NationStates Jolt Archive

Allanean Florida, Miami

The man paused for a moment as he put on his black wraparound sunglasses and checked out the sign. ‘Paul’s Sporting Goods’. He passed his hands over his dirty ‘wife-beater’ shirt – smelling heavily of WD-40 and machine oil, tightened the belt on his torn levis, and entered the shop.

The shop would be the same as a sporting goods store in Florida would look even before Tiburonese rule, during the Old Common Era. The only thing that was different under Allanean rule was that the sporting AR-15 rifles were replaced by select-fire M16’s and totally new stuff – grenades, explosives, and even a token belt-fed. Of course most of the heavier weaponry was rarely bought – it was mostly here for show.

This time was going to be different.

The big sunglasses-wearing man smiled to the dealer as he dropped several 200-dollar gold bars on the table. “Hello, Sir. I need grenades. Lots of grenades.”

The dealer blinked. The big man did not look like he would be a very polite person – or like a person that would have that much money. But before he could say anything, the man continued. “I’ll be taking the belt-fed, too. And four cases of three-oh-eight, please.”

Elsewhere in Miami

The sixteen-year old before the general store attendant looked like just another highschooler practicing for his Rifle Marksmanship class. He had an ordinary FAL rifle hanging off his left shoulder – same as many schoolkids his age would be using. Next to him stood a girl – one of those geekish schoolgirl types that wear teeth bridges and thick steel glasses. Her rifle was a lighter CAR-15 design, and it looked like she wasn’t going to get a boyfriend in the next few decades.

Regardless, the dealer thought nothing about selling them ammunition… even though they did order more than he expected.

A lot more.

At the Marina

A small yacht approached harbor, marked with the single word ‘Hope’. Instead of the Allanean flag, it carried a deep blue flag with a single white star in the middle. On the prow of the small yacht stood an old, expensively dressed man with a phone. He smiled as he looked at the people who expected him on the quai – the dirty-dressed, muscular man with the machinegun, the boy and the girl with their rifles, and more. Next to the machinegunner stood a man in what looked to be a torn former Army uniform, leaning on an hunting rifle with a huge scope. Behind them sat a young, long haired man perched on a large wooden box and grinning merrily at the sun as he stroked a Thompson submachinegun. Next to him, a skinheaded fellow in a black metal-spiked outfit with the name of a band written on it, carrying a Thompson too, a chainsaw hangin on his back. Two more men in camoflage sat on the very edge of the quai with beer cans in their hands. Almost everybody there, mused the man. Almost.

And then he saw two more people burst onto the quai – perched upon a bike with a sidecar, with small arms barrels sticking out everywhere.

Perfect. Now for the phonecall.

‘Hello, Mr. Walten. I heard from my contacts you may require… volunteer assistance for some of your projects in Colombia? Don’t worry, this is a secure line. How can I help?’

New Sydney, Chimaea

The office was dimly lit, split into six cubicles. Five of them were empty, the workstations neatly packed, monitors switched off. One of them was occupied by a man who stood out because of his non-descript looks and clothes. He was standing, ignoring the chair beside him, his hand resting on the handset of the cubicle's phone.

When it started to ring, his arm moved up and he placed the handset to his ear. Then everything was absolutely still again.

"‘Hello, Mr. Walten. I heard from my contacts you may require… volunteer assistance for some of your projects in Colombia? Don’t worry, this is a secure line. How can I help?"

Mr. Walten smiled. When he spoke, his voice was flat, with no discernible accent. "You have heard correctly. There is a situation in Chimaean Colombia that is starting to get serious... whilst the military can act against it, we would prefer not to have to... act in the manner the situation requires of us. At least, not openly. Which is where your... group comes in." Walten paused, his eyes faraway. "The enemy is communist, irregular and non-conventional. Battle must be waged seriously; psychologically. They must be made to understand that continuing their activities will be too costly a game. The people I represent are more than willing to supply your group if necessary and to give you necessary intelligence and support. However, once you're on the field... for the most part you will be alone. Colombia is a dangerous place--we would like you to make it deadly for some. Do we... understand each other?"

“Very well, then, Sir.” – said the Allanean. – “I am no stranger to guerrila warfare. I fought in several such operation. The Team Leader on this one will be a graduate of the Robert E. Lee Military Academy of Reichkamphen. We know well how to do the job – just point us at the enemy, and we’ll deal with him. I understand you perfectly.”

