Battle Hymn of the Republic [Earth II]

[Gzazerakh]

Wednesday 13 October 1993, 0400 Central Africa Time

Theodossius Strakitzi lit another cigarette as the sun climbed in the rearview mirror. Eight hours they had been on the road, since leaving Eldriopol at 20:00 the night before; Strakitzi had slept about four of them. They aimed to make it to Egzrera with the city asleep. Not that anyone in Egzrera slept these days. The symphony of bombings, gunfire, and propaganda loudspeakers was more than enough to keep most people up, and the capitol’s state of semi-siege ensured that there were always guards awake.

He was tired, but energetic, and the nicotine brought him new life. After dinner in Eldriopol, the mixed-ethnicity band of defectors, mercenaries, and expats had loaded up their fleet of de funct tanks and four-by-four utility vehicles for the long march west. Eldriopol, the Italian-heavy Red Sea capitol of Gzazerakh’s Christian-majority breakaway region, had for years hosted the exiles of the RevKom-dominated interior. There, flush with covert operations funds from the European Social Confederation, they had trained… and waited. Within the past two years, the tenor of Islamist violence in Egzrera had reached a fevered, and apparently indefatigable, crescendo. The aptly-named Operation Scipio was coming to fruition. Italian-funded terrorists had weakened the already poorly-legitimated RevKom to the breaking point. Now, it was time to return Gzazerakh to its rightful rulers.

Strakitzi checked his watch. They should be rolling up on the Blue Nile, and beyond it, southern Egzrera, within an hour and a half. By his calculations, their allies in the national military should be just now stirring, preparing to take control of an archipelago of urban bases that would see thirty percent of the city under Free Korps control by their arrival.

Theo was himself an Eldriopol native, and had only been to Egzrera a few times in his life. Though ethnically Gzazerakhi, his first name reflected the European milieu that all residents of Eldriopol, even Muslim indigenes, were steeped in. Like many of the Eldriopol population in the Korps, he had signed on out of boredom and promises of both glory and riches. You see, the victors of the yet-to-be-waged Last Battle of Egzrera would have access to substantial oil revenue and the staffing of the new army. Though Eldriopol offered a life as a fisherman or naval merchant, he was from a lowborn family and wanted more. The primary constituency in the Free Korps was, of course, exiled military defectors who had survived the purges and had no truck with Kommunism. Then, there were the indigenous professional, bourgeois expatriates who had offered their talents for far higher fees in Rome and Constantinople over the past few years. They, too, had come to claim the top rungs of their nation’s leadership, and victory over Kommunism. Lastly were the largely-European mercenaries—the flotsam and excess human capital that had been generated by decades of warfare between the Mediterranean Social Confederation and the Arab Socialists. Supplementing all three of these factions were the “coastals”—pejoratively oft-called the “colonials”—who, like Strakitz, were natives of Egzrera’s breakaway and Western-aligned Red Sea coast, regarded by some as a country in its own right.

Several cars ahead of Strakitzi’s in the convoy sat Tselios Zureiy. Right-hand man to General Votsin Kzarandrei, the last twenty-four hours had felt like a rendezvous with destiny. How many months had he and The General spent in foreign capitols, cajoling diplomats, dilettantes, and deputy directors? Acquiring illicit and covert funds to cap the intelligence operation of the century? Zureiy, though a native of the desert interior and a Muslim, was light-skinned, and, in civilian clothes, was passable enough on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. In such a guise, he had heard the thinly-veiled views of what the “Euros” thought ought to be done with Gzazerakh. “Scorch it… make it so not another damned revolutionary comes wandering out of that Hell hole.” “No, you’ve got it all wrong. The place is a wreck. Time to finally assert Roman dominion. Get our own guy in there. Then we’ll have whatever we need, and they’ll finally have competent leadership.” Zureiy knew that, at best, this operation was an attempt by the Euros to reclaim the territory so wrongly denied them forty years before. This was why Tselios had not slept a wink the entire journey—not that he found such likely in the noisy convoy anyway—someone had to be on the alert as a legion of Gzazerakhi patriots volunteered to fight side-by-side with Euros for control of his country.

Strakitzi’s cigarette had run out. He resisted the urge to light another. Within two hours, Egzrera would be on fire, and he needed the carton in his bag to last.

[Gzazerakh]

Wednesday 13 October 1993, 0415 Central African Time

Shafir Tsarkas threw himself out of bed, fitfully shaking sleep from his limbs. Four hours’ sleep—that’s all it had been. In concert with his comrades, he threw on his field uniform and slung his rifle over his right shoulder. He muttered a short prayer before he, and the troop, were off.

It was still dark when his unit filed onto the Pakhrava Boulevard from inside School No. 10, the abandoned educational facility that had housed them the past three months. He saw others from his precinct headquarters—School No. 10’s official name—streaming out behind them, disappearing into the night. They all had their orders. Sergeant Kharpashch was clear on this; as with any military operation, each cog must fulfill its assigned role. He knew some would be heading south, to secure the border there, while others saw to—internal duties.

Shafir’s unit quickly found the northern border of their precinct—Pakhrava Boulevard, bisected east-to-west by Tzilaziz Avenue. To the north, Tsarkas’ precinct bordered an Islamist-friendly borough, and, as such, all side streets had been plugged using garbage, rubble, and literal brick-and-mortar installations. The territory they patrolled, one in a dense, North African urban maze, lacked a major thoroughfare, and Pakhrava was the closest thing to a primary artery by which the borough was tied to the city at-large. The street had already been piled high by sandbags and temporary concrete barriers, leaving a narrow, winding path by which one might enter or exit. On an elevated platform, they found the troops they “relieved”—fast asleep. A member of Shafir’s unit climbed the three steps up to the platform, nudging both with the barrel of his gun until they rejoined the world of the living. “Relief’s here,” their captor grunted. Immediate confusion—it was still night, and they had expected to wake well before 0600.

