcare, water purification, and other such services throughout the poorly-developed country.
In Nakanishi's view, life as a coalition trooper in Masuka was simultaneously mundane and nerve-wracking, with equal potential for one to end up endlessly training the hapless conscripts of the National Army or getting into firefights guarding civilian doctors at some aid station in the ass-end of nowhere from ethnic rebels. Even the R&R would become mundane after some time, every third-world village looked the same, the resort city of Khao Meng only had a finite amount of bars and nightclubs, and Lek Thong was the stereotypical smog-filled metropolis that had lots to do - if one could speak Masukan. Eventually, every coalition soldier would ask himself the question; 'is this shithole really worth it?'
As he got the sixteenth Masukan soldier of the day to put his damned finger on the trigger when he wasn't intending to fire the weapon, Nakanishi found himself asking that question once again.
"<No touch. Only when shoot,>" Nakanishi chided the local soldier in broken Masukan, which he had slowly picked up over his fourteen months here. With the 27th Imperial Guards Infantry Battalion just three weeks away from packing up and getting on that chartered flight back to Edajima International Airport, the agreeable climate of Yamatai and everyday food that was not spicy or a type of fried insect were almost in grasp. Just a few more weeks of this bullshit.
The National Army of Masuka was fed by a constant stream of conscripts from all corners of the archipelago, with only a medical screening in place to weed out those truly unable to serve. What the training camps ended up with were a motley bunch that required a lot of training to learn proper military discipline and skills, but this was exceedingly difficult as a lot of them were illiterate and most had a preconceived idea of military life based on pirated Gyunghwan action films. Sure, they wore the same generic woodland camouflage uniforms, and at least this batch had all of their own helmets, but Nakanishi found the soldiers rowdy, unskilled, and highly unprofessional. Quite a few liked to wear aviator sunglasses for some reason, and the amazingly lacking official regulations did not prohibit this, so the YOCHIBU advisors could not do anything about it.
"<Target up!>" The Masukan officer leading the lesson yelled at the front of the training shed, the man looking too fat to pass the Yamatai Imperial Army's basic PT test. The soldiers yelled and raised their Yamatai-manufactured and YOCHIBU-provided Arisaka Type-29 battle rifles from the slung position to the standing-shoulder firing position. Most of the soldiers clearly needed more work to improve their reflexes. Constant drilling was the key.
"<Target down!>"
Constant drilling of the fundamentals, such as not putting the finger on the trigger when not firing.
"<No touch. Only when shoot,>" Nakanishi repeated again to another local soldier, who nodded and gave him a toothless grin. Poor soldiers they may have been, but at least they were willing to learn, and were exceedingly friendly and hospitable. Training them and working alongside them in the field provided small pleasures, even if they tended to do ridiculous things like drink-driving, setting up cooking-fires anywhere they pleased... And randomly abandoning combat situations.
Nakanishi proceeded down the file, giving a wry smile to Superior Private Kudo Nariakira, who was stalking around two rows over. They immediately knew what the other was thinking of; three more weeks until they were back home, two more days to R&R, or forty-five more minutes before this lesson was over. Everything about the Imperial Army was about counting down to the little things that mattered.
"<Five minute break!>" The Masukan officer barked. Almost immediately, any semblance of order was lost from the shed as the formation collapsed. The local troops immediately dropped their weapons to hang loosely on the slings or haphazardly left them around on the ground in a breach of basic weapon safety that Nakanishi had seen far too many times here - though the local NCOs did not seem to care, despite being trained to do exactly that. Most clustered in small circles and sat down, chattering away. Some immediately lit up noxious hand-rolled cigarettes.
Sighing with mixed emotions at it all, Nakanishi made his way out of the training shed, linking up with Kudo, who gulped the water in his canteen.
"Nakanishi, Kudo!" A familiar and shrill voice sounded from behind them. Their platoon commander, Lieutenant Iikubo Shizuko, called out to them as she made her way around the edge of the training shed in that dorky power-walk she was known throughout the battalion for.
"Yeah, ma'am?" Nakanishi tugged at his load bearing vest to let some air in.
"An emergency came up, I need to task you two to do checkpoint duty at Tsu-7 like right now," Lieutenant Iikubo tapped at her smartphone, "apparently some Chiseian cunts in the next detail got ridiculously bad diarrhoea, so we need to top it up ASAP."
"Fucking mainlanders," Kudo grumbled, clipping his canteen back to his webbing. Though they were cutting them down somewhat after the recent draw-down of troops, YOCHIBU still operated a series of random checkpoints along roads across the countryside in an effort to cut down the internal drug trade, something the local authorities were doing frighteningly little about. Sometimes Nakanishi wondered what happened to the majority of the troops he trained, and what the National Army was even doing with al this manpower if it was still so chaotic out there.
"Shit, where the hell's Tsu-7?" Nakanishi asked, wiping the sweat on his forehead again, "who else's on the detail?"
"It's about an hour's drive out. They got like Ichioka and Haga from our platoon, I think I saw Sasaki, Funaki and some other guys from 1st Platoon. The rest is Chiseian guys. Some new Chiseian sergeant's in charge," the bespectacled officer slipped her phone back into her middle magazine pouch, "the convoy's leaving, like, right now in fifteen, so go get your shit. Non-negotiable."
"Yes, ma'am," Nakanishi sighed, slapping Kudo on the back. Kudo just gave his usual wry smile, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
OUTSIDE SA KRACHOM VILLAGE, THA CHIN PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF MASUKA
"Then after that, Ota started singing Aikoku Koshinkyoku in the middle of this bar," Uemura laughed, gripping the steering wheel of their beat-up, last-generation Toyotomi-manufactured pickup truck. He took a swig from a 1.5 litre bottle of mineral water with his other hand, keeping a close eye on the intermittently paved road. Potholes were a constant out here.
"And because of this, they called police?" Noppa roared with laughter, shaking his head as he slapped the outside of his passenger-side door.
