NationStates Jolt Archive

Victory for Hotanites, but where next for Korea?

Fought behind the closed borders of Dra-pol, comrade Hotan's battle to retake Korea for the Chuche Idea has, despite the multi-ethnic composition of his rag-tag forces, remained an international obscurity next to the global struggle revolving around Holy League imperialism.

Once again, a small Indian force in Korea will be reported as having displayed greater proficiency in heavy combat than did more highly rated foreign counterparts. In the past, Dra-pol's suffocatingly thick low-altitude air defence grid wrought intimidatig destruction upon enemy forces, bringing down countless millions of dollars worth of Quinntonian aircraft and crew, but basic common-sense, such as the avoidance of routine in flying practice by time and course, enabled Podgordin's aircraft to outlast a large part of the Neo-Suloist resistance to Hotan's international brigades as they fought through the peninsula.

Russian mercenaries, two thousand strong at the outset, were killed almost to a man, only seventeen surviving uninjured and two dozen more in a bad way. Hotan declared that they had fought bravely, and that their casualties were due to a refusal to break against terrible odds, but, in fact, being mercenaries, most had been over-run by the Neo-Suloists as they tried to retreat on to landing craft that were ordered to abandon them, while others, fleeing across country, were secretly hunted-down by the Hotanite Banat. The survivors were those believed to have been active in a role and a location from where, Hotan was confident, they could not know the full details of their deliberate sacrifice as a diversionary force.

Massive aid rendered by the Kuro Student Defence League, which sacrificed a number of young lives that would go ever unconfirmed -certainly thousands, many arrested and executed by bayonet- frustrated forces loyal to Cheung Bai-Sul as they attempted counter-offensives. The Working Womens' Home Brigade was the second major military institution to exhibit significant practical support for Hotan, who during his administration had promoted many women through the Party's elite cadre and championed gender equality with revolutionary zeal. The Suloists found that their vaunted flak shield was rusted with more holes each day as female recruits frequently neglected to fire on foreign aircraft such as Podgordin's, and, later, on PAAF machines that took to the sky to avenge Suloko's massacre of Pyongyang's air force base.

The Drapoel were globally famous, or infamous, for their national defiance and single-minded commitment to unity, so it seemed strange that this invasion was such a success where others of greater scale and expense staggered to bloody failure. But the fight had lasted for months while the world moved on to its own war, and the death toll was dizzyingly high. It appeared that the key factor was an ability in the populace to turn against their government only to embrace Hotan once again.

Underground killing factories

Motivation for many in the brigades who would not be counted amongst those driven by revolutionary idealism came certainly from the weight of suspicion over just how far the Neo-Suloist junta would go to achieve its aims.

Fears were well founded, as we now know. One can only theorise over the real cost of Korea's division by foreign powers and the internal conflicts that have intensified since the late twentieth century, and the depth of atrocity committed in this latest phase of the nation's induced identity crisis will likely never be known: after Indians and other international forces had discovered several mass graves and traversed roads lined by corpses only to find more death, Hotanite forces took complete charge of, "investigations".

It is now known that Neo-Suloist agents herded civilians into many of the nation's huge subterranean developments -including storehouses, factories, air-raid shelters, and subways- often claiming to be conducting drills or escaping air raids related to the invasion, or even falsified Quinntonian missile strikes, before collapsing access tunnels or otherwise sealing exits, leaving people to be crushed, to suffocate, or simply to starve or die of thirst. In some cases, a few pounds of industrial explosive or even a chain and padlock were the only immediate price for the extermination of several thousand citizens suspected of Hotanite, Kurosite, Christian, democratic, or capitalist sympathies, or simply found living in the same proximity as such suspects and sacrificed for the deception that got them all to go willingly into the underground killing factories.

Genocide

The occupied portion of the former Republic of Korea has seen far the worst of the killings under Suloko, whose own fate is as yet no more common knowledge than the true scale of the slaughter.

A concerted effort was made by Suloko to wipe-out what he saw as the divisions and the weakness caused by the absorbtion of several million South Koreans made soft after two generations apart from the north. Locking them away to wither and die in factories and subways also fitted the Suloist commitment to ruralisation, which saw Hotan's establishment of these facilities as western and contrary to the original revolutionary ideology of the First Director and his anti-Japanese partisans.

While, in the north, thousands were slain for their individual crimes against the junta's reading of Sulo, sometimes crucified as a deterrant, more often being shot or put to the blade or spike and dumped on the disused paving of Hotan's roads, the pattern of killing south of the 38th parallel has been quite different. At first, it appears, people were shot or cut down in their former places of work. Later, artillery was directed against towns and cities, and military exercises targetted South Korean populations and, eventually, people were killed -or wounded and left to die- in the Neo-Suloists' experimentations with chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, though it appears that these products of modern technology were soon lost to the Director's interest. After -to save bullets- blades and bayonets had killed thousands and even mass gassing became too great a chore and, given the unproductive and frail nature of the average southerner, working people to death was dismissed as a waste of time, the junta finally moved to commit its greatest single killing...

The Hotan-era blast doors within the capitalist-built Seoul Metropolitan Subway were ordered shut, and the system that once carried eight million people a day was used to contain over three hundred thousand people, all racing to escape a second -but quite fictitious- nuclear attack on Korea. Beyond the expected fear experienced by a people racing underground in the middle of the night to escape foreign bombs, one can only imagine that no particular alarm was caused by the closing of multi-tonne blast doors. Discovering that emergency water was cut-off probably didn't even cause a major panic, as nobody expected to be underground forever, and supposed that, even if they couldn't go back to the surface in Seoul, they were at least on a subway system and could go elsewhere once the internal doors were opened. These people had spent many months learning to rely upon and trust the wisdom of their all-conquering government, and must have imagined that interrupted water supplies would soon be restored. Many probably even cursed the Quinntonians for bursting a pipe somewhere in the city, and preemptively applauded the authorities for fixing it.

But when the lighting and ventilation failed, the metro became as the black, stifling pit of hell from which no condemned person would escape.

Sul Joson is dead, but the question of Dra-pol's survival remains.

The Choson People's Republic was restored across most of Korea. While Sul Joson stood in its place, Dra-pol had missed much in the world. The Indian National Union, one of many nations to have met the People's Army in battle and one of few to have done so in a genuine effort to prevent the sort of disaster that since had fallen upon Korea, was victor in another war closer to home and was enjoying its own reunification with much less pain. Asia had come to the brink of total war and shuffled back away from it. Africa had come under imperialist assault while its own powers flexed their long-starved muscles. The Indian Soviets had brought-down the Second Commonwealth, which in its day abandoned the CPRD, withdrawing the aid of the First. So much that the people would never know about under the CPRD, nor under Sul Joson, and so much that Hotan at least was easily able to commit to his disciplined memory.

