Kali Yuga Presents…
RULES OF NATURE
Out here only the strong survive!
RULES OF NATURE
Out here only the strong survive!
Rules of nature!
Water. One oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms bound to it. A vital reagent of human culture, society, and existence: of human life itself. The first civilisations of mankind formed along the banks of rivers, supplying humanity’s cradles with an abundant supply of fresh water to water their crops and quench their thirst. It has also formed the foundation of the world’s mightiest nations, as the world’s oceans and seas have effectively become highways for trade routes criss-crossing the deep blue.
And as with anything vital to human existence, it has become a cause for war.
At the border between Sugogo and Bashriyya lies Lake Sugogo, a large lake containing massive water reserves. In 2007, with Palmyian help, the government of Sugogo embarked on a project to build a large number of irrigation canals, therefore draining water from the lake, hence depriving Bashriiyan side of water. Diplomatic protests from Bashriiya were countered with claims that since most of the lake is on the Sugogian side, Sugogo can do what it wants with it.
Sadr al-Din al Nasheed sees this as a perfect chance to come out of his father's shadow. He orders an invasion of Sugogo to seize the water and "punish the Sugogians for their transgressions".
The war had been nearly 15 years in the making at this point, and the Bashriiyans have started amassing at the border, especially now that an expansion to the initial irrigation network is currently underway…
And as with anything vital to human existence, it has become a cause for war.
At the border between Sugogo and Bashriyya lies Lake Sugogo, a large lake containing massive water reserves. In 2007, with Palmyian help, the government of Sugogo embarked on a project to build a large number of irrigation canals, therefore draining water from the lake, hence depriving Bashriiyan side of water. Diplomatic protests from Bashriiya were countered with claims that since most of the lake is on the Sugogian side, Sugogo can do what it wants with it.
Sadr al-Din al Nasheed sees this as a perfect chance to come out of his father's shadow. He orders an invasion of Sugogo to seize the water and "punish the Sugogians for their transgressions".
The war had been nearly 15 years in the making at this point, and the Bashriiyans have started amassing at the border, especially now that an expansion to the initial irrigation network is currently underway…
15 February 2022 2047H
Lake Sugogo, Sugogo
Sarah Schachner - Winds of Cyrene
The lake shone pristinely and brightly in the well-lit night, the sky illuminated brightly by sparkling stars and a waxing gibbous moon spared by the intense light pollution of the more populated southern half of Sugogo. A spillway station at the bank of the lake connected the lake to the rest of the irrigation system that ran further south, watering cities and farms connected to the Sugogian central irrigation system; this station, and the other neighbouring spillway station further west, regulated and monitored the flow of water from the lake and into the central canals, making sure the water was not horridly polluted. Smaller monitoring sites scattered around the lake, many of which were automated or remotely controlled, provided more data about water quality from other portions of the lake, on top of providing some sort of early warning to security: if one of them was physically tampered without prior notice, it would be a telltale sign of malicious intruders.
Such a rudimentary form of security, on top of the regular maintenance and security patrols that scoured the lake and guarding the stations and sites around it, was necessary, given the recent provocations by Bashriyya against Sugogo. Bashriyya outnumbered and outgunned Sugogo by almost an order of magnitude: Sugogo, with a population of 20 million, had at most 100,000 troops in its armed forces overall, and equipment modernisation was enacted and inaugurated only recently; it was fair to say that if Sadr al-Din al-Nasheed decided he'd go through with the invasion of Sugogo, it would beat Sugogo to the Moon and back mutliple times. Palmyrion and Sugogo, two nations with budding but promising relations, nonetheless believed in each other's capacity to fight in spite of all odds; the Royal Commonwealth stationed a few special operations units and advisers training their Sugogian counterparts on the modern art of warfare, with the Sugogians, in spite of being addled and being hampered by corruption and tribalism typical of an Afruikan country, learning from their Palmyrian counterparts keenly and studiously.
Celestina Hidalgo was by many standards a rookie among the ranks of Nilad Waterworks Corporation, a freshly-graduated chemical engineering student from the University of Palmyrion - Cebu. She had been looking for a job for the past year after she gained her Bachelorette of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from UP Cebu, and NWC was looking for engineers who would take up entry-level jobs in its rank and file. The application process was pretty run-of-the-mill for corporate applications anywhere: applications followed by interviews and then full employment...and Celestina chose an overseas deployment in an area of geopolitical contention both for the hazard pay and the opportunity to travel abroad. She had with her at most two weeks' worth of clothing, with 14 sets of field work clothing and 14 sets of house clothing more appropriate for leisurely activities.
Nighttime duty wasn't new to her, having worked night shifts as a cashier at her local fast food chain to pay for her college expenses. This was, however, an entirely new ball game apart from working night shifts at a local Joybee's, as it involved manually checking on one of the malfunctioning remote monitoring instruments scattered around the shores of the lake (at least those on the Sugogian side). She and three of her colleagues drove from their relatively comfy field base to the malfunctioning monitoring module on a Nifonese four-seater 4x4 pickup, the pickup riding smoothly on the wear-roughened gravel roads that traced the lake shores and between each automated monitoring station at the lake thanks to hydropneumatic suspension, with a local Sugogian AM radio station playing at the car's radio and the car's headlights illuminating the path forward. Unfortunately for them this malfunctioning instrumentation module was dangerously close to the border with Bashriyya, and this is the reason why they had pistols with them during such a trek: for the express purpose of self-defence. They would also have an armed escort consisting of local gunmen hired by Palmyrian PMC Griffin-Krugman Security Corporation (GKSC), with the armed escort, this time on a similar vehicle, taking point during the whole trek.