"No, no, there's more. So after he," Uemura paused as they arrived at a T-junction, a rusted blue sign board denoting in Masukan and Hyokana that Sa Krachom was to the right. He carefully checked for traffic, since too many farmers out here loved to materialise on their overloaded motorcycles out of blind spots. But of course nothing could beat the controlled chaos of Lek Thong's constantly-gridlocked streets and swarms of motorcycles with no concept of traffic safety. It was always a jarring shock for new arrivals so accustomed to the orderliness of Western Escar's metropolises.
"Yeah, so after he finished the song, some old guys at the next table were getting pissed off," the Yamataian man continued, easing his vehicle around the corner, "and then-"
Suddenly, a motorcycle tore past, a siren on it wailing away. Uemura puled the emergency handbrake just in time as a large, mud-stained dump truck followed behind the motorcycle, hurtling past the junction at breakneck speed. Uemura inhaled sharply and leaned back in his seat, glaring at the rear of the truck as it rapidly sped off to wherever it was going. With the speed the heavy vehicle had been travelling at, if they had been just two metres in front, they would probably be dead.
"Fucking hell," Uemura muttered, releasing the handbrake.
Further down the road, the truck suddenly bounced violently as it hit a pothole at its excessive speed. The drastic motion dislodged something, and a strange shape flew out from under the tarpaulin stretched over the truck's hopper, dropping in the middle of the road. Even from this distance, the shape looked somewhat familiar, and very suspicious. The truck and its motocycle escort quickly disappeared from sight over the crest of the hill.
"Hey, you saw that?" Noppa asked, pointing at the object lying in the middle of the road.
"Let's go check it out," Uemura threw the pickup into a sharp turn, proceeding down the road in the opposite direction. As they approached it, Noppa's suspicions were confirmed, eliciting a deep sigh from the man.
It was a human body.
Stepping on the brakes, Uemura was the first one out of the pickup, his camera already at the ready. Noppa came out and knelt next to the deceased young man, who was dressed in a knockoff soccer T-shirt and shorts. There did not seem to be signs of violence on his body, not even gunshots, but the youth was very much dead, his eyes blank. There was no sign of decomposiion either, which meant he had died not long ago. Closing his eyes and saying a prayer for the dead man, Noppa reached out to close the corpse's eyes.
"Don't touch him!" Uemura yelled, slapping away Noppa's hand. He pointed at the foamy saliva dripping out of the man's mouth.
"Look at that, I'll bet he was either poisoned or nerve-gassed. Whatever happened, it wasn't long ago," the Yamataian man stood up and placed his arms on his hips.
"Nerve gas? Is that not illegal?" Noppa queried seriously, rising to his feet.
"Yeah, it's very illegal. Which this country's government doesn't seem to give a shit about," Uemura replied grimly, turning on his camera and taking a few photographs of the body from various angles.
Noppa folded his arms, looking in the direction of the truck. Realising that the truck even had some kind of official escort, and knowing well enough the character of his current government, Noppa seemed to accept the grim implications of what they had discovered.
"I'm willing to bet that that truck wasn't carrying tons of wooden sticks and a single dead body," the Yamataian man finished with his camera, "what do you say we do some investigative journalism?"
"Right behind you as always, man," Noppa replied coolly, "but what we do about the body?"
"We'll wrap it up and take him with us," Uemura decided, "we'll hand it over to YOCHIBU or something. This is gonna be the story of 2020. I mean, since Orda is fucking itself up, I guess Escar has to as well, right?"
Noppa partially smiled grimly at the joke. He pulled out and unfolded the tarpaulin they kept in the back of the pickup, and the two spent several minutes carefully wrapping the body up without touching it. Twenty years ago, Uemura would never have done such a thing, and would probably be puking his guts out at the side of the road. Just like he did the first time he covered a warzone, when he was working in Dai Hoa. Ethnic rebels had clashed with the People's Army of Dai Hoa, and there was corpses all over the place. He had only ever seen dead people on the television before that day. And as he continued to work in the region, the number of corpses he had seen in person just kept climbing.
And now he was outright handling a corpse. This was definitely not what he had in mind when he told the job interviewers he wanted to expand his horizons and try new things. With some effort, the two of them loaded the dead man into the back of the pickup, and secured him with bungee cord. It was impossible to tell that there was a human body under the misshapen tarpaulin on the truck bed, which was good enough for him. They would hand the corpse and whatever information they found to the relevant authorities the moment they met them. Uemura had a few YOCHIBU contacts, maybe they could meet in Suphan.
Getting back into the car and starting the engine, a dangerously determined expression was plastered on the photographer's face. Like a shark smelling blood, Uemura's journalistic instincts were out. This could indeed be the story of 2020, whether it was the government or the rebels or whoever using gas weapons against civilians. Even Noppa could feel the excitement radiating off his partner as he gunned the engine, tearing down the road.
It did not take them long to locate the turning where the truck had gone onto a too-small dirt path leading off the road, with snapped branches and flattened bushes clear evidence that the truck had smashed its way through the vegetation here. Uemura parked the pickup truck along the main road and they dismounted, cameras at the ready. The middle-aged Yamataian man put on his jungle hat, adjusting the brim dramatically with a smirk. Noppa shook his head. Any way to defuse this tense situation, perhaps, with both their hearts pounding and the very real possibility of getting killed if whoever they were searching for was not to be trifled with.
Avoiding the main path, the two pushed through the brush and the trees stealthily. Years of wildlife photography had taught them how to move through nature silently, and in most cases animals were far more difficult to sneak up on compared to people. The omnipresent chirping of the cicadas further helped to mask their movements. It took just fifteen minutes of jungle trekking for them to arrive at what was evidently their destination. Noppa set up with his telescopic lens, while Uemura quickly took a few shots of the overall area.
It was a medium-sized clearing in the middle of the jungle. The big truck was in the middle of the clearing, having recently dumped its contents into a large hole that had been dug on the left side. Uemura already knew what would be in the hole. Hanging around the clearing were a bunch of soldiers, most of which wore gas masks, lending credence to the gas attack theory. Dressed in those distinctive black, white and grey 'urban digital' uniforms, the men toting Altiplano-made assault rifles were clearly part of President-for-Life Kriangsak's personal army, the notorious Elephant Corps.
"I fucking hate these guys," Noppa grumbled, muttering some expletives in Masukan.