If Hotan's restored Directorature had the resources to waste on a comprehensive census, it would have found figures to shock the world. Six million people lived in the Quinntonian enclave, more than two million had been killed fighting the United States in the Six Day and Conntinuation wars, similar casualties had been endured in the Reunification Struggle and the associated nuclear strikes, and thousands had fled Korea over recent years. Twenty-seven or so million people huddled in the much reduced Republic of Korea, and so it would have been perhaps initially confusing and eventually numbing to know that the restored Choson People's Republic contained less than thirty million people.

Twenty-seven million in the south, six million in the Quinntonian enclave, twenty-nine and a half million in the north and yet, accounting for the depletion caused by three wars, the peninsula ought to have housed sixty-seven million Koreans... not fewer than sixty-three million.

With Hotan's international brigades, the Banat, and loyal reserve organisations fighting the dogmatic core of the Red Bamboo and indoctrinated southern youth, thousands, not millions, had fallen in restoring the CPRD. Thousands more were known -thanks to detailed Suloist records- to have been accounted for by judicial executions in the north under Cheung Bai-Sul.

As no census was likely to be carried out for years, though, nobody would know for sure that the less well recorded campaign of extermination in the occupied south had buried four million.

Director Hotan appeared at the Central Directorature to declare that great change was necessary. The condition of north/south disunity could not be solved by force.

Sul-pol, now the vast southern province of the CPRD, containing what remained of Seoul, Andong, Suwon, Ch'unch'on, Inch'on, Kangung, Hotanang (Wonju), and Kurosian (Munsan), and other cities, would be recognised as a land in transition, and treated as such. Some thirteen to fourteen million people survived in Sul-pol.

Some of the Choson People's Republic's laws would not be enforced here. Some of the obligations of Drapoel citizenship would be differntly applied. The land mid way, between north and south, would be treated as a middle road. Practically, this meant changes such as that, though foreign transmissions would continue to be jammed by Da'Khiem, a domestic movie industry was to be established producing something other than documentaries and broadcasts of the Mass Games, which, between them, dominated all northern cinematography. Southerners would serve most of their own security. Individuals would be encouraged to establish small businesses during the reconstruction of the shattered land, so long as they did not employ subordinates, though family businesses would be allowed. Foreign nationalised concerns would be able to approach Da'Khiem and Seoul over involvement in the southern economy, while private firms still would not. Private transport would remain banned, but restrictions on internal movement between districts of Sul-pol would be relaxed in comparison to those regulating movement over the 38th Parallel and within the northern provinces.

The Director went on for some time.

Perhaps the first congratulations to reach Hotan issue from the People's Tower in Sithin... hardly a surprise considering much of his invasion force had been camped in northern Spyr. It is proudly announced amidst parades and celebrations that 'progress has returned to the Choson' and Director Hotan has 'proven himself a revolutionary hero and champion against feudal genocide'. The fact that these statements are true no doubt pleases the announcers who would likely have made the same statements regardless... Hotan was after all the Strainists' man, in as much as any Drapoel could be considered champion of a foreign land, their hopes and memories of their own revolutionary experience having become tied closely to their impressions of his quest to oust the Neo-Suloists.

Almost as soon as accolades were issued, offers of aid and economic partnership began, with rail cars prepared upon the line that joined the two peninsulas. More cynical observers might wonder if these efforts were not launched so speedily in the hopes of securing emerging opportunities before the Hindustanis, or to cement comradeship that would see Spyr, not the Bedgellens, play the role of benefactor to the Choson.
More specific motives were also at play... the space programme of the USSR, now helmed by Igovians, was racing with Franco-Roycelandian plans to plant this-or-that flag on the Moon, and while Sithin had no such grand schemes they had grown accustomed to mounting a substantial satellite launch schedule without need for costly rockets, and were eager to know if the Neo-Suloists had 'spiked the big guns' as it were, and when firings might be expected to resume.

Due to incredible coincidence and perhaps a little irony of fate, not one, but two Nigerian dictators contacted the Director as soon as word had come out of his renewed control of Dra-Pol. The first to contact Hotan was the current Impiri of Nigeria, Ghosni Mubarrak. He extended a warm congratulation, as he for one knew the struggles and hardships one had to endure to seize back a nation from a homicidal dictator. Mubarrak also cursed quite loudly when hearing of the horrific genocide of four million people, and remarked that Suloku had outdone Ghadafi by about two million.

Soon things came to the subject of business, however. Nigeria was of course always looking for more markets for its fossil fuels, and "light and sweet Nigerian crude" (a specific kind of crude oil mainly found in Nigeria which requires very little refining) could fuel up Dra-Pol within weeks. While Nigerian oil concerns weren't exactly nationalized, they were all mandated by the Nigerian government to have at least 51% Nigerian ownership, and were forced to offer stock as payment to each Nigerian employee, which in effect gave significant worker control to employees. It was hoped this was enough to convince the often stubborn Dra-Pol to open up their markets a bit to that sweet black nectar...

The second dictator of Nigeria to contact Dra-Pol was the undefatigable Ghadafi. Rejected by the Sul-Joson, he hoped to find more welcome from the Kurosites, especially since he in many ways shared their ideology. (Plus he still owned, in banks throughout the world, assets worth several billion dollars) Of course, the fact that he had committed horrific genocide made it difficult for him to find a home, and even Dra-Pol might not be willing to take on the boxer-turned-dictator.

To many it appeared that the upheaval was over. Hotan, the Wisest Director, was back in Da'Khiem, foreign volunteers were being debriefed and sent home and monuments erected to those who died -notably just about all of the Russians- and new public works were even being announced (though little was yet happening towards their completion).

However, the outside couldn't see the true level of devestation. Satellites would have shown something of the Suloist forced ruralisation and may have detected areas of disturbed earth that anywhere else would have looked like mass graves, but in Dra-pol might be just as likely to betray buried factories or tunnels. Indian, African, and Yugoslavian volunteers would now be able to confirm the discovery of mass graves, but their reports would be insufficient to build a conclusive picture on the scale of the Neo-Suloist disaster, and satellites wouldn't clearly show that hundreds of thousands of people in subways and air-raid shelters were now buried there.

