Iansisle
13-03-2004, 14:06
Whitman Tower
Ianapalis, Iansisle, the Commonwealth
Sir Penton Dubois looked a far cry from the confident, bright-eyed young administrator he’d been when Clancy I of Thorntree had picked him to head the Shield’s largest industrial interest. Not that he’d ever been naïve or idealistic; he’d just been a much younger, more vibrant cynic.
The Northern Seas Affair had shaken his confidence in his own abilities greatly; he’d done everything right, but even his best hadn’t been enough to save his younger brother. Every night, when he lay awake in bed with a wife he didn’t love, he’d see the pictures of the wreck. The smoldering car; the teams pulling out the bodies of Harry and that damn Brit. Sir Penton didn’t know why Harry was out for a drive with some hack of a naval commander, instead of in the Chateau fleet base hospital like he should have been, but it didn’t matter. He had failed Harry, his own flesh and blood; how could he hope to sustain Royal Mining and Manufacturing?
A soft knock and the sound of his door opening swung Sir Penton’s thoughts back to the present - not that it did much good. His secretary, Ms. Bradley, smiled brilliantly in at him. She was new, of course - they always were - and hadn’t quite yet mastered the art of telling when Dubois was ready to fly into a fit of absolute depression.
“Mr. Sidney here to see you, sir.”
“Don?” There was a note of concern in Sir Penton’s voice as his emotions swung from melancholy lethargy to mild confusion. Donald Sidney was Royal’s Vice President of Labor Relations; but he was also something of a coward with respect to office politics. If there was something important enough going on in his department to be worthy of bringing to Dubois’ attention, Sir Penton knew it had to be bad. “Send him in at once, please.”
There was a brief pause before Don Sidney came shuffling into the office. The expression on his face was hard to read; it was almost half way between an attempt at an ‘everything’s fine!’ grin and sheer panic. “Sorry to bother you, Sir Penton.”
“Never a bother, Don. Have a seat.” Now Sir Penton was really worried. He had a feeling there was some sort of problem that was quite out of the grasp of Don’s limited intellect, but hadn’t been reported to him before now out of fear. If that was the case, the problem might have even grown so large as to be completely out of control. “Can I get you some tea?” The question sounded stupid in light of the expression on Don’s face, but there was a certain procedure, even in informal business meetings. Part of it was that no business could actually be conducted until after tea had been offered.
“No, thank you.” Don looked exasperated, but didn’t expand on whatever he was thinking. In fact, his Weshieldian features were working in something like terror, but Sidney wouldn’t offer any sort of information until it was asked for.
Sir Penton sighed. There were a lot of stereotypes about people from the the Empire’s western frontier - primarily Weshield itself and Upper Mansford - most of which involved their slow wit and lack of reasoning skills. Dubois felt the familiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he thought back, ten years ago, when Harry had managed to run on the wrong side of one of King Alexander’s daughters and landed himself in jail. He had to be rescued, of course, and not only was he able to do it that time, but in the process Sir Penton had gained some respect for the people of the Western Kingdoms. Of course, people like Don Sidney, who had come to Royal straight out of Laughlin Academy in Fort Jackson, did more than their part to perpetuate the old assumptions.
With a slight shake of his head, Sir Penton forced himself to return to the matter at hand. “Suit yourself. Now, then, Don, I’m assuming this isn’t just a social call?”
“Well, no, sir, it isn’t.” Sidney looked like a kindergartner trying to admit he’d put glue in the dog’s hair. “It’s Mill W-1A.”
“W-1A?” asked Dubois sharply. He recognized the name immediately; it was that of Royal’s largest and most productive steel mill in Ianapalis. They were just completing a large - and very expensive - order of armor plating for the navy. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a ... strike.”
“A strike?! Don, what the hell? How did they organize? What about the RES? Why...” Sir Penton cut himself off before he could spew any more questions.
