The Macabees
21-02-2006, 22:09
The sole Macabee diplomatic attaché in Zarb [City] watched as the triple team of Zarbian diplomats walked into his enameled office. He was unperturbed and failed to give the slightest hint of being nervous, quite proper to his character, and he ever so slowly opened his mouth to greet the entourage of personnel, "Please, take a seat. I would offer you some coffee or tea but I fear that there is not much time for petty conversations.'
One of the Zarbians waved it all off and retorted, "Just give us what you were told to give. Perhaps, one day, we will see each other at peace again. Hopefully, it will be one where your capital is not crushed under the heel of Zarbian military might."
The Macabee man gave a short laugh and responded, "Yes, well, only fate will tell in the end, no?" He reached for his briefcase and laid it on the oak table to his forefront and flipped the locks open. He snatched out six sheets of white paper and gave to each man in front of him two. He finished the conversation with, "I assure you that by the time you're done reading this document I will be long gone. Hopefully, Zarbia has a bit of etiquette left in its politics and will allow my staff to leave your country unharmed. If not, oh God, do I pray on the souls of your people."
He closed the briefcase, stood up, adjusted his tie, and left the room. Two guards standing outside promptly closed it, without locking the door, and the one diplomat stopped in his footsteps to hear, with quite a bit pleasure, "Dear God, they had declared war."[/i] With that, the attaché continued striding down the hallway and then to the elevator. This latter machine took him to the roof of the embassy, where a civilian helicopter was already spinning its rotors. The Zarbian air control had already been warned of several helicopter flights from the embassy to the international airport, where a Macabee jet passenger airliner would be waiting for the diplomat and ninety-nine other officials. The guards would stay in the embassy until the end, and they would surrender; hopefully, the Zarbians would give them safe passage to the Macabee frontlines - if not, they would end up in a prisoner camp ... or worse yet, executed.
But to them the horror of that would not even be one-tenth of the horror experienced by the three Zarbians in the man's office, and then the horror expressed by the Zarbian administration, and finally, the horror which would have to be endured by those poor Zarbian personnel guarding the frontiers. We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. - Johann von Goethe
Declaration of War to Zarbian Government
Exactly forty-eight hours ago an ultimatum was issued to the Zarbian government, where upon the Golden Throne presented the Zarbians with quite enticing, and should we mention fit for the crime, guidelines to devolve Zarbia back into the state of neutrality. These included the cession of Zarbian Sarcanza to the Empire, and the complete halt on Zarbian and Havenite supplies flowing into Imperial Sarcanza. Unfortunately, the Zarbian administration has flung our ultimate back into our faces, establishing it as 'blatant lies and propaganda'. We will not, for one minute, allow for such a barefaced insult! For years, even under the reign of my grandfather, I have witnessed a constant and devoted attempt to undermine Imperial power in Sarcanza. For once, the Empire is threatened by multiple foes and characteristically Zarbia takes the chance to capitalize on the situation. I, Fedor I, will not stand for such diatribe - not now, not ever. Not only have you refused the words of the King of kings, but you have spent your forty-eight hours latent in your luxurious palaces.
So, let this be the historic day in which the Empire finally unsheathes its sword against an enemy so vile, so evil, and so Machiavellian. I, Fedor I, speaking for my Empire, declare unconditional war on the Military Junta of Zarbia. May finally the sword of Arádia, ancient god of war, strike down upon those that seek harm over the holiest of all Empires. And should his goal seem elusive, may the forsaken find the path, for no goal can escape for too long. With the help of the immortals, no matter the sin I have cast over myself for claiming the vigilance of multiple deities in the face of the sold God, my grandfather and I have struck down foe after foe, unperturbed by resisting forces. It is now your turn, Zarbia, to feel the martial brawn of the Golden Throne.
