NationStates Jolt Archive

Summer, the thirtieth year of the Alexian Dynasty, the tenth of Antonius’s reign. Two years of peace. Peace is the absence of war. A year and a half of stability. Stability is the absence of rebellion.

Thirty-eight years old. Ten years of war. Eight months of this war. Six months in Buchiana. Six weeks, three days, twelve hours, fourteen minutes, eight seconds in the Lew Valley. Welcome to the clock.

Major Mikhail Svien swallowed the pills without water. They stuck in his throat. He didn’t much mind. He rubbed his eyelids and reached for the wire rimmed glasses sitting on the small table in front of him. Outside an unfamiliar bird chirped. A quiet breeze blew through the leaves.

His head hurt. The pills didn’t help anymore. His eyes hurt now, with or without the glasses. He fingers hurt, his toes hurt, his knees hurt, his back hurt, his neck hurt, his scars hurt, his wounds hurt, his skin hurt, his bones hurt. He. Hurt.

It was hot and sticky. It was summer. He was sweating. He had been sweating in the winter too. It was always hot in a warzone, even if the air was cold. The seasons didn’t have any control over that. He welcomed it, too. Being hot meant being alive. The only time you got cold was when you got dead. Bullets were cold. So were corpses.

He walked over to the window. Small wooden shack. Passed for a headquarters. At least it was permanent shelter. Nothing was permanent in the Lew Valley. There was too much fire, too much heat, sometimes too much rain. There wasn’t enough water or enough men or enough ammo or enough food. There was enough time. It felt like too much.

The whole thing was too much for anyone.

He reached behind him and scratched his bare back. Mosquito bites. They itched like his uniform. Itched like a scab on his right knee. A scab from twenty-four years ago. A kid in Generia City fell on some pavement and bled.

He scratched his right knee.

He walked back over to the table and looked at a map. It was too small, too vague. The whole goddamn place was too small. How did they hide in it? Like ants. Tunnels. Traps. Birds ate ants. The Generians had birds. Helicopters. Ants couldn’t kill birds. Buchianans could kill helicopters. They killed Generians often.

He walked over to a radio sitting on the desk. It was old. It was quiet. Nothing happening today. It was too early. The BLA hadn’t had its coffee yet. They were slow starters. They liked to take their time. Slow and steady. Easy does it. Have a cup before you kill. Then come home and rest. Rest. No rest for the weary. He was weary. Generia was weary. The Army was weary.

He walked over to the thin mattress on the metal contraption that passed for a cot. He sat down on it. It whined. Old and rusty. The radio started to talk quietly. He got up. It whined again and the radio answered. He walked over to it.

The BLA had finished their coffee. They were killing. Then they’d rest and Generia would stay awake and look for them in their holes. Some of them would never wake up. Some Generians would finally get some sleep.

The wind kept blowing. A soft tap, just louder than the breeze. Broken glass. It was cold. Bullets were cold. So were corpses. Cold.

Laughter.

Death.

God, Allah, Ahura Mazda, Jehovah.

Man.

I.

AH!

"You can't do this! You are all insane! Why do you do this? Why tell your children to die like this? You're starving! I understand this. But your resolve must not break. Daeia is testing you now! Do not do this......"

"Shut up old man! You know nothing of us. The Generians treat us like we are not worth anything. They kill us by the thousands. They rape and destroy! What do we do? We fight back! We fight for our people. We are not of Alexei. We know this. But they are. They are think themselves higher......."

"And you think to strike those who think themselves lords over your land? You think that sending a few of your children to die will save this village from hunger? Do you think this! NO! If you go, I will stop you! If you prove that you have no soul then I will make you bleed until the earth gives you one. If you can sacrifice your children like this, then you are nothing more than animals to be ruled over, traded, and killed. None of you are deserving of the Lord's mercy. None of you shall have it!"

The beat him then. Struck him down where he was and they went off with their chosen victims. Those children who would get close to the Generian roads and pretending to beg for food would blow themselves and the Generian soldiers to hell. They left him there. They left him bleeding and cold and gasping for air. His eyes cried salt with no water. He struggled to his feet and deep in his resolve sought to punish them. Not for what they would do to him. For what they were willing to do to win.