“They didn’t organize; not as such, anyway.” Don looked even more glum that before, if such a thing were possible. “There were only a couple of them, at first. One of them - a Mr Lawrence Manders, according to our man on the spot, who has been suspected of unionist agitation in the past - broke in to the communication center, grabbed the P.A., and called for sit-down strike. And the workers obeyed.”
Dubois’ face threatened to turn purple with rage, but he managed to shove down the instinct. Ever since that rabble-rouser Bradsworth had been shuffled off to Golden Agate, the Ianapalis Mob had become even more uncontrollable than before. Despite his final speech, where he had promised to preach the workers’ message to the New Highlands Alliance, other ‘leaders’ had capitalized on the fact that shoveling Bradsworth off to Larkinia had been a very clear move to get him and his golden tongue out of the country.
Removing Bradsworth from the domestic scene may have chopped the head off the big dog, but now a hundred little problems nipped at Royal’s heels. Every which way Dubois looked, he saw unionist agitators, each and every one of them waiting for the chance to flaunt their defiance to the corporate headquarters. The Royal Enforcement Service was doing its best, but there were reports - mostly from the Noropian coal mining enterprises - of RES troops actually siding with the strikers!
“Damn, damn! Why didn’t the manager nip this in the bud from the first? Why am I just hearing about it now?” demanded Sir Penton, just managing to keep his voice under control.
“That’s...my fault, Sir Penton. The preliminary reports came in about an hour ago. I sent the local strike-breaking squad of the RIS to meet them, but...”
“But what?”
“But the workers had tossed out the management and locked them out of the factory grounds.”
Dubois just swore. That felt good, so he did it again. Then he sat up and pointed an accusing finger at Sidney. “Now see here, Don - I don’t care what it takes, but we can’t afford to set precedent here. I want that strike broken, and I want it done now, do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir Penton...anything...”
----
Mill W-1A
Ianapalis, Iansisle, the Commonwealth
I really ought to remember to thank good ol’ Clancy, thought Larry Maders as he walked confidently along the insider perimeter of the mill’s fifteen-foot high chain-link fence. If it wasn’t for him, those skull-crackers would have been able to get in hours ago!
“You will disperse now, and without any further incident,” said the bloke with a megaphone, his calm and dispassionate voice echoing about the compound. Shouts and jeers answered it.
“Just you try and make us!”
“Fair wages now!”
“No more yellow-dog contracts!”
“Why don’t you try and do something positive with your life?”
Every now and then, a Royal Enforcement Service goon would try and force a gate open or climb the fence. A hail of stones would invariably cut any expedition short. Sometimes, things would get a little too violent, but Maders had no wish for this to break out into a full scale riot. Not so much because of the pain and suffering both his people and Royal’s would suffer, but because that tactic had been tried time and time again. The result was always the same: the workers would be slaughtered, and Royal would get off in court on the pretext of self and property defense.
Maders knew a few of his men had to be the provocateurs employed by Royal for the express purpose of creating just such a disturbance. They were the reason he had his loyal men running about from one trouble spot to another, pulling workers off guards and trying to avoid a general escalation. With tensions running so high, it wasn’t easy.
A new sound drifted above the sounds of the strikers and their watchdogs - two hundred and eighty boots, all hitting the dirty cobblestone street in unison.
Gamma Company of the King’s IV Rifle Regiment was marching down 31st Street.
----
Staff Sergeant Tony Domacceli stifled a yawn as he let the sounds of a bitter argument wash over him. Gamma Company’s captain was busy arguing with some obstinate RM&M worker about their orders. Tony didn’t really know what it was all about; Royal Army Corps officers, with a blessed few exceptions, didn’t share their overall orders with the common rank-and-file. Even NCOs only received a brief outline of where they needed to march to, and that was on a strictly need-to-know basis.
He supposed it was only to be expected; the Army drew its officers primarily from those sons of the lower nobility and upper bourgeois who had failed out of the naval program at TMI, but didn’t have the family influence to continue anyway, or else the sons of the lower-middle class, who couldn’t afford a naval commission for their sons.