Cower. Bend. Cry for your mercy. It shall not be given. You have pulled a string too many; walked too far across that intangible line. And finally, to offer you some sort of consolidation, in advance of your pending debâcle - although, rather inversely quoted - for those about to fight, I salute you. May God be on your side and not mine, for only his force will be able to put an end to my rampage.
Fedor I
http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/180px-Emperor_charles_v.png
Somewhere Northwest of La Gloria
Six long haired individuals stepped out from behind a heavy set of leaves, their rifles at ready. They had decided to take the hard path through Zarbia, instead of the main road, and they were paying for it. The lead man was carrying a long, thick machete, cutting at the brush around him, and at anything else that got near him, and he murmured insults all the way. Their dress did not suggest anything about them, except the fact that they might have been guerillas, but the rifles and equipment gave them away as Macabee special operations personnel. They had been sent, originally, as a team of ten, destined to pinpoint locations for effective bombardment of the Zarbian jungles to clear areas for fire bases which the Imperial army would use to slowly advance and occupy border regions of Zarbia, thus giving them somewhere to rally around if the Zarbian jungle was to rout them in any particular operation. Unfortunately, two had died from snake bites, one being fully crushed by a boa constrictor before a single rifle round penetrated through the snake's head. Another man had been bit by a mosquito and was dead seventy-two hours later, and the fourth soldier had died by a pot shot by some Zarbian soldier who had been unfortunate enough to be in the way of the team. Nonetheless, although slowly dying off, the team was accomplishing its mission. It only had one more location to pinpoint to finalize their deed of ten possible sights for bases.
The lead soldier stopped suddenly and put up his hand. Whipping his head around he said, "Here. Tierst, set up the computer and uplink to base. Rogien, Natan, Georg and Falar, secure a perimeter around us. I want you to kill Zarbian and animal alike." The others nodded and followed his instructions, lathargically setting out.
Tierst was already on his knees, unpacking the laptop computer. He would locate their position via global positioning satellites and then send this to their foward base. The man who could now be related to as the commander looked down at Tierst and said, "Hurry up, I don't want to be here another second."
Tierst nodded and chuckeled, "True enough. I can't believe the Emperor actually sees something profitable in this war."
The commander solemnly shook his head, "Many will die. Not to Zarbian bullets, but to the Zarbian jungle." How right he would be.
The six man team finished the job and by the next hour they were already headed south. They would hit a jungle road and from there hitch a ride to La Gloria where they would 'monitor the progress of the Zarbian army in the defense of Western Zarbia.' In other words, they would chill there until the Macabee army had entered the city. When that happened they had no doubt they would most likely be sent foward in the event of another offensive. But they all had the feeling that the taking of La Gloria would take longer than expected, especially if the proportions of deaths in the special operations team was equivalent to that which the main army would face. In other words, it would be a disaster.
All the while, the skies grew dark with formations of GLI-34 Albatross bombers, their black airframes providing no chance for escaping light. They flew high, with no fear of the Zarbian airforce, as around them dozens of Lu-45 Hawks provided a very protective escort. They all flew relatively slow and when they arrived at a position roughly fifty kilometers from the Zarbian frontier they began their dirty work. The coordinates of all ten possible base locations had already been fowarded to them; all they had to do was make sure that by the time their job was done those locations were merely empty places. To that effect they began to unleash a torrent of extended range dumb bombs, loaded with greek fire, which would target these locations and hopefully burn the entire hell hole down. Soon enough, the Zarbian jungles would be pot marked with ten circles. When the Albatrosses had completed their job they banked and headed back for home, closely followed by their compatriots in the smaller air superiority fighters. Below them one could already witness the harsh explosions and the creeping fire produced by the chemical warhead.
In the jungle, Georg, one of the soldiers, shuddered and said, "Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment." He had put the Dag Hammarskjold quote so eloquently.
Tierst turned around to meet his gaze and said, "You mean suicide?"