He set their stores of food on fire. He burned the village and took everything he could carry. He salted their fields and threw down their altars. He wept and left. The old Monotheist priest walked from one devastation to another. His own devastation. Into the wilderness went this man. God forgive him and protect him for his sins. Forgive those who have debts against us. He fell then. He fell and slept and slipt and lay there. Deep in the forests on this night..........

They hunted him then. They found him and beat him more and they strangled him and they cut down a tree and hung him there. This man who betrayed them and destroyed their way of life. This man of evil. This man of God.

The light breeze off the ocean brought with it sweet relief from the stench of the battles that raged the days before. Staff Sergeant Jared Clark sniffed the air and looked out at the slowly rising sun as it illuminated the camp for the Incorporated Sarzonian Army.

Clark thought carefully about the preceding days' events. He had witnessed the modern equivalent of David slaying Goliath as the much-ridiculed ISA in a nation that was the least warlike among the Allied Powers battled it out with the storied Reavers from a Pantera that seemed to be bred for war. The units all around him fought with an uncommon severity that surprised their foes. Sarzonians and Branywnians fought with a unified sense of purpose that eluded them in Inkana.

Gone was the inter-service rivalry that had seen the Navy given caviar while the Army was served spam. Whatever egos may have fueled the dreadful performance against the Doomies must have been stuffed in the corner when the Reavers came calling. Combined arms of the army, navy, and air force all pounded the attempted landing and dealt serious losses while the Sarzonian army was preparing its second layer of defence. Clark would later find out about Operation Hangman and about the Navy's sending a full Fleet to hem in the Panteran navy against a combined assault of coastal batteries and naval ordnance.

All of a sudden, Clark felt proud to wear the Sarzonian army uniform, even though the current one he was wearing had the grime of war seeping throughout every inch of the fabric that covered his taut frame. The beaches near the city were strewn with the remains of the dead on both sides, while the groans of the wounded provided an unpleasant background noise. But Clark noted the groans weren't just his comrades. Faint as they were, he swore he could hear the Panterans.

Reports from other areas of the front suggested that the Lord Reaver called for a cease fire. The fact that it was the much larger nation who proposed negotiations wasn't lost on Clark.

"Got a little too hot for 'em, I guess," he said to no one in particular. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from his knapsack and began writing a letter to his parents.

24 April 2006

Lisa and David Clark
23 Brighton Road
Tacoma, Truxtun, SXI 248

Dear Mom and Dad,

I hope Cody and Katie are doing well. I miss Cindy lots. Maybe we can go to the movies when I come home from Branwyn?

You would not believe how different things are now that this war we've been fighting is over. It feels like we've brought honour to the uniform and our flag even though Branwyn is no longer a Sarzonian colony. We've lost about 220 lives and we've got about 600 wounded. We haven't gotten any word from the Panterans yet, but our estimates pin their losses at 447 dead and over 1,000 wounded. They've also got damage to several ships and aircraft from our combined assaults.

More important than whether we won or lost is the morale in camp. We're all walking around with a sense of pride I don't think we've ever had in our army. We have something tangible to hang our hats on as an army. The suits in Woodstock have something to pin all the money they spent on reforms. Bet we'll see recruitment go through the roof.

I'd better get going. We've got to break up camp and get ready for the ride home. I'll see everyone when I get back.

Love,

Jared

"Tell a joke or somethin'."

"A joke? I don't know any fuckin' jokes."

"Man, everybody knows some jokes, so tell a fuckin' joke."

"You want to hear a joke? Here's your goddamn joke. Knock-knock."

"Who's there?"

Gunshot.

The room erupted in laughter. It was low end Sarzonian cinema, to be sure, but luckily it was a crowd that was easily amused. Most of the men hadn't seen a film in nearly eight months as it was. Anything was better than nothing, and right now this bootleg foreign film was doing the trick.

He sat in the back, not really paying much attention. Far more interesting was the crumpled letter in his hands, read by the dim glow of the projectorilluminated screen. The hand was a rough cursive, legible only to the few who understood the intricacies of its misshapen loops. He chuckled when the rest did, not at what they saw on the screen, but because the energy of laughter lifted the words from the page, into his soul, and this in turn elevated him.

-tbc-