When HECO invaded Masuka in 2010, deposing the old socialist government, General Kriangsak Chattichai was quick to defect from the People's Army, bringing a cadre of loyal officers and some units with him. When that slippery man, to nobody's surprise, was placed in command of the Transitional Government by the YOCHIBU, he brought his cadre of officers into his new political party, while those masses of troops formed the core of a new army, loyal only to now-President Kriangsak. With YOCHIBU keeping their eyes on the National Army, Kriangsak needed a force capable of doing the things that would make even the old socialist premier Kraprayoon turn in her grave... And her regime was often called the Era of Blood.
Where the National Army was a force of poor conscripted novices led by corrupt and unskilled officers, the Elephant Corps was an elite fighting force allegedly trained by foreign mercenaries. They did the dictator's dirty work, and they did it well, leaving a trail of blood across the countryside that they funded with drug manufacturing and sales. The worst part was that these were all known facts, and nobody in this godforsaken world seemed to be willing to do anything about it.
"Well at least now we know who the bad guys are," Uemura remarked, taking a few photographs of the machine-gun armed pickup trucks parked on the far side of the clearing. A group of Elephant Corps troopers were sitting around a campfire near the vehicles, smoking and eating.
"We always knew that," Noppa grunted, "I photograph grave."
The spryer Masukan man crept through the underbrush, disappearing behind a fallen log. Uemura squatted in his position, zooming in as far as he could on the group at the vehicles. There were four of them having their meal, laughing and joking around despite being just metres away from a mass grave of their own making. Another five or six were milling around the grave, gas masks on. One of them in particular stood out, wearing a crimson beret over a Chiseian-style gas mask with the full-face visor. From just a few minutes of observation, Uemura realised the guy really had a penchant for waving his handgun around.
Regretting not bringing a more powerful lens, Uemura shifted his position to get a better vantage point. From where he was, there was a steep slope where the vegetation ended. He leaned against a thin tree to get a better shot of the dumper truck, perhaps get some licence plate number, if that could help YOCHIBU.
With a splintering sound, the tree suddenly buckled and gave way. Evidently, some part of it had started rotting, and Uemura's 70 kilos was too much for whatever was left to take. Just barely suppressing a yell, Uemura scrambled to grab onto anything with his left arm, his right instinctively pulling his camera to his chest protectively. Grabbing only air, the Yamataian man fell over and slid down the incline, managing to grab onto a root at the last moment before he reached the bottom of the hill. He almost breathed a sigh of relief, before realising that he was entirely exposed.
"Oi!" One of the soldiers suddenly yelled from all the way across the clearing, yelling something rapidly in Masukan. In a second, all attention was immediately on this random Yamataian cameraman holding onto a root at the side of a hill. For a split second that seemed to last for an hour, nothing happened.
Thinking quickly, Uemura pulled himself up using the root and scrambled back up the hill on all fours. Thankfully it hadn't rained for a few days, and the ground was relatively dry. Half a second later, the Elephant Corps began solving their problem in the way they knew best; automatic gunfire echoed over the cicadas and bullets started bursting through the foliage and impacting the ground all around him. Grabbing onto whatever roots, rocks, or branches he could, Uemura finally returned to his original vantage point, where Noppa came vaulting over the fallen log.
"<What the fuck happened?>" Noppa yelled in Masukan, pulling Uemura to his feet and dragging him a few metres into the jungle.
Bullets were still tearing through the foliage all around them as the two pushed through the vegetation on the way back to the main road, though they quickly left the gunfire behind. After what felt like hours of rushing through the dense vegetation, the pair finally burst out into the main road, a bunch of cuts and scrapes on the exposed parts of their bodies to show for it. Then they both held up their cameras.
Noppa laughed in relief. One fist-bump later, the two walked back to their pickup, thankfully still parked where they left it. Getting into the driver's seat, Uemura started the engine. Noppa walked to the other side of the vehicle and opened the passenger door.
Suddenly, loud machine gun fire echoed across the main road, almost silencing the cicadas entirely. Uemura instinctively ducked, the dull sounds of bullets hitting or ricocheting off the pickup's metal echoing after the burst. From the passenger side, Noppa cried out and almost fell onto the road. Reaching out for his friend with his left hand, Uemura grabbed the Masukan's arm and dragged him into the vehicle, Noppa maintaining just enough consciousness to pull the door closed. Blood was spurting out of a nasty exit wound on his upper right chest.
"<Fucking drive!>" Noppa gurgled, coughing up blood. After releasing the parking brake, Uemura hit the accelerator as he grabbed the towel off of the dashboard with his left hand, thrusting it onto Noppa.
"<Press it! You know what to do!>" Uemura ordered in Masukan, returning his hands to the steering wheel as he glanced behind. One of the Elephant Corps technicals was in pursuit, one of the soldiers manning the machine gun as they came after him. Just before he turned back to focus on the road, Uemura saw the second technical bounce out of the jungle path, skidding onto the main road and joining the chase.
Shifting gears, Uemura threw the pickup into a right turn down the next junction, whipping past the neat rows of trees in a palm oil plantation. The technicals followed some distance behind, slowly but surely closing the gap. The sound of their machine guns chattering away continuously echoed, but nothing was hitting his vehicle. They were probably moving too fast and erratically for the gunners to hit anything smaller than a warehouse.
"<Stay with me, Noppa!>" Uemura yelled at his friend, who was gasping for air and pressing onto his wound with the blood-soaked towel for dear life. After another left turn, the plantation suddenly disappeared, replaced with singe-storey houses. Uemura pounded on the horn as he tore past the large courtyards of these multi-generational dwellings. The Elephant Corps didn't care that they were moving through a populated area, and the machine gun fire continued. He didn't have any exit strategy in mind, and his only hope was that they would suddenly run into some YOCHIBU troopers at a medical station or something.
Following the low houses, Uemura almost sideswiped a motorcycle as he squeezed through a narrow road between brick houses, emerging onto a main thoroughfare in this village, or town. Taking a sharp left turn and barely avoiding a collision with another car, he barely registered that there was a KazokuMart here, another sign of Yamataian global corporate expansion. The KazokuMart's windows burst into shards of glass as the two technicals emerged from the side road, one of them attempting to shoot him without a care for the dozens of civilians going about their daily business here. As panicking people began to clear from the roads, Uemura gunned the engine and overtook a truck carrying a large amount of chickens.
