Kriegorgrad
25-08-2005, 23:50
“Eyes RIGHT!” The boom of Sergeant Major Heathadder pounded at Private Milan’s ears, the Proletarian Guardsmen were in parade formation marching down a street, bayonets forming the canopy of a forest made of the sturdy metal and wood of the Lee Enfield rifles. It was a box advancing down the street to the drum roll of war and the cheering of the crowds, men, women and children hung out of windows, screaming their praise for the war, each one trying to outdo the next, with eyes looking up at the Comrade General Melchett stood atop his podium with a mix of obedience and glee at the thought of a war, the bravado of the men seeing them happy until the time for battle actually began. Melchett returned the sustained salute given by the soldiers as the procession of men passed, only to be followed by yet another box of Proletarian Guardsmen. Standing on his podium, the General obviously a good view of the podium and Milan couldn’t help but smile at him having to squint to see the end of it, well rather the end of it from view, as the mighty snake of soldiers disappeared down the main street and to the rolling green fields outside the ruddy urban centre. Bravado and collective bravery serving him well so far, Milan’s smile faded from his face as his stomach became a clump of ice, for the first time, his mortality became apparent again and an epiphany came over him: he didn’t want to die, not for his family, not for his country, not even for glorious Fedor. He loved all of them dearly but dying…the thoughts vanished from his head, the temporary horror of individual thought washed away as the loudspeakers adorning the corner of every street and large building blared into life over the militaristic parade music. The unstoppable march of Kriegorgrad’s “armies”. The proper regiments had already boarded their ships and now waited in the harbour, forming a formidable armada alone, the potency was only added to when one saw the huge fleet of vessels crammed full of an unimaginable amount of food and bullets for the campaign.
It was truly epic. Huge, it was scale that Kriegorgrad had not known before, warehouses of food intended for the populace were emptied and the rural areas’ production of grain for the year was gutted, soldiers arriving by truck to cart off the vital ingredient to the hundreds of ships in the harbour. It wasn’t a good time to live in Kriegorgrad, before the conflict, things were looking up and living conditions were improving rapidly, bullets were too numerous to be built anymore, tanks and guns gathered dust in bases littered with more munitions than they knew what to do with. Kriegorgrad was ripe for a war, the oligarchs were growing increasingly concerned that the people were going to be able to keep their heads above the water, above the line of desperation where daily life became a struggle, a life where there was room for pause and thought about the system ruling your country. Already there were protests in the southern provinces and the government was truly panicked – this was uncalled for, the last protest was over fifty years ago, just after the founding of the Fedor regime and it was crushed brutally, after years of propaganda and endless wars, the oligarchs thought the possibility of rebellion was too remote to bother considering. It was time for a drop in living conditions.
It was extremely opportune that Praetonian-Freekish relations were take a dive from cold dislike to seething hatred and war. The oligarchs were mad with relief after hearing of the cold war, and had waited their time for the necessary spark to ignite the conflict, already, soldiers had been prepared and the reserves were being called up to do their part for the Collective Oligarchy, men as old as sixty press ganged into a war shoulder-to-shoulder with people a third their age. Massive armoured columns commanded the highways between the cities, the screech of MIG-21’s overhead pierced the tranquillity of the countryside as M110 (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Ground/M110-203mm.jpg) artillery guns churned up healthy green turf in search of an alternate route to the convoy packed highways. Drab olive tracks laden with soldiers just squeezed in wherever they could between the Centurion battle tanks and the M110 guns. Any nation with even the most crude of surveillance satellites would be able to tell from the raw amount of motion that took place in the Collective Oligarchy’s borders. Mothers and children waved off fathers, sons and brothers as the trucks came to pick up the men needed for the grinder that generals referred to as the “frontlines”. Whatever was coming, it would ensure roughly three generations of men would disappear in the fiery brimstone of war.
-----
The parade trailed off as the soldiers reached the dirty docks, crates, nets and thick rope lay strewn about the area and the cooing voices of the approving public were replaced by the rough accents of sergeants bawling at their men while the more bourgeoisie accented captains surrounded the colonel of the regiment, a harsh, unkind man how did his best to segregate the upper echelons of the regiment from the lower – a sure fire way to earn the disdain of your troops. Private Milan groaned in relief as the scrutiny of the public eye disappeared and he could relax a tad before boarding the looming shape of the transport vessel. It had numerous portholes, dirty portholes and after peering over the edge of the dock, the rust layered the lowest quarter of the draught. The ship overall looked much like a cruiser far past its years and only the sharp call of the colonel shook Milan out of his state of disapproval of the massive vessel, shouting his name in response to roll call, he set off for the gangplank , laden down in his Proletarian Guardsman equipment, laden down with his only earthly possessions upon draft into the Proletarian Guard.