The rest of the group laughed. But it was more of a nervous laugh than anything else. They all knew that the reaper was to come. Zarbia and the Second Empire of the Golden Throne was at a crossroads, and only invasion was a possible road. Death was not far off...
Fedala Internachnal
FEDALA, Second Empire of the Golden Throne - There have been growing signs of mobilization by the Macabee administration since the epic decleration of war. Bombing runs on Zarbia have no doubt escalated, annotated by the heavier explosions heard all over the eastern parts of the Empire. Further evidence, including the mass movement of armour and personnel through major cities of the Empire seems to point to a blatant mass deployment, meaning invasion of Zarbia is not far off. However, nothing has been officially stated yet.
Two days later...
Battle for La Gloria
The morning sky was streaked with a myriad of brilliant white stars. Their glow offered an eerie contrast to the lighting of the moon, and the two colors seem to fit together, manifesting peace. Regardless, below the mere mortals where scoured the Earth for war began their final preperations for an all out offensive into Zarbia. Already, thousands of artillery guns had lined up in the form of grand batteries, ready to pummel the Zarbians back into line and open a gap which would at one point allow the Empire to seize La Gloria, the nearest Zarbian citadel. Two mechanized divisions and an armoured division were already squeezed into the front, ready to pounce on the Zarbian Antelope. Monte Claro had been warned, but the Zarbians paid no attention with their usual pretentious attitudes. To their own fault they would face a fury of cannon fire and the ferocious teeth of the Macabee army. To the battlecry of, "Temperkui," would they see their very cities crumble before their eyes, their people be slaughtered, and their civilization slashed and burned, to the beat of Macabee war drums. It would begin...
In the dead of the morning night, at around three, one thousand guns opened with a fury unbeknownst to the gods themselves. One thousand guns pounded invariably at the Zarbian positions, offering them lead and napalm explosive. One thousand shells per twenty seconds, for a full twenty minutes; meaning, no less than sixty thousand shells were to be expended that very morning on the Zarbian heathen. The ground shook, and the light Zarbian jungles of the west were torn down in an awsome display of Imperial firepower. The systematic boom, boom, boom, of the cannons provided a very monotonous tone of war, but the artillery offered no mercy, no consolidation - they were murderers, and Zarbia was their victim. For twenty mintes the hell lasted, the shells shrieking through the dark skies, tainting the stars with streaks of red and blue, with the occasional orange, and then crashing into Zarbia, dazzling the human eye with a conglomeration of white and violet. When it was finally over an ear piercing silence befell both the Zarbian jungles and the flatlands of the Empire. It was as if the war had suddenly stopped.
But that conjecture was most certainly a fallacy. Minutes later the next sounds filtered through, and witnessed the movement of massed men. The two mechanized divisions had already begun to move out, some of them in large trucks, and those that led in the SOV-6 infantry fighting vehicles. They had begun to cruise through the multitude of roads that weaved through the Empire, but traffic began soon after as trucks and other vehicles merged into the single roads that penetrated into Zarbia. Nonetheless, the sperhead got underway almost perfectly, although a bit seperated from reinforcements. Regardless, they pursued into Zarbia and stopped at least eleven kilometers from the Zarbian position, calling home one of the first 'firebases' produced by the bombers, which although had no construction, it would serve as a temporary rondevouz area for one of the divisions. To their flank, the armoured division made better headway, not caught up with trucks and such, and having their logistics behind them. They would continue until they were around fifteen kilometers from the Zarbian flank. From there, all hell would break lose.
The commander of all three divisions, Colonel General Albrecht Dier, looked at a series of maps, along with fellow generals and other commanders, and he thought for a second, his face contorted with the view of a man thinking. Suddenly he said, "This is what we'll do. The 16th will made a sweep on the Zarbian flank; their right. The two mechanized divisions will form a spearpoint against the lines, crashing head on, attempting to break through. In the end, it will be a combination of pure pressure, and outright destruction, which will force the Zarbian line to crumble."
