Beth Gellert
18-09-2004, 01:33
Bootle, Victoria
“...you know they want to rename the island.”
“Eh?”
“St.George’s. The Igovians want to re-name it. Something pagan or red or somethin’.”
Mark Vess, one-time big-shot yacht salesman and now assistant harbourmaster at Bootle Cook Bay South, refrained by reflex from cursing the regime aloud. As a former bourgeois entrepreneur on the up during the rule of regal Llewellyn he was probably subject to especially close scrutiny by GSIC since the reunification with the Igovian Soviet mainland.
Victoria and Salvador enjoyed under the communists much more liberty in many social issues (from recreational drugs use to the ability to protest malpractice in the workplace without being cast out and forced to live in some run-down council estate) than had been true under the royalists. The skies, seas, and workers were cleaner now, too, and crime was down considerably. People could even raise issues in their Local Senate and expect to get a proper debate on them.
This didn’t please men like Mark and his friends who could no longer ruin junior workers for answering back, could no longer buy imported American sportswear, Gallagan tea, Andamanese and Nicobarese sportscars, could no longer get ahead of the Joneses and had to settle for keeping-up. They didn’t like hearing that the Church they never once visited was now a university annex where religion was lectured upon in the same module as mercantilism and feudalism, with a side project on Fascism, by professors of Historical Stepping Stones and Pointless Deviations. They certainly didn’t like that the Cathedral they never knew they had was now a five-story bar and the Virgin Megastore next door was a state-owned brewery.
Most of all, Mark Vess, Andrew Leatherton, and Crispin “Hobby” Jenkins really hated to read that the profits of their labour were to be spent building missiles that would later be sold to...
“...The North Koreans! Look at the state of it!” Said Leatherton, snatching the paper away from Crispin, who had been trying to check the form for what used to be his horses. They weren’t running steeple chases now. They were pulling chariots at muddy Beddgelen hess-keths.
Jenkins snorted a high-toned note of disapproval as Leatherton violently rustled the copy of Iskra! and began to expectorate the offending article.
Apparently, near as the other two men could gather, Portmeirion had finally agreed to get around to sending advanced air-to-air missiles for those three-score high performance fighter jets last year exported to the Choson People’s Republic of Dra-pol. Various Igovian attempts to render more direct aid to this authoritarian socialist north Korean hermitage had been rejected by a mix of more timid socialists and of outright counter-revolutionaries from the Victoria Salvadorian Territories. By way of compromise, Beth Gellert had managed to remain one of probably few nations since the CPRD invaded the Republic of Korea and captured Seoul to vote against an embargo on arms sales to the pariah state. Two squadrons of NT4(E) Hobgoblin air superiority fighters and three of NT5 Cardinal point-defence interceptors had been delivered, “in defence of the revolution abroad.” Until now, the Drapoel had been forced to arm these high-performance aircraft with inferior domestically designed infra-red-guided missiles or with imitations of older Chinese and Soviet weapons.
Apparently this meant that the Beth Gellen investment was as good as wasted, the aircraft unable to perform to the standards of their design and construction. It was an affront to Igovian ideals to continue in this sort of practice. Dissenters and capitalists like Andrew Leatherton would have considered this a lesson in why they shouldn’t bother in future. Revolutionaries like... ninety-some percent of the Beth Gellen populace considered it a sign that the job best be finished, however expensive, and so the missiles would be sent.
IR-guided DRAB ASRAAM (Advanced Short Range Air to Air Missile) –actually based upon a primitive Drapoel missile and given a more powerful seeker with enhanced clutter rejection and increased field of regard, as well as a more powerful rocket motor, new flight surfaces, and a gas-dynamic control system- would be delivered by the score. There was some chance of the Drapoel using these as a base to improve their own stocks and future weapons, too.
Radar-guided L’Angelot Maudit AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile) –probably equivalent in many ways and superior in some to the very best Soviet and Chinese AAMs available to Dra-pol- would also be provided in significant weight of numbers, mainly for the Cardinals.
The Hobgoblins’ primary armament was to be AAELRS ALRAAM (Advanced Long Range Air to Air Missile), a 180km-range weapon with renowned countermeasure-resistance that would represent a quantum leap in air-to-air capability for the CPRD’s People’s Army Air Force.
Vess, Leatherton and Jenkins spent most of the night awake in the condemned gentlemen’s clubhouse, where they discussed the severity of their society’s decline and the reality of their opportunity to do something worthwhile about it.