As people returned to the towns and cities, many continued to die. The Hotanite-Kurosites wanted to resume their progress and reverse damage done by the Neo-Suloists, but they weren't prepared to tollerate it even for a season, and the constant shifting of people spelled disaster for the troubled and over-stretched resources of the Drapoel countryside. Even rationing what little food was available became difficult with millions of people on the move. Hardly less difficult for the people was UPA retention of well over ninety percent of the nation's remaining vehicle fuels, leaving little for public transport and forcing hungry, wounded, sick, young, and old to walk back the way they'd come, jostled this time by bayonets thrusting on industrialist rather than ruralist orders. Apart from anything else, it was important that the Unified People's Army feel that it was still in control after such unfamiliar upset. The soldiers could walk back down the same roads along which they'd set-out so long as they had people to herd back and did not themselves trudge back like whipped lambs following an indecisive and weak shepherd of the Central Directorature. In its weakened state, the CPRD needed an army that would be prepared to follow its Director into battle should the nation's enemies decide to pounce.

From the horse's mouth

Hotan addressed his weary people as they began to return to the cities, some of which were damaged by fighting while most remained just as they'd been left. He spoke on the glories of the Choson People's Republic: its repulsion of Imperial Japanese forces, its long struggle to socialism, weathering of the Quinntonian storms, the space programme, the visible beginning of reunification, and more achievements.

That was how the Drapoel had always seen their nation: people always struggled, everywhere, but in Dra-pol they scrambled forwards, as one, leading the world, taking-on all comers, and astounding less vigarous foreigners with their military, social, and scientific successes. Now, they were just tired and hungry. Had they been a religious people, they would almost to a one have been asking that question- what sort of god...

The Director had something to confess before his people. In spite of all these past achievements, he said, in this world, my comrades, Dra-pol is now a poor country.

The Central Directorature had never before made such an admission. Even when famine struck once before, the people believed that Dra-pol was getting-off lightly compared with other nations. Now, though, Hotan beheld the enormity of the task before him and saw a war-weary people with no clear victory to console them, an army exhausted and with mountains of neglected equipment going to ruin and rust, a nation with no cash beyond the hundred and ten million US dollars received in aid before his invasion, a shattered transport and communications infrastructure, even an inactive industrial base and power-grid, and an agricultural sector that in less than two years had lost the progress of a lifetime.

Even the unflappable Hotan, who survived three bullet wounds in an assassination attempt; lead a victorious army in the field against 1st-world opposition; sailed through nuclear war, famine, and the murder of his mentor, was unsure where to begin, or how. The people must learn to understand and accept that their socialist utopia was no longer shrugging-off the wounds inflicted upon it but limping with them, left-behind by the world.

On the army

The Director spoke on many issues after his painful admission. One, of course, was the Unified People's Army, which stood in as much disarray as the rest of the state. Hotan told his people that their nation had, "suffered population decline under the regressive medieval administration of the Neo-Suloists" and that defence priorities had changed with world conditions. It was in this light, rather than the shadow of disaster, that the Unified People's Army was to decrease in size.

The official figures claimed 1.4million standing forces under the UPA umbrella, with some Banat and Red Bamboo strength not included. Many formations under the Kurosites were in fact under-strength, especially since the painful reunification struggle, and most estimates suggested a total closer to 1.2million. Nobody knew how many men and women were in regular uniform after the counter-coup, but, continuing to use the official 1.4million figure as a base, Hotan announced a decrease to some 920,000 UPA personnel.

Most of these, some 750,000 troops, would be assigned to the ground forces. Some 122,000 would remain in the Unified People's Army Air Force, though it wasn't exactly clear what most of these would... do, and the remaining 48,000 personnel would constitute the Unified People's Army Navy.

This left some uncertainty over manpower in the Air Defence Command, which may perhaps draw a few thousand UPAAF and Army personnel, and over the Banat Combat Corps and the troublesome Red Bamboo, but Hotan did nothing to clear this up.

Still, one would be hard pressed to remember the last time that a Drapoel director even suggested any form of down-sizing in the CPRD's infamous defence forces.

Hotan also said that war-tunnels in the south would not be reopened. A little vague to an outsider, this meant that the tunnels secretly collapsed on potential anti-Suloist southerners would not be dug-out and put back into operation or extended against the remaining ROK.

Finally, "Many of the nuclear materials hidden from the traitors, disabled, buried, or neglected by the illegal junta will be sold for civilian and scientific use by responsible partner nations."

Actually, the CPRD would attempt to convince the outside world to buy the right to disable much of its nuclear arsenal -including fission and boosted-fission warheads-, which, Hotan recognised, the state could no longer afford to maintain. Da'Khiem certainly intended to remain nuclear-capable, fighting a winning nuclear war was no longer an option on the contingency plan lists. But would any government think it worthwhile to pay for nuclear materials just to render them safe? Well, if not now, then, later, Da'Khiem could always fire another missile over Japan and test a small bomb to put the issue back on the table...

Also...

Hotan spoke of the need for new relations. Strainist Spyr was the natural partner for a Hotanite future, he said, much as Soviet India had been for the Kurosite past and Maoist China for the Suloist beginning.

Drapoel diplomats would discuss and arrange the reconstruction of shattered and temporary infrastructure connecting the CPRD with the PRS, hopefully engaging the resources of both nations to achieve this. Others, along with the famous scientist and engineer Taka Oamarii-Il, would prepare the restoration and reoperation of the Dragon's Throat orbital cannon, which, after several firings, was showing signs of stress before it was left neglected for more than a year. A few million dollars worth of refurbishment was thought to be required before the facility could again begin to orbit Drapoel and Spyrian payloads, and it remained to be seen whether Hotan would release scant reconstruction funds or hold-out for sufficient Spyrian investment in the programme.

The Director also had kind words for Patna, and mentioned the counter-coup's Bihari volunteers several times. Hotan said that he hoped to see Bihar's significant agricultural potential developed by, "proper waterisation", a reference to the state's historically limited efforts in proper irrigation (and apologies if that doesn't apply in AMW) given its natural potential and that Dra-pol would support the state's efforts to secure viable export routes for agricultural produce.

Da'Khiem was also to send diplomats to establish relations, if possible, with Yugoslavia and the Combine, the former of which Hotan thought may enjoy co-operation in defence technologies and tactics while for the latter he held high hopes of ideological familiarity and unity of purpose.

On the south

Here was much change. Many people were moving north as Hotan established job creation schemes through public works, announcing over-lapping schemes for a, "stabilising" Two Year Plan with specific target areas and a more general Five Year Plan. Moving north of the 38th also was seen as a good way to swear loyalty to the ideals of the administration, and being granted papers for passage across the internal border between Sul-pol and the other provinces was the first step on the road to membership of the party and a better life for one's family. It was unpublished, but Hotan intended to restore the north's population to some twenty-three million strong, exclusive of the Quinntonian enclave, and to achieve this mainly by moving people from the south into towns set-aside for what were recorded in the Directorature's archives as integrational purposes. The emptying of whole towns and the necessary movement of people now provided the perfect opportunity for this, at least.