The soldiers were relieved of their weaponry and offered the chance to join the “treason” to reclaim Egzrera from the communist defilers—or die. “It’s treason then,” one muttered, and they assented to helping however they could. An easy choice to make.

To the south, things were going as planned. Sergeant Kharpashch’s commandos had taken control of the command and communications center in the headquarters; meanwhile, the checkpoint farther down Pakhrava was under the rebellion’s control, and the mosque was being reopened.

All around, the majority of soldiers confronted with the new management accepted it easily; ten years of conscription policies had created a military ripe with discontent. Mass conscription had been phased out after the war of independence, and Gzazerakh had by-and-large successfully skirted military conflict in a world rife with war. What draft system had remained was a token of a time past and served primarily to give the officer corps a population to lord over. After the left-wing military government, the Revolutionary Kommittee (“RevKom”), had successfully displaced constitutional government in 1978, this had changed. In a few short years they had invited an Islamist insurgency in the provincial country west of the Nile. Mass conscription was soon to follow in the name of patriotism and “the revolution”. Shafir Tsarkus’ number had come up a mere six months prior, and following a rushed two-month training program, he had found himself effectively an urban police officer, tasked with maintaining order in his corner of the capitol city of Egzrera. Discontent with the regime ran through each barracks compound like a disease.

Regime loyalists were to be found primarily in those soldiers and petty officers whose fortunes had soared in the wake of purges and the “generals’ exodus” that had followed the revolution. A generation of aspiring leaders had been granted a crucial leg up and intended to maintain their positions. The task of Tsarkus and other soldiers under Kharpashch’s command was not to fight the populace, or even the Islamists—“They will have their time,” the Sergeant had assured them—but the RevKom loyalists. It was for this reason that soldiers were now made to stand guard at the border to the neighboring Strafeltzi borough. Lieutenant Graveltzish, the precinct commander there, owed his career to the RevKom and was known for indoctrinating his troops.

Alongside military loyalists were the small cells, styled as “precinct kommittees” by RevKom, that functioned as both the so-called cadres of a sham ruling party, and as a sort of group of political commissars. They were primarily staffed by a combination of would-be left-wing intellectuals and sycophants. Most of the uniformed military despised them. The kommittee headquarters had been ransacked the night before and addresses for all members obtained; they, too, were dragged into the square in front of School No. 10.

As morning came, events within the neighborhood played out like a political drama. Kharpashch’s troops herded the few RevKom loyalists they had found—and those hostages they knew could not be trusted—into the square in front of School No. 10. Despite it being very early, the commotion had aroused attention, and a small crowd was gathering, peering from alleyways and from behind local landmarks at the important matters of state unfolding before them.

A little after 0600, a soldier came running from the school and whispered something in the Sergeant’s ear. Kharpashch smiled from underneath his mustache. He withdrew some papers from his jacket, unfolding them. “To all assembled here—civilians, soldiers of the Republic of Gzazerakh, and traitors to the constitution—I have been instructed to inform you that a dispatchment of soldiers led by General Kzarandrei has reached the city gates and is announcing the restoration of constitutional government. Traitors are, as per our laws, sentenced to death. In the absence of a judicial system, I have been entrusted with such powers.” Reading off a litany of offenses, including “crimes against humanity” and “continued participation in a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution,” Kharpashch then proceeded to execute each prisoner with a bullet to the head, fired by him personally. Blood began to stain the cuff of his right sleeve. As Shafir heard the echoes of the last gunshot—the last of seventeen—he breathed a sigh of relief that it had not been worse. Suddenly, he heard a rumbling. Thunder? Why? No- shells. Mortars. The cavalry had arrived.

[Gzazerakh]

Wednesday 13 October 1993

The initial invasion had been easy. Soldiers had revolted in the precinct controlling the southernmost bridge across the Blue Nile into Egzrera. This was not intended to involve heavy artillery—at the insistence of General Ksarandrei—and as such there were few worries about infrastructural integrity in the crossing.

The small mortar shells heard across the city minutes after the crossing were not the Free Korps’ work. Ksarandrei, who some had described as more a philosopher than a soldier, was adroit enough to avoid shelling the homes of those he would claim to be liberating. Rather, several RevKom loyalist night patrols, having surmised what had been happening across the city the past few hours, had panicked. Counterinsurgency protocols—loosely enforced as they were—be damned. This was an existential fight.

The Free Korps nevertheless made their way steadily north on Moshkhat Avenue, which ran northwest with the Blue Nile ever to its right. The low-lying, low-density, and relatively wealthy riverfront areas fell easily even when they encountered active resistance. Nevertheless, the real challenge—both tactically and strategically—would be the “dense interior” of the urban jungle. Egzrera is a large city even by Western metrics, and at its widest point is over 20 kilometers across. The point at which Ksarandrei’s first battalions had crossed the river was still nearly 15 kilos from the city center. The “spine” of Egzrera consisted of factories fading into multi-story apartment blocks and then office buildings, running south-to-north through the city and meeting the city center at the fork where the Nile split. This posed several challenges.

For one, it constituted terrain where Ksarandrei’s troops—who, by contrast, were on largely open ground—were at a tactical disadvantage. Additionally, the denser areas concentrated Egzrera’s proletariat and sub-proletariat. This invited two types of political extremism—both RevKom supporters and the Islamist insurgency had recruited heavily from slums, with some differentiation by type of work performed and recency of migration from the countryside. Though the General, well behind the front lines, was personally seeing to the recruitment and defection of clerics, the insurgents were at best a wildcard while the RevKom’s labor militants posed a substantial practical threat. In addition, approaching the city center from the south with enemy combatants comfortably situated to their west would be suicide.