The RES officer seemed to be questioning Gamma Company’s right to help enforce Royal’s policy in Ianapalis, whereas Captain Monroe insisted that, given his official request from Whitman Tower, the Army had the right to help wherever it damn well pleased.
“Unless, of course, you’d rather I take your name back to Whitman myself,” was Monroe’s last word, in a rather smug and satisfied manner. Their effect on the Royal officer was immediate and dramatic. Tony was somewhat surprised; he hadn’t expected someone of Monroe’s rather sub-par wit to actually score any points in a verbal battle. Almost at once, the heavy-set Shieldian officer started issuing orders.
“Hawke and Peters! Take your platoons around to the back enterence! Sylverman, you’re here with me!” he called to his officers, and the troops began to move in their respective directions with the sloth typical of the RIAC. Tony, attached to the command platoon, started barking out orders.
They were basically good men, he reflected as A-platoon deployed about him. The IV Rifles, affectionately known as the ‘Fantastic Fourth,’ had a long and distinguished past. In their days as ‘The King’s Uplanders’ of the early Empire, they had participated with honor in several actions during the conquest of Tharia; as the ‘47th Foothills,’ they had fought in Gallaga and against Effit; in their present guise, after the reorganization of the Army, they had landed at Salvador.
Salvador - the eternal bogeyman of the Fantastic Fourth. They had lost 778 killed and 589 invalidated, out of a total of 2,000. That the permanent injury total had been even that low was a testament to the skill and fortitude of the Larkinian doctors who had arrived to relieve the Fourth’s overwhelmed and decimated medical corps. Of course, today, there were scant few remainders of the massacre left, and Tony was one of them. He’d taken a piece of flak at Salvador, and the terrible scar it had left was part of Gamma Company’s folklore.
Tony himself stood a scant five foot five, on the short side even by Iansislean standards, but he made up for it by being a virtual ball of energy. He was a legend to those not directly affected by him and a terror to those who were. His khaki battle dress bore the blue, gold, and red of Tharia on its left shoulder, indicating he - like most of the Commonwealth’s soldiers - was a Dominion man.
Movement barely registered out of the corner of his eye, from within the compound. One of the striking workers - unbeknownst to Tony, but probably beknownst to the RM&M men on the scene, in the employ of the Royal Mining and Manufacturing Consortium as an agitator - had pulled a gun on the newly arriving men from the Fantastic Fourth. It barked loudly, and a single .45 caliber round flew out from the compound, directly through the chain-link, and slammed bloodily into Staff Sergeant Tony Domacceli’s chest, sending the short but stocky Tharian crashing to the ground.
For a scant couple seconds, only the agitator was able to act. Every other person, worker and soldier alike, was frozen in confusion. Two more shots rang out from the agitator’s gun; one missed, but the other tore the face off a pimple-scarred young private.
And then it was the Fantastic Fourth’s turn. Without orders, and probably without thinking, they turned their M74B rifles towards the compound, and with a rippling crackle, sent a wave of .303 rounds into the heart of the strikers. The agitator had seen the first reaction and dropped to the ground - he had chosen his place, right behind a slight rise in the ground, well, and survived the encounter - but his ‘comrades’ weren’t so lucky. Several workers went down, blood streaming from gaping wounds. The sound of firing from the other side of the mill indicated that an idea Royal thought would work well once would work just as well twice.
Although the Fourth fired only a single volley into the compound, the RES goons had themselves a field day. The sharp rattling of automatic fire indicated a machine gun had been set up somewhere, and it mowed down the workers, who were almost all unarmed. It was never a fair fight, but it never had been meant to be one either. In the end, not a single soldier or RES man outside Tony, the private, and Lieutenant Hawke from the backside were even so much as injured, but over one hundred workers were killed, and scores more grievously wounded.
How the international press - and the Ianapalis Mob - would treat the ‘Massacre on 31st’ remained to be seen.
