The Meek Will Inherit Ash
__________________________________________________________
Die Sanftmütigen erben die Asche
кроткие будут наследовать пепел
кроткие будут наследовать пепел
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
KRASNOVAN ALDAR-ORDENITE WAR
"We thought we knew what we were getting into ... We were wrong."
Nykoli Volshnistrakt, Ret. Sjt., veteran of the Imperial Campaign for the Liberation of Krasnova
"We thought we knew what we were getting into ... We were wrong."
Nykoli Volshnistrakt, Ret. Sjt., veteran of the Imperial Campaign for the Liberation of Krasnova
Elsewhen ahead
"Ladies and gentlemen, earlier this week we discussed," Vyshnaukor Polzin locked eyes with a student in the front row of the class, "that is if you were in attendance for the discussion," raising the pitch of her voice slightly for effect, "Mister Ulanski--"
The moderately-sized but close-knit class erupted in laughter at their professor's chiding of the studious slacker. With a creeping smile, Polzin raised her hand to quiet her pupils before re-engaging the lecture, "We discussed the Post-Theohuanacu Scouring of Myrizstrakha insurgents in the Greater Dienstad region. Specifically, we talked about how there was substantial speculation, at the time, as to where the next emergence of Dreadstate enclave would occur. With what we know now in combination with investigative and thorough law enforcement reports on peculiar occult activities from the time, we can deduce approximately which paths the remaining Dreads took to get to where they were in the twenty-thirties."
The professor slid her thumb over and then pressed down on a small flattened-ovoid-shaped device grasped comfortably by mostly her index finger. The almost-mural, holo-projection screen-array behind the professorial podium scintillated into a new slide of black foreground and white text: Краснованский мятеж. Polzin elucidated, "The Krasnovan Insurgency of Myrizstrakha emerged sometime during either early winter late in twenty-twenty-nine--per local, Krasnovan security and law enforcement reports of a spree of still-unsolved murders that followed cult-like modus operandi--or somewhere between twenty-thirty and twenty-thirty-two--per even more reports of a wider and more prolific spree of serial killings that closely followed the Nicaro-Theohuanacan Cult of Otravan's general procedure of 'sacrifice to the Vynoslivyyka.' These reports, as we will soon go over in more detail, were acquired by Dark Eye and geh-ir-oh-bleh intelligence operatives. The significance of this particular splinter--"
Ulanski stirred to interject, "The significance is they started the war..."
The moderately-sized but close-knit class erupted in laughter at their professor's chiding of the studious slacker. With a creeping smile, Polzin raised her hand to quiet her pupils before re-engaging the lecture, "We discussed the Post-Theohuanacu Scouring of Myrizstrakha insurgents in the Greater Dienstad region. Specifically, we talked about how there was substantial speculation, at the time, as to where the next emergence of Dreadstate enclave would occur. With what we know now in combination with investigative and thorough law enforcement reports on peculiar occult activities from the time, we can deduce approximately which paths the remaining Dreads took to get to where they were in the twenty-thirties."
The professor slid her thumb over and then pressed down on a small flattened-ovoid-shaped device grasped comfortably by mostly her index finger. The almost-mural, holo-projection screen-array behind the professorial podium scintillated into a new slide of black foreground and white text: Краснованский мятеж. Polzin elucidated, "The Krasnovan Insurgency of Myrizstrakha emerged sometime during either early winter late in twenty-twenty-nine--per local, Krasnovan security and law enforcement reports of a spree of still-unsolved murders that followed cult-like modus operandi--or somewhere between twenty-thirty and twenty-thirty-two--per even more reports of a wider and more prolific spree of serial killings that closely followed the Nicaro-Theohuanacan Cult of Otravan's general procedure of 'sacrifice to the Vynoslivyyka.' These reports, as we will soon go over in more detail, were acquired by Dark Eye and geh-ir-oh-bleh intelligence operatives. The significance of this particular splinter--"
Ulanski stirred to interject, "The significance is they started the war..."
«««‹‹‹‹‹‹<<<•>>>››››››»»»
Late Winter, 20XX
Greater Dienstad
Krasnova
Nazarovo
Welcomed by the far-wandered warriors in the battle-weathered office building, the winds of winter berated the structures of the snow-strangled street just under the broken balcony that might have once provided a manager a break and maybe a smoke. Now, though, it was a church of the damned, abandoned and condemned by a ravaged society. The homeless came here to be hermits-among-many. The vengeful came here to vie for what little vigor such vessels had left. Then, they arrived.
They called themselves the "Otravan Cult of Afar." Within this prison of poverty, they had established dominance quickly with little remorse or reluctance for spilling the blood of the local, former power-brokers of insurgency in the city. Among the rugged dregs, these foreign creatures--some from a place few if any Krasnovans had ever heard of and some from the tropical Golden Throne territory to the south--recruited the ravager and ravaged alike. All were held equal in their eyes of terror, and the power sourced from a strange god and an even stranger-to-Krasnova sovereignty of the soul that they promised had been all that was needed for many of the wicked and/or weary to wither into their ranks. The rituals the braided "Dreads," as they sometimes called themselves, though ruthless and red-drenched, wreaked a fearful fervency into the forgotten so they could one day become fearless fighters for a feral freedom. What good was civility if civilization itself was so stricken with sickness that it discarded you like the remains of a removed cyst for being born without riches?
Now though, months into the campaign of callous courtship, the severe treatment of those who sinfully doubted the power of the Great Path reached a fever pitch. So few were left yet-befallen from the graces of their old ways that it was only a matter of time before a mob of madness moved with malice through the night. Tonight was that night. Screams muffled in the midnight quieted further by the lacerations of knives heralded the coming of the cold-hearted. Someone still-armed with a firearm and not aligned with the creeping darkness resisted the capture of their kin. Club, blade, boot, and bullet minced this man into little more than meat to be cleaned and served in the morning. Masked from the moonlight, the rest of the malevolent marauders painted with meticulous macabre the debris-drab floors into a scintillating and pooling sangoire. Those few fearful that wrestled themselves from the grotesque grasps of the Dreads ran for corridors and stairwells seeking escape could not manage to realize that they were being corralled like cattle as the murderous frenzy cascaded from the upper levels into a horde of killers at the lowest. Soon enough, slaughter settled into ceremony, and the unsafe survivors were stripped of their cloth and strangled by noose, hanged from the shattered balustrade.
The local militia watched with horrified disdain as the bodies fell from not only that building's balcony but also windows and openings elsewhere, to include other buildings that lay on that side of the snowed-in street of demarcation. Many juniors throughout the rag-tag ranks had to be calmed from opening fire too early as some witnessed friend and kin alike be executed. Shots rang out here and there, though, and the Dreads seemed to refuse to respond. The unconverted native insurgents began to fear that their dawn offensive had been compromised, but it was too late to change plans. If the militia waited any longer to deal a fatal blow to this invasive counter-culture, they risked losing not only the support of the people but as well as the apathy of the Fourth Reich. Fighting between the local Zvezdan and the Cultist insurgencies had been intense, especially since the Dreads had found the volatility of eastern Krasnova to be more to their liking.
Building up to the Solntsar Offensive, Polzin lectured, "The Otravan Cult of Afar's grand opening debut, you could say, had seemed, at first, a matter for the west to deal with. A man calling himself 'Theohuanacogul, Draugr of the Otravanskiy Kult'iz'Daleka of the Worldterror' had confessed to a series of killings that had his signature and a symbol familiar to some Krasnovans, the kolovrat, emblazoned in his and his victims' blood at the scenes of the crimes. This had been in Sterlya, but of course, it had only been the beginning. Similar serial killings, accompanied by mass disappearances presumed to be abductions, occurred in simultaneous pairs. As if it were a campaign march meant to attack an enemy on two fronts, the 'Dreadtide" diverged into two paths. From Sterlya, we believe and are almost certain that they went to Ol'Khovka and Ivanovka. From these, to Yukar..."
Pointing to the different cities as she spoke and as the holo-projected map panned, "and to Chernaya respectively. The Chernaya group seemed to go dormant, or silent, as they skipped over Dubrovnoye and eventually arrived in Kamenka where they established a dedicated cell headquarters apparatus for their southern arm of the Cult. However the Yukar group was a little more ambitious as they appeared to skip over the cities of Kokshlovo, New Impen, and Gryaznaya. Instead they established a dedicated cell in Susol, and then later another was formed in the city of Nazarovo. The ethnic-Ordenite Selbschutz battalions were never given a real chance to understand, and thus react accordingly to all of this, that this was a new breed of radical cultist insurgency. The Zvezdan Red Army and Krasnovan People's Volunteer Divisions and Militia Brigades, on the other hand were fighting a guerrilla war from the receiving end almost immediately as the Dreads bombed and knived their way into Susol and Kamenka. The final straw for the Reich itself as well as the final alert to our intel was the Solntsar Offensive."
The map faded into a photograph of a creature-of-a-man. Though the bronzed skin was a tropical tan's shade-darker than normal, the golden eyes and the blonde-flecked dark-brown hair of his greasy braids confirmed the man's Aladamian ethnicity. From both of his cheeks down, covering all of his arms, presumably his back, and most of his upper body besides the center of his chest and upper abdomen were covered in scarified tally marks, an Ubiystvonomer or Kill Count. As they went lower from his cheeks, the beast-of-man had somewhere made some realization that if he was going to fit all of the marks all over his body and die on the last, at the current rate, he might have to squeeze them closer and closer together. They became so condensed that they appeared more like stripes the lower along his body he had gone. In the center of his upper body though was a scar-tattoo fusion with an antlered and elongated-jaw skull tattoo at the center. As the antlers extended and parsed out, they swirled and twisted to formed sun-wheel much like the kolovrat itself. The peripheral tips of the sun-ray-spokes were a gruesome blend of scarred flesh which had let the ink from the tattoo-proper bleed into.
He had pointed-metal surgical implants at the tips of his fingers that made for small claws--the photograph was just well-focused enough to confirm that the skin-to-alloy protrusions were indeed used for combat by the red that dripped from them. The many rings pierced into his ear carried teeth--some gold and some natural alternating--presumably stolen from his enemies. The braids of his hair themselves appeared to be held together with sinew strings and bone shards. As a necklace, the thing wore lower jaws broken and linked together that, of course, were missing some teeth. A grotesque maned coat lacked any telltale signs of the furs from the sport-mammals it could have been fabricated from. Instead, it was a quilt of different colored human hair patches. The only reasonable deduction could be that it was made from the mummified or similarly-preserved scalps of felled foes, possibly the same ones that had been desecrated and looted for their jaws and teeth. If the class had never seen anything like it before, many might have dashed out for the restroom or a trash can from the pensive speculation on the stench alone, but such weak-stomached had been weeded out long before. No one bothered to inquire as to what happened to the photographer.