In accordance with the plans they had been given, the “spine” was encircled to its east, west, and south by the end of the day, the low-lying suburbs in all areas having made easy conquest by the Free Korps; the city center could afford to wait. And meanwhile, the General’s long-laid schemes were coming to fruition. Across the city, mosques were reopening and clerics were declaring the return of the free practice of Islam. The long-suffering devout had become the shock troops of democracy, with fighting taking place between and within apartment blocks at a scale unprecedented in the insurgency. Military loyalties within the spine were also a patchwork; precinct commanders need not reflect the biases of the local populace and vice-versa. This nevertheless left patches of Free Korps-allied “constitutionalist” strength within a region riven between political Islam and kommunisim. As the day ended, the atmosphere took on that of a siege. Constitutionalist-controlled precincts throughout the day had seen to their own security, and only when night fell did they go on the offensive. Labor militants, local kommittee members, and loyalist troops had been worn out by the day’s killing, and the slums had begun settling into an uneasy silence.

[Gzazerakh]

Wednesday 13 October 1993, 23:15 Central Africa Time

Julia Tsenyats gritted her teeth as she heard the explosion several floors below. Shouting indicated that the door had been breached. So, this was what it meant to die for your country, she thought. Though such a stance might find her in the minority in 1993, Julia was proud that she had stood with the revolution until the end. For her, the 1978 had meant the official end of the veil, reproductive freedom, and the opening of the workforce to women in ways never before imagined in Gzazerakh. She had participated in these newfound freedoms fully, first leading a precinct council in the university housing district, then joining the diplomatic corps after graduation.

Were this the ancien regime, even a career in the foreign service would have left her a secretary. Instead, she had served as a professional diplomat for ten years, representing the revolution abroad. Emergency domestic spending and a collapse in the petroleum market had seen her recalled home. With gender equality the law of the land and the military in need of bodies, she became one of the ten percent of the nation’s female soldiers, and rose quickly. This was distinctly less glamorous work, she had decided, but she had decided long ago that she would do anything for freedom.

“That’s it,” she thought, “the fascists are here, and they’ll exterminate us like rats.” She checked her ammunition again, and looked around. The apartment she had styled her headquarters had once belonged to a family. Now, it had become a sprawl of cords, punctuated by the occasional comm equipment apparatus. She radioed HQ, “Oppfor has breached Zendava apartment block. Preparing for engagement.” She did not wait for a reply. Instead, she hurried out, dispatching what troops remained in the hall to either stairwell. Already, the air had become a cacophony of fire as the fascist militia made contact with loyalist troops in either stairwell. Passing an apartment door, left ajar, Julia remembered the families that had once lived here—before the insurgency had made her home city a hellhole.

When the civil war had reached Egzrera, it had torn the city apart, with each apartment building—Hell, each floor—a unit for the taking. The Zendava apartment block occupied the center of a labor-heavy inner-city district. It had been a bedrock of loyalty to the regime and had produced recruits for both the military and the informal pro-government street gangs that fought head-to-head with the Islamists. Nevertheless, the last six months had seen families steadily fleeing. Enough was enough, and many apartment buildings across the city had been reduced to fortresses where once they had housed thousands of families. Julia recalled one little girl, perhaps six, whose family had left in June. She had only spoken to the girl a few times, but her parents had both worked in the factory district to the south. Julia had forgotten the child’s aspiration, but she remembered vividly telling herself: this is what she fought for. The reactionaries would see her wedded, pregnant, and veiled at sixteen. Julia had almost suffered the same fate herself.