Ianapalis, Iansisle, the Commonwealth
Sir Penton Dubois looked a far cry from the confident, bright-eyed young administrator he’d been when Clancy I of Thorntree had picked him to head the Shield’s largest industrial interest. Not that he’d ever been naïve or idealistic; he’d just been a much younger, more vibrant cynic.
The Northern Seas Affair had shaken his confidence in his own abilities greatly; he’d done everything right, but even his best hadn’t been enough to save his younger brother. Every night, when he lay awake in bed with a wife he didn’t love, he’d see the pictures of the wreck. The smoldering car; the teams pulling out the bodies of Harry and that damn Brit. Sir Penton didn’t know why Harry was out for a drive with some hack of a naval commander, instead of in the Chateau fleet base hospital like he should have been, but it didn’t matter. He had failed Harry, his own flesh and blood; how could he hope to sustain Royal Mining and Manufacturing?
A soft knock and the sound of his door opening swung Sir Penton’s thoughts back to the present - not that it did much good. His secretary, Ms. Bradley, smiled brilliantly in at him. She was new, of course - they always were - and hadn’t quite yet mastered the art of telling when Dubois was ready to fly into a fit of absolute depression.
“Mr. Sidney here to see you, sir.”
“Don?” There was a note of concern in Sir Penton’s voice as his emotions swung from melancholy lethargy to mild confusion. Donald Sidney was Royal’s Vice President of Labor Relations; but he was also something of a coward with respect to office politics. If there was something important enough going on in his department to be worthy of bringing to Dubois’ attention, Sir Penton knew it had to be bad. “Send him in at once, please.”
There was a brief pause before Don Sidney came shuffling into the office. The expression on his face was hard to read; it was almost half way between an attempt at an ‘everything’s fine!’ grin and sheer panic. “Sorry to bother you, Sir Penton.”
“Never a bother, Don. Have a seat.” Now Sir Penton was really worried. He had a feeling there was some sort of problem that was quite out of the grasp of Don’s limited intellect, but hadn’t been reported to him before now out of fear. If that was the case, the problem might have even grown so large as to be completely out of control. “Can I get you some tea?” The question sounded stupid in light of the expression on Don’s face, but there was a certain procedure, even in informal business meetings. Part of it was that no business could actually be conducted until after tea had been offered.
“No, thank you.” Don looked exasperated, but didn’t expand on whatever he was thinking. In fact, his Weshieldian features were working in something like terror, but Sidney wouldn’t offer any sort of information until it was asked for.
Sir Penton sighed. There were a lot of stereotypes about people from the the Empire’s western frontier - primarily Weshield itself and Upper Mansford - most of which involved their slow wit and lack of reasoning skills. Dubois felt the familiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he thought back, ten years ago, when Harry had managed to run on the wrong side of one of King Alexander’s daughters and landed himself in jail. He had to be rescued, of course, and not only was he able to do it that time, but in the process Sir Penton had gained some respect for the people of the Western Kingdoms. Of course, people like Don Sidney, who had come to Royal straight out of Laughlin Academy in Fort Jackson, did more than their part to perpetuate the old assumptions.
With a slight shake of his head, Sir Penton forced himself to return to the matter at hand. “Suit yourself. Now, then, Don, I’m assuming this isn’t just a social call?”
“Well, no, sir, it isn’t.” Sidney looked like a kindergartner trying to admit he’d put glue in the dog’s hair. “It’s Mill W-1A.”
“W-1A?” asked Dubois sharply. He recognized the name immediately; it was that of Royal’s largest and most productive steel mill in Ianapalis. They were just completing a large - and very expensive - order of armor plating for the navy. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a ... strike.”
“A strike?! Don, what the hell? How did they organize? What about the RES? Why...” Sir Penton cut himself off before he could spew any more questions.