L’Angelot Maudit and DRAB were both manufactured on the mainland by Apti (April Titovo Aeronautics Plant) and Jaf (January Fort Brennus Aviation Plant) respectively, and they would be flown from those cities. Fort Brennus was, as the name suggested, something of a fortress city, basing countless thousands of fanatical communist warriors. Titovo too was a hard-line revolutionary city, and it was on the very far side of The Commonwealth.
“We could always escape into the badlands to the east...”
“What, with those beastly Glakatahn fellows rampaging about on their horses, raping and plundering? Not on your life, Andie, old boy!” Scoffed Crispin.
Besides, Mal, the March Alaric Aviation Plant had lately become the primary source of AAELRS, and Alaric was just north up the coast from Cook Bay.
Better yet, as one conspirator said without realising the absurdity of his statement for all of his self-interested vitriol, Alaric had been devastated by communist cruise missiles during the civil war and the associated Battle of Salvador. Why the locals would probably impede the authorities if anything went wrong!
“We’d better have an associated plan.”
“Eh?”
“Get somebody else interested. You know, rile-up some foreign government.” Said Vess.
“Liberation?” Ventured Leatherton.
“No, no, the Nicobarese have no direct interest in this. Except to get one over on the Igovians they’ve nothing to gain.”
“Someone with interests in Korea.” Said Jenkins, sedately.
Vess nodded. “I’ll do that. Send copies of the paper to the embassies of nations deploying forces in South Korea. Maybe they’ll put on enough pressure to delay the deal while you and Andie head up to Alaric.”
By the next morning, parcels arrived at consulates representing the Republic of Korea, Hudecia, Quinntonia, Lunatic Retard Robots, and just about anyone else that struck Vess as being potentially anti-Drapoel or anti-Igovian. Contained were photocopies not only of Iskra! articles that may already have been known to alert diplomats, but also the more specific details such as involve describing the type ands and quantities of missiles to be transferred. Such information as to which politically involved Beth Gellen citizens –those able to enter regional senates- were privy.
(OOC: I know it’s rather small-fry in the world of Nation States- a few score air-to-air missiles all told, but I gather this fairly in keeping with adjustments made in relevant RP circles of late. I’m fairly sure it would be big news in South Korea and other nations if somebody decided to deliver top of the range AAMs to the North.)
“...you know they want to rename the island.”
“Eh?”
“St.George’s. The Igovians want to re-name it. Something pagan or red or somethin’.”
Mark Vess, one-time big-shot yacht salesman and now assistant harbourmaster at Bootle Cook Bay South, refrained by reflex from cursing the regime aloud. As a former bourgeois entrepreneur on the up during the rule of regal Llewellyn he was probably subject to especially close scrutiny by GSIC since the reunification with the Igovian Soviet mainland.
Victoria and Salvador enjoyed under the communists much more liberty in many social issues (from recreational drugs use to the ability to protest malpractice in the workplace without being cast out and forced to live in some run-down council estate) than had been true under the royalists. The skies, seas, and workers were cleaner now, too, and crime was down considerably. People could even raise issues in their Local Senate and expect to get a proper debate on them.
This didn’t please men like Mark and his friends who could no longer ruin junior workers for answering back, could no longer buy imported American sportswear, Gallagan tea, Andamanese and Nicobarese sportscars, could no longer get ahead of the Joneses and had to settle for keeping-up. They didn’t like hearing that the Church they never once visited was now a university annex where religion was lectured upon in the same module as mercantilism and feudalism, with a side project on Fascism, by professors of Historical Stepping Stones and Pointless Deviations. They certainly didn’t like that the Cathedral they never knew they had was now a five-story bar and the Virgin Megastore next door was a state-owned brewery.
Most of all, Mark Vess, Andrew Leatherton, and Crispin “Hobby” Jenkins really hated to read that the profits of their labour were to be spent building missiles that would later be sold to...
“...The North Koreans! Look at the state of it!” Said Leatherton, snatching the paper away from Crispin, who had been trying to check the form for what used to be his horses. They weren’t running steeple chases now. They were pulling chariots at muddy Beddgelen hess-keths.
Jenkins snorted a high-toned note of disapproval as Leatherton violently rustled the copy of Iskra! and began to expectorate the offending article.