Having dispatched the last of her troops, Julia and two of them sprinted towards the east stairwell. Already, the sound of gunfire was growing ever louder. She arrived at the landing in time to see two soldiers fall right before her eyes. She produced her weapon and fired over the rail, but it was no use. Even as a feeling of invincibility overtook her and bullets whizzed past, she felt the wetness growing in her left shoulder. The fascists had rounded the bend a floor below and even as she turned, she was struck in the side, and dropped her firearm. In a bid of desperation, she reached with her right hand toward her chest, groping—but no grenade was to be found. There was to be no glorious suicide. Simple martyrdom would have to do, she thought, as she screamed, lunging forward at her killers.

~~~

"Sweet victory," thought Theodossius Strakitzi as he and two of his brothers-in-arms strolled into the makeshift "headquarters" for the Zendava apartment block. The conquest had been easier than expected. He noted more senior members of his platoon remarking at the enemy's apparent ammunition shortages and low levels of personnel. This place had been manned by a skeleton crew. Per his instructions, Strakitzi rooted through the filing cabinets--nothing of note. He was unsurprised. In as insecure an environment as this, it made little sense to write anything down pertaining to intelligence. Nevertheless, he noted the channel the radio was tuned to, and the voice emitting from it. "Reinforcements unavailable," were the two words he made out through the static. He smiled, and slapped his chest, finding after a few moments the pocket where he had stowed his cigarettes. Lighting it, he heard the radio operator's calls of desperation at repeatedly finding no answer. He and the others were given little time to rest on their laurels, however. What few residents that remained in this building, and throughout the sector, were likely regime loyalists. If lucky they would find them bitter but acquiescent. Nevertheless, if the stories about political "street gangs" were to be believed, then this was hardly the end of the fight.

A commotion outside drew all three soldiers' attention. Loath to rush into enemy fire, they simply readied themselves listening to the slap of bare feet and what they assumed was a battle cry before someone lunged into the room, large wrench clutched in their left hand. All three fired. Simple shots, clean. The body fell dead to the ground, the wrench clattering to the floor a few feet away. It was a boy, probably fifteen. Strakitzi would have been horrified, twenty-four hours before. Instead, he snorted in distaste. Even before he heard the shouted commands from down the hall, he knew they would be checking every single room for weaponry.

As it turned out, civilian disruption was to a minimum, at least when they were within the building. Regime-aligned civilians lacked access to a lot of weaponry, if only because what resources were available generally went to the formal military first. Nevertheless, Strakitzi was told by a fellow soldier that they might face a hail of garbage, stones, and even furniture if they tried to enter any of the surrounding buildings on foot. In this respect, it seemed Zendava was uniquely positioned to captain the district--large and imposing, it took up an entire street block and thus had no directly adjacent buildings. It was unreachable from every roof, and in most cases several feet higher than them. This had not saved the loyalist troops inside, however, and Strakitzi made sure to remind himself of that. What mattered, in overall operation terms, was that the primary enemy garrison for the district had been pacified. It would not do to waste time on searching every single civilian residence for the hundreds of apartments around them. Zendava was staffed with a small police force and Strakitzi found himself among the soldiers filing down the stairs and, enduring the occasional rock or wastebin hurled from above, on northward.

[Layarteb]

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Wednesday, October 13^th, 1993 | 08:00 hrs [UTC+2]

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Egzrera, Sudan | Consulate of the Empire of Layarteb
15° 31' 35" N, 32° 36' 29" E

The cacophonous symphony of destruction that was Gzazerakh's ongoing civil war was not new music to the Layartebians housed in the Egzrera consulate. In fact, it had become commonplace background music for the Layartebians who continued to go about their day-to-day work tasks. Sleeping at night at been difficult at first but - as with everything - they adapted and soon the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire at night became nothing more than "white noise." For the first few months, the consulate was open for business but all of that had changed in the past two months when the consulate started operating "by appointment only" and then not at all in the past two weeks, the gates shut and barred with a sign indicating that consulate services were shut down until further notice. No date for the resumption of services was given since no one could know the outcome of the country's civil war or when it would end. In Eldriopol, the consulate remained open however, which hardly made the Layartebian presence in Egzrera the most tolerable.

The sitting government had objected when the Empire opened its second consulate in the port city, even more so when the Empire provided clandestine funding to breakaway region. The only reason the sitting government had not outright thrown out the Layartebians was that the consulate in Eldriopol did not have an ambassador nor could it conduct the same level of services that the consulate in Egzrera could conduct. It was all just wordplay on the diplomatic level but it mattered, legally speaking. Outright, the Layartebians told the government that they needed to monitor the activities of the Italians in the breakaway region, a not far-flung excuse given the animosity between the two nations. Yet it didn't sit well with the government, not that the Empire wished to make friends out of them either. After all, the "RevKom" - as they called themselves - sat ideologically opposite of the Empire. The Layartebian presence in Egzrera was as much for espionage as it was for diplomacy. The government knew it but they also knew they could run their own schemes against Layarteb.

When indications of the civil war reached Egzrera first fell upon the desk of Layartebian intelligence personnel, they were nearly dismissed outright. Two months ago, the officers who'd seen the probability as low were kissing their dependents goodbye as non-essential personnel were evacuated. A request to abandon the consulate was dismissed outright by Layarteb City and thus there remained around forty Layartebians. The normal ten to twenty natives who assisted hadn't been allowed through the gates for the past two weeks, as much for security as for their own safety. There was no telling just what the rebellious parties thought of the Layartebian presence or what they would do. The last thing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to explain was why native Gzazerakhi citizens were being called "collaborationists." Was there a threat against the consulate? There was always a threat, as Layarteb City explained.

Now, on this morning, the situation on the ground was rapidly evolving. If there was an end in sight it might have been ushered in by today. Eldriopol had communicated that a sizeable column of rebel forces was moving towards Egzrera the night before; after all, the Layartebians had a stake in their success. The fall of the RevKom was not necessarily bad though what influence Rome would have on the country should General Kzarandrei be successful remained to be seen. The Layartebians just hoped to be able to influence him and whatever groups rose to take power enough that they would not outrightly side with Rome. It wasn't going to be an easy matter. The rebels, which had departed early in the evening, had reached the outskirts of the capital before dawn and now that the sun had risen, news was flowing about the possibility of mass defections. It was enough to put the consulate on alert, not that they hadn't been since the fighting first broke out in the city. What this simply meant was that security was increased.

Of the forty persons at the consulate, thirteen were diplomatic personnel, seven were maintenance personnel, ten belong to the intelligence community, and ten provided for security. In truth, everyone could handle a weapon, especially if the consulate came under siege but the diplomatic and the maintenance staff, which accounted for half of the persons, should not be armed as it would violate diplomatic conventions. No one attacking the consulate would understand however that the very attack violated the same conventions. They would simply propagandize that no one in the compound was a civilian if they were armed. It was ironic of course but not making anyone comfortable.