The generals nodded and then one asked, "And if the Zarbians move reserves to place a block for our armour?" This one got the general thinking again.
But he responded nonetheless, "The armour will simply have to be rerouted, and it will have to move fast enough to make this impossible for the Zarbians. Understood?"
The same general conjectured, "I would think that our armour is too heavy. These are jungles, after all. I would have doubts to any speed."
This obviously peturbed Dier and he retorted, "Nonsense. Leave your gibberish for those who care general." Nobody said a word.
And so the advance continued in the morning. By six that morning the three divisions had successfully rondevouzed, after unfortunate traffic build-up and such. And so, soon thereafter the full on invasion began; Operation Diadem. That same day, the mechanized divisions struck into the Zarbian lines, using their full furty to attempt to break them, prodded along by the constant bombardment of Zarbian positions by Macabee artillery to the rear. The onslaught would continue for quite some time. The SOV-6s stopped about three thousand meters from the Zarbian positions, in the jungle, and let loose their hordes of infantry. Together, the two began to quickly advance, the SOV-6s providing light armoured support with their multiple machineguns, and the infantry giving rifle support. Slowly, but surely, they would make sure the Zarbian lines reeled. All the while, the flank had movements as well. The armour made a wide manuever away from the Zarbians, and then came crashing back down to the rear, striking straight on the side of the Zarbian line, and behind it, not only cutting off portions from logistical supplies, but piercing them were they had not expected to be hit. The fires of war raged.
Nobody seemed to hear the lowest rumble in the sky; all were too preoccupied with the fighting before them. But it was certainly visible from at least four kilometers away. For sixty meters, the artillery tube, underlined by a thin titanium ramp, reached for the sky. It was a monster. It was the 'Anat, named after the Levantine godess of war. Sixty meters worth of artillery, with a 1200mm diameter bore; it was the mother of all artillery, propelled by a single fission reactor in a hull over seventy-five meters long, and itself at least seventeen meters high, with the artillery completing a total altitude of seventy-seven meters. It was the godess of artillery. It had the tendency to snap under intense pressures, so its bombardment would be saved for later - but its presence would make the Zarbians shake.
"Temperkuí!"
One of the Zarbians waved it all off and retorted, "Just give us what you were told to give. Perhaps, one day, we will see each other at peace again. Hopefully, it will be one where your capital is not crushed under the heel of Zarbian military might."
The Macabee man gave a short laugh and responded, "Yes, well, only fate will tell in the end, no?" He reached for his briefcase and laid it on the oak table to his forefront and flipped the locks open. He snatched out six sheets of white paper and gave to each man in front of him two. He finished the conversation with, "I assure you that by the time you're done reading this document I will be long gone. Hopefully, Zarbia has a bit of etiquette left in its politics and will allow my staff to leave your country unharmed. If not, oh God, do I pray on the souls of your people."
He closed the briefcase, stood up, adjusted his tie, and left the room. Two guards standing outside promptly closed it, without locking the door, and the one diplomat stopped in his footsteps to hear, with quite a bit pleasure, "Dear God, they had declared war."[/i] With that, the attaché continued striding down the hallway and then to the elevator. This latter machine took him to the roof of the embassy, where a civilian helicopter was already spinning its rotors. The Zarbian air control had already been warned of several helicopter flights from the embassy to the international airport, where a Macabee jet passenger airliner would be waiting for the diplomat and ninety-nine other officials. The guards would stay in the embassy until the end, and they would surrender; hopefully, the Zarbians would give them safe passage to the Macabee frontlines - if not, they would end up in a prisoner camp ... or worse yet, executed.