In contrast, few community leaders survived, and party members were coming south to take-over local administration. Most were veterans of the open city experiments, projects generally agreed to have been failures.

Sul-pol had little capital, almost everything -including much that was nailed down- had been taken north or destroyed during reunification fighting or the Neo-Suloist period, and many skilled people were dead, or had fled south during the war or moved north more recently. The thirteen-million population was falling rapidly, and it was mostly youngsters heading north, with secret plans leaving only six or seven million undesirable people to inhabit the region that once crammed more than that into a single dynamic city. However, with Seoul its regional capital, the place had a reputation, and, in a certain environment, that was almost all that mattered.

Seoul achieved increasing autonomy under Hotan. It agreed to host Nigerian diplomats and industrialists and to discuss the building of a refinery dedicated to Nigerian crude though, frankly, it was likely that reconstruction aid would have to be secured in order to fund much of the work. Such a refinery would absolutely have to process more than the district's needs, enabling export of petroleum products to neighbouring nations in order to generate some currency. It was hoped that veterans of the ROK's own related industries, shattered by war and coup, along with wages reduced by the desperate situation, would make this viable while the still-strong central government refused to allow a southern labour shortage to invite wage increases and assigned workers to posts.

Sul-pol was allowed freedom to seek aid independently of the CPRD as a whole, with hopes of greater sympathy for the region and for optimism over its relative openness next to the north.

Seoul would even be allowed to invite migrant workers -experts from Spyr and labourers from Sujava-, under unsurprisingly strict conditions and vetting proceedures, to help reconstruction (and even demolition of ruined districts) and to spend money in designated quarters of the now half-empty metropolis as ethnic Choson youth were drawn to the north by the government's refusal to post them in work to the south.

Meanwhile...

Ghadafi was invited by Hotan to buy a home in Seoul, in fact the whole top-floor of one of the few highly-rated hotels to survive fighting and not be taken by the government. Well, of course it was taken by the state, but they had been unable to afford to convert it for government use, and couldn't even afford to run it for use by party members and so, if Ghadafi had a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare, plus a fair few thousand more each year for staff and facilities, he could get himself a penthouse in a district with precious few neighbours. If he neglected to hide the scale of his wealth, the ex-dictator would also be gouged for extra luxuries at the hotel, perhaps invited to make a charitable donation and rename the building to his choosing, and even offered the chance to buy a helicopter that the military could no longer spare the funds to maintain and perhaps to pay for landing facilities to be built on the hotel roof. He could also hire heavily armed (and more heavily indoctrinated) security from the thousands of UPA soldiers put out of work by down-sizing, which was a potential double victory for a state that needed money and didn't need disgruntled young demobbed fighting men.

If this went well, it was quite likely that a large part of Seoul would become dedicated to housing agreeable tyrants in exile, or just on holiday.

(Sorry for how disjointed that all reads. I'm hungry as a North Korean and keen to get out of here.)

Spyran aid efforts quickly begin to flow into the CPRD, though it soon becomes apparent that these are limited in key areas... with Lyong facing potential conflict with the Tsar of Russia, what stockpiles of food and fuel exist there must be kept in case of wartime difficulties, and hardly any nations can boast accounts full of currency with which to 'buy' foreign development, a fact which Strainist officials will mumble apologetically to their Choson counterparts.

There does, however, seem to be some money which can be spared... several million dollars to assist in refurbishing the Dragon's Throat. This is unlikely to surprise Kurosites who have spent time in Spyr during their exile, as even during the Neo-Suloist period the Lyongeans continued to be fascinated by the cannon (to the point of producing an improbable cartoon series featuring some sort of gun-launched robots).

Of course, Sithin seeks to make up for its limitations in a broader sense than just focussing on those things it holds most dear... Strainist technical experts quickly make themselves available for service in the CPRD, while educational institutions propose scholarship programs for promising Drapoel.

In the north, efforts begin to repair PRS-CPRD rail infrastructure, and further expansions are proposed; amongst them the suggestion that Spyr fund connections between the Lyongean and Drapoel power grids. The very lack of fossil fuels which leaves Lyong with no oil to gift Hotan has seen the development of nuclear and hydroelectric power stations on a sufficient scale to see Spyr become a net exporter of energy. With the embargo on Russia eliminating the Siberian market, and demand in Manchuria insufficient to make up the slack, the Strainists hope to supply Dra-pol with 'electricity aid' (and, in the process, use 'aid' money to pay domestic powerplant workers).

From across Spyr, other forms of assistance arrive, mostly second-hand equipment replaced during modernizations of industry and infrastructure ovver the last decade. Included in this equipment are a number of older electric trams for urban transit, ready to ease civil need for fossil fuels should the Drapoel accept Sithin's offer of electricity.

Much later in coming will be foodstuffs from Sujava, forced to make their way from Indonesia by boat. In addition to rice and poultry, small quantities of cigarrettes and coffee are included, as well as palm oil for cooking or cutting oil for 'boidiesel'.

Ghadafi's arrival in the CPRD is frowned on by Sithin, the Strainists seeing him as little more than a gross caricature of a Marxist leader. Still, it is understood that the Drapoel need currency to recover from the Neo-Suloist disaster... the former boxer can be dealt with in time, once his accounts have begun to drain.

The Union is also quick to dispatch aid to Dra-pol, with Hotan back in power. Unioners are not eager to see the Hotanite triumph spoiled by poor management afterward, so when word of food shortages reaches the subcontinent Mumbai gets right to work. A relief convoy, organized weeks in advance and loaded with Hyderabad-built tractors, seed, ex-INA bridging equipment, and prefabricated shelters, leaves Bhavnagar escorted by a pair of Chhattisgarh-class patrol ships, bound for Hotan's wrecked state. No.44 Squadron's Belfasts are themselves loaded with emergency food aid and sent to Spyr, from where their cargoes can hopefully be shipped across the border.

The one-legged, one-eyed Vasiliy Podgordin, after several years spent abroad, returns to the INU along with the rest of the foreign service pilots and advisors. They are given a hero's welcome at Mumbai's Sardar International Airport, where Podgordin is promoted to Air Commodore and given command of the Foreign Service's Air Commando Wing. Many of the UIC volunteers are inducted into the regular forces at the surprisingly well-attended return ceremony, and the Indians who perished are honored with a mass flypast conducted mainly by veteran DC-3s. The Bihari volunteers re-enter the Subcontinent through Sardar International as well, and unexpectedly are included in the proceedings.