The layout of the compound was such that it was relatively easy to defend. It was ten-and-a-half acres with high walls and only one gated entrance. Razor wire topped the walls. There were six buildings: the main building, the on-site residences, an auxiliary building for maintenance personnel, a vehicle maintenance building for the motor pool, the security building, and the intelligence building. Save for the residence, only the security, main, and intelligence buildings were two stories high. The residence was five stories high for it had to provide for housing for all of those who worked at the compound. It was thus the largest building of all of them, housing sixty apartments, enough for the staff and visitors. Egzrera wasn't a posting cleared for children so there were no amenities for children, thus anyone working there had to be either single or married but without children, a requirement that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was very draconian about enforcing with such postings.

The consulate and the Layartebian mission to Gzazerakh was led by Ambassador Thomas James, a fifty-two-year-old, career diplomat. When the government was drafting men to go to Venezuela, he was in the Peace Corps, teaching English and science to the poorer nations of the world. When the revolution happened, he was a foreign service officer in Bactria. There was no purge following the Emperor's ascension to power and so Thomas James didn't have to worry about his past voting preferences, which put the very people in power who betrayed the nation. They of course came up in his background review prior to promotion to ambassador but his career was one of merit. His knowledge of the continent, of the people, and of the language especially made him an ideal candidate and so he came to replace his predecessor in 1991. Nowadays he wondered if he would be the last ambassador to Gzazerakh given how violent the war had been.

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[Gzazerakh]

Thursday, 14 October 1993, 05:00, Central Africa Time

General Alghani Tsolonskoi awoke with a start. Glancing at the clock in his makeshift chambers, he quickly surmised that he must have drifted off at about 03:00, and he clenched his fists in his eye sockets, hoping to mop away the hours upon hours of fatigue. Nearly twenty-four hours before, he and the rest of the RevKom had been startled be news of an incipient invasion and military uprisings across the city. Since then they had convened in the Capitol Building, attended to by a stream of advisers and subordinates, each bearing bad advice or, worse, bad news.

But at 05:00, as he stumbled out of the makeshift quarters in one of the lower halls. When it had been determined that there was an emergency situation, lower officers had raced to prepare the residential areas of the building, intended for times such as these. Climbing the staircase to the executive boardroom, the eerie silence of the morning was at last broken. Around the luxury mahogany table that in ordinary times would have been reserved for meetings of state were scattered legions of temporary tables, laden with communications equipment. Printers, whirring, spat out sheet after sheet while an assortment of lesser military figures shouted into headset microphones. During normal daytime crisis hours, the immense table would have seated military and civilian officials alike. The civilians, Tsolonskoi knew, were a sad array of useless figureheads, yielded from state-dependent sectors of the economy, labor unions, and the university system. Silent as statues and flimsy as rubber, they had been, for the past fifteen years.

Fighting his lack of balance, Tsolonskoi strode over to the officer in charge. Inquiring as to the situation, the officer in charge, Colonel Barbatou, made reference to the large map on the primary table. It showed Egzrera and the surrounding region. Tsolonskoi held back a snort—he knew that in far more developed corners of the world, he might be viewing this on a computer screen or a projector, with areas of control and troop movements animated and color-coded. Here, in this, the country he helped to administer, they seemed trapped in the 1940s. The situation, on its own merits, wasn’t pretty either. As of 23:00 the day before, the enemy had taken the single-family housing and suburbs that surrounded the southern half of Egzrera. Nevertheless, the situation appeared overall easy to repel once a concerted effort could be made and a strategy found. By 00:100, however, it was more than apparent that the “spine” of the city—dense housing, factories, and office-buildings—was being swarmed by superior firepower, better numbers, and the element of surprise. North of the fork in the Nile, the situation had developed in parallel, with housing for government officials and the regime’s favorites located near the center, with the river to the south, and relatively secure, while low-density housing areas had quickly fallen to Ksarandrei’s invaders or were themselves under control of Islamists.

Tsolonskoi no longer felt like a young man. In the midst of the revolution, he had been forty-five, a promising, but frequently frustrated up-and-comer in Gzazerakh’s bloated military establishment. Fascinated with the ideas of state-led modernization offered by left-wing dissidents and foreigners, chafing under the administrative weight of generals that should have been retired long ago, cursing his nation’s immense inequality and religious barbarism, he and a group of like-minded colonels had decided to do the unthinkable. The surprising death of President Iusus Tsururi—the Father of the Nation, longtime leader of the independence movement, and the nation’s first chief executive since the 1950s—in 1978 had created a unique opportunity the self-described “revolutionary kommittee” might not see again in their lifetimes.

“Gzazerakh is a desert country, financed by petroleum, and with a complacent populace. If we wait one more moment, acting president Kselengi will have firmed up all the major power-brokers.” These words, whispered to him by a colleague, had been definitive. It had seemed so simple. And, indeed, things had gone very well in the beginning. Kselengi lacked Tsururi’s popularity. By sheer luck, riots had broken out immediately after Tsururi’s funeral—in favor of what, few could have said—in the ensuing chaos, with the forces of order distracted and the nation clearly in an “upheaval”, the RevKom had proceeded, with a few cadres of loyal soldiers, to arrest the entire corps of generals and president Kselengi. Proclaiming it a victory for “socialism, kommunism, and progress,” labor unions and left-wing militants rallied to the new regime, thereby retroactively granting it the label of “revolution”.

The first sign that things would not go as hoped had come early. General Votsin Kzarandrei, the one young general and a political enigma, escaped, with the help of his own captors, rank-and-file soldiers who had been over-awed by the authority exuded by their mysterious prisoner. He was over the mountains and far away by the time the RevKom had even heard the news. Additional inconvenient news had streamed in like a cascade—mass desertion, failure to win international recognition by the capitalist powers, the secession of the region around Eldriopol, the removal of foreign capital, religious activism…

The revolutionary program of 1979 was intended to save the regime, solidifying its revolutionary and left-wing credentials while securing the nation from internal and external threats. Agriculture was to be collectivized, factories and oil fields were to be put under the control of workers, conscription was expanded, political Islam was prohibited, and several religious restrictions on the activities of women were formally banned. This ignited a firestorm the likes of which had never been predicted by the RevKom. Soldiers, fleeing to their villages, became the leaders of local militias, enforcing their own order, several hundred miles away from the capitol. Experiments in collectivization were resounding failures, and food prices would never be the same again. The nation’s petroleum production eventually had to be overseen by a state corporation rather than by “autonomous workers collectives voluntarily collaborating”, but profits appeared to disintegrate into the growing mass of state workers and bureaucrats the new program demanded. And building projects invited in from the villages and deserts the very demographics that had come to despise the regime the most, turning Egzrera into a hotbed of political radicalism of every stripe. Meanwhile, the RevKom dissolved into a dictatorship, with Tsolonskoi’s colleague and one-time friend, now General Al-Dzorabi sidelining other members of the committee while diluting it with “civilian appointments”.