“They didn’t organize; not as such, anyway.” Don looked even more glum that before, if such a thing were possible. “There were only a couple of them, at first. One of them - a Mr Lawrence Manders, according to our man on the spot, who has been suspected of unionist agitation in the past - broke in to the communication center, grabbed the P.A., and called for sit-down strike. And the workers obeyed.”
Dubois’ face threatened to turn purple with rage, but he managed to shove down the instinct. Ever since that rabble-rouser Bradsworth had been shuffled off to Golden Agate, the Ianapalis Mob had become even more uncontrollable than before. Despite his final speech, where he had promised to preach the workers’ message to the New Highlands Alliance, other ‘leaders’ had capitalized on the fact that shoveling Bradsworth off to Larkinia had been a very clear move to get him and his golden tongue out of the country.
Removing Bradsworth from the domestic scene may have chopped the head off the big dog, but now a hundred little problems nipped at Royal’s heels. Every which way Dubois looked, he saw unionist agitators, each and every one of them waiting for the chance to flaunt their defiance to the corporate headquarters. The Royal Enforcement Service was doing its best, but there were reports - mostly from the Noropian coal mining enterprises - of RES troops actually siding with the strikers!
“Damn, damn! Why didn’t the manager nip this in the bud from the first? Why am I just hearing about it now?” demanded Sir Penton, just managing to keep his voice under control.
“That’s...my fault, Sir Penton. The preliminary reports came in about an hour ago. I sent the local strike-breaking squad of the RIS to meet them, but...”
“But what?”
“But the workers had tossed out the management and locked them out of the factory grounds.”
Dubois just swore. That felt good, so he did it again. Then he sat up and pointed an accusing finger at Sidney. “Now see here, Don - I don’t care what it takes, but we can’t afford to set precedent here. I want that strike broken, and I want it done now, do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir Penton...anything...”
----
Mill W-1A
Ianapalis, Iansisle, the Commonwealth
I really ought to remember to thank good ol’ Clancy, thought Larry Maders as he walked confidently along the insider perimeter of the mill’s fifteen-foot high chain-link fence. If it wasn’t for him, those skull-crackers would have been able to get in hours ago!
“You will disperse now, and without any further incident,” said the bloke with a megaphone, his calm and dispassionate voice echoing about the compound. Shouts and jeers answered it.
“Just you try and make us!”
“Fair wages now!”
“No more yellow-dog contracts!”
“Why don’t you try and do something positive with your life?”
Every now and then, a Royal Enforcement Service goon would try and force a gate open or climb the fence. A hail of stones would invariably cut any expedition short. Sometimes, things would get a little too violent, but Maders had no wish for this to break out into a full scale riot. Not so much because of the pain and suffering both his people and Royal’s would suffer, but because that tactic had been tried time and time again. The result was always the same: the workers would be slaughtered, and Royal would get off in court on the pretext of self and property defense.
Maders knew a few of his men had to be the provocateurs employed by Royal for the express purpose of creating just such a disturbance. They were the reason he had his loyal men running about from one trouble spot to another, pulling workers off guards and trying to avoid a general escalation. With tensions running so high, it wasn’t easy.
A new sound drifted above the sounds of the strikers and their watchdogs - two hundred and eighty boots, all hitting the dirty cobblestone street in unison.
Gamma Company of the King’s IV Rifle Regiment was marching down 31st Street.
----
Staff Sergeant Tony Domacceli stifled a yawn as he let the sounds of a bitter argument wash over him. Gamma Company’s captain was busy arguing with some obstinate RM&M worker about their orders. Tony didn’t really know what it was all about; Royal Army Corps officers, with a blessed few exceptions, didn’t share their overall orders with the common rank-and-file. Even NCOs only received a brief outline of where they needed to march to, and that was on a strictly need-to-know basis.
He supposed it was only to be expected; the Army drew its officers primarily from those sons of the lower nobility and upper bourgeois who had failed out of the naval program at TMI, but didn’t have the family influence to continue anyway, or else the sons of the lower-middle class, who couldn’t afford a naval commission for their sons.
