NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: I had posted a thread for this earlier, but I might as well just RP the situation. Basically since Geronia is an emerging nation, I was thinking about setting it up so that Geronia's been an independent nation for only twenty years or so, prior to that, it was a colony of a larger nation that we broke away from. Basically the RP is set twenty-five years or so from the present and if anyone is interested in RPing as the colonizer (preferably an older nation to lend credibility to the RP) or as nations interested in aiding Geronia's independence, just jump in.

For reference: The capital of Geronia is Caimen (pronounced Khai-men).

IC:

Caimen, 1981

All his life he had known nothing but fear. Fear of the police, fear of the establishment, fear of losing his life, of vanishing in the night. The police were not protectors of life and liberty, not even the Geronian police, comprised of his countrymen, simple tools of those who controlled his country. For thirty years, Geronia had been under the boot of the occupiers, its citizens staved and beaten into submission, its national treasures looted, its army disbanded, its products and resources taken to fuel the "mother country."

A bright flash of light startled him. Quickly he ducked into a nearby alley, watching as the vehicle passed him, a grim-faced man in uniform at the wheel, his eyes slowly scanning the street. The vehicle's engine roared once and the car disappeared down the street into the night.

His heart was pounding. To calm his nerves, the man reached down, steadying his hand over his heart, willing it to slow down. He had come close; under the system, the only people with cars in this part of town would be either government officials or police, both of which meant trouble, especially if you were a Geronian out after curfew which he was.

Suddenly he heard a screeching of brakes behind him and heard the roar of a vehicle engine once more. Clutching his coat around him, he ran down the alley, feet pounding against the cracked asphalt as he ran heedlessly. Behind him he heard shouts and the sounds of car doors opening and closing, but he still ran, his heart thumping in his chest.

The end of the alley loomed ahead. He was almost there....almost to safety when the sound of a roaring car filled his ears and he turned behind him to look for one fatal second.

The nose of the second hidden police vehicle, its lights extinguished struck the man's body, lifting him up onto the hood before crushing him between the bumper and the wall of a nearby building. The driver backed the car up slowly, paying little attention to the status of the man he'd just hit, but being careful of the fact that he didn't want to hit the car against the walls. Damage to the department's car would cost him.

The car halted and the men climbed out, clad in the uniforms of state police. They stood over the broken twitching body of the man, saying nothing at first.

"Geronian resistance?" said one man, looking down at the broken body of the man before them, his eyes still moving, his lungs still breathing.

"Who cares? They're all the same," retorted one man wearing the chevrons of a sergeant on his arm. Then, unholstering his sidearm, he pointed it at the head of the man on the ground and pulled the trigger once...

[ooc: I'd be pleased to RP as the mother country with you as one of my "protectorates".]

Mianel Valcrag was proud of himself. He deserved it too: five Thought Criminals captured in the space of one week, dispatched to Retrieval and from there on to the detention camps... By the end of the month Valcrag may have earned enough of his pay to be transferred from the Geronian battalion back to the "elite" of the Thought Police, the Capitol Guards.

Valcrag, properly Captain-Major Valcrag, was one of the commanding officers of the Geronian battalion. While officially the terms were full equality for Geronian and Bandurian citizens and allowing the occupied citizens to live their own lives, the Imperium did have the upper hand after all with a fleet of 560 combat vessels and four Legions menacing Geronia if it failed to comply with whatever terms the Bandurians would set. Thus, Valcrag allowed for some lapses impermissible anywhere but a colony-protectorate, the same way the High Command simply failed to see them.

Today Valcrag was sitting in his office, his eyes narrowed, when another man entered. It was Detective-Lieutenant Arno Rutgars, of Investigation. Both men knew that Valcrag was the superior here, commander of all of the police in this city. Rutgars deferred properly and went on with a concise report.

"The resistance in the city. It's getting worse."

"Yeah."

"You think we should start launching real offensives against them now?"

"Why bother?" Valcrag shrugged. "They're nowhere near organized enough to be a threat to the TP battalions, let alone the Imperium itself."

A timer on Valcrag's desk rang and he pressed a small blue button marked "3" next to it, one in a series of blue buttons numbered from 1 through 7. Each summoned a specific Patrol squad from the TPHQ as another one returned. Another patrol hour, another small group of crimson-clad TP searching houses of known or suspected thought-criminals, patrolling the streets in semi-armoured cars for anyone still out after hours. Another few people who, before the night was old, would have vanished from the streets and all records, taken to detention camps whose true purpose was unknown to all but top TP and Imperium officials.

Another typical night, full of fear for those who lived through it, a monotonous terror called life... under Banduria.

Or was it?

(OOC: I'll be an aiding force in the revolt (if you don't mind), although my nation itself is also developing.)