"This," pausing for a moment to take a look over her shoulder as if the Draugr was actually there, "Draugr is Solntsar, of Vhoszny and Krasnova. For what he did at the beginning of his eponymous Solntsar Offensive, he is something of a legend to the boys and girls down the hall in PsyOps..."
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..."
As the eerie tune from a land and time long-forgotten and a language so pervasively common rose from speakers concealed for maximum acoustic effect throughout Nazarovo, the Myrizstrakha insurgents preempted their enemy's morning offensive with one of their own as soon as light first pierced the veil of the night. They chanted with a mixture of the local Krasnovan dialect and Mralic Aldarminian, "Here comes the sun... and here is the sun... here is the sun... and the sun is here..."
As the solemn song and cadence echoed through city, plumes of smoke from ritual pyres the Dreads had constructed the nights and days before rose simultaneously like signals to begin the march. The first wave--mostly simple and low-ranking Strakhzoldati prodding forward their weak-willed sacrifices who were blindfolded and bound but not gagged--staggered out from under the hanging bodies to cross the snowy streets, alleys, and corridors of rubble. A few Bezbholskiy were present in this wave to maintain a loose discipline of the strange march. These sergeants-of-the-cult mostly made sure that the sacrifices stayed ahead of the line. The majority of the sacrifices whimpered as they struggled to bear the pain of injuries from torture in the hours before so that they could walk, hopefully, to their salvation in the hands of the more-familiar militiamen and Red Army. Some sacrifices appeared to be in a catatonia-like state as they even mimicked the Dreads' chant in low mutters. Along the line, none of the Dreads carried firearms. Instead, they carried weapons of melee, and many of these had been self-fashioned by the Dreads themselves, but some had been stolen from Krasnovan homes, farms, and museums. There was a great amount of confusion on part of the Zvezdan defenders for what they thought they were seeing was a disturbingly-coordinated mass prisoner exchange--or release.
In their prescient wisdom, Red Army, Militia, and Volunteer commanders did not trust such an altruistic gesture to come from those as brutalizing as the Dreads. Gunfire and mortar shells started to rain down upon the first wave as well as well-known or sufficiently-suspected Dread positions and encampments across the city and its outskirts. Ordenite forces also began to join the fray as well. Similar skirmishes and battles began to up across eastern Krasnova as bombings and melee attacks timed with the first wave in Nazarovo sparked a firestorm of combat in Susol and Kamenka. Nail bombs and Dread snipers wreaked havoc in Vostok before the Nyktbholstrakhi retreated back into the shadows of alley-ways and the resultant carnage to ambush emergency personnel and survivors with trauma weapons and strangle-wires. Dozens of prominent households, so few there were throughout the country marred by the misguided sentiments of communism, were targeted for raids with objectives alternating between murdering and kidnapping. The cities that had been "skipped" by the Dreadtide's preliminary campaign into the east were wormed like rotten apples by the explosions of all sorts of bombs--suicide, remote-detonated, and time alike--as the sleeper cells there awoke with a tenacious fury. Security force and medical facilities, in a mimic of Theohuanacan Dread tactics, were targeted by gunmen and nail bombs in Saint Pyter, Yerkina, Vostok, Nazarovo, and Dubrovnoye. Both sets of personnel and buildings throughout all of the country lurched from the attacks as they came under the painful strain of the influx of casualties.
Nazarovo, though, is where the malevolence of the Dread offensive and its leader were placed on inglorious display. As it came under fire, the intent of the first wave became deadly clear. The sacrifices lunged forward into the arms of those at the front of the defensive line able to reach out and do so. Many of the catatonic just kept walking past the defenders who were too busy dealing with the now-charging Strakhzoldati and Bezbholskiy. These moments would forever live on in infamy. In the case of the Krasnovan People's Militia Brigade position across from the dilapidated office building that had been the site of the ritualistic massacre in the previous night-hours, a self-made medic grabbed a catatonic sacrifice to tend to the apparent wounds of torture. This medic began stripping the would-have-been-survivor only to discover in horror, "They're bo-!"
Explosives rigged into improvised bomb-vests concealed under winter-clothes donned unto the sacrifices were remotely detonated to gore a vicious path for the second-and-last wave of the initial assaults of the Solntsar Offensive. The bulk of the Myrizstrakha insurgency's forces lashed outward from their positions, to include those surreptitiously formed behind their enemy's lines, to attack from every direction possible so they envelope if not overrun the various security and militia troops. Commanders throughout the ranks of the anti-Dread forces were faced with an oft-feared choice. They could either continue to lay down indirect and direct artillery fire to try to dwindle the cultist attackers' numbers en masse at the risk of killing countless of their own comrades; or they could give up such an advantage. The ultimate answers were various but many, if not most, did choose the former--for better or for worse.
They called themselves the "Otravan Cult of Afar." Within this prison of poverty, they had established dominance quickly with little remorse or reluctance for spilling the blood of the local, former power-brokers of insurgency in the city. Among the rugged dregs, these foreign creatures--some from a place few if any Krasnovans had ever heard of and some from the tropical Golden Throne territory to the south--recruited the ravager and ravaged alike. All were held equal in their eyes of terror, and the power sourced from a strange god and an even stranger-to-Krasnova sovereignty of the soul that they promised had been all that was needed for many of the wicked and/or weary to wither into their ranks. The rituals the braided "Dreads," as they sometimes called themselves, though ruthless and red-drenched, wreaked a fearful fervency into the forgotten so they could one day become fearless fighters for a feral freedom. What good was civility if civilization itself was so stricken with sickness that it discarded you like the remains of a removed cyst for being born without riches?
Now though, months into the campaign of callous courtship, the severe treatment of those who sinfully doubted the power of the Great Path reached a fever pitch. So few were left yet-befallen from the graces of their old ways that it was only a matter of time before a mob of madness moved with malice through the night. Tonight was that night. Screams muffled in the midnight quieted further by the lacerations of knives heralded the coming of the cold-hearted. Someone still-armed with a firearm and not aligned with the creeping darkness resisted the capture of their kin. Club, blade, boot, and bullet minced this man into little more than meat to be cleaned and served in the morning. Masked from the moonlight, the rest of the malevolent marauders painted with meticulous macabre the debris-drab floors into a scintillating and pooling sangoire. Those few fearful that wrestled themselves from the grotesque grasps of the Dreads ran for corridors and stairwells seeking escape could not manage to realize that they were being corralled like cattle as the murderous frenzy cascaded from the upper levels into a horde of killers at the lowest. Soon enough, slaughter settled into ceremony, and the unsafe survivors were stripped of their cloth and strangled by noose, hanged from the shattered balustrade.
The local militia watched with horrified disdain as the bodies fell from not only that building's balcony but also windows and openings elsewhere, to include other buildings that lay on that side of the snowed-in street of demarcation. Many juniors throughout the rag-tag ranks had to be calmed from opening fire too early as some witnessed friend and kin alike be executed. Shots rang out here and there, though, and the Dreads seemed to refuse to respond. The unconverted native insurgents began to fear that their dawn offensive had been compromised, but it was too late to change plans. If the militia waited any longer to deal a fatal blow to this invasive counter-culture, they risked losing not only the support of the people but as well as the apathy of the Fourth Reich. Fighting between the local Zvezdan and the Cultist insurgencies had been intense, especially since the Dreads had found the volatility of eastern Krasnova to be more to their liking.
«««‹‹‹‹‹‹<<<•>>>››››››»»»
Building up to the Solntsar Offensive, Polzin lectured, "The Otravan Cult of Afar's grand opening debut, you could say, had seemed, at first, a matter for the west to deal with. A man calling himself 'Theohuanacogul, Draugr of the Otravanskiy Kult'iz'Daleka of the Worldterror' had confessed to a series of killings that had his signature and a symbol familiar to some Krasnovans, the kolovrat, emblazoned in his and his victims' blood at the scenes of the crimes. This had been in Sterlya, but of course, it had only been the beginning. Similar serial killings, accompanied by mass disappearances presumed to be abductions, occurred in simultaneous pairs. As if it were a campaign march meant to attack an enemy on two fronts, the 'Dreadtide" diverged into two paths. From Sterlya, we believe and are almost certain that they went to Ol'Khovka and Ivanovka. From these, to Yukar..."
Pointing to the different cities as she spoke and as the holo-projected map panned, "and to Chernaya respectively. The Chernaya group seemed to go dormant, or silent, as they skipped over Dubrovnoye and eventually arrived in Kamenka where they established a dedicated cell headquarters apparatus for their southern arm of the Cult. However the Yukar group was a little more ambitious as they appeared to skip over the cities of Kokshlovo, New Impen, and Gryaznaya. Instead they established a dedicated cell in Susol, and then later another was formed in the city of Nazarovo. The ethnic-Ordenite Selbschutz battalions were never given a real chance to understand, and thus react accordingly to all of this, that this was a new breed of radical cultist insurgency. The Zvezdan Red Army and Krasnovan People's Volunteer Divisions and Militia Brigades, on the other hand were fighting a guerrilla war from the receiving end almost immediately as the Dreads bombed and knived their way into Susol and Kamenka. The final straw for the Reich itself as well as the final alert to our intel was the Solntsar Offensive."
The map faded into a photograph of a creature-of-a-man. Though the bronzed skin was a tropical tan's shade-darker than normal, the golden eyes and the blonde-flecked dark-brown hair of his greasy braids confirmed the man's Aladamian ethnicity. From both of his cheeks down, covering all of his arms, presumably his back, and most of his upper body besides the center of his chest and upper abdomen were covered in scarified tally marks, an Ubiystvonomer or Kill Count. As they went lower from his cheeks, the beast-of-man had somewhere made some realization that if he was going to fit all of the marks all over his body and die on the last, at the current rate, he might have to squeeze them closer and closer together. They became so condensed that they appeared more like stripes the lower along his body he had gone. In the center of his upper body though was a scar-tattoo fusion with an antlered and elongated-jaw skull tattoo at the center. As the antlers extended and parsed out, they swirled and twisted to formed sun-wheel much like the kolovrat itself. The peripheral tips of the sun-ray-spokes were a gruesome blend of scarred flesh which had let the ink from the tattoo-proper bleed into.