A few more details were hammered out, and then he put down the phone. “Okay, boys and girls, does everybody have their act together? Timmy, what did you tell your Mom?”

The boy smiled: “Told her I was going off with my Scout troop for the summer. They don’t have phones or anything at camp, so she won’t know for two months. She know I’ve been out with the Scouts last summer too, so she doesn’t mind that much, Colonel.”

The man that the boy called ‘Colonel’ nodded. ‘Very well. Ashley, what did you tell your aunt?’

‘My aunt?’ – smiled the girl sadly, the bridge glinting in the Florida sun. ‘She won’t care, Colonel. She doesn’t notice when I’m there, I don’t think she’ll notice much when I’m off either. Besides, Colonel, you said it yourself. I’m an adult, ain’t I?’

He sighed sadly. Oh well. That’s what you get when you involve children in this stuff.

“John, I assume you had little problems.”

“That’s correct, Colonel.” – said the burly giant with the machinegun. ‘I’m a drifter, Sir. Nobody there to notice when I get up and leave, Sir.”

The Colonel nodded approvingly at the man’s military-like demeanor. That was the reason he appointed him Team Leader.

“What about you, Trevett?”

The man smiled. “I’m off to the Territory, chasing some wildebeeste. ‘course, chasing dem wild Colombian commies is much more fun.”

The Colonel chuckled. “Ain’t this a bit too much even for you, tho? They don’t use guns to hunt there, you know.”

“Who cares? None of my neighbors care enough about hunting in bloody Africa to actually notice.”

“Ah, well then. William?”

The skinhead smiled. “Concert tour with my band to the Outer Rim colonies. Told everybody Boris and Sandy here were my piano and bass.”

This elicited a chuckle from the biker pair – it seemed that the skinheaded fellow has solved their problems, too.

The two men with the beers turned towards the ‘Colonel’. “We signed up on some smuglnig boat going to Crimmond with a load of nice white coke – not differing much from the truth, except we’re bringing in freedom, not coke, and Crimmond sounds like Colombia when you squint.”

“Indeed. Petrovich?”

The young man smiled, speaking with only a slight Russian accent.

“I em on Mars. Khelping to bild ze new kolonee zere.”

“Most excellent. I see you’ve covered your bases. Now get the stuff on the boat and get going – I got the green from the Chimeans.”

New Sydney, Chimaea

Mr. Walten put down the phone careful, then for the first time shifted his body. He picked up a military greatcoat from the coathook on the cubicle wall and shrugged it over his dark grey suit. The markings on the coat were Chimaean military but other than that contained no insignia or rank. The peaked hat he placed on his head was also Chimaean military, but without any rank.

The office was still empty. He looked around carefull in case he'd disturbed anything, then smiled and walked to the door. The building was a skyscraper that contained the offices of a large amount of businesses--no-one would notice the phone call in the logs. It was better than editting the logs, which could be picked up. And Walten wanted to leave a small trail, just in case...

As he stepped out into the corridor and took the lifts back to the ground floor. The guard at the deserted lobby didn't even glance up as he walked out into the cold, rainy night, heading for the unmarked staff car waiting on the curb. He slipped into the back and quietly closed the door.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"Cunnington Airbase, Private. Fast as you can."

"Sir."

The car sped off and Mr. Walten leaned back in the leather seat, staring at the streetlights half-obscured by the rain. The plan was going well. With any luck, he'd be in Colombia before the... special operatives arrived. And then...

Smiling slightly, he activated a comms unit set into the back of the driver's seat. Static appeared then cleared to reveal a shadowed figure seated at a table.

"It's done?" asked the figure brusquely.

Mr. Walten nodded slightly. "It's done. They are on their way."

"Good. Keep this under wraps, Major. Don't let anyone else in Colombia find out."

Mr. Walten nodded. "Leave it to me, sir."

The screen went blank. Mr. Walten remained still and silent for the rest of the journey.

***

New Sydney Parliament House, Office of the Governor

Lady Bryce was seated tensely behind her desk, tapping her fingers on the polished wooden surface. One of the lights on the small control panel in one corner was blinking, and her eyes were fixed on a particular panel on the wall before her.

The panel suddenly slid back smoothly, and a black-suited figure wearing a visor walked in silently until he was standing at attention before her. When he spoke, his voice was flat and accentless. "The plan is in motion, my Lady."