Apparently, near as the other two men could gather, Portmeirion had finally agreed to get around to sending advanced air-to-air missiles for those three-score high performance fighter jets last year exported to the Choson People’s Republic of Dra-pol. Various Igovian attempts to render more direct aid to this authoritarian socialist north Korean hermitage had been rejected by a mix of more timid socialists and of outright counter-revolutionaries from the Victoria Salvadorian Territories. By way of compromise, Beth Gellert had managed to remain one of probably few nations since the CPRD invaded the Republic of Korea and captured Seoul to vote against an embargo on arms sales to the pariah state. Two squadrons of NT4(E) Hobgoblin air superiority fighters and three of NT5 Cardinal point-defence interceptors had been delivered, “in defence of the revolution abroad.” Until now, the Drapoel had been forced to arm these high-performance aircraft with inferior domestically designed infra-red-guided missiles or with imitations of older Chinese and Soviet weapons.
Apparently this meant that the Beth Gellen investment was as good as wasted, the aircraft unable to perform to the standards of their design and construction. It was an affront to Igovian ideals to continue in this sort of practice. Dissenters and capitalists like Andrew Leatherton would have considered this a lesson in why they shouldn’t bother in future. Revolutionaries like... ninety-some percent of the Beth Gellen populace considered it a sign that the job best be finished, however expensive, and so the missiles would be sent.
IR-guided DRAB ASRAAM (Advanced Short Range Air to Air Missile) –actually based upon a primitive Drapoel missile and given a more powerful seeker with enhanced clutter rejection and increased field of regard, as well as a more powerful rocket motor, new flight surfaces, and a gas-dynamic control system- would be delivered by the score. There was some chance of the Drapoel using these as a base to improve their own stocks and future weapons, too.
Radar-guided L’Angelot Maudit AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile) –probably equivalent in many ways and superior in some to the very best Soviet and Chinese AAMs available to Dra-pol- would also be provided in significant weight of numbers, mainly for the Cardinals.
The Hobgoblins’ primary armament was to be AAELRS ALRAAM (Advanced Long Range Air to Air Missile), a 180km-range weapon with renowned countermeasure-resistance that would represent a quantum leap in air-to-air capability for the CPRD’s People’s Army Air Force.
Vess, Leatherton and Jenkins spent most of the night awake in the condemned gentlemen’s clubhouse, where they discussed the severity of their society’s decline and the reality of their opportunity to do something worthwhile about it.
L’Angelot Maudit and DRAB were both manufactured on the mainland by Apti (April Titovo Aeronautics Plant) and Jaf (January Fort Brennus Aviation Plant) respectively, and they would be flown from those cities. Fort Brennus was, as the name suggested, something of a fortress city, basing countless thousands of fanatical communist warriors. Titovo too was a hard-line revolutionary city, and it was on the very far side of The Commonwealth.
“We could always escape into the badlands to the east...”
“What, with those beastly Glakatahn fellows rampaging about on their horses, raping and plundering? Not on your life, Andie, old boy!” Scoffed Crispin.
Besides, Mal, the March Alaric Aviation Plant had lately become the primary source of AAELRS, and Alaric was just north up the coast from Cook Bay.
Better yet, as one conspirator said without realising the absurdity of his statement for all of his self-interested vitriol, Alaric had been devastated by communist cruise missiles during the civil war and the associated Battle of Salvador. Why the locals would probably impede the authorities if anything went wrong!
“We’d better have an associated plan.”
“Eh?”
“Get somebody else interested. You know, rile-up some foreign government.” Said Vess.
“Liberation?” Ventured Leatherton.
“No, no, the Nicobarese have no direct interest in this. Except to get one over on the Igovians they’ve nothing to gain.”
“Someone with interests in Korea.” Said Jenkins, sedately.
Vess nodded. “I’ll do that. Send copies of the paper to the embassies of nations deploying forces in South Korea. Maybe they’ll put on enough pressure to delay the deal while you and Andie head up to Alaric.”
By the next morning, parcels arrived at consulates representing the Republic of Korea, Hudecia, Quinntonia, Lunatic Retard Robots, and just about anyone else that struck Vess as being potentially anti-Drapoel or anti-Igovian. Contained were photocopies not only of Iskra! articles that may already have been known to alert diplomats, but also the more specific details such as involve describing the type ands and quantities of missiles to be transferred. Such information as to which politically involved Beth Gellen citizens –those able to enter regional senates- were privy.
(OOC: I know it’s rather small-fry in the world of Nation States- a few score air-to-air missiles all told, but I gather this fairly in keeping with adjustments made in relevant RP circles of late. I’m fairly sure it would be big news in South Korea and other nations if somebody decided to deliver top of the range AAMs to the North.)