He had pointed-metal surgical implants at the tips of his fingers that made for small claws--the photograph was just well-focused enough to confirm that the skin-to-alloy protrusions were indeed used for combat by the red that dripped from them. The many rings pierced into his ear carried teeth--some gold and some natural alternating--presumably stolen from his enemies. The braids of his hair themselves appeared to be held together with sinew strings and bone shards. As a necklace, the thing wore lower jaws broken and linked together that, of course, were missing some teeth. A grotesque maned coat lacked any telltale signs of the furs from the sport-mammals it could have been fabricated from. Instead, it was a quilt of different colored human hair patches. The only reasonable deduction could be that it was made from the mummified or similarly-preserved scalps of felled foes, possibly the same ones that had been desecrated and looted for their jaws and teeth. If the class had never seen anything like it before, many might have dashed out for the restroom or a trash can from the pensive speculation on the stench alone, but such weak-stomached had been weeded out long before. No one bothered to inquire as to what happened to the photographer.
"This," pausing for a moment to take a look over her shoulder as if the Draugr was actually there, "Draugr is Solntsar, of Vhoszny and Krasnova. For what he did at the beginning of his eponymous Solntsar Offensive, he is something of a legend to the boys and girls down the hall in PsyOps..."
«««‹‹‹‹‹‹<<<•>>>››››››»»»
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..."
As the eerie tune from a land and time long-forgotten and a language so pervasively common rose from speakers concealed for maximum acoustic effect throughout Nazarovo, the Myrizstrakha insurgents preempted their enemy's morning offensive with one of their own as soon as light first pierced the veil of the night. They chanted with a mixture of the local Krasnovan dialect and Mralic Aldarminian, "Here comes the sun... and here is the sun... here is the sun... and the sun is here..."
As the solemn song and cadence echoed through city, plumes of smoke from ritual pyres the Dreads had constructed the nights and days before rose simultaneously like signals to begin the march. The first wave--mostly simple and low-ranking Strakhzoldati prodding forward their weak-willed sacrifices who were blindfolded and bound but not gagged--staggered out from under the hanging bodies to cross the snowy streets, alleys, and corridors of rubble. A few Bezbholskiy were present in this wave to maintain a loose discipline of the strange march. These sergeants-of-the-cult mostly made sure that the sacrifices stayed ahead of the line. The majority of the sacrifices whimpered as they struggled to bear the pain of injuries from torture in the hours before so that they could walk, hopefully, to their salvation in the hands of the more-familiar militiamen and Red Army. Some sacrifices appeared to be in a catatonia-like state as they even mimicked the Dreads' chant in low mutters. Along the line, none of the Dreads carried firearms. Instead, they carried weapons of melee, and many of these had been self-fashioned by the Dreads themselves, but some had been stolen from Krasnovan homes, farms, and museums. There was a great amount of confusion on part of the Zvezdan defenders for what they thought they were seeing was a disturbingly-coordinated mass prisoner exchange--or release.
In their prescient wisdom, Red Army, Militia, and Volunteer commanders did not trust such an altruistic gesture to come from those as brutalizing as the Dreads. Gunfire and mortar shells started to rain down upon the first wave as well as well-known or sufficiently-suspected Dread positions and encampments across the city and its outskirts. Ordenite forces also began to join the fray as well. Similar skirmishes and battles began to up across eastern Krasnova as bombings and melee attacks timed with the first wave in Nazarovo sparked a firestorm of combat in Susol and Kamenka. Nail bombs and Dread snipers wreaked havoc in Vostok before the Nyktbholstrakhi retreated back into the shadows of alley-ways and the resultant carnage to ambush emergency personnel and survivors with trauma weapons and strangle-wires. Dozens of prominent households, so few there were throughout the country marred by the misguided sentiments of communism, were targeted for raids with objectives alternating between murdering and kidnapping. The cities that had been "skipped" by the Dreadtide's preliminary campaign into the east were wormed like rotten apples by the explosions of all sorts of bombs--suicide, remote-detonated, and time alike--as the sleeper cells there awoke with a tenacious fury. Security force and medical facilities, in a mimic of Theohuanacan Dread tactics, were targeted by gunmen and nail bombs in Saint Pyter, Yerkina, Vostok, Nazarovo, and Dubrovnoye. Both sets of personnel and buildings throughout all of the country lurched from the attacks as they came under the painful strain of the influx of casualties.
Nazarovo, though, is where the malevolence of the Dread offensive and its leader were placed on inglorious display. As it came under fire, the intent of the first wave became deadly clear. The sacrifices lunged forward into the arms of those at the front of the defensive line able to reach out and do so. Many of the catatonic just kept walking past the defenders who were too busy dealing with the now-charging Strakhzoldati and Bezbholskiy. These moments would forever live on in infamy. In the case of the Krasnovan People's Militia Brigade position across from the dilapidated office building that had been the site of the ritualistic massacre in the previous night-hours, a self-made medic grabbed a catatonic sacrifice to tend to the apparent wounds of torture. This medic began stripping the would-have-been-survivor only to discover in horror, "They're bo-!"
Explosives rigged into improvised bomb-vests concealed under winter-clothes donned unto the sacrifices were remotely detonated to gore a vicious path for the second-and-last wave of the initial assaults of the Solntsar Offensive. The bulk of the Myrizstrakha insurgency's forces lashed outward from their positions, to include those surreptitiously formed behind their enemy's lines, to attack from every direction possible so they envelope if not overrun the various security and militia troops. Commanders throughout the ranks of the anti-Dread forces were faced with an oft-feared choice. They could either continue to lay down indirect and direct artillery fire to try to dwindle the cultist attackers' numbers en masse at the risk of killing countless of their own comrades; or they could give up such an advantage. The ultimate answers were various but many, if not most, did choose the former--for better or for worse.
«««‹‹‹‹‹‹<<<•>>>››››››»»»
Sometime before the Offensive
Vostok
"The Dreads are getting bolder," remarked the rasp-voiced Tymnoglaznik, or Dark Eye operative, Volk 64. "Volk 64" was both a name and a rank as far as anyone who did not know him outside of work was concerned. And those were little-to-none. As an espionage-agent of the Tymnoglaz, the "Dark Eye" of the Civil Intelligence and Security Bureau, his identity was even more classified and inter-departmentally- insulated than a military High Command Bolshmakt's personage. "Volk," or "wolf," was an indicator his confirmed high-level skill set in infiltration, surveillance, acquisition, and assassination. The "64" was a likely indicator that he had been recruited to be a spy not long after the War of Reclamation (if not, during so), the Aldarminian civil war that immediately followed the Vanarhelvik Blood House's coup d'état almost twenty years ago.
Volk had not been on Domostrovgor, the home-continent, or even Aldarminian soil at all, for almost ten years. His various areas-of-operation would not be declassified until he died either in the line-of-duty or from old age. Theoretically, the middle-aged Aldyrman man of black-brown hair and grey-green eyes could have married and had children to make himself a family, but there would have been little chance to see them at all. At least time had been good enough to him so that the only signs of aging were merely accumulations of stress rather than the years themselves. He did not have to wear any make-up to cover up the stress marks here though. No, everyone was stressed in Krasnova.
His higher-ranking (but definitely lower-statured) peer and fellow diner in the shoddy restaurant deep in the Ordenite territory of the Krasnovan capital city agreed, "That they are. Sova,"--another Dark Eye spy--"says that their attacks in Susol have stopped being flashy, but the abductions are increasing."
Pretending to look through her own personal items, the woman, a "regular" CISB agent of much-younger age to Volk, nonchalantly picked up the bag that Volk had brought to their table. There was not much cause to be so secretive as though the Reich ruled here, the Zvezdan Krasnovans not only cared little for the Reich outside of keeping the Communists down but also mostly kept to themselves and their own business. Such behavior was probably a by-product of both the Reich's totalitarianism and the brutality of the many wars that the country had endured. The brunette Polbyevakhar knew it was better to be safe than sorry. Just like the Empire had its eyes looking inward and outward, so did the Fourth Reich, and their own intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives were probably on high alert since the Kosmokratium had tried to offer its assistance (to no avail) in dealing with the growing-and-spreading Krasnovan Dreadstate cell. No, "cult" really is the bettor word, she thought.
Though she would never have used it on-mission, her real name was Elvyra Hysheg, but in Krasnova she was Oksana Biryukova. She was just a humble secretary by day and a hostess by night, working at the local government office and one of the higher-class restaurants. Within her cover-portfolio, there were just enough "documentary black-gaps" to provide her with the room to improvise she needed for various pseudonyms and false identities if anyone ever questioned her about her alternating and non-routine meetings with Volk 64 and Sova 209. A young couple and a family arrived successively to the run-down diner that was empty spare the two Aldarminian spies and the staff. The family sat close to the two while the couple found themselves a quiet corner on the other side of the dining area. "Business talk" would have to be conducted at a whispering stagger or in code. Volk preferred code, "My wife's planning a big party with the Bolshovs to welcome the new neighbors. You should come. Sergei is probably going to get an invite as he's back in town. Like I said, you should come."
Elvyra quickly and silently deciphered, The Krasnovan People's Volunteer Division he is embedded with is planning with some People's Militia Brigades and the Zvezdan Red Army to attack the Dreads, and they might even take the opportunity, if provided, to strike at the Reich security as well.
Before she could respond, though, one of the children from the nearby family approached the two spies with all of his youthful curiosity and enthusiasm in an almost-squeal, "Big party?! I want to go to a party! How big is it going to be!? I just had a birthday party! You should come to the next one!"
Instinctively, before either Elvyra or even the parents could respond to their little son's misadventure, Volk 64 snapped into paternal action, "Well I'm sorry we missed it, big guy--"
"You have a funny voice!" the child interrupted, barely if at all aware of the impoliteness of his comment.
The parents were so aghast and embarrassed they could barely manage, "Sasha!"
A gentle hand in the air and a chuckle from Volk stopped the reprimand as he continued to entertain the child, "That I do, young man, but you should be careful because not every old guy like me has a sense of humor. Now, why don't you go sit down with your family and ask them if you can come to the party?"
The mother had arrived to the scene then, and she offered her apologies on behalf of her son for which 64 and Elvyra kindly accepted. After two civilians had returned to their seats, the two spies continued, mentally deciphering each other's statements and questions as they went.
Elvyra resumed, "Back to what you were saying I would love to come! If I'm being honest, I would like to see what Sergei is up to. Oh, and I might be getting a promotion soon!"