Rushing past the typical shophouses and open-air markets of these rural towns, Uemura's heart skipped a beat as he realised he had reached East Suphan town upon reading a signboard. That meant they were just a few kilometres away from Suphan City, safety at the YOCHIBU installation there, and of course medical aid for Noppa. Swerving to overtake a sedan and then dodging three motorcycles, Uemura cursed in Yashiman, looking in his rear view mirror to see the technicals gaining on him. Those foreign mercenaries had probably taught them how to drive tactically, and this traffic was not helping him to get away.
Uemura took the next right turn off the main road, skidding onto an unpaved downhill path that led into a floodplain covered with rice paddies. The truck bounced dramatically as they rolled over a pothole, eliciting a scream from the increasingly delirious Noppa, who appeared to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Uemura was no medical practitioner, and his friend looked to be on the edge of death. He yelled a few more curses in Yashiman as the technicals again began opening fire, now that they had a clear line of sight. A few bullets pinged off the back of the pickup.
Pulling the handbrake and powersliding around a corner between the paddies in a move he had learned from playing Touge-Ou: Toyotomi Kaminari 86 at the arcade during his teenaged years, Uemura looked in the rear view mirror to see one of the technicals almost overshoot and roll into the water-filled rice fields. Shifting gears and accelerating down the relatively straight path, Uemura kept an eye on the main road to the left. He had to head towards Suphan. The evidence they carried, and his best friend's life, depended on it.
Up ahead, the road once again re-entered the jungle. Narrowing his eyes, Uemura jammed his foot on the accelerator.
"And because of this, they called police?" Noppa roared with laughter, shaking his head as he slapped the outside of his passenger-side door.
"No, no, there's more. So after he," Uemura paused as they arrived at a T-junction, a rusted blue sign board denoting in Masukan and Hyokana that Sa Krachom was to the right. He carefully checked for traffic, since too many farmers out here loved to materialise on their overloaded motorcycles out of blind spots. But of course nothing could beat the controlled chaos of Lek Thong's constantly-gridlocked streets and swarms of motorcycles with no concept of traffic safety. It was always a jarring shock for new arrivals so accustomed to the orderliness of Western Escar's metropolises.
"Yeah, so after he finished the song, some old guys at the next table were getting pissed off," the Yamataian man continued, easing his vehicle around the corner, "and then-"
Suddenly, a motorcycle tore past, a siren on it wailing away. Uemura puled the emergency handbrake just in time as a large, mud-stained dump truck followed behind the motorcycle, hurtling past the junction at breakneck speed. Uemura inhaled sharply and leaned back in his seat, glaring at the rear of the truck as it rapidly sped off to wherever it was going. With the speed the heavy vehicle had been travelling at, if they had been just two metres in front, they would probably be dead.
"Fucking hell," Uemura muttered, releasing the handbrake.
Further down the road, the truck suddenly bounced violently as it hit a pothole at its excessive speed. The drastic motion dislodged something, and a strange shape flew out from under the tarpaulin stretched over the truck's hopper, dropping in the middle of the road. Even from this distance, the shape looked somewhat familiar, and very suspicious. The truck and its motocycle escort quickly disappeared from sight over the crest of the hill.
"Hey, you saw that?" Noppa asked, pointing at the object lying in the middle of the road.
"Let's go check it out," Uemura threw the pickup into a sharp turn, proceeding down the road in the opposite direction. As they approached it, Noppa's suspicions were confirmed, eliciting a deep sigh from the man.
It was a human body.
Stepping on the brakes, Uemura was the first one out of the pickup, his camera already at the ready. Noppa came out and knelt next to the deceased young man, who was dressed in a knockoff soccer T-shirt and shorts. There did not seem to be signs of violence on his body, not even gunshots, but the youth was very much dead, his eyes blank. There was no sign of decomposiion either, which meant he had died not long ago. Closing his eyes and saying a prayer for the dead man, Noppa reached out to close the corpse's eyes.
"Don't touch him!" Uemura yelled, slapping away Noppa's hand. He pointed at the foamy saliva dripping out of the man's mouth.
"Look at that, I'll bet he was either poisoned or nerve-gassed. Whatever happened, it wasn't long ago," the Yamataian man stood up and placed his arms on his hips.
"Nerve gas? Is that not illegal?" Noppa queried seriously, rising to his feet.
"Yeah, it's very illegal. Which this country's government doesn't seem to give a shit about," Uemura replied grimly, turning on his camera and taking a few photographs of the body from various angles.
Noppa folded his arms, looking in the direction of the truck. Realising that the truck even had some kind of official escort, and knowing well enough the character of his current government, Noppa seemed to accept the grim implications of what they had discovered.
"I'm willing to bet that that truck wasn't carrying tons of wooden sticks and a single dead body," the Yamataian man finished with his camera, "what do you say we do some investigative journalism?"
"Right behind you as always, man," Noppa replied coolly, "but what we do about the body?"
"We'll wrap it up and take him with us," Uemura decided, "we'll hand it over to YOCHIBU or something. This is gonna be the story of 2020. I mean, since Orda is fucking itself up, I guess Escar has to as well, right?"
Noppa partially smiled grimly at the joke. He pulled out and unfolded the tarpaulin they kept in the back of the pickup, and the two spent several minutes carefully wrapping the body up without touching it. Twenty years ago, Uemura would never have done such a thing, and would probably be puking his guts out at the side of the road. Just like he did the first time he covered a warzone, when he was working in Dai Hoa. Ethnic rebels had clashed with the People's Army of Dai Hoa, and there was corpses all over the place. He had only ever seen dead people on the television before that day. And as he continued to work in the region, the number of corpses he had seen in person just kept climbing.
And now he was outright handling a corpse. This was definitely not what he had in mind when he told the job interviewers he wanted to expand his horizons and try new things. With some effort, the two of them loaded the dead man into the back of the pickup, and secured him with bungee cord. It was impossible to tell that there was a human body under the misshapen tarpaulin on the truck bed, which was good enough for him. They would hand the corpse and whatever information they found to the relevant authorities the moment they met them. Uemura had a few YOCHIBU contacts, maybe they could meet in Suphan.