Tsolonskoi suppressed the memories of failure and disappointment and absorbed all of the information he had just received. The extremely crucial detail was this: the reactionaries, dubbing themselves the “Free Korps”, had taken the city airfields an hour before. He now realized: there would be no escape. News of the mass executions had reached him and the others hours before. It was always thought, however, that a proper showing of force once the invaders reached the city center would repel the “temporary”, “artificial”, and “wholly foreign” invasion force. But why was he to think that? The past twenty-four hours had seen nothing but losses. Hell, the past fifteen years felt like a gigantic misstep. Tsolonskoi thanked the corporal and headed downstairs to his chambers. Generals still wore pistols as symbolic of their martial authority. He was a disheveled mess and was not wearing the various accessories of his dress uniform when he had been brief. He found the pistol now, and deemed himself quite serendipitous that he, a stickler, had always kept it loaded, as per military custom. “One shot should do it,” he thought. Given the hectic nature of the day ahead, the quarters were not to be cleaned of his blood for some time.

[The Kingdom of Apilonia]

Captain Stephen W. Ford, RAN
HMS California C94
12 Miles off the Gzazerakh Coast, The Red Sea
Thursday 14th October 1993, 0800hrs Local Time

---

As he sat silently in his chair, on the bridge of the Apilonian Cruiser California, watching the handover of the navigation watch, Captain Stephen W. Ford, considered the delicate balancing act the Kingdom of Apilonia was trying to pull off in East Africa.

What was now the East African Republic had once been the Apilonian Crown Colony of Somaliland and had been critical to the protection of the Kingdom’s merchant shipping, it is lifeblood, as well as a key waystation for these same merchantmen. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, de-colonization movements in Somaliland had grown steadily more and more vocal, and violent, eventually amalgamating around the young, charismatic Emmanuel Xavier. It had been Xavier who had put an end to the violence against the Apilonian forces stationed in the Crown Colony. It had been Xavier who had negotiated independence for this country in return for a one-hundred-year lease of several key sites around Djibouti to the Kingdom, to facilitate continued protection of Apilonian interests in the region. Although less suitable than some other sites for a naval base, it was sufficient as a naval support activity, especially given that the neither the Crown Colony of Bahrain nor the Crown Colony of Qatar seemed to have any inclination for independence themselves and already had extensive naval facilities which would be sufficient for any forward-based Apilonian warships. In short, it was an acceptable trade off to avoid unnecessarily loss of Apilonian lives whilst retaining a military presence in the Red Sea.

Unfortunately for the Kingdom, relations had deteriorated thereafter. In order to hold the disparate factions of his new East African Republic together, ‘President’ Xavier had decided to target much of his rhetoric for the country’s ills, especially after the withdrawal of most Apilonian companies from the territory, firmly at the Kingdom. This had been disrespectful, diplomatically, but tolerable for some years, however Xavier steadily developed increasingly authoritarian tendencies on his own people, and was increasingly provocative to the Apilonian military assets stationed in the East African Republic, leading to concerns that he had undergone a mental break. In short, the domestic situation within the Republic was deteriorating, and current intelligence estimates suggested that a rebellion was mere years away, which would significantly complicate the Apilonian position in the East African Republic. Between the situation in the East African Republic, and the tensions in the Mediterranean and the Middle East between the Mediterranean Social Confederation and the Arab Socialists, not to mention more extreme factions, the last thing the Kingdom of Apilonia had needed in this part of the world was more trouble.

The conflict in the Republic of Gzazerakh, therefore, had been met with despair in the Royal District across the Sound from Seattle. There were some who were cautiously optimistic, and advocated for a wait-and-see approach and then forging as positive a relationship as possible in the aftermath, whilst others emphasised the need to protect existing Apilonian interests, particularly diplomatic staff and other citizens in-country. In the end a compromise had been struck, in which the Kingdom would make preparations to protect its interests in as subtle a way as possible, so as not to burn any bridges for potential future relations. This left the Ministry of Defence with an interesting conundrum; they had to ensure that sufficient assets, particularly helicopters, were available to swoop in, rescue Apilonian citizens and dependencies and get out safely, without parking an 62,000 tonne aircraft carrier intimidatingly off the coast.

So the Admiralty had turned, as it often did in situations like this, to it’s cruisers; which had long been the backbone of the Royal Apilonian Navy’s global presence.

The RAN cruiser fleet was at a crossroads. As it stood, the Royal Apilonian Navy possessed twenty-four guided missile cruisers of the Duchy-Class, however these ships, although capable in the role the Admiralty needed them for, were not without their own drawbacks and had a troubled history. When the ships had been first proposed, in the middle of the 1940s, the Kingdom had been hit by an economic downturn that had a detrimental impact on the defence budget which, combined with the emergency of the aircraft carrier as the predominant naval warship, had required delicate handling and, to use a sports reference, the Admiralty had fumbled that one spectacularly. At the time, the Royal Apilonian Navy had possessed a line of battle consisting of superdreadnought battleships, a sizable cruiser fleet and dozens of destroyers; however the emergency of the aircraft carrier, and the subsequent emergence of the missile, had upended and made obsolete entire ship classes. The decision was made to retain existing cruisers and divert funds to refitting them to modern standards, rather than an expensive and untested new design. This proved inadequate, however, as the technology was advancing, but the Duchy-Class was hardly an improvement as although the hulls had laid mostly finished for nearly a decade their machinery was old and out of date, in urgent need of refurbishment.

Never the less, by the first half of the 1950s, the Royal Apilonian Navy was in urgent need of long-legged cruisers to protection surviving Apilonian colonies overseas as well as the expansive merchant fleet, and the Duchy-Class received a new lease of life, receiving a substantial refit to bring the design up to modern specs, followed by another conversion in the 1960s to helicopter-carrying cruisers in an effort to increase their utility. In the end, due in no small part to the ingenuity of the Bureau of Ships, the Duchy-Class evolved into a capable multi-role warship, well-suited for flag-flying missions, where her size (compared to local destroyers or frigates) was of great use, not to mention maintaining the carrier-and-cruiser institutional structure of the Navy. Given that the hulls had remained intact, but unstrained, for nearly a decade, the ships, although old, were by no means the oldest operational warships in the world and were generally receptive to repair work. In short, the issue was not the hull life but rather it’s ability to accept newer, often larger and more complex, weapons systems required to make the ship suitable for modern warfare, as older ships were simply laid out differently to more modern designs.

As it stood, following the most recent refit, the Duchy-Class guided missile cruiser of the Royal Apilonian Navy was armed with a single twin 6-inch turret forward, the older 3/70 gun normally mounted immediately behind had been replaced at great expense by the Sea Dart missile, finally giving the design a long-range anti-air punch, whilst the Sea Cat launchers had been replaced by Sea Eagle anti-shipping missiles, also at great expense. Ultimately however, this was very much the final evolution of the design and even these improvements were feared to have a detrimental impact on the material condition of the ship every time they were fired (much to the horror of BuShips).