As she spoke, she had glanced at the bag which held a folder with photographs provided to Volk by one of his comrades in the Volunteer Division. The pictures were disturbing, if not damning, pieces of evidence of the Reich's genocidal campaign in the peninsula, but unfortunately that was only a minor portion of their mission that had arisen extraneously from Volk's interactions with communist insurgents. Volk had yet to see one of the camps himself, and thus, he could not confirm their locations or scale, and subsequently, Elvyra could not relay such information up the intelligence vine to her superiors who might do the same and eventually provoke a flurry of war-hawking in the Kosmokratium. It was too dangerous. Volk laughed at what Elvyra had said as he deciphered what she really meant, The Chyrnokhrana black ops special forces soldiers will be arriving to Krasnova via covert submarine infil within a few days. The cavalry's on its way. In other words, the man- and firepower I need to acquire and neutralize Solntsar is fina-fucking-ly going to be in-country. And Hysheg actually is getting a promotion commensurate with having such a network operatives under her command.
The Black Guard's imminent insertion and rendezvous brought a genuine-but-actually mischievous smile to 64's face. He congratulated "Oksana" on her promotion and inquired, "So, how many new friends have you made here since the big move?"
How many people will be in our network after the Black Guard arrives..., decoded, "A lot!"
Pushing a strand of hair away from her with her thumb surreptitiously pointed at her chest, Elvyra began the secret count that included her...
...a sip from her drink with a pinky towards Volk... That's two, obviously...
...four blinks for her general staff of two field agents, Polovhyssar, and two field analysts, Anhylitskovhyssar...
...three bites of food for her own personal Sajhomnik, local informants...
...two blinks for Sova 209 and 64's Sajhomnik in the Volunteers...
...and finally three finger taps on the table for the Black Guards.
Good, Volk pondered, The brass listened to her recommendation to send a whole squad rather than just a fireteam or two. We will probably need every single one of those guns if not more if we're lucky. And the op's still tight enough to where she either does not know yet or is not letting on that she knows about my second informant in the Red Army. Altogether, once the sub's heading back out-of-region, Operation Centerfold will total twenty-five personnel, not including however many informants 209 has. If only the Chetverti weren't so obstinate, this job could be done by now, and I--
Elvyra interrupted his train of thought, "So, I do need to be going."
Volk apologized, "Oh yes of course. I'm sure you've got work soon enough. I'll go sight-seeing and maybe pick something up for the kids."
I need to go do my job and you need to get back to doing yours.
The diner received its compensation, and as the two hugged goodbye outside, Volk whispered, "Congratulations, Polmakt."
The embrace released, Elvyra said, "Goodbye, and thank you, Uncle."
The two parted ways: Elvyra to... somewhere in Vostok probably. 64 was on his way back to Nazarovo where he was currently on-leave from the Division so he could attend the funeral of his cousin who had passed after a long battle with cancer. He wondered, "Goodbye... Uncle" huh? Guess I won't be seeing you again until it's go-time. I'll miss you, Hysheg. More than just a fresh, pretty face, you're a good agent. If only I were a few years wiser and not in this business, maybe...
"Oksana!" he heard from behind him, so Volk looked over his shoulder to see two Selbschutz officers greeting the CISB spy like they were good friends. One was substantially older than both Hysheg. Even older than 64. The other was younger but probably not too much to the spy's tastes. Either way, Volk thought, Maybe they're her informants, as he continued his leisurely stroll down the street towards one of the historical attractions in the city. Simultaneously, Elvyra was thinking Just when I was ready to get some sleep and take out these fucking contacts, I have to deal with these per--
She never had to deal with the perverted Ordenite regulars of the restaurant she worked at for cover again. The sniper bullet missed the older of the two officers and struck her in the neck.
"Oksa--!" screamed the officers before the sniper corrected his aim to fire several times more and pin the lifeless bodies of the officers to the ground. After the first shot rang out, Volk had instinctively taken cover, and after watching the officers go down, ran to the scene, still carrying the bag. No more shots were fired, so he figured that it was not a Dread attack, but just a commie assassin or some dumb kid trying to score fame and glory. As the crowd around the bodies started to form, 64 checked for pulses, found none, and then made sure Hysheg was not carrying anything too incriminating besides her Alnardic purple eyes in her head. Finally, after finding and deftly stealing the fallen spy's two phones, Volk 64 departed, thinking as he did Just another day in Krasnova.
Volk had not been on Domostrovgor, the home-continent, or even Aldarminian soil at all, for almost ten years. His various areas-of-operation would not be declassified until he died either in the line-of-duty or from old age. Theoretically, the middle-aged Aldyrman man of black-brown hair and grey-green eyes could have married and had children to make himself a family, but there would have been little chance to see them at all. At least time had been good enough to him so that the only signs of aging were merely accumulations of stress rather than the years themselves. He did not have to wear any make-up to cover up the stress marks here though. No, everyone was stressed in Krasnova.
His higher-ranking (but definitely lower-statured) peer and fellow diner in the shoddy restaurant deep in the Ordenite territory of the Krasnovan capital city agreed, "That they are. Sova,"--another Dark Eye spy--"says that their attacks in Susol have stopped being flashy, but the abductions are increasing."
Pretending to look through her own personal items, the woman, a "regular" CISB agent of much-younger age to Volk, nonchalantly picked up the bag that Volk had brought to their table. There was not much cause to be so secretive as though the Reich ruled here, the Zvezdan Krasnovans not only cared little for the Reich outside of keeping the Communists down but also mostly kept to themselves and their own business. Such behavior was probably a by-product of both the Reich's totalitarianism and the brutality of the many wars that the country had endured. The brunette Polbyevakhar knew it was better to be safe than sorry. Just like the Empire had its eyes looking inward and outward, so did the Fourth Reich, and their own intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives were probably on high alert since the Kosmokratium had tried to offer its assistance (to no avail) in dealing with the growing-and-spreading Krasnovan Dreadstate cell. No, "cult" really is the bettor word, she thought.
Though she would never have used it on-mission, her real name was Elvyra Hysheg, but in Krasnova she was Oksana Biryukova. She was just a humble secretary by day and a hostess by night, working at the local government office and one of the higher-class restaurants. Within her cover-portfolio, there were just enough "documentary black-gaps" to provide her with the room to improvise she needed for various pseudonyms and false identities if anyone ever questioned her about her alternating and non-routine meetings with Volk 64 and Sova 209. A young couple and a family arrived successively to the run-down diner that was empty spare the two Aldarminian spies and the staff. The family sat close to the two while the couple found themselves a quiet corner on the other side of the dining area. "Business talk" would have to be conducted at a whispering stagger or in code. Volk preferred code, "My wife's planning a big party with the Bolshovs to welcome the new neighbors. You should come. Sergei is probably going to get an invite as he's back in town. Like I said, you should come."
Elvyra quickly and silently deciphered, The Krasnovan People's Volunteer Division he is embedded with is planning with some People's Militia Brigades and the Zvezdan Red Army to attack the Dreads, and they might even take the opportunity, if provided, to strike at the Reich security as well.
Before she could respond, though, one of the children from the nearby family approached the two spies with all of his youthful curiosity and enthusiasm in an almost-squeal, "Big party?! I want to go to a party! How big is it going to be!? I just had a birthday party! You should come to the next one!"
Instinctively, before either Elvyra or even the parents could respond to their little son's misadventure, Volk 64 snapped into paternal action, "Well I'm sorry we missed it, big guy--"
"You have a funny voice!" the child interrupted, barely if at all aware of the impoliteness of his comment.
The parents were so aghast and embarrassed they could barely manage, "Sasha!"
A gentle hand in the air and a chuckle from Volk stopped the reprimand as he continued to entertain the child, "That I do, young man, but you should be careful because not every old guy like me has a sense of humor. Now, why don't you go sit down with your family and ask them if you can come to the party?"
The mother had arrived to the scene then, and she offered her apologies on behalf of her son for which 64 and Elvyra kindly accepted. After two civilians had returned to their seats, the two spies continued, mentally deciphering each other's statements and questions as they went.
Elvyra resumed, "Back to what you were saying I would love to come! If I'm being honest, I would like to see what Sergei is up to. Oh, and I might be getting a promotion soon!"
As she spoke, she had glanced at the bag which held a folder with photographs provided to Volk by one of his comrades in the Volunteer Division. The pictures were disturbing, if not damning, pieces of evidence of the Reich's genocidal campaign in the peninsula, but unfortunately that was only a minor portion of their mission that had arisen extraneously from Volk's interactions with communist insurgents. Volk had yet to see one of the camps himself, and thus, he could not confirm their locations or scale, and subsequently, Elvyra could not relay such information up the intelligence vine to her superiors who might do the same and eventually provoke a flurry of war-hawking in the Kosmokratium. It was too dangerous. Volk laughed at what Elvyra had said as he deciphered what she really meant, The Chyrnokhrana black ops special forces soldiers will be arriving to Krasnova via covert submarine infil within a few days. The cavalry's on its way. In other words, the man- and firepower I need to acquire and neutralize Solntsar is fina-fucking-ly going to be in-country. And Hysheg actually is getting a promotion commensurate with having such a network operatives under her command.
The Black Guard's imminent insertion and rendezvous brought a genuine-but-actually mischievous smile to 64's face. He congratulated "Oksana" on her promotion and inquired, "So, how many new friends have you made here since the big move?"
How many people will be in our network after the Black Guard arrives..., decoded, "A lot!"
Pushing a strand of hair away from her with her thumb surreptitiously pointed at her chest, Elvyra began the secret count that included her...
...a sip from her drink with a pinky towards Volk... That's two, obviously...
...four blinks for her general staff of two field agents, Polovhyssar, and two field analysts, Anhylitskovhyssar...
...three bites of food for her own personal Sajhomnik, local informants...
...two blinks for Sova 209 and 64's Sajhomnik in the Volunteers...
...and finally three finger taps on the table for the Black Guards.
Good, Volk pondered, The brass listened to her recommendation to send a whole squad rather than just a fireteam or two. We will probably need every single one of those guns if not more if we're lucky. And the op's still tight enough to where she either does not know yet or is not letting on that she knows about my second informant in the Red Army. Altogether, once the sub's heading back out-of-region, Operation Centerfold will total twenty-five personnel, not including however many informants 209 has. If only the Chetverti weren't so obstinate, this job could be done by now, and I--
Elvyra interrupted his train of thought, "So, I do need to be going."
Volk apologized, "Oh yes of course. I'm sure you've got work soon enough. I'll go sight-seeing and maybe pick something up for the kids."
I need to go do my job and you need to get back to doing yours.
The diner received its compensation, and as the two hugged goodbye outside, Volk whispered, "Congratulations, Polmakt."
The embrace released, Elvyra said, "Goodbye, and thank you, Uncle."