Getting back into the car and starting the engine, a dangerously determined expression was plastered on the photographer's face. Like a shark smelling blood, Uemura's journalistic instincts were out. This could indeed be the story of 2020, whether it was the government or the rebels or whoever using gas weapons against civilians. Even Noppa could feel the excitement radiating off his partner as he gunned the engine, tearing down the road.
It did not take them long to locate the turning where the truck had gone onto a too-small dirt path leading off the road, with snapped branches and flattened bushes clear evidence that the truck had smashed its way through the vegetation here. Uemura parked the pickup truck along the main road and they dismounted, cameras at the ready. The middle-aged Yamataian man put on his jungle hat, adjusting the brim dramatically with a smirk. Noppa shook his head. Any way to defuse this tense situation, perhaps, with both their hearts pounding and the very real possibility of getting killed if whoever they were searching for was not to be trifled with.
Avoiding the main path, the two pushed through the brush and the trees stealthily. Years of wildlife photography had taught them how to move through nature silently, and in most cases animals were far more difficult to sneak up on compared to people. The omnipresent chirping of the cicadas further helped to mask their movements. It took just fifteen minutes of jungle trekking for them to arrive at what was evidently their destination. Noppa set up with his telescopic lens, while Uemura quickly took a few shots of the overall area.
It was a medium-sized clearing in the middle of the jungle. The big truck was in the middle of the clearing, having recently dumped its contents into a large hole that had been dug on the left side. Uemura already knew what would be in the hole. Hanging around the clearing were a bunch of soldiers, most of which wore gas masks, lending credence to the gas attack theory. Dressed in those distinctive black, white and grey 'urban digital' uniforms, the men toting Altiplano-made assault rifles were clearly part of President-for-Life Kriangsak's personal army, the notorious Elephant Corps.
"I fucking hate these guys," Noppa grumbled, muttering some expletives in Masukan.
When HECO invaded Masuka in 2010, deposing the old socialist government, General Kriangsak Chattichai was quick to defect from the People's Army, bringing a cadre of loyal officers and some units with him. When that slippery man, to nobody's surprise, was placed in command of the Transitional Government by the YOCHIBU, he brought his cadre of officers into his new political party, while those masses of troops formed the core of a new army, loyal only to now-President Kriangsak. With YOCHIBU keeping their eyes on the National Army, Kriangsak needed a force capable of doing the things that would make even the old socialist premier Kraprayoon turn in her grave... And her regime was often called the Era of Blood.
Where the National Army was a force of poor conscripted novices led by corrupt and unskilled officers, the Elephant Corps was an elite fighting force allegedly trained by foreign mercenaries. They did the dictator's dirty work, and they did it well, leaving a trail of blood across the countryside that they funded with drug manufacturing and sales. The worst part was that these were all known facts, and nobody in this godforsaken world seemed to be willing to do anything about it.
"Well at least now we know who the bad guys are," Uemura remarked, taking a few photographs of the machine-gun armed pickup trucks parked on the far side of the clearing. A group of Elephant Corps troopers were sitting around a campfire near the vehicles, smoking and eating.
"We always knew that," Noppa grunted, "I photograph grave."
The spryer Masukan man crept through the underbrush, disappearing behind a fallen log. Uemura squatted in his position, zooming in as far as he could on the group at the vehicles. There were four of them having their meal, laughing and joking around despite being just metres away from a mass grave of their own making. Another five or six were milling around the grave, gas masks on. One of them in particular stood out, wearing a crimson beret over a Chiseian-style gas mask with the full-face visor. From just a few minutes of observation, Uemura realised the guy really had a penchant for waving his handgun around.
Regretting not bringing a more powerful lens, Uemura shifted his position to get a better vantage point. From where he was, there was a steep slope where the vegetation ended. He leaned against a thin tree to get a better shot of the dumper truck, perhaps get some licence plate number, if that could help YOCHIBU.
With a splintering sound, the tree suddenly buckled and gave way. Evidently, some part of it had started rotting, and Uemura's 70 kilos was too much for whatever was left to take. Just barely suppressing a yell, Uemura scrambled to grab onto anything with his left arm, his right instinctively pulling his camera to his chest protectively. Grabbing only air, the Yamataian man fell over and slid down the incline, managing to grab onto a root at the last moment before he reached the bottom of the hill. He almost breathed a sigh of relief, before realising that he was entirely exposed.
"Oi!" One of the soldiers suddenly yelled from all the way across the clearing, yelling something rapidly in Masukan. In a second, all attention was immediately on this random Yamataian cameraman holding onto a root at the side of a hill. For a split second that seemed to last for an hour, nothing happened.
Thinking quickly, Uemura pulled himself up using the root and scrambled back up the hill on all fours. Thankfully it hadn't rained for a few days, and the ground was relatively dry. Half a second later, the Elephant Corps began solving their problem in the way they knew best; automatic gunfire echoed over the cicadas and bullets started bursting through the foliage and impacting the ground all around him. Grabbing onto whatever roots, rocks, or branches he could, Uemura finally returned to his original vantage point, where Noppa came vaulting over the fallen log.
"<What the fuck happened?>" Noppa yelled in Masukan, pulling Uemura to his feet and dragging him a few metres into the jungle.
Bullets were still tearing through the foliage all around them as the two pushed through the vegetation on the way back to the main road, though they quickly left the gunfire behind. After what felt like hours of rushing through the dense vegetation, the pair finally burst out into the main road, a bunch of cuts and scrapes on the exposed parts of their bodies to show for it. Then they both held up their cameras.
Noppa laughed in relief. One fist-bump later, the two walked back to their pickup, thankfully still parked where they left it. Getting into the driver's seat, Uemura started the engine. Noppa walked to the other side of the vehicle and opened the passenger door.
Suddenly, loud machine gun fire echoed across the main road, almost silencing the cicadas entirely. Uemura instinctively ducked, the dull sounds of bullets hitting or ricocheting off the pickup's metal echoing after the burst. From the passenger side, Noppa cried out and almost fell onto the road. Reaching out for his friend with his left hand, Uemura grabbed the Masukan's arm and dragged him into the vehicle, Noppa maintaining just enough consciousness to pull the door closed. Blood was spurting out of a nasty exit wound on his upper right chest.
