NationStates Jolt Archive

Light slips in under my eyelids for the first time in... in... how long has it been? The sleek blue tubes 12 or so feet from my nose seem to be telling me I'm in medical quarters. My head moves--thank god--slowly to the left as I let the unconscious tension out of my shoulder. The time on a nearby clock doesn't tell me much, but the expression on the face of a passing nurse does. She nearly drops her clipboard and shouts something over her shoulder in a language I might have understood at a more coherent time in my life.

"Captain Aldo!"

Finally, something I can understand. I struggle to blink: it should be a lot easier given how goddamn bright this room is. I've always hated hospitals. They seem to have the ability to offend all five senses almost constantly. My eyes reluctantly slip from the nurse and I gather my bearings. From the looks of things, I've been here for a while. This isn't an examination room. I struggle to discern my last memory. Nothing comes up.

"Y...yes?"

"Don't move! Doctor Barret is on his way. Are you ok?"

She stoops closer, leaving the clipboard on my nightstand. When she does, I notice a small pile of letters and various "Get Well" type effects from what I assume is left of my friends and family: on one corner there's my military portrait with a gold and red sash draped down the front: I can only guess the Red Badge lies on the opposite side--the medal conferred to soldiers injured in battle. At least, that was what they called it when I got injured. Maybe it's something else now.

"I think so." My brows furrow. "Am I a... hero, or...a prisoner?"

The nurse smiles, but that doesn't comfort me light it ought to.

"A hero, sir. You've been in a coma since we retook Ali'Staan. Your unit was instrumental in the victory."

"Indeed it was!"

A voice booms behind the nurse and I almost piss myself--it must be the aforementioned Doctor Barret. The nurse clasps her hands behind her back and bows her head as she steps aside, allowing Doctor Barret to shove something really bright into my face. His thumb lifts my eyelid and he peers at my eyes, asking what seems like a torrent of questions.

"Any pain? Do you feel alright? We've been paying attention to you a lot recently as you've grown more responsive in recent weeks You've woken up breifly a couple of times before, but I doubt you remember them; your eyes only opened for a couple of minutes, according to the machinery. This is the first time you've seemed fully aware of things. Scans don't show any permanent damage but we can never be too sure. Can you move your extremities?"

Of course. You have no idea how hard it was to keep from hitting your dumb ass when you yanked open my eyelid. It's bright in here, dammit...

"Yeah. I think I'm alright. I can wiggle my toes at least, which is reasurring."

"Well, the cause of your coma was not a physical one, Captain. We didn't expect any significant physical damage. Your unit got gassed as you came in around the Gates: one other has since woken up but everyone else who was exposed to the toxin is either still comatose, or ceased nearly instantly. You're a very lucky man, Captain."

Well, they're calling me 'Captain'--that says a hell of a lot more than that nurse's smile could have. I breathe easy again. The imagery around me and the nature of the doctor and his nurse seems to indicate I'm in friendly hands.

"How...how long has it been? Do I want to know yet or will I have a heart attack or something? Did we win?"

"And how! Ali'Staan was reataken and wasn't seriously threatened again for the remainder of the war."

Shit. It's been a while. Years, probably. I close my eyes.

"How long?"

"Ten years."

Son of a...

I'm sitting upright in my hospital bed for what nurses tell me is the first time in a decade. A newspaper sits at my lap, open: I had been reading it a moment ago but my eyes still sort of hurt, and my head is still reeling from the shock of waking up in the first place. My uncle and my brother--the two surviving members of my immediate family--came to visit me last night, and I've learned a little about just how much things have changed since I fell.

At first I didn't want to believe that it had really been ten years, and my mind searched frantically for some previous reference to Doctor Barret, whom I wanted to say I knew, so as to give creedance to the theory that he was just pulling my leg. Despite my desperate attempts at evasion, it dawned on me fully when I examined the lines on my brother's face: deep creases existed where before there were none, and his eyes seemed both saddened and relieved when we spoke.

He told me of the war, evidently it came to pass that I was incapacitated towards the end of the conflict. Ali'Staan was retaken and the siege at Daturias was broken some weeks later. I didn't believe him at first when he told me that Alkanphel had returned, as I do still remember his death and no mention of him could be found in the stack of newspapers I had requested, but to be honest I still hadn't made it to the bottom yet. Damn dumb assed nurse stacked them with the newest ones at the top. Somehow it didn't occur to her that I might be more interested in what went on while I was asleep, or especially the war news immediately following my incapacitation.