The two parted ways: Elvyra to... somewhere in Vostok probably. 64 was on his way back to Nazarovo where he was currently on-leave from the Division so he could attend the funeral of his cousin who had passed after a long battle with cancer. He wondered, "Goodbye... Uncle" huh? Guess I won't be seeing you again until it's go-time. I'll miss you, Hysheg. More than just a fresh, pretty face, you're a good agent. If only I were a few years wiser and not in this business, maybe...
"Oksana!" he heard from behind him, so Volk looked over his shoulder to see two Selbschutz officers greeting the CISB spy like they were good friends. One was substantially older than both Hysheg. Even older than 64. The other was younger but probably not too much to the spy's tastes. Either way, Volk thought, Maybe they're her informants, as he continued his leisurely stroll down the street towards one of the historical attractions in the city. Simultaneously, Elvyra was thinking Just when I was ready to get some sleep and take out these fucking contacts, I have to deal with these per--
She never had to deal with the perverted Ordenite regulars of the restaurant she worked at for cover again. The sniper bullet missed the older of the two officers and struck her in the neck.
"Oksa--!" screamed the officers before the sniper corrected his aim to fire several times more and pin the lifeless bodies of the officers to the ground. After the first shot rang out, Volk had instinctively taken cover, and after watching the officers go down, ran to the scene, still carrying the bag. No more shots were fired, so he figured that it was not a Dread attack, but just a commie assassin or some dumb kid trying to score fame and glory. As the crowd around the bodies started to form, 64 checked for pulses, found none, and then made sure Hysheg was not carrying anything too incriminating besides her Alnardic purple eyes in her head. Finally, after finding and deftly stealing the fallen spy's two phones, Volk 64 departed, thinking as he did Just another day in Krasnova.
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During the Offensive, Midday to Dusk
Nazarovo
Southwestern Outskirts
Scoffing down the last of his rations from the Division, Volk 64 bittersweetly remembered Jésús Crìstobal, the Mokastani drug trafficker that had smuggled the intelligence corps of Operation Centerfold into Krasnova. Whilst in his "care," the deceased Hysheg, Sova 209, and 64 had had the pleasure of fusing Aldarminian and Mokastani cuisines. The "last meal" had been an especially delicious and intoxicating (literally-so) dzhombalyya, or jambalaya, with the additions of Mokastani traditional meats and aldgrass. Concurrently, Volk wished he could go back and wished he had never gone at all. Krasnova and Centerfold, Nazarovo especially, were becoming tediously bleak to him.
After Elvyra Hysheg's death, Volk 64 assumed command of Centerfold until a rendezvous with 209 could be established. The night-time rendezvous with the Black Guard operatives had been successful, but there had been too-close-of-a-call with bumping into local security. The fact that Hysheg's body had almost certainly been autopsied and discovered to be Aldarminian, not Ordenite or at all Krasnovan, weighed heavily upon everyone during the final and only gathering of all the Aldarminian conspirators of Operation Centerfold a day prior. The field agents and analysts had been most concerned for good reason. They had had the most contact with Elvyra and were probably under thorough surveillance, and if it had not been so short of time before the communist insurgents' offensive to push out the Dreads and give the Ordenites hell, the meeting might never had been called in the first place. For all intents and purposes, the Aldarminian spy network was operating under the assumption that it was compromised.
The plan that had been worked out with the Black Guard Khommyssar and Sova was relatively simple considering their options. Connecting all the puzzle pieces of months of intelligence gathering beforehand, the most likely place for the Draugr Solntsar to be was deduced to a condemned office building in the east of the city where the Dreads had outmaneuvered local security and a Krasnovan People's Militia Brigade in the area to "set up shop before the big show." If the target acquisition deduction was correct, the lead fireteam of the Black Guard was to push forward in-step with Krasnovan Communist insurgents' advances on the Dreads' positions and terminate Solntsar and any other Dreads they encountered. For whatever could be said derisively of the Dreads though, they were infamously deceptive.
Thusly, to be safe the Chyrnokhrana squad was split into its three fireteams and dispersed throughout the city rather than all positioned in close proximity to the supposed location of the Draugr target. The mission was accordingly divided into three teams. Volk 64 would lead Team Page; the Khommyssar would lead Team Eraser; and Sova 209 led Team Turnout. Unfortunately, Volk 64 had been unable to get out of mortar duty with his division in the northwestern quarter of the city's outskirts, so he would not be able to even observe the mission. One fireteam was dispatched (Wasted, 209 and 64 had thought at the time the plan was made) to the forest near 64's position to make sure that when it was time to exfil out the city he was not left behind. However, being off of the frontline and near a communications hub for his Division, Volk would be able to relay information to the rest of Centerfold on the general state of affairs throughout the city. The lead fireteam with the Khommyssar, one of Anhylitskovhyssar, and one of Polovhyssar, was positioned as close as possible to the office building so that their line-of-sight-and-advance would be almost perpendicular to the Militia's Brigades. The remainder of Operation Centerfold's mission personnel, Team Turnout, were positioned in the northeast of the city.
Then, the Dreads made their move. Despite immediately seeing the first wave for what it was, Team Eraser and Turnout were not immune to the chaos caused by the sacrifices' suicide bombings. All the while, the Dreads never stopped chanting, "I vot solntse..."
The cacophony of combat quickly shadowed the speakers secretions of the eerie Common Tongue song. While Volk loaded shell after shell after to be lobbed into Nazarovo, Team Eraser was forced to abandon their initial position by a Dread attack that pressed the adjacent Red Army forces into their over-look building. Team Turnout was apparently engaging intensely with both Myrizstrakha and Red Army troops. Team Page, though, seemed safe for the moment.
The Black Guardsmen and Guardswomen were not used to having charges under fire, but they were used to this kind of multi-factional combat. They had all survived tours across the Far West that involved braving crossfires to reach the snakes whose heads had to be cut-off. The difference here in Krasnova though was that they were nowhere near what could arguably be called an Aldarminian sphere of influence. Exfil, getting out the city, would be up to them, which was not too abnormal, but getting out of country was an entirely different story. With the intelligence-end of the operation most likely compromised, they probably could not rely on what their pre-mission briefing had called the "Mokastani Shuffle" of smugglers' routes, drug exchanges, and vehicle-and-vessel swaps. The Chyrnokhrana would most likely have to bivouac in various locations along the Zvezdan peninsula's coast before the intel spooks could re-secure themselves and re-establish a method of extraction for all of Operation Centerfold. At the moment though, considering how such black ops worked, the shadow-soldiers of Empire were not so sure they were fighting for their survival in the urban hell-hole of Nazarovo so much as they were fighting to die by Reich firing squad rather than Dread or Commie line-of-fire.
As the hours passed without so much as a sign or whisper of Solntsar's position, the numbers of Centerfold started to pay their toll. The early morning's enjoining of battle and its subsequent procession had seen a field analyst die from ricochet, and two Black Guards were presumably killed-in-action from the suicide blasts. Sova was injured and practically immobilized by shrapnel in his leg. Most if not all of the Black Guards within the thick of the firefights of the city carried similar-yet-less-severe wounds from shrapnel. One Black Guard and one of the field agents had caught a spray of small arms fire from either side as Team Turnout tried to enter an apartment building bored and gored by all manner of projectile, gut, and explosive. Team Page were the only ones left unscathed if no one counted Volk 64's bled-and-burnt hands from the fortunately-small-and-precisely-placed pieces of shrapnel that had coming flying at him and his mortar team because a negligent team down the line improperly dropped live ordnance into an overheated time. Considering that his injuries made him a liability on the team and had him transferred directly to the comms-hub and also considering the bodies of those nearer to that team-of-fools, Volk was certain he had had a good time of things.
As he hustled with a brisk pace towards the communications hub, a cluster of tents and trucks crudely camouflaged by the snow itself and netting, 64 observed that there was an increasing influx of Comm-insurgent troops into his Division's area-of-operations. Making sure to keep their distance from the People's Volunteers' perimeter watches, Volk's Team in the woods made a similar-if-not-more-certain conclusion. After briefly watching a battle-battered truck arrive just outside of the hub, 64 resolved to ask the nearest Volunteer, "Who are they? And why are they coming here, and not going to the front?"
The trooper, drenched in sooty sweat, shrugged before passing on the rumor, "I think those are actually the Reds themselves. Apparently the front's a lot closer to us than it's supposed to be ri--"
Someone called out for the trooper who hurriedly extended his apologies and ran off to do whatever it was that was needed of the good soldier. Volk pressed onward into one of the peripheral tents of the communications center after checking with a medic to make sure his wounds were as treated and dressed as they needed to be. After a quick scan of the "room," the Tymnoglaznik found "his man," his trusted informant, sitting at a desk that was really just a fold-out table that struggled just well-enough to hold all of the comms equipment atop it. Beads of sweat inter-mixed with blood splattered across the comms-officer's face as the droplets raced down the greasy and shaggy locks of his hair. As the Sajhomnik, and thus prospective foreign recruit into the CISB, barked as calmly as he could various codes and coordinates protocols into the telephone-like contraption attached sweat-stuck-so to the man's cheek, he lit up with a mediocre hope at the site of Volk who could only dash it all with a shake of his head. Eventually, with gunfire ringing out a bit-too-close-by, the informant could step away from the various devices long enough to speak with the man he knew to be a spy, yet trusted to get a job done.
"Sheremetev," Volk nodded, "What's going on?"
The Dark Eye spy already had a good idea, but Sheremetev was a good source of confirmation as he spoke almost-frantically, "Comrade," nodding as he never needed a name from the spy because the first he had been given was evidently fake anyway, "I just got back from the front," gesturing to his face, "After having to go out there to fix a fucking radio because we are running out of technicians because every time we send one out," pointing in every direction around him and thus the AO, "The front gets fucking closer and those techs get fucking dead-er. Tell me that you at least have boots on the ground about to get eyes on the son of a bitch."
Volk would never compromise the presence of his best assets in the field, the Imperial Vanguard Chyrnokhrana, but he would and did do everything he could to alleviate some of his best source's concerns, "I can say that we are looking-"
That had not been enough, "Looking into it?! Cyka blyat, look around! Just tell me what this Solntsar looks like and where he might be, and if any of our spotters scope him, they won't even bother calling it in!"