"<Fucking drive!>" Noppa gurgled, coughing up blood. After releasing the parking brake, Uemura hit the accelerator as he grabbed the towel off of the dashboard with his left hand, thrusting it onto Noppa.
"<Press it! You know what to do!>" Uemura ordered in Masukan, returning his hands to the steering wheel as he glanced behind. One of the Elephant Corps technicals was in pursuit, one of the soldiers manning the machine gun as they came after him. Just before he turned back to focus on the road, Uemura saw the second technical bounce out of the jungle path, skidding onto the main road and joining the chase.
Shifting gears, Uemura threw the pickup into a right turn down the next junction, whipping past the neat rows of trees in a palm oil plantation. The technicals followed some distance behind, slowly but surely closing the gap. The sound of their machine guns chattering away continuously echoed, but nothing was hitting his vehicle. They were probably moving too fast and erratically for the gunners to hit anything smaller than a warehouse.
"<Stay with me, Noppa!>" Uemura yelled at his friend, who was gasping for air and pressing onto his wound with the blood-soaked towel for dear life. After another left turn, the plantation suddenly disappeared, replaced with singe-storey houses. Uemura pounded on the horn as he tore past the large courtyards of these multi-generational dwellings. The Elephant Corps didn't care that they were moving through a populated area, and the machine gun fire continued. He didn't have any exit strategy in mind, and his only hope was that they would suddenly run into some YOCHIBU troopers at a medical station or something.
Following the low houses, Uemura almost sideswiped a motorcycle as he squeezed through a narrow road between brick houses, emerging onto a main thoroughfare in this village, or town. Taking a sharp left turn and barely avoiding a collision with another car, he barely registered that there was a KazokuMart here, another sign of Yamataian global corporate expansion. The KazokuMart's windows burst into shards of glass as the two technicals emerged from the side road, one of them attempting to shoot him without a care for the dozens of civilians going about their daily business here. As panicking people began to clear from the roads, Uemura gunned the engine and overtook a truck carrying a large amount of chickens.
Rushing past the typical shophouses and open-air markets of these rural towns, Uemura's heart skipped a beat as he realised he had reached East Suphan town upon reading a signboard. That meant they were just a few kilometres away from Suphan City, safety at the YOCHIBU installation there, and of course medical aid for Noppa. Swerving to overtake a sedan and then dodging three motorcycles, Uemura cursed in Yashiman, looking in his rear view mirror to see the technicals gaining on him. Those foreign mercenaries had probably taught them how to drive tactically, and this traffic was not helping him to get away.
Uemura took the next right turn off the main road, skidding onto an unpaved downhill path that led into a floodplain covered with rice paddies. The truck bounced dramatically as they rolled over a pothole, eliciting a scream from the increasingly delirious Noppa, who appeared to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Uemura was no medical practitioner, and his friend looked to be on the edge of death. He yelled a few more curses in Yashiman as the technicals again began opening fire, now that they had a clear line of sight. A few bullets pinged off the back of the pickup.
Pulling the handbrake and powersliding around a corner between the paddies in a move he had learned from playing Touge-Ou: Toyotomi Kaminari 86 at the arcade during his teenaged years, Uemura looked in the rear view mirror to see one of the technicals almost overshoot and roll into the water-filled rice fields. Shifting gears and accelerating down the relatively straight path, Uemura kept an eye on the main road to the left. He had to head towards Suphan. The evidence they carried, and his best friend's life, depended on it.
Up ahead, the road once again re-entered the jungle. Narrowing his eyes, Uemura jammed his foot on the accelerator.
CHECKPOINT TSU-7, OUTSIDE EAST SUPHAN TOWN
THA CHIN PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF MASUKA
The convoy of olive-green Yamataian utility vehicles came to a stop at the checkpoint, which was a portable affair consisting of water-filled barricades, sandbags, two utility vehicles with machine guns, and a few collapsible tents at the side for shelter. The blue YOCHIBU flag flew from the side of one of the tents, and a large banner proclaimed that this was a routine security checkpoint and demanded all vehicles on the road stop to be inspected by the YOCHIBU troopers. Heavy foliage covered both sides of the two-lane dirt road, providing some measure of shade except during high noon.
Out here in the sticks, the largest threat was usually boredom. That and narco-rebels tearing through the place with drug-filled minivans.
"Yo, Asano," Nakanishi fist bumped his friend from the 3rd platoon as he dismounted from the vehicle, "anything exciting happen?"
"You know, the usual. Some fucking farmer with a truck full of chickens showed up and Sergeant Tsugunaga made us check all of the chicken cages," Corporal Asano replied, gesturing nonchalantly, "the fuck are you here, weren't you were on the training detail?"
"Some Chiseians got diarrhoea or some shit," Nakanishi jerked his chin in the direction of the Chiseian sergeant Kawamura, who was approaching his Imperial Army counterpart from the previous detail with a clipboard and the paperwork to take over the checkpoint for the next twelve hours. Sergeant Tsugunaga Haruto was from 1st Platoon, and was well-known as a by-the-book hardass.
"Hey, everyone quiet down," Sergeant Tsugunaga suddenly ordered. Nakanishi's first instinct was to cynically assume that this was just another episode of Sergeant Tsugunaga's obsession with 'tacticality', but then started to hear it. The faint but familiar sound of gunfire could be heard sporadically from somewhere beyond the trees. The mood immediately shifted, and the YOCHIBU troopers instinctively moved to their tactical positions, checking their weapons as they moved.
Suddenly, a white Toyotomi pickup truck burst out of a side road, bouncing precariously and throwing up a cloud of dust as it slid across the road, before its wheels found traction and the truck continued hurtling towards the checkpoint. Rushing out to the forward station, Sergeant Tsugunaga and the Chiseian sergeant waved their red light wands and arms respectively with wide movements to signal the vehicle to stop. Recognising a probable suicide car bomb, the experienced YOCHIBU soldiers raked their charging handles, ejecting the weapon chamber flags and chambering live rounds.