The changes described to me have been quite profound, but I'm taking it with a grain of salt for now: they can't be too eager to give me any bad news, as I could see how that might worsen my condition. The doctors tell me I'll still be pretty weak for a couple of days, and they'll have to restimulate a number of my muscles since some of them have evidently atrophied. Nevertheless, I'm confident about my recovery and I hope to soon gain the ability to discern the situation for myself, but if what my brother tells me is true, Warlord Althalon is no longer a Warlord, but the Emperor: Alkanphel supposedly abdicated after what I'm told was an epic battle between himself and Morgoth, at the end of which the Vala was sent screaming into the Void, reportedly never to return.

I have my doubts.

On top of this, accounts seem to indicate that Althalon has garnered political control of the entire region, having used his victory against Morgoth as leverage to annex and occupy the remainder of the region. Pockets of resistance turned up of course, and they likely continue to this day, but the Five Kingdoms is about three or four times more expansive than it was before the revolt. Althalon is a very ambitious man. I'm told the orcs are contained more or less to the Sixth Kingdom, although the tunnels are treacherous in places, even under the remaining Five Kingdoms. I couldn't beleive my eyes when I was first shown a map, but then again I'm willing to wager that political control is, in some places, tenuous at best and confrontational at worst. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. At the very least, it means that the Five Kingdoms armed forces will still be getting the same workout they always have.

The mobile infantry has been split up into two entities: the Pax Imperica and the Guardis Imperica. Both are trained as military combat units, but the Guardis is primarily concerned with domestic affairs, while the newly inagurated Pax is to concern itself primarily with international operations and peacekeeping missions. He told me who the commanders are, but I forget the names. Hopefully they'll come back to me.

I'm also told there is now a Parliament, although I doubt they have any real power, given the structure described to me. Citizens vote, after a fashion, but no MP is admitted without the approval of Althalon's estate--either through the Emperor himself or a representative thereof. He still has complete control over both branches of the MI not to mention the fleets, so any physical showdown between Althalon and Parliament would likely be a short and messy one. On the surface, it doesn't make much sense to me why he'd set up such a system, but I can only imagine things will start to make more sense once this headache goes away...

Try as he might, Nordanl couldn't shake the feeling he was out of place in his Imperial uniform.

For most of his career as a black op specialist, his loyalties had resided with Xaosis Enterprises, or more specifically, the Xaosis mercenary force Blood and Iron. Now, Blood and Iron, while still under the pay of Xaosis and ultimately under his jurisdiction, was now a mechanism of the Pax Imperica, of which Nordanl was now a colonel.

It was truly curious that the path Xaosis had set upon when they betrayed the Five Kingdoms and thrown their lot with Sirithil of Menelmacar would end up with the metacorp participating in the downfall of their former master
and joined to the new regime that would take his place. Xaosis was now firmly entrenched within the Novus Imperium, headquartered in the capital of Near Harad, the city of Ali'Staan.

Now, Nordanl Bey, Pax Imperica security marshal of Ali'Staan and the surrounding area, waited in his office to debrief Captain Aldo himself.

Though Aldo origianally was not part of Blood and Iron, he had been attached to the Southron Guardsmen who followed Marshal Sudani in the recapture of Ali'Staan in the weeks preceding the Battle of Daturias. Now, Sudani was the commander in chief of the Pax Imperica, and he had taken an interest in the formerly comatose captain. Some days ago, he had asked Nordanl to debrief him; a duty which Nordanl reluctantly accepted. Despite the victory at Ali'Staan, the topic was often a sensitive one.

Nordanl had trememendous standing in Ali'Staan. When the revolution began, word of it drifted to Araman, a planet in a sector of largely unexplored space where Xaosis had taken refuge following it's near destruction at the hands of Morgoth. Eager to avenge themselves against their former masters, the Board of Directors sent Nordanl and Blood and Iron to the Five Kingdoms to make common cause with the Rebels and possibly bring Xaosis out of exile. Nordanl's forces arrived to Ali'Staan, saving the city from capture at the
hands of an Orcish legion.

Unfortunatly, holding the city became increasingly difficult, even with the help of the Xaosis dreadnought, the Dragon Eyes. Though it came at a frightful costs, the city fell, forcing Blood and Iron, as wells as the
Ali'Staani Rebels, to flee into the countryside.

The Rebels waged a guerilla war in the rocky badlands of Near Harad, and eventually were joined by Loyalist Southron Guardsmen who discovered Morgoth's intention toward a "final solution." It was strange for Nordanl to
accept the assistance of Tatha Gorkin, the man who led the Loyalist assault on the city. The man was still a subordinate commander under Sudani.