"We're here." a Sugogian colleague of hers said as he parked the car in front of a 20-foot intermodal container bolted into the ground, the container itself housing the instruments that monitored water quality in real time. This was connected via a fibre optic cable to a monitoring buoy floating well away from the shore and into the lake, the fibre-optic communications cable itself serving as one of two tethers that kept the buoy connected to the containerised instrumentation module (the other was a simple cable made of marine-grade Kevlar). They would reel the buoy back to shore while conducting diagnostics on the module itself, the buoy itself being inspected after the team was done with the containerised monitoring module. Once they had thoroughly combed the entire thing for malfunctioning parts and bits they would go on to fixing it, a process that could take almost two hours or more to complete, and it was already nighttime at a place near the border with Bashriyya. The armed escorts provided security overwatch while the NWC employees conducted their maintenance and diagnostic runs.
Halfway into performing diagnostics on both the buoy and the instrumentation module, their security complement hailed a suspicious armed contact coming from the Bashriyyan side of the border.
Should the armed contact reply the security complement would then communicate that they were here to provide security to engineers performing repairs on a malfunctioning monitoring module. It was a ballsy move on the part of the security complement, but it was a necessary risk to take for the safety of their charge.
Such a rudimentary form of security, on top of the regular maintenance and security patrols that scoured the lake and guarding the stations and sites around it, was necessary, given the recent provocations by Bashriyya against Sugogo. Bashriyya outnumbered and outgunned Sugogo by almost an order of magnitude: Sugogo, with a population of 20 million, had at most 100,000 troops in its armed forces overall, and equipment modernisation was enacted and inaugurated only recently; it was fair to say that if Sadr al-Din al-Nasheed decided he'd go through with the invasion of Sugogo, it would beat Sugogo to the Moon and back mutliple times. Palmyrion and Sugogo, two nations with budding but promising relations, nonetheless believed in each other's capacity to fight in spite of all odds; the Royal Commonwealth stationed a few special operations units and advisers training their Sugogian counterparts on the modern art of warfare, with the Sugogians, in spite of being addled and being hampered by corruption and tribalism typical of an Afruikan country, learning from their Palmyrian counterparts keenly and studiously.
Celestina Hidalgo was by many standards a rookie among the ranks of Nilad Waterworks Corporation, a freshly-graduated chemical engineering student from the University of Palmyrion - Cebu. She had been looking for a job for the past year after she gained her Bachelorette of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from UP Cebu, and NWC was looking for engineers who would take up entry-level jobs in its rank and file. The application process was pretty run-of-the-mill for corporate applications anywhere: applications followed by interviews and then full employment...and Celestina chose an overseas deployment in an area of geopolitical contention both for the hazard pay and the opportunity to travel abroad. She had with her at most two weeks' worth of clothing, with 14 sets of field work clothing and 14 sets of house clothing more appropriate for leisurely activities.
Nighttime duty wasn't new to her, having worked night shifts as a cashier at her local fast food chain to pay for her college expenses. This was, however, an entirely new ball game apart from working night shifts at a local Joybee's, as it involved manually checking on one of the malfunctioning remote monitoring instruments scattered around the shores of the lake (at least those on the Sugogian side). She and three of her colleagues drove from their relatively comfy field base to the malfunctioning monitoring module on a Nifonese four-seater 4x4 pickup, the pickup riding smoothly on the wear-roughened gravel roads that traced the lake shores and between each automated monitoring station at the lake thanks to hydropneumatic suspension, with a local Sugogian AM radio station playing at the car's radio and the car's headlights illuminating the path forward. Unfortunately for them this malfunctioning instrumentation module was dangerously close to the border with Bashriyya, and this is the reason why they had pistols with them during such a trek: for the express purpose of self-defence. They would also have an armed escort consisting of local gunmen hired by Palmyrian PMC Griffin-Krugman Security Corporation (GKSC), with the armed escort, this time on a similar vehicle, taking point during the whole trek.
"We're here." a Sugogian colleague of hers said as he parked the car in front of a 20-foot intermodal container bolted into the ground, the container itself housing the instruments that monitored water quality in real time. This was connected via a fibre optic cable to a monitoring buoy floating well away from the shore and into the lake, the fibre-optic communications cable itself serving as one of two tethers that kept the buoy connected to the containerised instrumentation module (the other was a simple cable made of marine-grade Kevlar). They would reel the buoy back to shore while conducting diagnostics on the module itself, the buoy itself being inspected after the team was done with the containerised monitoring module. Once they had thoroughly combed the entire thing for malfunctioning parts and bits they would go on to fixing it, a process that could take almost two hours or more to complete, and it was already nighttime at a place near the border with Bashriyya. The armed escorts provided security overwatch while the NWC employees conducted their maintenance and diagnostic runs.
Halfway into performing diagnostics on both the buoy and the instrumentation module, their security complement hailed a suspicious armed contact coming from the Bashriyyan side of the border.
"Contact. Armed men coming this way." one of the security complement said to his commander. "Shall we hail them, or shall we get out of here?" he added.
"I'll hail them. We'll tell them we're providing security to engineers conducting field repairs on a malfunctioning monitoring module." the team leader replied, and hailed what could be a Bashriyyan military recon patrol coming their way.
"I'll hail them. We'll tell them we're providing security to engineers conducting field repairs on a malfunctioning monitoring module." the team leader replied, and hailed what could be a Bashriyyan military recon patrol coming their way.
Should the armed contact reply the security complement would then communicate that they were here to provide security to engineers performing repairs on a malfunctioning monitoring module. It was a ballsy move on the part of the security complement, but it was a necessary risk to take for the safety of their charge.