Lady Bryce glared at the man, the distaste showing in her face. "I do not approve of these methods."

The man cocked his head slightly, in a strangely odd mannerism. "You have given your approval, my Lady."

Lady Bryce sighed. "Because this wave of terrorism must is threatening to create civil turmoil. But I don't approve of using these... irregulars. They are not professional soldiers following the Geneva conventions--"

"Which is exactly why my Lady must permit their use. Even our special forces have certain rules of operation that must be obeyed. We need something completely deniable and completely... unrestricted."

Lady Bryce shivered at the sudden relish in the man's voice at the last word. "This could create a greater problem than we started with."

"A risk we must take."

Lady Bryce frowned but nodded. "Keep me informed. And..."

"Yes, my Lady?"

"If you fuck up, I'll remove your balls with a blunt spoon."

"Yes, my Lady." the man stepped back through the panel in the wall, just slightly too hurriedly. The wall slid back seamlessly.

Several days later, on approach to a military port in Chimaean Colombia

“The other teams,” said John, “will arrive at different locations in the country, and will be disseminated and mission-briefed by whoever it is in the Chimaean government who’s responsible for us – nor that we care anyhow.”

Everybody chuckled. The Brigade operatives – all of them – would be pretty much on their own once the wheels hit the road and they knew it.

Trevett – or, as they’ve all started referring to him after their short boat journey, the Hunter was sitting on the boat’s prow, playing some sad tune on a flute, listening quietly to what the Team leader was saying as the boat approached harbor. Next to him, the skinhead – somehow, the Skinhead was what they all ended up calling him – sat, picking almost inaudibly on the strings of his guitar.

It was Timmy who asked the next question. Almost the youngest member of the crew [besides Ashley] he looked rather nervous about the enterprise – Ashley showed a strange detachment. The boy, on the other hand, looked at the Team Leader, and asked, with a bit of a stutter to his voice:

“After we’re out… will we be able to communicate in any way to the other teams or… the Chimaean government?”

John Lamme shook his head. “No, Timmy. No med-evac, no air support, no nothing. Just like it was done by our forefathers, Timmy – long, long ago. Only after we do it all, when we complete the mission, will we return out to sea and then home. Don’t worry, though. We’ll get home in two months – and your Mom will probably still think you were out with the Scouts.”

Timmy laughed besides himself. Only Ashley – who for some reason busied herself with cleaning the windows on the boat’s bridge from the inside - stopped momentarily when she heard the Team Leader said that, then returned to cleaning. Nobody saw that, though.

“Here it is!” – said the Team Leaders suddenly, pointing his hand at a collection of structures they suddenly saw on the fast-approaching Colombian shore. “That’s their harbor! We’ve made it! We’ve gotten to the insertion!”

Laughter and hooting broke out – as if they had not merely arrived to the beginning of their jorney but were already at it’s blissful end.


Florida, Miami, the Colonel’s House

The Colonel raised the glass of Dersconi brandy in front of him and looked at it through the light. His personal mission was accomplished. He has selected, equipped, and sent out ten teams of Ashtonbury Brigade operatives in Colombia. Soon, they would strike out against the local communists.

The Colonel hated communists. Sometime, in a different time and age, he had a son – a young boy of maybe ten years old, killed by some Communist group or another during Allanea’s civil war. Maybe those were the Javivalentira – and mayhaps the Halladi and New Havenite intervention forces. Maybe it was murder, maybe it was an accident. The Colonel never found out for sure. But for him, the war was never over.

Those kinds of wars never end.

http://www.theboxset.com/images/reviewcaptures/1397cap003.jpg

The Colonel

Mr. Walten observed the group who had steered their boat into one of the less-used and less-maintained jetties. The bump of the boat's prow against the badly-treated wood almost collapsed the entire jetty but they made it out of the boat in one piece.

One part of Mr. Walten, a long-buried part, was shocked at how young some of them seemed. The girl looked like she should have been in a classroom, not sporting a CAR15. They were a fairly motley collection, though one or two of them looked like they'd been through a few wars. The leader was obvious--a big, burly man carrying a machine gun. He studied the way the team moved around him. An interesting dynamic... some of them looked like they'd come to take part in a sport, an adventure. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the bodies of Chimaean soldiers impaled on the branches of trees. Interesting sport.