It was a calm and peaceful evening in the office of Tomino's leader, Mark Gibson. He had just turned off the lights and began to head to his bed room on the third floor, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs came up from behind him.

"Sir, we have received a message from the Bandurian colony, Geronia. They are requesting aid from nations to help fight for their independence," the Minister explained.

"Hmm, interesting," Mark replied. "This doesn't seem like a fight we'd be able to win if we jumped in. Banduria has a strong economy and military that we're probably no match for."

The Minister nodded his head then asked, "That's exactly what I was thinking. I'll tell them right away that we're unable to-"

"No," Mark interupted. "Tell them that although we may not do much, we're still going to provide aid. I want you to notify General McKinley to prep some troops for shipment within fourty-eight hours."

The stolen truck drove through the streets at high speeds as the men inside carried out the mission that had been given to them. As member of the Geronian resistance faction, the mission had been to steal transportation and utilize it to spread anti-colonial literature and leaflets throughout the city.

The driver grimaced to himself under his mask. He didn't want to spend his evening doing what was basically organized littering; he'd wanted to be part of the committee meeting back at HQ, planning how the resistance factions would carry out their next move.

The papers were simply printed leaflets written out by the underground militia commanders. The goal of the papers were to open the eyes of the Geronian populace to the horrors of colonization and get them to band together against the Bandurians. The fiery rhetoric of the leaflets it was hoped would open the eyes of a populace that had suffered long and hard under the occupation.

To all Geronian citizens! Liberation is near!

For fifty years the Bandurian military has illegally occupied the sovereign state of Geronia. Our proud history and our heritage as been trampled in the mud, beneath the banners of a nation that has crushed whatever national identiry we once had. We have suffered in the shadow of these oppressors for fifty years and we continue to suffer today.

But liberation is near! Geronia will not struggle under the foreign yoke forever! The Underground is behind our fellow Geronians and with our combined might, we shall raise the flag of the old country once again and sweep out the Bandurian violators! Arise Geronia, aid your country in her hour of greatest need!

Xavier Chen
Commander of the Geronian Resistance Forces (GRF)

"Hey Kai, throw me another bundle of leaflets," laughed one of the men in the back of the boosted delivery truck. Taking a thick sheaf of papers in one hand, he briefly opened the back door, tossing them free so they scattered in the steet. They'd covered a lot of ground, miraculously they'd managed to avoid the police patrols tonight with the driver sticking to the back roads. Tossing them out the back door, he watched as they scattered along the roads.

"Be a hell of a mess to clean up tomorrow morning," laughed the man next to him. "Let's see how you Bandurian bastards like THAT!" he shouted out the open door of the truck.

As if in response, a set of roof lights flashed on behind the truck and the sound of a siren began wailing. With frightened looks on their faces, both men slammed the doors of the truck shut and the truck began to accelerate.

"You IDIOTS!" exclaimed the driver angrily. "What the hell did you just do!?"

"I didn't do anything!" shouted the first man in protest. "It was all-"

A loud voice blasted through the cabin, put forth by the police cruiser's microphone. "Unidentified vehicle, cease and desist. Pull over to the side of the road and submit to identification processing."

"The hell I will," snarled the driver as he stomped the accelerator, the truck racing forward with the cruiser behind it.

Behind the truck, the police cruiser swerved, trying to get a position on the vehicle so they could stop it. But the driver was talented; every time the cruiser came up on one side, the driver pulled further away from the police vehicle.

"Unidentified vehicle! This is your last warning! Cease and desist!" came the voice out of police cruiser. The truck driver snarled as he pushed the accelerator to its limits, smiling thinly as he heard the engine roar one last time and the truck surged forward. Behind them, the cruiser braked slowly and began to slow down. Cheers filled the enclosed space of the truck, filling the men with elation.

It also distracted them from the darkened vehicle across the road in front of them.

A rapid-fire stream of muzzle flashes blazed across the path of the truck, shattering the windshield as the automatic burst tore into the truck's cab. The driver was thrown back against his seat, his chest and face instantly shredded by the rain of submachine bullets, losing control of the truck as he died. Without direction, the truck violently swerved to the right and flipped over, rolling several times before coming to rest against the side of a building.

Brandishing submachine guns, three officers of the Thought Police moved to the broken vehicle, flinging open the shattered back doors. The driver was dead, but the other two were only shaken.

"What should we do with them?" asked a youthful looking officer, himself obviously a new addition to the force.

The officer in charge, a burly worn looking veteran only grimaced. "Resistance scum," he snarled before spitting onto the asphalt. "Eliminate them."

Three submachine guns blazed into the truck's interior, erasing the lives of the two men inside.

"Get on the radio and inform Captain-Major Valcrag that we have a situation down here," barked the older officer. "And tell him to send a cleanup team for the....fatalities."