But to them the horror of that would not even be one-tenth of the horror experienced by the three Zarbians in the man's office, and then the horror expressed by the Zarbian administration, and finally, the horror which would have to be endured by those poor Zarbian personnel guarding the frontiers. We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. - Johann von Goethe
Declaration of War to Zarbian Government
Exactly forty-eight hours ago an ultimatum was issued to the Zarbian government, where upon the Golden Throne presented the Zarbians with quite enticing, and should we mention fit for the crime, guidelines to devolve Zarbia back into the state of neutrality. These included the cession of Zarbian Sarcanza to the Empire, and the complete halt on Zarbian and Havenite supplies flowing into Imperial Sarcanza. Unfortunately, the Zarbian administration has flung our ultimate back into our faces, establishing it as 'blatant lies and propaganda'. We will not, for one minute, allow for such a barefaced insult! For years, even under the reign of my grandfather, I have witnessed a constant and devoted attempt to undermine Imperial power in Sarcanza. For once, the Empire is threatened by multiple foes and characteristically Zarbia takes the chance to capitalize on the situation. I, Fedor I, will not stand for such diatribe - not now, not ever. Not only have you refused the words of the King of kings, but you have spent your forty-eight hours latent in your luxurious palaces.
So, let this be the historic day in which the Empire finally unsheathes its sword against an enemy so vile, so evil, and so Machiavellian. I, Fedor I, speaking for my Empire, declare unconditional war on the Military Junta of Zarbia. May finally the sword of Arádia, ancient god of war, strike down upon those that seek harm over the holiest of all Empires. And should his goal seem elusive, may the forsaken find the path, for no goal can escape for too long. With the help of the immortals, no matter the sin I have cast over myself for claiming the vigilance of multiple deities in the face of the sold God, my grandfather and I have struck down foe after foe, unperturbed by resisting forces. It is now your turn, Zarbia, to feel the martial brawn of the Golden Throne.
Cower. Bend. Cry for your mercy. It shall not be given. You have pulled a string too many; walked too far across that intangible line. And finally, to offer you some sort of consolidation, in advance of your pending debâcle - although, rather inversely quoted - for those about to fight, I salute you. May God be on your side and not mine, for only his force will be able to put an end to my rampage.
Fedor I
http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/180px-Emperor_charles_v.png
Somewhere Northwest of La Gloria
Six long haired individuals stepped out from behind a heavy set of leaves, their rifles at ready. They had decided to take the hard path through Zarbia, instead of the main road, and they were paying for it. The lead man was carrying a long, thick machete, cutting at the brush around him, and at anything else that got near him, and he murmured insults all the way. Their dress did not suggest anything about them, except the fact that they might have been guerillas, but the rifles and equipment gave them away as Macabee special operations personnel. They had been sent, originally, as a team of ten, destined to pinpoint locations for effective bombardment of the Zarbian jungles to clear areas for fire bases which the Imperial army would use to slowly advance and occupy border regions of Zarbia, thus giving them somewhere to rally around if the Zarbian jungle was to rout them in any particular operation. Unfortunately, two had died from snake bites, one being fully crushed by a boa constrictor before a single rifle round penetrated through the snake's head. Another man had been bit by a mosquito and was dead seventy-two hours later, and the fourth soldier had died by a pot shot by some Zarbian soldier who had been unfortunate enough to be in the way of the team. Nonetheless, although slowly dying off, the team was accomplishing its mission. It only had one more location to pinpoint to finalize their deed of ten possible sights for bases.
The lead soldier stopped suddenly and put up his hand. Whipping his head around he said, "Here. Tierst, set up the computer and uplink to base. Rogien, Natan, Georg and Falar, secure a perimeter around us. I want you to kill Zarbian and animal alike." The others nodded and followed his instructions, lathargically setting out.
Tierst was already on his knees, unpacking the laptop computer. He would locate their position via global positioning satellites and then send this to their foward base. The man who could now be related to as the commander looked down at Tierst and said, "Hurry up, I don't want to be here another second."
Tierst nodded and chuckeled, "True enough. I can't believe the Emperor actually sees something profitable in this war."
The commander solemnly shook his head, "Many will die. Not to Zarbian bullets, but to the Zarbian jungle." How right he would be.