The RES officer seemed to be questioning Gamma Company’s right to help enforce Royal’s policy in Ianapalis, whereas Captain Monroe insisted that, given his official request from Whitman Tower, the Army had the right to help wherever it damn well pleased.
“Unless, of course, you’d rather I take your name back to Whitman myself,” was Monroe’s last word, in a rather smug and satisfied manner. Their effect on the Royal officer was immediate and dramatic. Tony was somewhat surprised; he hadn’t expected someone of Monroe’s rather sub-par wit to actually score any points in a verbal battle. Almost at once, the heavy-set Shieldian officer started issuing orders.
“Hawke and Peters! Take your platoons around to the back enterence! Sylverman, you’re here with me!” he called to his officers, and the troops began to move in their respective directions with the sloth typical of the RIAC. Tony, attached to the command platoon, started barking out orders.
They were basically good men, he reflected as A-platoon deployed about him. The IV Rifles, affectionately known as the ‘Fantastic Fourth,’ had a long and distinguished past. In their days as ‘The King’s Uplanders’ of the early Empire, they had participated with honor in several actions during the conquest of Tharia; as the ‘47th Foothills,’ they had fought in Gallaga and against Effit; in their present guise, after the reorganization of the Army, they had landed at Salvador.
Salvador - the eternal bogeyman of the Fantastic Fourth. They had lost 778 killed and 589 invalidated, out of a total of 2,000. That the permanent injury total had been even that low was a testament to the skill and fortitude of the Larkinian doctors who had arrived to relieve the Fourth’s overwhelmed and decimated medical corps. Of course, today, there were scant few remainders of the massacre left, and Tony was one of them. He’d taken a piece of flak at Salvador, and the terrible scar it had left was part of Gamma Company’s folklore.
Tony himself stood a scant five foot five, on the short side even by Iansislean standards, but he made up for it by being a virtual ball of energy. He was a legend to those not directly affected by him and a terror to those who were. His khaki battle dress bore the blue, gold, and red of Tharia on its left shoulder, indicating he - like most of the Commonwealth’s soldiers - was a Dominion man.
Movement barely registered out of the corner of his eye, from within the compound. One of the striking workers - unbeknownst to Tony, but probably beknownst to the RM&M men on the scene, in the employ of the Royal Mining and Manufacturing Consortium as an agitator - had pulled a gun on the newly arriving men from the Fantastic Fourth. It barked loudly, and a single .45 caliber round flew out from the compound, directly through the chain-link, and slammed bloodily into Staff Sergeant Tony Domacceli’s chest, sending the short but stocky Tharian crashing to the ground.
For a scant couple seconds, only the agitator was able to act. Every other person, worker and soldier alike, was frozen in confusion. Two more shots rang out from the agitator’s gun; one missed, but the other tore the face off a pimple-scarred young private.
And then it was the Fantastic Fourth’s turn. Without orders, and probably without thinking, they turned their M74B rifles towards the compound, and with a rippling crackle, sent a wave of .303 rounds into the heart of the strikers. The agitator had seen the first reaction and dropped to the ground - he had chosen his place, right behind a slight rise in the ground, well, and survived the encounter - but his ‘comrades’ weren’t so lucky. Several workers went down, blood streaming from gaping wounds. The sound of firing from the other side of the mill indicated that an idea Royal thought would work well once would work just as well twice.
Although the Fourth fired only a single volley into the compound, the RES goons had themselves a field day. The sharp rattling of automatic fire indicated a machine gun had been set up somewhere, and it mowed down the workers, who were almost all unarmed. It was never a fair fight, but it never had been meant to be one either. In the end, not a single soldier or RES man outside Tony, the private, and Lieutenant Hawke from the backside were even so much as injured, but over one hundred workers were killed, and scores more grievously wounded.
How the international press - and the Ianapalis Mob - would treat the ‘Massacre on 31st’ remained to be seen.