Valcrag grimaced as the report from Squad Three came in. He quickly called for backups.

"Patrol Squad Five, Retrieval Squad Six, Cleanup Squad One, IT commos A6, report for duty to situation 003476, get sitrep."

He relaxed once more. The Bandurian TP machine was beginning to grind in its perfectly-oiled gears, serving to "defend" the colony. From the HQ -- an obviously hated building for the resistance squads, protected by many security devices -- patrols emerged, piling into cruisers and police helicopters that spiraled away towards the "situation". As the cruisers veered down the near-empty streets at top speeds, TP Ret047233 (known to his friends as Dave) ground his vehicle to a halt.

"What the hell?"

The streets were littered with sheafs of papers, thrown from some kind of vehicle. The well-built officer picked one up and scanned it into his microfilm scanner as he read it, the way he had been trained to from birth, like all Thought Police agents. He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder, speaking briefly into a mike.

"Calling for Cleanup support, leaflet removal practice at t-minus..." He went on to give the coordinates of the area based on his handheld GPS device.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the TP agents were arriving at the truck by now, Cleanup to deal with the bodies and wreckage, Retrieval to take any survivors to the detention camps as the CO belaboured the Patrol officers who had intercepted the illegal machinery.

"You know you're supposed to take the fuckers prisoner, not kill them! How do you think we keep all this equipment we're blasting the place up with? Where will we get cheap labour and Fanatic manpower for our wars? What do you think this is, Generia?"

The Lt.-Cpl. in charge of the patrol shrugged glumly. The CO smiled. He was rather fond of that particular officer in a way, although it was known in the TP that one should never get too fond of one's patrolmates. They might turn out to be thought-criminals as well, after all.

Meanwhile, the IT commos back at the HQ were getting to work. As soon as they received the scanned text, it was immediately searched for in all computer networks in the city and destroyed, preventing the printing of any further leaflets. The IT network in the city was massive, intercepting and covering everything. Cleanup did on the rest. Cleanup patrols would then proceed to destroy any leaflets they found on the streets and enter the houses of all citizens living along the streets. If any of them had read the leaflets, they would be sent off to the detention camps...

Valcrag smiled, calculating. The Imperial TP machine was being put to good use. And it would see more before the night was out.

"Sir, Thought Police have just purged the networks of our announcement and hit the main server we were storing it on. I don't know how effective the operation was," spoke up the tech in charge of monitoring the operation.

"It doesn't matter. The information is still available to us on the parallel network and if needed it's transferrable to the main networks," responded a youthful man clad in urban camoflage fatigues. At 28, Xavier Chen was the young leader of the Geronian Resistance Forces. Once a star student at the Bandurian-run Geronian Military Academy, he'd joined the GRF after his older brother had been abducted in the middle of the night by Bandurian authorities on false charges. The tactics and techniques he had learned at the Academy had served him well and he had been one of the guiding forces behind the GRF's transformation from a loosely-knit confederation of scattered resistance groups into a well-connected and effective fighting force.

The GRF had cells and units located in cities across Geronia and had an even larger force of sympathizers and operatives. The GRF used its non-uniformed members as intelligence agents and spies within the occupied territories. Posing as delivery boys, cooks, garbage collectors, taxi drivers, and even a few located within the Bandurian-controlled National Police. These operatives collected and relayed information back to the local commanders and units they were attached to. To prevent captured operatives from betraying the entire operation, GRF did not share intelligence information with its operatives in the field and obtained its information by 'tapping' into the mainstream systems instead of handing it off or maintaining "safehouses." Because Bandurian security forces such as the Thought Police utilized only Bandurians in its ranks, the upper echelons of government were harder to penetrate.

Under Xavier, the GRF had shied away from the bombings and terrorist activities it had initially practiced. The GRF's activities were mostly aimed at provoking a full-scale uprising amongst the populace. Hacking systems, distributing leaflets, and destroying propaganda relay stations were all primary activities of the GRF. Xavier was not one to forsake combat though and the GRF did embark on military actions against the Bandurians. The GRF was behind a number of attacks on Bandurian military and police stations, seizure and theft of Bandurian military equipment, and was responsible for its share of political assassinations, although Xavier was never willing to kill civillians to reach one target.

And now with this latest effort all he could do was sit back and watch how it all unfolded.

The Grand Palace of Geronia was one of the colony-protectorate's grandest and most imposing structures, commissioned specially for the Bandurian Governor to reside in. It also happened to be one of the best-defended, as it was obviously one of the top targets for Geronian terrorist attacks. Not as though there had been any recently; they continued to crop up in small patterns, but Bandurian High Command was sure that with more purges of resistance movements and propaganda distribution Geronia would become as peaceful a district as the Imperium itself within less than twenty years.