The six man team finished the job and by the next hour they were already headed south. They would hit a jungle road and from there hitch a ride to La Gloria where they would 'monitor the progress of the Zarbian army in the defense of Western Zarbia.' In other words, they would chill there until the Macabee army had entered the city. When that happened they had no doubt they would most likely be sent foward in the event of another offensive. But they all had the feeling that the taking of La Gloria would take longer than expected, especially if the proportions of deaths in the special operations team was equivalent to that which the main army would face. In other words, it would be a disaster.
All the while, the skies grew dark with formations of GLI-34 Albatross bombers, their black airframes providing no chance for escaping light. They flew high, with no fear of the Zarbian airforce, as around them dozens of Lu-45 Hawks provided a very protective escort. They all flew relatively slow and when they arrived at a position roughly fifty kilometers from the Zarbian frontier they began their dirty work. The coordinates of all ten possible base locations had already been fowarded to them; all they had to do was make sure that by the time their job was done those locations were merely empty places. To that effect they began to unleash a torrent of extended range dumb bombs, loaded with greek fire, which would target these locations and hopefully burn the entire hell hole down. Soon enough, the Zarbian jungles would be pot marked with ten circles. When the Albatrosses had completed their job they banked and headed back for home, closely followed by their compatriots in the smaller air superiority fighters. Below them one could already witness the harsh explosions and the creeping fire produced by the chemical warhead.
In the jungle, Georg, one of the soldiers, shuddered and said, "Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment." He had put the Dag Hammarskjold quote so eloquently.
Tierst turned around to meet his gaze and said, "You mean suicide?"
The rest of the group laughed. But it was more of a nervous laugh than anything else. They all knew that the reaper was to come. Zarbia and the Second Empire of the Golden Throne was at a crossroads, and only invasion was a possible road. Death was not far off...
Fedala Internachnal
FEDALA, Second Empire of the Golden Throne - There have been growing signs of mobilization by the Macabee administration since the epic decleration of war. Bombing runs on Zarbia have no doubt escalated, annotated by the heavier explosions heard all over the eastern parts of the Empire. Further evidence, including the mass movement of armour and personnel through major cities of the Empire seems to point to a blatant mass deployment, meaning invasion of Zarbia is not far off. However, nothing has been officially stated yet.
Two days later...
Battle for La Gloria
The morning sky was streaked with a myriad of brilliant white stars. Their glow offered an eerie contrast to the lighting of the moon, and the two colors seem to fit together, manifesting peace. Regardless, below the mere mortals where scoured the Earth for war began their final preperations for an all out offensive into Zarbia. Already, thousands of artillery guns had lined up in the form of grand batteries, ready to pummel the Zarbians back into line and open a gap which would at one point allow the Empire to seize La Gloria, the nearest Zarbian citadel. Two mechanized divisions and an armoured division were already squeezed into the front, ready to pounce on the Zarbian Antelope. Monte Claro had been warned, but the Zarbians paid no attention with their usual pretentious attitudes. To their own fault they would face a fury of cannon fire and the ferocious teeth of the Macabee army. To the battlecry of, "Temperkui," would they see their very cities crumble before their eyes, their people be slaughtered, and their civilization slashed and burned, to the beat of Macabee war drums. It would begin...
In the dead of the morning night, at around three, one thousand guns opened with a fury unbeknownst to the gods themselves. One thousand guns pounded invariably at the Zarbian positions, offering them lead and napalm explosive. One thousand shells per twenty seconds, for a full twenty minutes; meaning, no less than sixty thousand shells were to be expended that very morning on the Zarbian heathen. The ground shook, and the light Zarbian jungles of the west were torn down in an awsome display of Imperial firepower. The systematic boom, boom, boom, of the cannons provided a very monotonous tone of war, but the artillery offered no mercy, no consolidation - they were murderers, and Zarbia was their victim. For twenty mintes the hell lasted, the shells shrieking through the dark skies, tainting the stars with streaks of red and blue, with the occasional orange, and then crashing into Zarbia, dazzling the human eye with a conglomeration of white and violet. When it was finally over an ear piercing silence befell both the Zarbian jungles and the flatlands of the Empire. It was as if the war had suddenly stopped.