Parliament has nothing but praise for Hotan's return to power and is proud of its own role in the triumph of the Hotanite faction. While he might not be the ideal ruler from Mumbai's point of view, he is infinitely better than the Suloists. Hotan is, though, advised to pay especially close attention to the physical condition of his people and not to take reconstruction and resettlement at too quick a pace, lest groups of people on the move go without food and vital infrastructure. Ghadafi's arrival is, like in Sithin, held in less than high regard, but he is currently the least of Parliament's problems. Hotan's nuclear disarmament proposal also elicits Union approval, and in order to win-back some favor with Quinntonia Unioners vote to take care of the CPRD's arsenal themselves, free of charge.

The Biharis, meanwhile, are also quite proud of the role they played in Hotan's restoration, and while crippling domestic problems conspire to keep the erstwhile People's Republic from contributing any meaningful aid, Patna does prepare to dispatch an ambassador to Da'Khiem. Perhaps, thinks General Secretary Gopalkrishna Patel, a friendly relationship with Dra-pol will translate into improved relations with generally antagonistic Beth Gellert, and Patna's right of deposit at Calcutta will be restored at long last.

An odd sound could be heard above the skies of Dra-Pol, and any of Korea's children that looked up to investigate would find little more than a small green blur flashing past. The blur was later described to Party Officials as "an emerald in the sky", and ironically, the odd sound was later revealed to be Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles.

Several Dra-Pol were startled and began firing useless potshots into the air, thinking that The Quinntonians or perhaps the Russians had taken this opportunity to pounce upon the nation they had just now been told was poor (although many had a sneaking suspicion that the PDA wielding and sharply dressed Spyrians were a tad better off).

The blur, of course, was not of Quinntonian or Russian origin, but instead hailed from the mysterious land known only as Armand. The green blur was explained by the jet's beautiful and ornate drawings of trees, plants, and other flora, and the odd sound by the gigantic sound system that seemed to be attached to the vehicle. As the oddly decorated jet landed in Da'kheim's airport (or what was left of it) observers would note an unusual engine type; this was because this plane utilized a cutting edge, airborne, prototype hydrogen engine. (This didn't imply that the Combine's denizens had figured out how to produce hydrogen cost effectively; rather, it implies that they wanted to show off.)

This trip had of course been cleared with the Directorate much earlier, but Combine, always eager to maintain its mystique, insisted that the airport officials not be informed of the unique nature of this flight. Thus, as the row of eerily similiar looking Asiatic men and women strode out of their vehicle, with The Beatles still blasting away behind them, they were met only with dropped jaws and frantic accusations of extra terrestrial origin. The Combine's delegation , in stark contrast to their flamboyant vehicle, was dressed in quite a subdued manner. They were bedecked in the black Western style suit/jade green tie/dark sunglasses combination that the Combine had seen fit to declare standard attire for those who would be its face to the world.

After moments of awkward silence, relieved only by the distant drone of an old British band, the diplomatic delegation, chanted a line in unison that had clearly been rehearsed.

"The Combine has arrived. We wish to speak to the Director himself."

(OOC: Three issues.

1. The Combine is not psychic and I'm not claiming it to be. While they do have the sort of twin-like ability, at times, to finish each other's sentences, most of the time when Armandians speak in unison it is because they have been rehearsed. The Combine makes much hoo hah over the ideals of unity, so it tries to put on displays like this quite often.

2. I realize that Hydrogen fuel cells, which produce electricity, are in no way, shape, or form powerful enough to power a jet. This is a hydrogen burning vehicle, which is an entirely different story.

3. Nigerian stuff later, I'm falling asleep at my keyboard...)

[OOC: Sorry for going a bit off-track... a few questions relating to the 'hydrogen aircraft' from the Combine.

Firstly, I had thought hydrogen-burning aircraft were made difficult because of fuel volume, which is about four times that of aviation kerosene when liquified, plus insulation to prevent expansion. The only range-capable hydrogen-burning aircraft plans I've seen at modern technology levels have bulbous spheres slung here and there to hold the required fuel, but then I may not be up to date on the latest developments.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, who in the region was informed of the flight. A Combine-Dak'heim course happens to be in line to keep going and pass over Chidao, where Spyr's main tank production lines are located. With both us and the Chinese expecting League hostilities and sweeping out to about 3,00km with OTH radars, I just thought I'd check to make sure the thing wasn't suspiciously stealth-built, or shaped like a missile...]

Lyong

The Choson People's Republic is quick to accept Spyrian help in just about all of its forms. The Central Directorature considers the course of revolution and liberation more important than any one person -or generation- and gobbles-up material aid with little worry for the lack of food from Lyong.

In truth, ties formed during Hotan's exile in Lyong probably mean that the absolute pinnacle of government in the Spyrian People's Republic is at least close to fully aware of Hotan's plan to shrink, "Sul-pol" (occupied South Korea) to just six million, from its current size of more than twice that many residents. Hotan intends to make Sul-pol, "10% of Spyr" in his own words to a few dozen Kurosite-Strainist elite, while Dra-pol-proper moves more slowly and mysteriously.

Certainly Hotan believes that the progressive bloc will win the war that the Holy League has started, even if the feudalists and the capitalists are the main combatants. He is one who subscribes to the view that the east -subtly- won the C20th's world-war. As a result, Hotan is preparing South Korea for initiation into an eastern progressive system... specifically, a derivative of Strainism. The north remains tightly under his direct control, and as mysterious as ever it has been.

Still, Dra-pol is happy to receive Spyrian trams and so forth for use in both north and south, and Da'Khiem is happy to work on the connection of Lyongian-Korean power grids. Alternative power generation in certainly interesting to the CPRD.

The Dragon's Throat will be operation in short order, though infrastructure involved in getting payloads to the mountain may take longer to come back on-line, and the assembly of propellant charges may take time. Still, it is clear that Dra-pol will soon enough be orbiting more Strainist and Hotanite satellites.

India

Regarding India, Vasiliy Podgordin returns to the sub-continent wearing a very retro-Stalin brest-full of medals cast in the mid C20th and marking him out as a Hero of the Choson Liberation and Hero of the Drapoel Revolution, while several of his comrades, along with four Biharis, also receive medals from the Hotanite faction.

Food-aid is accepted much more easily than ever before. In Korea's one previous modern famine, the hard times of the early 1990s, Da'Khiem turned much aid back out of pride, and confiscated more for the army as it arrived in Haeju. This time, it is accepted readily, and distributed with Drapoel efficiency.

However, the CPRD holds on to its nuclear weapons, insistant that the world must pay it for the right to dismantle Drapoel warheads.