Volk grabbed Sheremetev by the shoulder and the neck and pressed his forehead up against the Krasnovan's. If there was ever a time not to make a scene but someone made it anyway, then was probably the best time to put all cards on the table, he thought before he tried to calm the Division comms-officer, "You need to lower your fucking voice and listen closely. I've got the damn boots you need, but if a Krasnyik spotter just scopes this guy and doesn't call it in so my guys can grab-and-bag him, not blow his demented brains out, though trust me, we want to as much if not more-so than all of you do, then I cannot get you or anyone else out of this steaming gruda der'ma of an occupation. And I damn sure won't be able to convince anyone back-where-I'm-from that a bunch of rag-tag communists like you are a lot better to deal with than a bunch of Reich-romping Chetverti. Now, tell me: Why are Red grunts coming here and not their base just up the line? Do so quietly, Sheremetev, or I will forced to rectify the situation you just nearly put me in."
As Volk scanned the tent-space around the two of them, Sheremetev pulled out of the clinch in major-but-quickly-evaporated horror as he came to realize how much was truly at stake. He collected his thoughts, and the data dancing around the inside of the Krasnovan's head was then choreographed into coolly-collated words, "The Reds are here because the Selbschutz have their heads up their asses and are playing the wrong game. They're hitting us harder than we're hitting them. Hell, we haven't even had a chance to hit them, we've been on the damn defensive all day," shaking his head to gather himself for better brevity, "The Reds just coming in are from their artillery AO down the line. They got overwhelmed by the Order-"
Cutting the Krasnovan off, Volk inquired, now-frantic himself, "You mean the big guns? Not the fucking tube-thumpers?"
Confusion awash across his face, Sheremetev shook his head as a strange static-and-click sound came from the wire-and-box device wrapped around Volk's neck followed shortly by an almost gargled, "He's here! Ini-" then followed by sharper static. Volk's eyes widened, and as the Krasnovan informant realized the implication of the abruptly cut-off message, so did Sheremetev's eyes go wide and his expression go bright, but for some reason, his Aldarminian comrade's did not. Hastily, the spy reached into his front pocket, grabbed Sheremetev's hand, placed two pieces of paper into it, and ripped off the name-badge from the People's Volunteer's BDU.
Aghast at the rapidity of the movements, the Krasnovan barely managed to speak before 64 instructed as coolly and succinctly as possible, "You are Lieutenant Grishin. Grab four or five troopers you can trust, but do so on your east-north-east way out of Nazarovo. Go to the first address--but don't bring your friends directly there with you--and use the orders on the other to get around where you can. If someone obstructs you, kill them. Maim them. Do what you have to, but make sure they can never report either of your identities or your face to anyone anywhere ever. Once you're where you need to be, stay there as long as you can until I or someone else gets there. The sign will be 'Center,' and your designated counter-sign is 'Wrap.' Do not say anything else if it's not me. If they don't say, 'Center,' you fucking lay-low and act like you're not there until they leave. Once they leave follow them and have your friends kill them. Don't do it yourself. If they try to enter, kill them. If that happens, there's a second address; rinse, wash, repeat. More addresses will be at the second. All of them, to include the first two, should have enough money to feed and clothe yourself as well as provide close-by lodgings. Your buddies will have to fend for themselves besides shelter. Make sure they make do, we'll probably end up needing all of you, but if they don't make it or if they drag you down or if they fucking compromise you, either kill them or let them die. Don't say another word to me. Just do as I say, and go now!"
Sheremetev was frozen in shock from just the generosity-of-necessity alone. Volk could not have that, so the Tymnoglaznik slapped sense into the Krasnovan who then understood the dire urgency. Spies, he surmised, would never risk blowing their cover in such a way unless the world-as-they-knew-it was at stake. Volk 64 followed the comms-officer out of the tent and out of the AO as far as he could. As he watched Sheremetev, with two other Krasnovans in-tow, step over the perimeter heading due-east-but-skirting-along the other perimeters of the line, Volk tried to call it in before it was too late, "The Dreads have fucking howitz-"
After Elvyra Hysheg's death, Volk 64 assumed command of Centerfold until a rendezvous with 209 could be established. The night-time rendezvous with the Black Guard operatives had been successful, but there had been too-close-of-a-call with bumping into local security. The fact that Hysheg's body had almost certainly been autopsied and discovered to be Aldarminian, not Ordenite or at all Krasnovan, weighed heavily upon everyone during the final and only gathering of all the Aldarminian conspirators of Operation Centerfold a day prior. The field agents and analysts had been most concerned for good reason. They had had the most contact with Elvyra and were probably under thorough surveillance, and if it had not been so short of time before the communist insurgents' offensive to push out the Dreads and give the Ordenites hell, the meeting might never had been called in the first place. For all intents and purposes, the Aldarminian spy network was operating under the assumption that it was compromised.
The plan that had been worked out with the Black Guard Khommyssar and Sova was relatively simple considering their options. Connecting all the puzzle pieces of months of intelligence gathering beforehand, the most likely place for the Draugr Solntsar to be was deduced to a condemned office building in the east of the city where the Dreads had outmaneuvered local security and a Krasnovan People's Militia Brigade in the area to "set up shop before the big show." If the target acquisition deduction was correct, the lead fireteam of the Black Guard was to push forward in-step with Krasnovan Communist insurgents' advances on the Dreads' positions and terminate Solntsar and any other Dreads they encountered. For whatever could be said derisively of the Dreads though, they were infamously deceptive.
Thusly, to be safe the Chyrnokhrana squad was split into its three fireteams and dispersed throughout the city rather than all positioned in close proximity to the supposed location of the Draugr target. The mission was accordingly divided into three teams. Volk 64 would lead Team Page; the Khommyssar would lead Team Eraser; and Sova 209 led Team Turnout. Unfortunately, Volk 64 had been unable to get out of mortar duty with his division in the northwestern quarter of the city's outskirts, so he would not be able to even observe the mission. One fireteam was dispatched (Wasted, 209 and 64 had thought at the time the plan was made) to the forest near 64's position to make sure that when it was time to exfil out the city he was not left behind. However, being off of the frontline and near a communications hub for his Division, Volk would be able to relay information to the rest of Centerfold on the general state of affairs throughout the city. The lead fireteam with the Khommyssar, one of Anhylitskovhyssar, and one of Polovhyssar, was positioned as close as possible to the office building so that their line-of-sight-and-advance would be almost perpendicular to the Militia's Brigades. The remainder of Operation Centerfold's mission personnel, Team Turnout, were positioned in the northeast of the city.
Then, the Dreads made their move. Despite immediately seeing the first wave for what it was, Team Eraser and Turnout were not immune to the chaos caused by the sacrifices' suicide bombings. All the while, the Dreads never stopped chanting, "I vot solntse..."
The cacophony of combat quickly shadowed the speakers secretions of the eerie Common Tongue song. While Volk loaded shell after shell after to be lobbed into Nazarovo, Team Eraser was forced to abandon their initial position by a Dread attack that pressed the adjacent Red Army forces into their over-look building. Team Turnout was apparently engaging intensely with both Myrizstrakha and Red Army troops. Team Page, though, seemed safe for the moment.
The Black Guardsmen and Guardswomen were not used to having charges under fire, but they were used to this kind of multi-factional combat. They had all survived tours across the Far West that involved braving crossfires to reach the snakes whose heads had to be cut-off. The difference here in Krasnova though was that they were nowhere near what could arguably be called an Aldarminian sphere of influence. Exfil, getting out the city, would be up to them, which was not too abnormal, but getting out of country was an entirely different story. With the intelligence-end of the operation most likely compromised, they probably could not rely on what their pre-mission briefing had called the "Mokastani Shuffle" of smugglers' routes, drug exchanges, and vehicle-and-vessel swaps. The Chyrnokhrana would most likely have to bivouac in various locations along the Zvezdan peninsula's coast before the intel spooks could re-secure themselves and re-establish a method of extraction for all of Operation Centerfold. At the moment though, considering how such black ops worked, the shadow-soldiers of Empire were not so sure they were fighting for their survival in the urban hell-hole of Nazarovo so much as they were fighting to die by Reich firing squad rather than Dread or Commie line-of-fire.
As the hours passed without so much as a sign or whisper of Solntsar's position, the numbers of Centerfold started to pay their toll. The early morning's enjoining of battle and its subsequent procession had seen a field analyst die from ricochet, and two Black Guards were presumably killed-in-action from the suicide blasts. Sova was injured and practically immobilized by shrapnel in his leg. Most if not all of the Black Guards within the thick of the firefights of the city carried similar-yet-less-severe wounds from shrapnel. One Black Guard and one of the field agents had caught a spray of small arms fire from either side as Team Turnout tried to enter an apartment building bored and gored by all manner of projectile, gut, and explosive. Team Page were the only ones left unscathed if no one counted Volk 64's bled-and-burnt hands from the fortunately-small-and-precisely-placed pieces of shrapnel that had coming flying at him and his mortar team because a negligent team down the line improperly dropped live ordnance into an overheated time. Considering that his injuries made him a liability on the team and had him transferred directly to the comms-hub and also considering the bodies of those nearer to that team-of-fools, Volk was certain he had had a good time of things.
As he hustled with a brisk pace towards the communications hub, a cluster of tents and trucks crudely camouflaged by the snow itself and netting, 64 observed that there was an increasing influx of Comm-insurgent troops into his Division's area-of-operations. Making sure to keep their distance from the People's Volunteers' perimeter watches, Volk's Team in the woods made a similar-if-not-more-certain conclusion. After briefly watching a battle-battered truck arrive just outside of the hub, 64 resolved to ask the nearest Volunteer, "Who are they? And why are they coming here, and not going to the front?"
The trooper, drenched in sooty sweat, shrugged before passing on the rumor, "I think those are actually the Reds themselves. Apparently the front's a lot closer to us than it's supposed to be ri--"
Someone called out for the trooper who hurriedly extended his apologies and ran off to do whatever it was that was needed of the good soldier. Volk pressed onward into one of the peripheral tents of the communications center after checking with a medic to make sure his wounds were as treated and dressed as they needed to be. After a quick scan of the "room," the Tymnoglaznik found "his man," his trusted informant, sitting at a desk that was really just a fold-out table that struggled just well-enough to hold all of the comms equipment atop it. Beads of sweat inter-mixed with blood splattered across the comms-officer's face as the droplets raced down the greasy and shaggy locks of his hair. As the Sajhomnik, and thus prospective foreign recruit into the CISB, barked as calmly as he could various codes and coordinates protocols into the telephone-like contraption attached sweat-stuck-so to the man's cheek, he lit up with a mediocre hope at the site of Volk who could only dash it all with a shake of his head. Eventually, with gunfire ringing out a bit-too-close-by, the informant could step away from the various devices long enough to speak with the man he knew to be a spy, yet trusted to get a job done.
"Sheremetev," Volk nodded, "What's going on?"