The sleeping quarters were repulsive, even by Kriegos standards, a boxed in affair with rust from an unknown damp gnawing at the walls while the stench of bodies pressed into a small area filled the air. The ruddy yellow tinged light bulb swayed left and right from the gentle rock of the tide, causing shadows to throw themselves to move and light to rhythmically coming over a Guardsmen trying to get some rest. Milan would’ve complained at the conditions but he knew better than to tempt the hand of fate, COMSEC in this case. The all seeing eye that ensured the oligarchs’ policies were not spoken out against, the dark fist that smote down those who dared challenge to the semi-god Comrade Leader Nikolai Fedorenkov. Milan groaned let himself collapse into the bunk, must to the audible protest of the springs supporting the rough matress. He leant up again, with purpose and produced a stubby pencil as well as a fat, small book garbed in a dark blue cover. It was his diary, the only material recollection of Milan’s life events should he ever need to be done away with, usually, such an expression of thought was forbidden in Kriegorgrad but why ban diaries? One only needs to read them to know the secrets and desires of the man who wrote in it.
Drawing out his pencil and thumbing through to a fresh page, the private paused for a moment of thought then jotted down what seemed to make the most sense.
”I’m stuck in this ship until we go off to war to die. Bugger.”
-----
The colonel stood alongside the captain of the ship on the bridge, ironically named the HFS Glorious, a most unfitting name for such a dirty and badly kept ship. The colonel wasn’t very old for an officer of his rank, while only clocking in at only thirty-four, he held an air of snobbishness meant for meant with twice his age, he had found the man whom he kept company for the short duration of his stay aboard the “Glorious”, the man was somewhat a pseudo intellectual – the perfect man the Fedor regime wanted. A man who thought he knew it all and was content with his lot while knowing absolutely nothing, usually the colonel would be repulsed by such a man, and he was, save for the same snobbishness that the colonel held for the proletariat. While the dockyard accent of the captain told of certain hypocrisy, the aristocratic voice of the colonel ensured that he was in a position to the look down his nose at the working class.
“Why I daresay, I must concur, I try and keep my more…noble officers away from the malign influence of the proles, they aren’t a positive group to be around, can reduce the most sophisticated of men to bawling idiots.” The colonel was at his most contemptuous, his passionate condescending view towards the group who supported his way of life inflamed by a few glasses of brandy the captain had stashed away in his quarters.
“Aye, I agree with you there, bloody workin’ class thinkin’ they’re better than us and givin’ us lip when we give ‘em orders.” Replied the ship captain around his pipe, his accent telling the colonel how unjustified his loathing of the lower classes was. He didn’t look like a particularly noble captain with pipe in one hand and bottle of brandy in the other, a contrast to the colonel holding his glass of brandy and sipping it now and again.
“So…when are we launching? With more than three quarters of the Proletarian Guard called up for this campaign forced to wait in bases for these same ships to come back after dropping the troops off, I assume we have quite a wait on our hands.”
”Aye laddy, that we do, it’s gonna’ be Fedor knows what shipping men over to…wherever we’re attacking.”
”Crimmond.”
”Aye.” The conversation stopped, it simply trailed off after the exchange of words, and the pair just stood on the bridge of their dirty ship as the orange orb began to retreat from the skies overhead, sending brilliant lights skimming across the surface of the ocean and making silhouettes of the hundreds upon hundreds of ships anchored outside the massive harbour. A smile came to the colonel’s lips and he repeated an old rhetoric told to him by his wealthy father and he whispered.
“Soldiers trot, bodies rot; bring on the crescendo of war…” His murmurings lost to the wind from an open window, the repeated sound of the ebb and flow of the tide weakly crashing against the hull of the ship and the wooden struts that supported the pier the ship was docked to…
It was truly epic. Huge, it was scale that Kriegorgrad had not known before, warehouses of food intended for the populace were emptied and the rural areas’ production of grain for the year was gutted, soldiers arriving by truck to cart off the vital ingredient to the hundreds of ships in the harbour. It wasn’t a good time to live in Kriegorgrad, before the conflict, things were looking up and living conditions were improving rapidly, bullets were too numerous to be built anymore, tanks and guns gathered dust in bases littered with more munitions than they knew what to do with. Kriegorgrad was ripe for a war, the oligarchs were growing increasingly concerned that the people were going to be able to keep their heads above the water, above the line of desperation where daily life became a struggle, a life where there was room for pause and thought about the system ruling your country. Already there were protests in the southern provinces and the government was truly panicked – this was uncalled for, the last protest was over fifty years ago, just after the founding of the Fedor regime and it was crushed brutally, after years of propaganda and endless wars, the oligarchs thought the possibility of rebellion was too remote to bother considering. It was time for a drop in living conditions.
It was extremely opportune that Praetonian-Freekish relations were take a dive from cold dislike to seething hatred and war. The oligarchs were mad with relief after hearing of the cold war, and had waited their time for the necessary spark to ignite the conflict, already, soldiers had been prepared and the reserves were being called up to do their part for the Collective Oligarchy, men as old as sixty press ganged into a war shoulder-to-shoulder with people a third their age. Massive armoured columns commanded the highways between the cities, the screech of MIG-21’s overhead pierced the tranquillity of the countryside as M110 (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Ground/M110-203mm.jpg) artillery guns churned up healthy green turf in search of an alternate route to the convoy packed highways. Drab olive tracks laden with soldiers just squeezed in wherever they could between the Centurion battle tanks and the M110 guns. Any nation with even the most crude of surveillance satellites would be able to tell from the raw amount of motion that took place in the Collective Oligarchy’s borders. Mothers and children waved off fathers, sons and brothers as the trucks came to pick up the men needed for the grinder that generals referred to as the “frontlines”. Whatever was coming, it would ensure roughly three generations of men would disappear in the fiery brimstone of war.