The conundrum facing the Admiralty was simple; even conservative estimates placed the price tag for the Next-Generation Cruiser at only a little less than the projected cost of the CVF project, also due to be authorised soon. To make matters worse, estimates by the Bureau of Planning had underlined the need to maintain cruiser numbers at their present level, to meet current commitments, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean, which would be a sizable expense to say the least, even without considering that the RAN’s destroyer fleet would need replacing in the next decade or so as well. Although the Apilonian defence budget had come a long way from the middle of the century, but three major shipbuilding projects at the same time was simply not practical, from a shipyard capacity perspective if nothing else, which meant that they would have to be staggered and it was the order of this sequence that was causing a great deal of consternation at the Admiralty.

Nevertheless, when the Admiralty had needed to send a larger warship to back-up the frigates based at Djibouti, it had been a no-brainer to call in His Majesty’s Ship California, primarily for the helicopters and Royal Apilonian Marine Corps detachment the cruiser carried as a standard complement.

“Forenoon Watch is manned, Sir,” Lieutenant Zoe Hunter, the Officer of the Watch and one of the Royal Apilonian Navy’s first female warfare officers following the integration of the Women’s Royal Naval Service into the navy, reported. “Additional watch stood-to in the Ops Room.”

“Very good,” Captain Ford nodded. “Are you up to speed on the latest intelligence reports, Lieutenant?”

“Latest from Defence Intelligence indicates that there is extensive street fighting in Egzrera, the fall of the city looks imminent,” Lieutenant Hunter replied, having thoroughly read the brief. “No direct threat to the Embassy likely, but we’re liaising closely with our people on the ground.”

“Keep the ship in the box the Navigator plotted when we first arrived here; don’t take the ship into territorial waters at any costs,” Captain Ford ordered crisply, satisfied with her knowledge. “Keep us positioned for flying stations on short notice, we may need to move fast if the situation on the grounds go south.”

[Gzazerakh]

Thursday, 14 October 1993, 06:30, Central Africa Time, Eldriopol

Savra Zucchelli was a creature of habit. Up at six. A run, a shower, a cigarette, and a coffee (black, of course). Then, work. This morning, she had been forced to ditch her morning penance of some seven miles. Work began immediately. At least she got her cigarette and her coffee.

Compared to its region, Eldriopol and the surrounding area is relatively cool. Ventilated by the Red Sea, it has been remarked—perhaps optimistically—that it bears a greater climatic resemblance to the shores of the Italian or Balkan peninsulas. Still, the “Coastals”, as the primarily Christian, heavily European residents of Eldriopol are often dubbed, will often complain that their city is nothing like the glories of Europe. Irrespective of Eldriopol’s anomalous temperature, Savra, like most women in the coast’s professional class, went about her duties adorned in a thin, light-colored cotton blouse and khakis. Her black, wavy—almost curling—hair had been shoved back into a knot at the top of her head.

Eldriopol bragged the highest female labor force participation of any major city in the country. Nevertheless, Savra had been somewhat of a trailblazer in a regional government that was already well-known for (relatively) high proportions of female political leadership. The intelligence services, along with the associated industries of defense and law enforcement, were traditionally male-dominated. When, in the late 1970s, the greater Eldriopol metro-area, known officially as Cisatbaya, had declared its sovereignty from the left-wing government in Egzrera, government at all levels went through a crucial building period. Not only did Cisatbaya need to gear up for the potential reprisals, but events across the new border had prompted waves of refugees, primarily from the Egzrera and from the savanna cities of Kuzra (the nation’s third-most populous city). At the time, Savra had completed her university studies in Rome, specializing in history.

Gzazerakh citizens are polyglots by nature. For most of the nation, this is for the fact of needing to know both Gzazerakhi and Arabic. For residents of Eldriopol and Cisatbaya at-large, this expands to Italian, Greek, and even Armenian, Hebrew, or Bulgarian. As such, Savra was by no means in a league of her own when she opted out of a career in academia and chose to use her knowledge in the state services. Nevertheless, despite lacking a background in business or logistics, she was found to possess an apt organizational mind. Moreover, her youth made it easy to take advantage of emergent technologies, including management and data analysis machines. This meant that, now in her early mid-thirties, she was the point-person for the Cisatbayan Republic in Operation Scipio, a position that involved leadership, tact, and, most of all, diplomacy.

Savra was aware of the large body of stakeholders involved in Scipio. Most obvious was of course the new class of military officers that this would empower. Led by General Ksarandrei, they would likely be the dominant class in the newly reformed Republic of Gzazerakh. Additionally, numerous civilian natives of the interior had been involved in a variety of tasks, and would be the “shock troops” of public administration in the immediate aftermath of the battle. Far, far more dangerous—and this had been acknowledged to her by some representatives of interior Gzazerakh—was the foreign presence. Substantial funding had been obtained abroad, as well as military equipment. Though a Coastal, and ethnically Italian, Savra was not a European. She was a patriot. Policy-making influence, stakes in large state enterprises, reduced prices on petrol, military bases… a restored but weakened Gzazerakh had much to offer enterprising powers abroad. In the case of Eldriopol, the interests were in fact quite similar. Accustomed to being the economic elite of their old country, business-owners, politicians, and bureaucrats in Cisatbaya wanted in. And, for many enterprising young leaders, the prospects of a place in one of the government ministries—perhaps even a cabinet position—were tempting. Savra had determined that the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance would fall into the hands of her compatriots. These were suited to the strength of the Coastals—diplomacy and business. For her part, she was angling for leadership in the reconstructed Intelligence Directorate.

As for why Savra had been compelled to nix her morning run, the reason was Operation Scipio. It was her second sixteen-plus hour day. Accustomed to routine and order, this was inconvenient, but thrilling. A few hours ago, word had rolled in via communications from some contingents of Eldriopol troops that the air fields had been taken. Her deputy had ordered helicopters in as quickly as possible, along with two additional planes full of soldiers. The briefing she was presented with at 06:30 pleased her immensely: even now, as the sun was preparing to rise, airborne units were preparing to pepper the Capitol Building with spray should demands, to be delivered shortly, not be met. Civilian-led street fighting had overwhelmed government troops in key districts that the Free Korps had yet to touch. Government-held territory was limited to the capitol district in south Egzrera and north Egzrera’s city center. The rest she already knew or could have surmised: several Party members had joined street protesters and much of the middle class was rallying to the side of the Free Korps. Imams and clerics had managed to bring their areas of influence under Free Korps control, even pacifying some Islamist militant factions.

It appeared that victory was imminent. Savra knew what came next. Diplomatic recognition and humanitarian aid. Barring a formal vote of union—that would come later, after it was assured the experiment had worked—Cisatbaya’s Foreign Affairs Ministry would issue its enthusiastic and good faith intention to engage in constructive dialogue with Gzazerakh. Moreover, technical specialists, several tonnes of grain, and liquid cash would flow into the new, constitutional government. At this point, her role, and the role of her team, would be primarily one of communications coordination as the Foreign and Defense Ministries began their legwork.