The Dark Eye spy already had a good idea, but Sheremetev was a good source of confirmation as he spoke almost-frantically, "Comrade," nodding as he never needed a name from the spy because the first he had been given was evidently fake anyway, "I just got back from the front," gesturing to his face, "After having to go out there to fix a fucking radio because we are running out of technicians because every time we send one out," pointing in every direction around him and thus the AO, "The front gets fucking closer and those techs get fucking dead-er. Tell me that you at least have boots on the ground about to get eyes on the son of a bitch."
Volk would never compromise the presence of his best assets in the field, the Imperial Vanguard Chyrnokhrana, but he would and did do everything he could to alleviate some of his best source's concerns, "I can say that we are looking-"
That had not been enough, "Looking into it?! Cyka blyat, look around! Just tell me what this Solntsar looks like and where he might be, and if any of our spotters scope him, they won't even bother calling it in!"
Volk grabbed Sheremetev by the shoulder and the neck and pressed his forehead up against the Krasnovan's. If there was ever a time not to make a scene but someone made it anyway, then was probably the best time to put all cards on the table, he thought before he tried to calm the Division comms-officer, "You need to lower your fucking voice and listen closely. I've got the damn boots you need, but if a Krasnyik spotter just scopes this guy and doesn't call it in so my guys can grab-and-bag him, not blow his demented brains out, though trust me, we want to as much if not more-so than all of you do, then I cannot get you or anyone else out of this steaming gruda der'ma of an occupation. And I damn sure won't be able to convince anyone back-where-I'm-from that a bunch of rag-tag communists like you are a lot better to deal with than a bunch of Reich-romping Chetverti. Now, tell me: Why are Red grunts coming here and not their base just up the line? Do so quietly, Sheremetev, or I will forced to rectify the situation you just nearly put me in."
As Volk scanned the tent-space around the two of them, Sheremetev pulled out of the clinch in major-but-quickly-evaporated horror as he came to realize how much was truly at stake. He collected his thoughts, and the data dancing around the inside of the Krasnovan's head was then choreographed into coolly-collated words, "The Reds are here because the Selbschutz have their heads up their asses and are playing the wrong game. They're hitting us harder than we're hitting them. Hell, we haven't even had a chance to hit them, we've been on the damn defensive all day," shaking his head to gather himself for better brevity, "The Reds just coming in are from their artillery AO down the line. They got overwhelmed by the Order-"
Cutting the Krasnovan off, Volk inquired, now-frantic himself, "You mean the big guns? Not the fucking tube-thumpers?"
Confusion awash across his face, Sheremetev shook his head as a strange static-and-click sound came from the wire-and-box device wrapped around Volk's neck followed shortly by an almost gargled, "He's here! Ini-" then followed by sharper static. Volk's eyes widened, and as the Krasnovan informant realized the implication of the abruptly cut-off message, so did Sheremetev's eyes go wide and his expression go bright, but for some reason, his Aldarminian comrade's did not. Hastily, the spy reached into his front pocket, grabbed Sheremetev's hand, placed two pieces of paper into it, and ripped off the name-badge from the People's Volunteer's BDU.
Aghast at the rapidity of the movements, the Krasnovan barely managed to speak before 64 instructed as coolly and succinctly as possible, "You are Lieutenant Grishin. Grab four or five troopers you can trust, but do so on your east-north-east way out of Nazarovo. Go to the first address--but don't bring your friends directly there with you--and use the orders on the other to get around where you can. If someone obstructs you, kill them. Maim them. Do what you have to, but make sure they can never report either of your identities or your face to anyone anywhere ever. Once you're where you need to be, stay there as long as you can until I or someone else gets there. The sign will be 'Center,' and your designated counter-sign is 'Wrap.' Do not say anything else if it's not me. If they don't say, 'Center,' you fucking lay-low and act like you're not there until they leave. Once they leave follow them and have your friends kill them. Don't do it yourself. If they try to enter, kill them. If that happens, there's a second address; rinse, wash, repeat. More addresses will be at the second. All of them, to include the first two, should have enough money to feed and clothe yourself as well as provide close-by lodgings. Your buddies will have to fend for themselves besides shelter. Make sure they make do, we'll probably end up needing all of you, but if they don't make it or if they drag you down or if they fucking compromise you, either kill them or let them die. Don't say another word to me. Just do as I say, and go now!"
Sheremetev was frozen in shock from just the generosity-of-necessity alone. Volk could not have that, so the Tymnoglaznik slapped sense into the Krasnovan who then understood the dire urgency. Spies, he surmised, would never risk blowing their cover in such a way unless the world-as-they-knew-it was at stake. Volk 64 followed the comms-officer out of the tent and out of the AO as far as he could. As he watched Sheremetev, with two other Krasnovans in-tow, step over the perimeter heading due-east-but-skirting-along the other perimeters of the line, Volk tried to call it in before it was too late, "The Dreads have fucking howitz-"
Later that night
East Central Nazarovo
"After Shit-Really-Hit-The-Fan," as the Khommyssar explained it to the unexpectedly-arrived Sova 209 and Krygfurir Basyronov, "We lost contact with Team Page. We haven't heard anything from Privot Njarysk since his last message. We have been trying to fight our way back to the initial position, like you two, ever since, but as I'm guessing y'all are starting to understand," waving his hands around the roughly-triangle-shaped pocket of rubble that inhabited the space that a small, one-way street and two larger streets had once intersected around some sort of recreational building, "We're a bit fucking pinned here as it is, and I see you've brought yourself, a veritable cripp-"
"Spare me the lecture, soldier, " Sova interrupted and then corrected, "I can walk now. Not with much speed, but I can walk, so just point me where I need to go and where I need to shoot."
He had said the last sentence as if was not already well aware of the situation, but he was, and even with that common knowledge, the Khommyssar still felt the need to elucidate in the getting-longer intermissions between his blind-firing, "Be that as it may, you've still only brought me with a half-dead," pointing to the Stridfurir who was promptly bleeding out as he blind-fired, "Man, who, mind you, is half-dead because the good, half-dead man had to cover your half-dead, mostly-crippled asses as y'all came sauntering up the fucking promen--"
A poorly-lobbed-and-aimed grenade's landing interjected with the obligatory, "Take cover!" as the Aldarminians dove behind juts of debris. The grenade did little damage to anyone, but the Khommyssar bemoaned over a new piece of shrapnel in his arm and cursed the Ordenites though no one knew exactly from whence the frag came. He spoke slightly more softly as he reloaded with a sorrowed stare at the magazine, "And you've got no new intel, huh?"
Sova, empathizing with the man, could only shake his head, No, but I wish I did, soldier. By gods dead and Enduring, I wish I did.
"Take cover!"
A rocket streaked over head of their position and collided with an APC that had been coming towards them. The Stridfurir's last words were a joke, fitting of his rank in the chain and his demeanor in life, "Sir, maybe if we just fucking cuddle up and hide, they commies, the Chetverti, and the Pygaloi will all just kill each other!"
"Take cover!" the Khommyssar shouted as another rocket streaked over them and another grenade fell ill-effectively as far as those alive were concerned. The pieces of ceramic, concrete, and metal pushed outward from the frag's explosion lacerated the Stridfurir's lifeless body. Lifting his head and face up from the rubble, Sova could have sworn he could read from an otherwise scorched piece of paper from a Bible, The meek will...
"Take cover!"
"...Be blown to fucking bits!" shouted 209.
Puzzled, the other Black Guard, a Syrjhont, yelled back, "What the hell are you on about?!"
Sova, blind-firing, "Nothing!"
There was a brief lull as the three took time to reload. Tracer rounds from every direction arced their ways across the night sky overhead as the various forces tried to gauge their aims against either the Aldarminians who were probably confusing the entire party or the rest of the factions. The agents of the Empire were running out time though. The slow-and-steady rumble of approaching Selbschutz armor became more ominous by the second. The streaking rockets and the crack of molotovs were only small comforts to what was conceivably left of Operation Centerfold. The Khommyssar said as much, "So the way I see it," blind-firing as briefly as possible, "We are the only Aldarminians left alive in this hell-hole country. Is that correct, Sova?"
Sova nodded. The Syrjhont and his superior exchanged thoughts quietly via somber stares that occasionally made their way over to 209. Finally, the highest-ranking of the Black Guard duo asked, "Do you know the Reds' signals?"
Sova looked at the Vanguardsman as blankly as possible. "Don't fucking play with me, man. We still got a mission, and your limp-legged-ass is probably the only one who could ever get it done. You are a Sova right?"
209 nodded, a frown starting to curl its way over his lips as he did. "So you know the blasted signs?"
"Volk told them to me."
"Good, get the fuck out of here."
If there had not been an urban battle between three factions vying for control over Nazarovo all around them, the silence between the three Aldarminians would have been oppressive. Oppression was not something unfamiliar or insurmountable to an Aldarminian if they knew their own history, so the Khommyssar insisted with an explication, "The Syrjh' and I will cover you. The Reds should be that way," pointing to the direction opposite from where Sova had come to the final stand for the Black Guard detachment to Operation Centerfold. By sheer stroke of luck and power of adrenaline, Sova's leg could work well enough to haul-ass-and-tail down the small, one-way street that had become even more pock-marked by bodies, debris, and burnt-out vehicles than when he had arrived. As he limped-ran and yelled what he need to at the Red Army soldiers who would, being too-busy, almost without question, let someone wearing their rugged uniforms and red colors pass through their line fire under some modicum of cover, while providing cover, Sova never looked behind him to his fellow Aldarminian nationals. He knew that even more-so than the Reds that they were providing covering fire to suppress as much of the Ordenite and Dread forces as possible.
After making sure he had cleared the lines of fire completely and reached the Reds' line, the Khommyssar and Syrjhont wished Sova well on his mission and prayed that he might find other survivors of Operation Centerfold elsewhere. The two Chyrnokhrana gave each other one last look, shook hands, divvied up what ammunition was left, and picked a side. The superior chose to kill as many of the Selbschutz as he could while the other decided to stay the course of their mission and cut-down with his gun every single advancing Dread. The Reds had stopped firing on the two Black Guards, and some of the Communist insurgents even tried to wave them, but the Aldarminians paid no mind. By then, the Ordenites and the Dreads were too close. Fifty-caliber rounds from a flanking Ordrnite tank eviscerated the Syrjhont. The last of the Black Guard held his ground on the other side of pocket-of-run until Ordenite infantry swarmed him with the intent to capture. After he refused to stand down and instead fired upon the nearest officers he could pick-out, the Khommyssar shot to ribbons by small arms fire.
"Spare me the lecture, soldier, " Sova interrupted and then corrected, "I can walk now. Not with much speed, but I can walk, so just point me where I need to go and where I need to shoot."