-----
The parade trailed off as the soldiers reached the dirty docks, crates, nets and thick rope lay strewn about the area and the cooing voices of the approving public were replaced by the rough accents of sergeants bawling at their men while the more bourgeoisie accented captains surrounded the colonel of the regiment, a harsh, unkind man how did his best to segregate the upper echelons of the regiment from the lower – a sure fire way to earn the disdain of your troops. Private Milan groaned in relief as the scrutiny of the public eye disappeared and he could relax a tad before boarding the looming shape of the transport vessel. It had numerous portholes, dirty portholes and after peering over the edge of the dock, the rust layered the lowest quarter of the draught. The ship overall looked much like a cruiser far past its years and only the sharp call of the colonel shook Milan out of his state of disapproval of the massive vessel, shouting his name in response to roll call, he set off for the gangplank , laden down in his Proletarian Guardsman equipment, laden down with his only earthly possessions upon draft into the Proletarian Guard.
The sleeping quarters were repulsive, even by Kriegos standards, a boxed in affair with rust from an unknown damp gnawing at the walls while the stench of bodies pressed into a small area filled the air. The ruddy yellow tinged light bulb swayed left and right from the gentle rock of the tide, causing shadows to throw themselves to move and light to rhythmically coming over a Guardsmen trying to get some rest. Milan would’ve complained at the conditions but he knew better than to tempt the hand of fate, COMSEC in this case. The all seeing eye that ensured the oligarchs’ policies were not spoken out against, the dark fist that smote down those who dared challenge to the semi-god Comrade Leader Nikolai Fedorenkov. Milan groaned let himself collapse into the bunk, must to the audible protest of the springs supporting the rough matress. He leant up again, with purpose and produced a stubby pencil as well as a fat, small book garbed in a dark blue cover. It was his diary, the only material recollection of Milan’s life events should he ever need to be done away with, usually, such an expression of thought was forbidden in Kriegorgrad but why ban diaries? One only needs to read them to know the secrets and desires of the man who wrote in it.
Drawing out his pencil and thumbing through to a fresh page, the private paused for a moment of thought then jotted down what seemed to make the most sense.
”I’m stuck in this ship until we go off to war to die. Bugger.”
-----
The colonel stood alongside the captain of the ship on the bridge, ironically named the HFS Glorious, a most unfitting name for such a dirty and badly kept ship. The colonel wasn’t very old for an officer of his rank, while only clocking in at only thirty-four, he held an air of snobbishness meant for meant with twice his age, he had found the man whom he kept company for the short duration of his stay aboard the “Glorious”, the man was somewhat a pseudo intellectual – the perfect man the Fedor regime wanted. A man who thought he knew it all and was content with his lot while knowing absolutely nothing, usually the colonel would be repulsed by such a man, and he was, save for the same snobbishness that the colonel held for the proletariat. While the dockyard accent of the captain told of certain hypocrisy, the aristocratic voice of the colonel ensured that he was in a position to the look down his nose at the working class.
“Why I daresay, I must concur, I try and keep my more…noble officers away from the malign influence of the proles, they aren’t a positive group to be around, can reduce the most sophisticated of men to bawling idiots.” The colonel was at his most contemptuous, his passionate condescending view towards the group who supported his way of life inflamed by a few glasses of brandy the captain had stashed away in his quarters.
“Aye, I agree with you there, bloody workin’ class thinkin’ they’re better than us and givin’ us lip when we give ‘em orders.” Replied the ship captain around his pipe, his accent telling the colonel how unjustified his loathing of the lower classes was. He didn’t look like a particularly noble captain with pipe in one hand and bottle of brandy in the other, a contrast to the colonel holding his glass of brandy and sipping it now and again.
“So…when are we launching? With more than three quarters of the Proletarian Guard called up for this campaign forced to wait in bases for these same ships to come back after dropping the troops off, I assume we have quite a wait on our hands.”
”Aye laddy, that we do, it’s gonna’ be Fedor knows what shipping men over to…wherever we’re attacking.”
”Crimmond.”
”Aye.” The conversation stopped, it simply trailed off after the exchange of words, and the pair just stood on the bridge of their dirty ship as the orange orb began to retreat from the skies overhead, sending brilliant lights skimming across the surface of the ocean and making silhouettes of the hundreds upon hundreds of ships anchored outside the massive harbour. A smile came to the colonel’s lips and he repeated an old rhetoric told to him by his wealthy father and he whispered.
“Soldiers trot, bodies rot; bring on the crescendo of war…” His murmurings lost to the wind from an open window, the repeated sound of the ebb and flow of the tide weakly crashing against the hull of the ship and the wooden struts that supported the pier the ship was docked to…