~~~

Thursday, 14 October 1993, 12:00, Central Africa Time, Egzrera

Tselios Zureiy was at last ride of the captain. The leader of a regiment recruited largely from Cisatbaya, the captain was also one of Operation Scipio’s many errand boys for the government in Eldriopol. Tselios was more than tired of this back-and-forth with the Colonials. He had heard it for years as part of the Egzrera diaspora in Eldriopol. “Before 1978, the region of Cisatbaya contributed 70% of the nation’s non-oil GDP. The diplomatic, intelligence, and finance ministries were primarily recruited from our residents. Specialists at every level of government and business can brag an education from our local colleges, or were from here and studied in Europe. If you want to man the helm of a retrograde petro-state that will disintegrate the next time petrol bottoms out, be our guest.” He was tired of it, and, worse, he understood it. Rebuilding the country he once loved would heavily involve the help—and the leadership—of what was essentially an alien people.

Nevertheless, the most immediate task was the one in front of them, and Zureiy was aware that the crucial moments ahead would involve force, rather than his careful diplomacy. The General, never one to shy away from battle, had moved his command center up to the fore of the line of scrimmage separating Free Korps-held territory from the city center. While the morning’s materialization of tanks, manned by government troops, had complicated matters, the liberating army’s sudden acquiescence of an air advantage earlier that day had made it meaningless.

It had now been two hours since issuing the General’s demands: the immediate surrender of the entire government and the turning over of RevKom leadership. Yesterday morning’s executions had no doubt made much of the remaining government troops and staff hesitant to surrender. That was partially the intention. What good would it do to gum-up the new order with trials, sentences, and a horde of very-much-alive malcontents? Besides, who could resist the site now to unfold. In a rarely-seen feat, two military helicopters made their way between slightly above the high-rises, down Central Avenue, and towards the Capitol Building. The statement of two hours ago had been very clear: all within the capitol district should surrender and leave the area, or face the consequences.

There were, of course, rocket-propelled grenades to worry about. And the cowardly RevKom leadership had no doubt reserved the best materiel for their own protection. But the choppers were well-armed. Then, the unthinkable happened. The roar of the ‘copters was echoing across the urban landscape and appeared to have finally broken the regime. Emptying from apartment buildings came civil servants and white collar state workers. The true protected class of revolutionary Gzazerakh. Even infantry troops had joined them from farther off. As gunspray began to pepper the windows of government buildings, civilians were overwhelming the tank battalions from behind. Then, in accordance with hastily-prescribed commands, Free Korps troops surged forward. Zureiy had himself never seen combat, having served primarily in intelligence or administrative roles in both Gzazerakh’s military, then in its effective government-in-exile headed by the General. As such, while the front lines were in view, he could only imagine the thrill as troops tore down avenues and boulevards, heading for the Capitol Building.

In the end, the place was stormed, and, while there were a few fire-fights, the primary deaths had actually been friendly fire. By the time the Capitol Building had been reached, the place was a ghost town, and RevKom leaders were found either cowering or having shots themselves. A few had escaped—along with several of their loyalists, but they would either be found in short order or find themselves strangers in their own nation. The deed was done.