It was here that Archon Barantsa'i, the latest governor of the ill-fated colony, resided in resplendent and decadent splendour, but few would be fooled by that. Barantsa'i was a careful, designing, and calculating man, with a sharp intelligence imprinted indelibly on his Asiatic features. It was in the magnificent hall of the palace that he now sat discussing with Cpt.-Maj. Valcrag of the TP the latest developments. Despite his apparent Eastern origin, Barantsa'i spoke with a perfectly cultivated Oxford accent, perhaps developed during his long education overseas, like any wealthy archon made sure to invest in.

"Lord Governor, we're under the impression that the Geronian resistance may be a bit stronger and better-organized than we thought at first."

"Oh? That's a bit of a shame," Barantsa'i responded, sipping from a glass of champagne nearby, his eyes wandering over massive golden and marble statues adorning the room before returning to Valcrag. "How much stronger?"

"Well, they've been distributing leaflets, and we suspect that they're behind much of the organized anti-Bandurian crime in Caimen and elsewhere."

"It looks like we'll have to use some, er, drastic measures," the archon said. "Mianel, I'm putting you in command of the entire Caimen TP garrison, and I'm giving you a detachment of the Imperial Guard. They're authorized to ignore Savarticus's Code."

Valcrag smiled a bit chillingly. Savarticus's Code had been created long ago for the Imperial armed forces to follow, restraining excessive brutality, Fanatic use in domestic settings, and use of SIT (Special Interrogation Techniques) to extract information from captured prisoners of war.

"In addition, have intel teams penetrate the Geronian ranks and find out everything they can about the resistance movement. They shouldn't hesitate to use underhand techniques if they wish."

Barantsa'i sipped more from his champagne glass and looked back at Valcrag. "Now go. Exploit the natural desires of self-preservation -- people are more likely to give up their freedom if the alternative involves extreme pain, especially if inflicted upon their loved ones."

"Basic training." Valcrag grinned. "Thank you, Lord Governor."

"My pleasure."

That day curious Geronians watched from doorways and windows as detachments of Legionnaires began marching into Caimen, soldiers, their red and silver uniforms dazzling in the afternoon sun. That night the raids began anew. Children were tortured until their parents broke down and gave up. Houses of suspected revolutionaries were burned down, and attack dogs roamed the streets with their patrollers, trained to seek out the enemy.

The city would soon erupt into an inferno of destruction.

(ooc-I'll be the part of a Usea-Jason Merc group being paid by the resistance.They have alterior motives as well)
[ic]
"So the leaflets didn't work?"Said the merc Leader, Riketz Hycion,"I reallly thought we get farther with that."His team was waiting to move on major oppressor bases."You sure that you want to keep it clean.Ok,yet well still do what is needed."

Within minutes of the introduction of Legionnaires into the city center, GRF commanders were aware of the damage and chaos being created at their hands. Through dispatches and reports, the GRF's inner circle quickly became aware of the atrocities being carried out at the hands of Bandurian security forces. Although intelligence was hampered by the loss of a number of key operatives and the fact that nearly all of the CCTV cameras monitoring the city center had been shut down by the Bandurian-controlled local government in order to conceal the atrocities, the GRF's commanders began to know the full extent of the damage being done.

"This is terrible," muttered Chen, reading the latest dispatch that had come in via transmission. "They've started rounding up all suspected spies and collaborators and shipping them off to detention camps."

An older man wearing military fatigues and a faded red beret slammed his hand onto the conference table with a loud bang. "We've got to do something Chen! We can't just sit here and let them murder our people!"

"Sakamoto's right," replied another figure, this time a youthful man wearing civllian clothes. "Letting the Bandurians massacre innocents isn't something we can stand for!"

Chen looked up at his advisors. "I want to do something about this more than any of you," he responded, a hardened look appearing on his features. "But you have to realize that this is what the Bandurians want us to do. If we launch our attack prematurely, we will fail. And that's exactly what the governor is counting on!"

"I don't care!" shouted the young man in civllian garb, slamming both fists onto the table. "I've got to do something about this and with or without your help I will!"

"Are you insane?!" shot back Chen angrily. "I'm not going to risk the future of our independence on one course of action!"

Tears welled up in the younger man's eyes as he turned to leave. "Then may God forgive you for the lives you failed to save today. I'm going to do something sir. The people need deliverance," he replied, before storming out of the room.

Two of Chen's guards leapt up to stop him, but Chen shook his head. "Let him go."

He stared ahead into space. "History will prove one of us right."

"Were Ready if needed Mr.Chen"Riketz said.His Merc group was mostlly training the Resistance in urban fighting styles from the Xharn-Usean war."We were not paid to train you know..."