Warlord Althalon shortly after decided that Near Harad would be the best place to draw forces away from Daturias, ordering an offensive to retake the city. Captain Aldo had been part of this offensive. When they moved into the area, mercenaries and militiamen in the countryside instigated a general
uprising in the countryside, and the city fell swiftly, though at a bloody cost.

Captain Aldo's arm nearly shot up out of it's socket in salute when he walked in, saluting with visible effort."For God's sake, Captain, at ease!" Nordanl suppressed a smile. He remembered Aldo, remembered noting the man's discipline in the days of Ali'Staan's recapture.

Aldo relaxed, doing a less then excellent job of concealing his relief. Nordanl gestured to a chair, regarding the Haradrim captain. "How are you feeling, soldier?"

"Tired, sir," the Captain replied. "I know that's an odd thing to say after being asleep for ten years."

"Indeed, soldier." Nordanl tilted his head to one side. "I imagine you are quite disoriented."

"Better then being dead, sir," answered the captain with a wry grin and an ever so slightly hoisted eyebrow. "I'm told my recovery was a surprising one, but I still can't tell who means it and who still has their tounge
inextricably up my ass."

Bey chuckled. "You'll have that, I suppose..." he trailed off as he leafed through the documents in front of him." Aldo folded his hands in his lap and looked out the window. It was nice to have windows now; under any prior circumstance meeting in a military base generally required that they be well underground and thus utterly windowless. To the best of his undertsanding, many such facilities were still kept underground, but leadership was sensible enough now to realize that a debreifing during peacetime might actually not need to take place a half a mile or more under the earth's surface.

Finding the necessary passages, Bey cleared his throat to alleviate the silence that had accumulated since he last spoke. "You were knocked out at around seventeen hundred hours, shortly after the assault on the South Side
began. Your unit was up against a batallion of orcs, most of whom were stationed in and around the buildings just inside the city's perimeter. The gas was deployed immediately to the north and east of your position, and
Overlord Ghâsh was smart enough to position the canisters upwind from your location. A short time later, a massive wave of Liathine gas swept over you and your unit, killing about 35 and incapacitating some dozens more."

Aldo nodded slowly, as if it was finally starting to come back to him. "Those of us furthest to the east probably didn't have enough time to initialize our EPD masks..."

The edges of Bey's mouth were pulled downward in the kind of frown one displays when conceding an obvious but still unpleasant truth. "Yes, more or less. Despite this effort, these series of gas attacks were not enough to
deter our force. Most of the men were Southron citizens themselves, and the desire to retake their fallen capital was immense." he flipped back the cover of his file folder and slid it in front of Captain Aldo. "As you can see from the figures your unit performed fairly well up until the end of the
conflict. E-Company met up with you guys just outside the city limits shortly after the gas attack, and that's when you and the others got airlifted out of there."

Aldo's eyes skimmed the casualty report tensely. The only possible reaction--sadness--drifted across Aldo's face within moments. The losses were modest, but many men in the unit were locals to Aldo's area, and some
of them he had known since childhood. Learning almost simultaenously of their death and his own life created a strange antipodal feeling, which manifest itself as a feeling that something may burst from his chest at any moment. He had to lower his forehead to Bey's desk for a moment before it would pass.

Silence lingered for a time. Not wishing to interrupt Aldo's reverie, Bey waited for him to speak. "What about the tunnels?"

Bey winced. He was secretly half-hoping Aldo wouldn't have remembered that. At around the same time the rebels made their bid to reclaim Ali'Staan, a similar effort had to be undertaken to secure the tunnel grid immediately
beneath and around the city. The idea had been to overtake the city first to draw hostile forces out, and sweep in underneath with a smaller contingent to come up the middle and out. Bey's eyes scanned the ceiling for a moment before he answered."That operation did not fare quite as well. The orcs did a much better job dividing their forces than we had thought possible at the time. Many suspect that they had believed the main assault would come from underneath, so the area was much more heavily fortified. We managed to secure the nodes surrounding the city--and even a few within its limits--but holdouts remain there and in various places around the Empire even today. The orcish threat has..." he paused. "Has not been eliminated. We control all of the
surface area of the Five Kingdoms of course, but subterranean strongholds dot the countryside. They're growing weaker annualy, so many--including our Emperor--remain optimistic."

"Alkanphel?" asks Aldo absently, still scrutinizing the paperwork before him. "I heard he rose from the dead and returned to us or some such?"

Bey released a nervous chuckle. "Yes and no.