He had said the last sentence as if was not already well aware of the situation, but he was, and even with that common knowledge, the Khommyssar still felt the need to elucidate in the getting-longer intermissions between his blind-firing, "Be that as it may, you've still only brought me with a half-dead," pointing to the Stridfurir who was promptly bleeding out as he blind-fired, "Man, who, mind you, is half-dead because the good, half-dead man had to cover your half-dead, mostly-crippled asses as y'all came sauntering up the fucking promen--"
A poorly-lobbed-and-aimed grenade's landing interjected with the obligatory, "Take cover!" as the Aldarminians dove behind juts of debris. The grenade did little damage to anyone, but the Khommyssar bemoaned over a new piece of shrapnel in his arm and cursed the Ordenites though no one knew exactly from whence the frag came. He spoke slightly more softly as he reloaded with a sorrowed stare at the magazine, "And you've got no new intel, huh?"
Sova, empathizing with the man, could only shake his head, No, but I wish I did, soldier. By gods dead and Enduring, I wish I did.
"Take cover!"
A rocket streaked over head of their position and collided with an APC that had been coming towards them. The Stridfurir's last words were a joke, fitting of his rank in the chain and his demeanor in life, "Sir, maybe if we just fucking cuddle up and hide, they commies, the Chetverti, and the Pygaloi will all just kill each other!"
"Take cover!" the Khommyssar shouted as another rocket streaked over them and another grenade fell ill-effectively as far as those alive were concerned. The pieces of ceramic, concrete, and metal pushed outward from the frag's explosion lacerated the Stridfurir's lifeless body. Lifting his head and face up from the rubble, Sova could have sworn he could read from an otherwise scorched piece of paper from a Bible, The meek will...
"Take cover!"
"...Be blown to fucking bits!" shouted 209.
Puzzled, the other Black Guard, a Syrjhont, yelled back, "What the hell are you on about?!"
Sova, blind-firing, "Nothing!"
There was a brief lull as the three took time to reload. Tracer rounds from every direction arced their ways across the night sky overhead as the various forces tried to gauge their aims against either the Aldarminians who were probably confusing the entire party or the rest of the factions. The agents of the Empire were running out time though. The slow-and-steady rumble of approaching Selbschutz armor became more ominous by the second. The streaking rockets and the crack of molotovs were only small comforts to what was conceivably left of Operation Centerfold. The Khommyssar said as much, "So the way I see it," blind-firing as briefly as possible, "We are the only Aldarminians left alive in this hell-hole country. Is that correct, Sova?"
Sova nodded. The Syrjhont and his superior exchanged thoughts quietly via somber stares that occasionally made their way over to 209. Finally, the highest-ranking of the Black Guard duo asked, "Do you know the Reds' signals?"
Sova looked at the Vanguardsman as blankly as possible. "Don't fucking play with me, man. We still got a mission, and your limp-legged-ass is probably the only one who could ever get it done. You are a Sova right?"
209 nodded, a frown starting to curl its way over his lips as he did. "So you know the blasted signs?"
"Volk told them to me."
"Good, get the fuck out of here."
If there had not been an urban battle between three factions vying for control over Nazarovo all around them, the silence between the three Aldarminians would have been oppressive. Oppression was not something unfamiliar or insurmountable to an Aldarminian if they knew their own history, so the Khommyssar insisted with an explication, "The Syrjh' and I will cover you. The Reds should be that way," pointing to the direction opposite from where Sova had come to the final stand for the Black Guard detachment to Operation Centerfold. By sheer stroke of luck and power of adrenaline, Sova's leg could work well enough to haul-ass-and-tail down the small, one-way street that had become even more pock-marked by bodies, debris, and burnt-out vehicles than when he had arrived. As he limped-ran and yelled what he need to at the Red Army soldiers who would, being too-busy, almost without question, let someone wearing their rugged uniforms and red colors pass through their line fire under some modicum of cover, while providing cover, Sova never looked behind him to his fellow Aldarminian nationals. He knew that even more-so than the Reds that they were providing covering fire to suppress as much of the Ordenite and Dread forces as possible.
After making sure he had cleared the lines of fire completely and reached the Reds' line, the Khommyssar and Syrjhont wished Sova well on his mission and prayed that he might find other survivors of Operation Centerfold elsewhere. The two Chyrnokhrana gave each other one last look, shook hands, divvied up what ammunition was left, and picked a side. The superior chose to kill as many of the Selbschutz as he could while the other decided to stay the course of their mission and cut-down with his gun every single advancing Dread. The Reds had stopped firing on the two Black Guards, and some of the Communist insurgents even tried to wave them, but the Aldarminians paid no mind. By then, the Ordenites and the Dreads were too close. Fifty-caliber rounds from a flanking Ordrnite tank eviscerated the Syrjhont. The last of the Black Guard held his ground on the other side of pocket-of-run until Ordenite infantry swarmed him with the intent to capture. After he refused to stand down and instead fired upon the nearest officers he could pick-out, the Khommyssar shot to ribbons by small arms fire.
«««‹‹‹‹‹‹<<<•>>>››››››»»»
Earlier
East Nazarovo
Twilight was creeping its way into the horizon. Though the light was dimming, the fight was not at all subsiding. Towers of constrictive smoke and bursts of explosive fireballs slithered and erupted into the skyline in every direction. All the while, the crepuscular creatures around the Chyrnokhranjhir chanted their haunting hymn, "A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..."
As the two pieces of rebar in each shoulder were swirled and pushed around inside of his flesh and muscles, the Black Guard tried to yell out in agony, but he had done so for hours, so the only sound that came out was a hoarsely-shrieked shadow of a scream. If only his puppeteers lowered the bars just a few centimeters lower, his knees could touch the ground, and he could finally rest his feet. After they destroyed his communicator was destroyed by the Dreads that found him, they had made a point to "chase" him as his already-weak, shrapnel-tattered feet struggled to even step let alone stand. His comrades had abandoned--wisely-so--him after the suicide bombers made their marks in across Nazarovo. Now, alongside the very man he had come to capture--and if absolute need had arisen, kill--the Aldarminian Black Guard, a man who desperately just wanted to go home to his girlfriend in Madukhya in Domostrovgor. He knew deep in his heart, though, that it was hopeless to even fantasize about it. The Black Guard would never leave Krasnova... and the puppeteer made him dance some more.
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..." the Dreads still chanted here and throughout the battle.
Solntsar toyed with the man's bloodied stubble (There had been no time to shave in Zvezda) as he watched the ballistic ballet of battle bore and burrow through the city's boulevards and buildings like they were worms through berms. The Draugr's claws scraped away flakes of dried blood only to welcome fresh fluid foraged from the incisions by the scalpel pointed fingers. A rotten, razor-toothed sneer sawed its way through the Black Guard's soul as he could not even have the simple pleasure of enough saliva to spit in Solntsar's face. The stench from his comrade's body was probably the worst of it. Strakhzoldati were tearing the soldier's carcass apart like their hands were the beaks of vultures digging into carrion. Solntsar's voice as he heralded the doom of many of his rival insurgents was surprisingly suave if not smug, "Here comes the sun, homelander, but first-"
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..." the chanting seemed to interject, but Solntsar was just gazing towards his handiwork in the west before he explained, "The sun must drag the night, and melt the snow, so-"
"I solntse zdes!" the chant crescendo-ed across the city as a salvo of artillery fire from somewhere in the west landed precisely-and-accurately-so upon the mountain range flanking the city so that a great avalanche was stirred to serpentine down and smother the western-positioned forces of the Red Army, the People's Volunteer Divisions and Militia Brigades, and the Selbschutz battalions in snow and ice. The Black Guard was barely able to cough up a blood-spittle, "Nyet!"
Digging his claws into the fearful flesh of the Black Guard's neck after the man fell forward from the Bezbholskiy-puppeteer finally letting go of the rebar, the Draugr Solntsar said in his mother-tongue, "Solntse prishlo i ushlo."
The sun has come and gone.
As the two pieces of rebar in each shoulder were swirled and pushed around inside of his flesh and muscles, the Black Guard tried to yell out in agony, but he had done so for hours, so the only sound that came out was a hoarsely-shrieked shadow of a scream. If only his puppeteers lowered the bars just a few centimeters lower, his knees could touch the ground, and he could finally rest his feet. After they destroyed his communicator was destroyed by the Dreads that found him, they had made a point to "chase" him as his already-weak, shrapnel-tattered feet struggled to even step let alone stand. His comrades had abandoned--wisely-so--him after the suicide bombers made their marks in across Nazarovo. Now, alongside the very man he had come to capture--and if absolute need had arisen, kill--the Aldarminian Black Guard, a man who desperately just wanted to go home to his girlfriend in Madukhya in Domostrovgor. He knew deep in his heart, though, that it was hopeless to even fantasize about it. The Black Guard would never leave Krasnova... and the puppeteer made him dance some more.
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..." the Dreads still chanted here and throughout the battle.
Solntsar toyed with the man's bloodied stubble (There had been no time to shave in Zvezda) as he watched the ballistic ballet of battle bore and burrow through the city's boulevards and buildings like they were worms through berms. The Draugr's claws scraped away flakes of dried blood only to welcome fresh fluid foraged from the incisions by the scalpel pointed fingers. A rotten, razor-toothed sneer sawed its way through the Black Guard's soul as he could not even have the simple pleasure of enough saliva to spit in Solntsar's face. The stench from his comrade's body was probably the worst of it. Strakhzoldati were tearing the soldier's carcass apart like their hands were the beaks of vultures digging into carrion. Solntsar's voice as he heralded the doom of many of his rival insurgents was surprisingly suave if not smug, "Here comes the sun, homelander, but first-"
"A i vot solntse... i vot solntse... vot solntse... i solntse zdes..." the chanting seemed to interject, but Solntsar was just gazing towards his handiwork in the west before he explained, "The sun must drag the night, and melt the snow, so-"
"I solntse zdes!" the chant crescendo-ed across the city as a salvo of artillery fire from somewhere in the west landed precisely-and-accurately-so upon the mountain range flanking the city so that a great avalanche was stirred to serpentine down and smother the western-positioned forces of the Red Army, the People's Volunteer Divisions and Militia Brigades, and the Selbschutz battalions in snow and ice. The Black Guard was barely able to cough up a blood-spittle, "Nyet!"
Digging his claws into the fearful flesh of the Black Guard's neck after the man fell forward from the Bezbholskiy-puppeteer finally letting go of the rebar, the Draugr Solntsar said in his mother-tongue, "Solntse prishlo i ushlo."
The sun has come and gone.