Armandia

In their own tongue, the Drapoel call the land of the combine The Fractured Green, but this hardly serves to familiarise the Working Women's Home Brigade with Armandian aircraft. In its state of disarray, the CPRD makes several attempts to engage the transport. 14.5mm KPV machineguns, single, dual, and quad-barrel weapons, all fire on the aircraft as it passes through the thickest low-level air-defence grid in the history of humanity, and it is only by luck and the currently disorganised state of the Republic that the Armandians arrive in one piece. Their mission's fore-warning meant that no CS-400 missiles or fighter-aircraft were deployed against them by central authorities, but rural low-level flak was uninhibited, and an impressive light-show was available to the new arrivals.

On landing, the Armandians are met by men of dark skin, hardly more than five feet tall, and women an inch or two shorter, many carrying short swords on their hips and all dressed in simple uniform. Hair cuts are to government standard and, "in accordance with the socialist ideal" and formality is a match for Combine uniformity.

Da'Khiem itself has no major air port, and the Armandians were directed by air traffic control to Pyongyang, where -if they had the means- they would detect above-safe levels of radioactivity, in spite of obvious rebuilding works. Getting to Da'Khiem would mean a trip on the subway, with the guests travelling several dozen kilometres at a few hundred metres under ground.

They emerged outside of Da'Khiem, and were obliged to walk more than a kilometre along dirt-paths with the city in view.

Da'Khiem was small enough that the whole thing could be seen from the hills along which the guests were marched. It was an ancient walled city, and no expansion had been allowed beyond its centuries-old fortifications. This was the place in which Hotan -then a mere General- had isolated an entire regiment of western paratroopers and killed or captured every last one of them. The Central Directorature was the only building that didn't fit the ancient oriental style of the city. It alone rose above the pagodas' seven stories, and sank as many floors below the earth. A giant black monolith it was, blitzing anything imagined in 1984. This was a structure bombed by the United States and still in operation.

Inside, the Combine's representatives would meet a man under five and a half feet tall, middle-aged, totally bald, dressed like an oriental peasant and wearing sandals, weakened by three bullet-holes that failed to kill him. Perhaps the only man ever to have killed any of Quinntonia's most fanatical agents? And three of them at once.

Hotan did not bow, but offered a salute far less firm than the ones presented by his comrades as passed along the way by the Combine's diplomats. He remained seated behind a desk of English oak- riddled with bullet-holes, his saviour.

There were no windows, the Armandians were now several dozen metres below ground. The room was massive and empty, light shon on they and on Hotan, but the walls and the ceiling were far enough as to be invisible.

[OOC: Spyr, the newest developments in hydrogen technology over here at the Livermore Labs <I know a guy who works there> are focused on the technology of using a combination of pressure and temperature to greatly compress hydrogen so that it's easier to transport across long distances.

Increasing gas pressure would improve the energy density per volume, making for smaller, but not lighter container tanks (see pressure vessel). Compressing a gas will require energy to power the compressor. Higher compression will mean more energy lost to the compression step. Alternatively, higher volumetric energy density liquid hydrogen may be used (like the Space Shuttle).

I'm extrapolating it, admittedly, so if it's a big deal then I can change it to biodiesel. And all pertinent governments are informed of the flight, obviously, and allowed to track it as they wish. We may be mindless drones but we ain't stupid. :D And Dra-Pol, not to be nitpicky, but it's just Armand, and not Armandia. Armandia makes it sound too effeminate. :D Okeh, enough smileys..]

-Pyongyang-

On second thought, we really should've just gone ahead and told everyone, mused the elegant beauty known only as the Energy Minister as she glanced at their vehicle, which bore the marks of not a few Dra-Pol anti-air rounds. This certainly wasn't the first time the Combine's predilection for showmanship had gotten it in hot water, and most likely wasn't the last. (This was of course something that the Combine would never admit)

The Minister sensed that her comrades shared her admiration of the Kurosite display of uniformity, and the salute the Armandians gave Hotan's men was perhaps a tad more firm, with a hint of more sincerity, than the one they usually gave at diplomatic functions around the world. With hardly a word spoken, the diplomatic crew made its way to the subway, and then travelled across the sparse dirt road, all the time keeping to an orderly march.

-Da'khiem-

The diplomats were shocked by the bare and austere look of Hotan's office. Although they had heard many reports of the Director's preference for simplicity, they had grown so used to visiting Stalinist dictators who worked in the fields for a photo op and then drove off in their plush limousines when the cameras were turned away. The surprise was blended with a trait not often found in the Combine: admiration. Could Hotan truly be genuine, as the propaganda proclaimed?

Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It didn't matter either way to the Combine, but it did make business intriguing, and brought a rare smile to the lips of the cold Energy Minister. For what could have been eons but was likely only a few moments, the Combine simply stared down at Hotan, assessing him in every possible way. After salutes were exchanged, the diplomats began to speak.

"Greetings, Comrade. The Combine would like to congratulate you on retaking your capital from those barbaric fools...How any being could believe that regression is a path to progress is unfortunately beyond even the Combine's ability to comprehend. We hope that our hire of Russian mercenaries and the funds we donated to the war effort served you well. [OOC: Yeah, I know it was originally the Apostles, but that idea didn't really pan out, so I'm rewriting a bit of history, if you don't mind.] We are glad to have aided in your struggle, and wish to build upon that to create a flourishing relationship."

"You have fallen out of favor with the Igovians, who are too arrogant to believe that anything short of drunken debauchery and choas on the streets is a credible form of government. This has cost your aggrieved nation much, and helped reduce a once proud people to horrific poverty; we are here to rectify that. We have long remained quiet in international affairs, wishing to allow others to manage their own issues. However, in an age of increasing globalization, as the world shrinks and technology binds us closer together, such an introspection is simply no longer possible. Even Dra-Pol must step out of the comfortable shadows, for the world refuses to let us simply be. As we emerge from those shadows, we realize that we must also join together with those whose goals match our own. Clearly, that voice is that of the Progressive Bloc."

"However...That voice has long been that of an angry Celt, bellowing chaotically on the world stage, fraught with self righteousness and rage. It is the Bedgellens that turned the Left against you, it is the Bedgellens who refused to aid you when Sulo maniacs tore your country away from you, it is the Bedgellens who put their own selfish individualism above the good of the world. For too long they have led the Progressive peoples of the world...but now that time has past."

"Today we ask the proud people of Dra-Pol to join their hands with the Combine, so that we may become as one. A formal alliance is not necessary, initially, and indeed, all we ask for is a declaration of friendship between our two nations. We are full of ideas, including perhaps one day fully integrating the economies of our nations under one structure, but let's start small and build from that."

"Firstly, we would like to initiate trade with Dra-Pol. We offer your country Most Favored Nation status, which shall give you access to specific goods, like oil, natural gas, and foodstuffs at rates far below the market price. Additionally, we would like to follow the Lyongian lead and cooperate with you in developing energy infrastructure. While solar power isn't likely going to be that practical in Dra-Pol---although it might still be applied to individual homes---nuclear and wind power does look promising, especially with Dra-Pol's barren, wind swept landscapes...Speaking of nuclear affairs, the Combine is willing to purchase several of your weapons, along with any ballistic delivery capacity you may have. This must be kept under the highest layers of secrecy, however."