From the same junction that the white pickup had emerged from, two machine-gun armed technicals just as suddenly turned onto the road. The rear technical almost rolled over due to the momentum, the hideous large-squared 'digital' camouflage scheme and the crest emblazoned on the hoods marking these as Elephant Corps vehicles. YOCHIBU was always wary of the Elephant Corps, and almost-lethal clashes between the two had occurred in the past, mostly due to the Elephant Corps' overzealousness in their role as the thug army of President Kriangsak. When the front technical fired its machine gun with wild inaccuracy, the YOCHIBU troopers began picking targets.
Tires crunching against the dirt road, the pickup skidded to a stop just metres from the checkpoint and a man opened the driver's door and stumbled out, hand raised, yelling something. The Chiseian sergeant signalled for two men to move to secure the civilian, while Sergeant Tsugunaga rushed around the pickup to confront the frantically braking Elephant Corps technicals, aggressively gesturing to his blue armband with his light-wand.
"Uemura Akira! Civilian photographer for Akagi Shinbun!" The civilian's yells were finally intelligible, "my friend needs medical attention now! He's a local employee of Akagi!"
Once the technicals reached a stop, the doors opened and the Elephant Corps soldiers piled out, brandishing Altiplano-made assault rifles and taking up firing positions behind their vehicles. A lanky officer wearing a red beret started shouting at Sergeant Tsugunaga, gesturing at the civilian vehicle they had been chasing. He pulled his pistol out and started advancing aggressively towards Sergeant Tsugunaga in a way that oddly reminded Nakanishi of Lieutenant Iikubo's power-walking.
"<Sir, stop right there!>" Sergeant Tsugunaga shouted in Masukan, then ordered in Yashiman, "I need a perimeter around this vehicle now, move it up!"
Nakanishi gestured to Kudo, Ichioka and Haga to move up, vaulting over the sandbag wall and sprinting up to Sergeant Tsugunaga's position, dropping to a kneeling firing position and picking a target. The three privates arrived alongside him shortly after, while Asano and a couple of Chiseians quickly took up the left flank as well. It had been extremely fortunate that this incident occurred during the handover; the YOCHIBU troopers outnumbered the Elephant Corps militia two-to-one.
The Elephant Corps officer yelled a long and angry string of Masukan, pointing at the Yamataian civilian Uemura, who the Chiseian sergeant was escorting back behind the barricades. Sergeant Tsugunaga held his ground, stowing the light-wand, then gripping his rifle at his hip. The angry Masukan soldier suddenly pointed his pistol at Sergeant Tsugunaga, prompting the Yamataian NCO to drop to his knee while taking aim on the officer with his rifle in one well-drilled, swift motion.
"<Sir, do not come any closer,>" Sergeant Tsugunaga ordered with finality.
With the cicadas droning on in the background, both sides remained almost perfectly still, weapons trained on each other. A bead of sweat rolled down Nakanishi's face as he maintained his aim on the Elephant Corps machine gunner's chest. The Masukans were much more jumpy, some of them occasionally switching targets, but exhibiting stable firing stances and small arms fundamentals that those National Army recruits would never hold.
After what seemed like an hour, the Masukan officer put down his pistol and spat on the ground. Shoving the ancient Gaangi gun into its holster, he made a rotating hand gesture and barked orders to his men, who quickly piled into their vehicles under the vigilant aim of the YOCHIBU troops. With one final hateful glare, the officer entered the front passenger seat of one of the technicals before the vehicles surged back down the road in a cloud of dust. Only after the technicals were fully out of sight did Sergeant Tsugunaga give the hand signal for the soldiers to stand down.
Nakanishi scrambled to his feet, letting his rifle hang by the sling as he wiped off the sweat accumulating on his face. Sergeant Tsugunaga gently smacked Nakanishi's arm, shaking his head while smiling in some mixture of relief and something else. Three of the Chiseians had loaded the local man from the passenger seat onto a stretcher and were moving him back behind the barricade. Despite the large amount of blood he had lost, the Chiseian combat medic said that he would live. The bullet missed everything important, but clipped a vein.
Sergeant Tsugunaga raised one hand to wave at the Chiseian sergeant Kawamura, who was watching over the Yamataian civilian. The middle-aged man gave no resistance, drinking from Kawamura's water canteen. Bizarrely, a corpse was also unleaded from the vehicle, something which Nakanishi had lots of questions about, but he kept silent next to Sergeant Tsugunaga. For all that man's annoyingly straight-laced tendencies, not many people had the balls to stand up to a 9mm barrel in the face, Nakanishi admitted to himself.
"Yo, Kawamura, I'll take over from here," Sergeant Tsugunaga swung his rifle over his back and extended a hand to Sergeant Kawamura, "we'll take them back to Suphan with us. This is gonna be one hell of a report."
"Maybe command will finally give us something more than a couple of 12.7s and sandbags for these checkpoints," Sergeant Kawamura joked darkly, shaking his counterpart's hand firmly before casting his gaze at the man Uemura, "fucking hell, you've got a lot of questions to answer."
Uemura raised his digital camera weakly, staring into the distance with a cold expression. He inhaled sharply and looked up at his fellow Western Escaric citizens, giving them a grim half-smile that somehow sent chills down Nakanishi's spine.
"And there's gonna be a lot of questions coming."
Out here in the sticks, the largest threat was usually boredom. That and narco-rebels tearing through the place with drug-filled minivans.
"Yo, Asano," Nakanishi fist bumped his friend from the 3rd platoon as he dismounted from the vehicle, "anything exciting happen?"
"You know, the usual. Some fucking farmer with a truck full of chickens showed up and Sergeant Tsugunaga made us check all of the chicken cages," Corporal Asano replied, gesturing nonchalantly, "the fuck are you here, weren't you were on the training detail?"
"Some Chiseians got diarrhoea or some shit," Nakanishi jerked his chin in the direction of the Chiseian sergeant Kawamura, who was approaching his Imperial Army counterpart from the previous detail with a clipboard and the paperwork to take over the checkpoint for the next twelve hours. Sergeant Tsugunaga Haruto was from 1st Platoon, and was well-known as a by-the-book hardass.