But that conjecture was most certainly a fallacy. Minutes later the next sounds filtered through, and witnessed the movement of massed men. The two mechanized divisions had already begun to move out, some of them in large trucks, and those that led in the SOV-6 infantry fighting vehicles. They had begun to cruise through the multitude of roads that weaved through the Empire, but traffic began soon after as trucks and other vehicles merged into the single roads that penetrated into Zarbia. Nonetheless, the sperhead got underway almost perfectly, although a bit seperated from reinforcements. Regardless, they pursued into Zarbia and stopped at least eleven kilometers from the Zarbian position, calling home one of the first 'firebases' produced by the bombers, which although had no construction, it would serve as a temporary rondevouz area for one of the divisions. To their flank, the armoured division made better headway, not caught up with trucks and such, and having their logistics behind them. They would continue until they were around fifteen kilometers from the Zarbian flank. From there, all hell would break lose.
The commander of all three divisions, Colonel General Albrecht Dier, looked at a series of maps, along with fellow generals and other commanders, and he thought for a second, his face contorted with the view of a man thinking. Suddenly he said, "This is what we'll do. The 16th will made a sweep on the Zarbian flank; their right. The two mechanized divisions will form a spearpoint against the lines, crashing head on, attempting to break through. In the end, it will be a combination of pure pressure, and outright destruction, which will force the Zarbian line to crumble."
The generals nodded and then one asked, "And if the Zarbians move reserves to place a block for our armour?" This one got the general thinking again.
But he responded nonetheless, "The armour will simply have to be rerouted, and it will have to move fast enough to make this impossible for the Zarbians. Understood?"
The same general conjectured, "I would think that our armour is too heavy. These are jungles, after all. I would have doubts to any speed."
This obviously peturbed Dier and he retorted, "Nonsense. Leave your gibberish for those who care general." Nobody said a word.
And so the advance continued in the morning. By six that morning the three divisions had successfully rondevouzed, after unfortunate traffic build-up and such. And so, soon thereafter the full on invasion began; Operation Diadem. That same day, the mechanized divisions struck into the Zarbian lines, using their full furty to attempt to break them, prodded along by the constant bombardment of Zarbian positions by Macabee artillery to the rear. The onslaught would continue for quite some time. The SOV-6s stopped about three thousand meters from the Zarbian positions, in the jungle, and let loose their hordes of infantry. Together, the two began to quickly advance, the SOV-6s providing light armoured support with their multiple machineguns, and the infantry giving rifle support. Slowly, but surely, they would make sure the Zarbian lines reeled. All the while, the flank had movements as well. The armour made a wide manuever away from the Zarbians, and then came crashing back down to the rear, striking straight on the side of the Zarbian line, and behind it, not only cutting off portions from logistical supplies, but piercing them were they had not expected to be hit. The fires of war raged.
Nobody seemed to hear the lowest rumble in the sky; all were too preoccupied with the fighting before them. But it was certainly visible from at least four kilometers away. For sixty meters, the artillery tube, underlined by a thin titanium ramp, reached for the sky. It was a monster. It was the 'Anat, named after the Levantine godess of war. Sixty meters worth of artillery, with a 1200mm diameter bore; it was the mother of all artillery, propelled by a single fission reactor in a hull over seventy-five meters long, and itself at least seventeen meters high, with the artillery completing a total altitude of seventy-seven meters. It was the godess of artillery. It had the tendency to snap under intense pressures, so its bombardment would be saved for later - but its presence would make the Zarbians shake.
"Temperkuí!"