He hesitates a moment, then walked towards them. He was wearing his dark grey suit, the military great-coat opened over it. Below his peaked hat he wore a visor--a heavily built instrument designed to look like thick sunglasses which gave the wearer a heads up display, relayed battlefield information and, in the more advanced systems, was linked to a main weapon's scope and gave night vision. All these features were turned off at the moment as they needed an uplink to a Chimaean military mainframe--leaving traces wasn't what Mr. Walten was there for.

He noticed how the group reacted as he came towards them. The team leader didn't react at all, just watched him get closer, his finger resting gently on the trigger. The youngest two were nervous but trying not to show it--no, only the male was. The female... a sort of guarded look. Mr. Walten wondered what sort of sight he presented. No markings, no frills, no eye contact. Unsettling.

He allowed a smile on his face as he stopped two meters away. "Good evening. I'm Major Walten. I will be your one and only contact... and if things go to plan, this may indeed be the final time we meet."

Ninety eight per cent of all men who have been in combat for sixty days or more without rest should be considered psychiatric casualties.
WWII-era medical research


The Team Leader jumped off onto the quay with a lightness that you would not normally expect from a man of his size, especially when burdened with a fifteen-kilogram machinegun. ‘Good day, Sir,’ he said. He looked at the Chimaean’s face – and for a second, he wasn’t there. Colombia wasn’t there. He was elsewhere entirely.

’Die! Die, commie sons-of-bitches, die!’ He heaved his machinegun again, the hot barrel searing his fingers with unimaginable pain, the stream of spinning, furious, screaming lead and steel sweeping through the narrow Deriksburg street. The skyscrapers comprising the Edolian – formerly Edolian – city were very close together, with nearly no light getting to the bottom. It was as it all happened underground – or in the bowels of Hell itself.

The asphalt half-burned, half-melted under the unending bursts of napalm from the Allaneans’ flamethrowers and the Edolians’ incendiary munitions. Sometimes, hot glass shards would come screaming down from the upper stories of the buildings above. Sometimes, a man would come screaming down with them. But the man who became Team Leader endured.

And meanwhile, in Colombia, the Team Leader was still speaking – without hearing his own words. ‘We do not know who you are. We do not wish to know. We are satisfied to know that you’re with the government and that you will give us instructions for our operation. We merely desire you to give them to us, so we can get on our way, like the other teams.’

’Heeelp me! Help! Unstick me! Someone unstick me!’ – somehow, Danny has managed to get the sleeve of his shirt embedded firmly in the soft asphalt and couldn’t get up. He was wounded already, and if someone didn’t help him now…

And the Red Guards were coming down the road, their rifles at the ready, and the future Team Leader couldn’t help Danny – he was busy reloading and firing, as fast as he could, just to prevent them from overrunning him… and he was a big man, and he knew karate and aikido, and he had a gun with the firepower to shoot down helicopters… and he was helpless.

It was for that – not even for Danny’s death, but for his own helplesness – that he has grown to hate communists for the rest of his life.

Of course, he couldn’t be in the Army any more to make it happen.

He simply was in combat for too long.

‘Give us our orders, Sir.’ – he said, standing on the quay in Colombia millenia far and lightyears late.

‘Give us our orders, and we’ll do the rest.’

*Government Tower, Bordoria City, Suite 402, the Secretary General's Office (SGO)*

"What do you make of the situation in Chimean Columbia?"said Prime Minister Sir. Christopher St.Dennis to Secretary General Prince Consort. Caesar Thomas, while he had his 6th martini. "Bloody 'ell, how i'm supposed ta know," snapped the politician. "Ï'm only responsible for the country's fori'n policy ya twit!"

*3 hours later*
The Sec.Gen., now sober and with an hangover that would kill his horse, "now, about Chimean Columbia, we must moderate this situation post haste. How do tou propose we do this." Said Caesar to the Secretary of State. "We could bring this up to the UN," said the secretary. He continued, "We have a quarter of a million peacekeepers in both Kashmir and Iraq (Bordoria sent peacekeepers to Iraq after the war, and did not take part in the invasion). Divert about 10,000 that should assess the situation. If it escalates to war, we could withraw some of our combat troops from Rathanan. If we present this to the UN, and to the GHOB in an appropriate manner, we could avert war." "Ï hope you'r right." said Caesar.

(i know, not much now, but do not fret, the best is yet to come! :lol: )