"Hey, everyone quiet down," Sergeant Tsugunaga suddenly ordered. Nakanishi's first instinct was to cynically assume that this was just another episode of Sergeant Tsugunaga's obsession with 'tacticality', but then started to hear it. The faint but familiar sound of gunfire could be heard sporadically from somewhere beyond the trees. The mood immediately shifted, and the YOCHIBU troopers instinctively moved to their tactical positions, checking their weapons as they moved.
Suddenly, a white Toyotomi pickup truck burst out of a side road, bouncing precariously and throwing up a cloud of dust as it slid across the road, before its wheels found traction and the truck continued hurtling towards the checkpoint. Rushing out to the forward station, Sergeant Tsugunaga and the Chiseian sergeant waved their red light wands and arms respectively with wide movements to signal the vehicle to stop. Recognising a probable suicide car bomb, the experienced YOCHIBU soldiers raked their charging handles, ejecting the weapon chamber flags and chambering live rounds.
From the same junction that the white pickup had emerged from, two machine-gun armed technicals just as suddenly turned onto the road. The rear technical almost rolled over due to the momentum, the hideous large-squared 'digital' camouflage scheme and the crest emblazoned on the hoods marking these as Elephant Corps vehicles. YOCHIBU was always wary of the Elephant Corps, and almost-lethal clashes between the two had occurred in the past, mostly due to the Elephant Corps' overzealousness in their role as the thug army of President Kriangsak. When the front technical fired its machine gun with wild inaccuracy, the YOCHIBU troopers began picking targets.
Tires crunching against the dirt road, the pickup skidded to a stop just metres from the checkpoint and a man opened the driver's door and stumbled out, hand raised, yelling something. The Chiseian sergeant signalled for two men to move to secure the civilian, while Sergeant Tsugunaga rushed around the pickup to confront the frantically braking Elephant Corps technicals, aggressively gesturing to his blue armband with his light-wand.
"Uemura Akira! Civilian photographer for Akagi Shinbun!" The civilian's yells were finally intelligible, "my friend needs medical attention now! He's a local employee of Akagi!"
Once the technicals reached a stop, the doors opened and the Elephant Corps soldiers piled out, brandishing Altiplano-made assault rifles and taking up firing positions behind their vehicles. A lanky officer wearing a red beret started shouting at Sergeant Tsugunaga, gesturing at the civilian vehicle they had been chasing. He pulled his pistol out and started advancing aggressively towards Sergeant Tsugunaga in a way that oddly reminded Nakanishi of Lieutenant Iikubo's power-walking.
"<Sir, stop right there!>" Sergeant Tsugunaga shouted in Masukan, then ordered in Yashiman, "I need a perimeter around this vehicle now, move it up!"
Nakanishi gestured to Kudo, Ichioka and Haga to move up, vaulting over the sandbag wall and sprinting up to Sergeant Tsugunaga's position, dropping to a kneeling firing position and picking a target. The three privates arrived alongside him shortly after, while Asano and a couple of Chiseians quickly took up the left flank as well. It had been extremely fortunate that this incident occurred during the handover; the YOCHIBU troopers outnumbered the Elephant Corps militia two-to-one.
The Elephant Corps officer yelled a long and angry string of Masukan, pointing at the Yamataian civilian Uemura, who the Chiseian sergeant was escorting back behind the barricades. Sergeant Tsugunaga held his ground, stowing the light-wand, then gripping his rifle at his hip. The angry Masukan soldier suddenly pointed his pistol at Sergeant Tsugunaga, prompting the Yamataian NCO to drop to his knee while taking aim on the officer with his rifle in one well-drilled, swift motion.
"<Sir, do not come any closer,>" Sergeant Tsugunaga ordered with finality.
With the cicadas droning on in the background, both sides remained almost perfectly still, weapons trained on each other. A bead of sweat rolled down Nakanishi's face as he maintained his aim on the Elephant Corps machine gunner's chest. The Masukans were much more jumpy, some of them occasionally switching targets, but exhibiting stable firing stances and small arms fundamentals that those National Army recruits would never hold.
After what seemed like an hour, the Masukan officer put down his pistol and spat on the ground. Shoving the ancient Gaangi gun into its holster, he made a rotating hand gesture and barked orders to his men, who quickly piled into their vehicles under the vigilant aim of the YOCHIBU troops. With one final hateful glare, the officer entered the front passenger seat of one of the technicals before the vehicles surged back down the road in a cloud of dust. Only after the technicals were fully out of sight did Sergeant Tsugunaga give the hand signal for the soldiers to stand down.
Nakanishi scrambled to his feet, letting his rifle hang by the sling as he wiped off the sweat accumulating on his face. Sergeant Tsugunaga gently smacked Nakanishi's arm, shaking his head while smiling in some mixture of relief and something else. Three of the Chiseians had loaded the local man from the passenger seat onto a stretcher and were moving him back behind the barricade. Despite the large amount of blood he had lost, the Chiseian combat medic said that he would live. The bullet missed everything important, but clipped a vein.
Sergeant Tsugunaga raised one hand to wave at the Chiseian sergeant Kawamura, who was watching over the Yamataian civilian. The middle-aged man gave no resistance, drinking from Kawamura's water canteen. Bizarrely, a corpse was also unleaded from the vehicle, something which Nakanishi had lots of questions about, but he kept silent next to Sergeant Tsugunaga. For all that man's annoyingly straight-laced tendencies, not many people had the balls to stand up to a 9mm barrel in the face, Nakanishi admitted to himself.
"Yo, Kawamura, I'll take over from here," Sergeant Tsugunaga swung his rifle over his back and extended a hand to Sergeant Kawamura, "we'll take them back to Suphan with us. This is gonna be one hell of a report."
"Maybe command will finally give us something more than a couple of 12.7s and sandbags for these checkpoints," Sergeant Kawamura joked darkly, shaking his counterpart's hand firmly before casting his gaze at the man Uemura, "fucking hell, you've got a lot of questions to answer."
Uemura raised his digital camera weakly, staring into the distance with a cold expression. He inhaled sharply and looked up at his fellow Western Escaric citizens, giving them a grim half-smile that somehow sent chills down Nakanishi's spine.
"And there's gonna be a lot of questions coming."