"We have shown you our deck, Mr. Hotan. Do you wish to play?"

-Port Moscow, Nigeria-

Nigerian industrialists, flush with Tsarist cash grants, are quite willing to fund reconstruction efforts if the Dra-Pol are willing to allow a refinery. The investment in the long term will pay off greatly, especially if Dra-Pol's economy accelerates and the hunger for fuel goes with it, and the refinery can serve as a base platform for oil delivery to eastern China, Japan, and Lyong. Dra-Pol's almost grotesquely cheap labor beats out even Nigerian standards, and thus the plant will mainly be staffed by locals, with management provided by a highly educated mix of Nigerians and Russian expatriates.

-Sul-Pol, Dra-Pol-

Ghadafi was quite pleased with the hospitality of the Dra-Pol, and seeing as how he had managed to stash away several billion dollars worth of Nigerian treasury funds in various banks around the world, he was all too eager to throw around hundreds of thousands of dollars, which to him represented "petty cash." In fact, the flamboyant ex-dictator asked if he could buy the entire hotel, and rename it "Ghadafi's Tower of Revolution". He also inquired about the possibility of purchasing arms for his two thousand strong "entourage". Oblivious as usual to the resentment the poor would have for his extravagance, he made no attempt to conceal his rampant appetite for material possessions, although at the same time he became a generous contributor to various social causes, in order to curry favor with the local populace.

Certain rumors also swirled of Ghadafi opening talks with Dra-Pol's propaganda agencies, and, if the rumors are to be believed, of asking if they could perhaps assist him in a PR campaign to clean up his image and make him more popular amongst the Progressives...

He had no intention to live out the rest of his days as a mere playboy; Nigeria still called to his dark and maddened soul...

Along a road north of Seoul, a small group of Banat agents travelled using a 1970’s era jeep that had mountings for a machine gun on the back, though that was conspicuously absent. They alternately pushed the machine through mud and kept the lights off in the dark, all the while showing the proper identification to anyone who should asks for it as they headed into Northern Dra-pol. They were armed, but close inspection would find that their ammo was low and there fuel reserves were equally suspect, almost proving right there that they were representatives of the government.

If questioned, they would simply say that they had been posted in the South, had fought in some of the engagements on the Hotanites side, and they were being called north, they didn’t know why. They are ethic Dra-poel, the older ones having grown up in these territories and knew it well.



In Dakhiem, a small squad of regular Peoples Army would be meeting after being activated, and when no one could see them, they would make the sign of the corss and start to head out on their mission.

Similar scenes were happening as at least 10 sleeper cells that had been imbedded deep in Dra-pol were activated by various means and sent to do their business, some motivated by faith, some by the protection and prosperity that Quinntonia had brought there families, and all motivated by hatred of Dra-pol.


And in a small prison with the best high tech security scads of money can buy, a man with a polished Dra-poel look about him paces back and forth in fron of a few maps on a table, with advisors, definitely not Dra-poel, making suggestions.

WWJD
Amen.

(OOC: Jesus Christ, I just start off as a country and I go ahead and align myself in a war against Quinntonia XD. Hoo boy.)

Dra-pol had experienced its share of leaders in the mould more familiar to the Armandians. Sulo started out as a brave and dirty partisan, fighting the Imperial Japanese Army, but ended up falling in his old age to a more vital and enthusiastic young man. That man, Kurosian I, always talked the talk, and he started out walking the walk... then sort of dawdling, and, eventually, became soft and middle aged, slumped at his desk or his dinner table, having grown fat on secret trips to Europe's finer resteraunts and hotels.

But Hotan remembered the young version, his mentor, who lead the Choson People's Republic in war with the United States and raised the nation's international profile almost beyond imagination. He never found time to wander from the path himself- since he became Director, Dra-pol had been in a near constant state of crisis, which served well in keeping Hotan focussed and away from selfish temptation. Hotan clung to his ideals and traditions all the more firmly for Dra-pol's troubles.

Hotan gestured to offer the Combine diplomats seats on the opposite side of his desk.

He listened, and was fairly soft spoken, though his voice crackled a little to give it depth, and was slow with his words. He offered some defence of the Soviets, who had at least at one time essentially saved his revolution by furnishing the Choson with Red Sky missile defences, while, more recently, Geletian volunteers had been amongst the ranks of his international brigades, though it was admittedly an unofficial deployment on their part.

Hotan was certainly interested by talk of essentially subsidised trade with the Combine. It may help to limit the pain of reconstruction. But it would still be difficult to manage, even at favoured rates. Dra-pol, rebuilding herself, would have little to exchange.

The Director suggested technological help from his nation in pursuit of certain major Combine aims.

With the Banat part of the world's largest special forces and full-time intelligence organisation, even when Dra-pol lacked fuel, force-projection, infrastructure, services... it always had intelligence (though it had a habit of interperating it through the eyes of a long-isolated hermit). Hotan said that he was, "dimly aware" of Armand's serach for new air force equipments, and its approaches to the Strathdonians. "Dra-pol" he said, "in its current state has little more industrial capacity than little Strathdonia, it is true. However, our long socialist legacy furnishes us with a large number of university graduates and skilled scientists and engineers. Some, it is true, have... departed for a Strainist life in Lyong" (Dra-pol has hemorrhaged intellectuals in a rare defection epidemic caused by Suloist regression and a break-down of border security) "...but our intellectual basin is deep.

"Some of the Republic's aircraft are no longer the world's most advanced, but our thoughtfully-produced technologies have proven their adaptability: the current short-range air-to-air missile of choice in the progressive bloc, the Soviet DRAB ASRAAM is merely an evolved version of our own DRAR-1(9) series, which itself is equal to the famous Quinntonian Sidewinder."

Hotan sounded a little unnatural in talk of specific military science. He was a skilled warrior and proven battlefield commander, but not really a man of modern technology, and pushed typwritten papers across the desk to his guests only after he'd finished talking about the data contained on their pages.

"The Soviets only developed their larger air-launched cruise missiles with our help, and these weapons remain also in our arsenal." This was a reference to the Harpoon-equivalent Qian Wei (which the Soviets had lately decided to rename, but the Drapoel had not), and Hotan slid more papers across the polished oak.

"Perhaps your fuels are worth the engines that they may power in your people's defence."

Hotan now picked a wire from behind his desk and pressed a button at its end. A projector grumbled into life and threw against the wall -which actually was close behind him, though it had previously been invisible, painted mat-black in a dark and cavernous space, a bright image.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Chivtv/NS1/NT4Export.jpg

"The best of our aircraft to have survived the Neo-Suloists are these, the Soviet-built Drapoel version of their current front-line air superiority fighter. She is more simple than South India's NT4C, with inferior stealthing and sensors equivalent to earlier versions of the Soviet fighter, such as flew for the Second Commonwealth, but there are similar aerodynamic features, some modern airframe composites, the current light-weight automatic cannon, and, I think most importantly, the powerplant, which is two engines of an early form of the contemporary Sprite-C thrust-vectoring unit. If the Combine is to develop its own modern fighter aircraft, the powerplant will present a major challenge that you can not expect to solve alone: the Beddgelens spent a generation lagging behind the Hindustanis who initially flew foreign aircraft, the French -though their aircraft are otherwise advanced- perpetually struggle to catch-up with the efficiency of Quinntonian engines and, likewise, the Combine risks letting-down a modern design by giving it a first-generation powerplant that may be inefficient or perform poorly at either high or low altitudes.

"As you regard the Sovietists as disorderly and threatening, so, I am sure, they stand opposed to your people's homogeny, and I see few other likely sources of top-level experience being made available.

"So, where we now lack the means to build and support such advanced aircraft, which the Combine surely does, you perhaps lack the background, which we can provide. Perhaps if your own engineers, and the Strathdonians, had access to Soviet turbofan technology, the task of developing a new fighter would not seem so beyond the limits of your respective means. Reverse-engineering is often a major challenge, but Dra-pol has major maintenance facilities that we simply no longer have the means to run at full capacity: these may help, if transfered to the Combine in exchange for this subsidised fuel and power-generation technology."

Meanwhile, to the South, Ghadafi had much success in acquiring his hotel (more sloth was evident in arming his minions, though the matter was at least being 'looked into'), and, to the north, Hotan maintained interest in infrastructural links to Lyong.

The Energy Minister's first instinct was to further attack the Soviets and shred Hotan's defense of them, but she quickly caught herself. Such an angry and brazen display of individuality had nearly destroyed her so many years ago, and she was not apt to repeat such a mistake.

Although the fact that Hotan was aware of the Combine's interest in a modern air superiority fighter did disturb her, the Minister simply made a mental note in her head to perform another sweep of all foreign employees in Defensive Cooperatives (for the idea that an Armandian would betray the Combine was simply an unthinkable one), and moved along with her characteristic grace.

"This is...to say it is wonderful is to commit an atrocity against our tongue, for it would be an incredible understatement. This kind of expertise will push our programs years forward...But we are not merely content to copy Soviet technologies. The Soviets advanced the DRAR-1(9); let us advance it further. The Soviets use the Qian Wei; let us improve it. The Soviets developed the NT4E into the NT4C; let us develop it further."

"In other words, we accept your offer, lock, stock, and barrel, and want you to transfer your facilities as soon as it is physically possible."

"Moving onto other issues...We do not feel the need for nuclear capability as of now, but we find that such a huge Dra-Poel arsenal provides for much regional instability. When the Neo-Suloists seized control, there was many a sweaty brow in Constance...Not to be pessimistic, of course, but we cannot take that chance again. Thus, we would be more than happy to purchase and dismantle as many of your nuclear weapons as you'd allow us."

"One final note...the alternative energy production facilities we shall provide to you free of charge, as a gift from our people to yours. After all, we benefit from a cleaner earth as much as you do."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=489252&highlight

<QUOTE>
Along a road north of Seoul, a small group of Banat agents travelled using a 1970’s era jeep that had mountings for a machine gun on the back, though that was conspicuously absent. They alternately pushed the machine through mud and kept the lights off in the dark, all the while showing the proper identification to anyone who should asks for it as they headed into Northern Dra-pol. They were armed, but close inspection would find that their ammo was low and there fuel reserves were equally suspect, almost proving right there that they were representatives of the government.

If questioned, they would simply say that they had been posted in the South, had fought in some of the engagements on the Hotanites side, and they were being called north, they didn’t know why. They are ethic Dra-poel, the older ones having grown up in these territories and knew it well.



In Dakhiem, a small squad of regular Peoples Army would be meeting after being activated, and when no one could see them, they would make the sign of the cross and start to head out on their mission.

Similar scenes were happening as at least 10 sleeper cells that had been imbedded deep in Dra-pol were activated by various means and sent to do their business, some motivated by faith, some by the protection and prosperity that Quinntonia had brought their families, and all motivated by hatred of Dra-pol.


And in a small prison with the best high tech security scads of money can buy, a man with a polished Dra-poel look about him paces back and forth in front of a few maps on a table, with advisors, definitely not Dra-poel, making suggestions.

WWJD
Amen.

<QUOTE>
OOC-This was the set-up for years of work, which will now show its fruition.
IC-Citizen Kurosian was now in ROK, and he was ready. He had been undergoing “mental restructuring” for all of the years that he was in a USQ prison. Now, he had a group of loyal Dra-poel around him, and stashes of Gelletian weapons, purchased on the black market with Chinese currency, but whose roots had decidedly hidden Quinntonian foundations. He had been gathering around him a small group of disaffected Dra-poel who longed for the purity of his father’s regime, prior to the troubles brought about by Hotan. He was already making contact with some loyal elements within Dra-pol itself, and was making up with money what he had lost in being gone all of these years. All told, he had barely two hundred followers so far, but word was starting to get around, and with his newfound wealth, plus some very quiet Dra-poel advisors, meant that more than a few mercenaries, mostly Gelletian and Lyongese in nature, were being placed on notice. He was not ready to come out of hiding quite yet, but things were definitely moving along nicely. True enlightened political theory would enter Dra-pol once again.

Elsewhere:
The cannon that was firing satellites into space was a monumental achievement and was envied/hated the world over by allies and enemies alike. It was a massive thing, stretching up into the sky like a giant middle finger raised to the Western world. And the sleeper elements had been working on it for a long, long time. Unbeknownst to CPRD leadership, some of the people involved in the engineering of this marvel were also working against their masters. They has written in maintenance tunnels and small caves into the plans, and then arranged to have the plans that showed their existence disappear. They had then used influence to remain on as technical staff and over years allowed their fellow saboteurs to place large amounts of explosives all over the mountain. Over the space of years, they had drilled holes and filled them with C-12, only to hide the holes with nothing but a single wire indicating anything had ever been there. They had filled tunnels with explosives of all types, and then sealed them up forever, with charges on them designed to blow if they received a certain frequency. Tonnes and tonnes of explosives of every conceivable type, from military yield high test to fairly easy to procure stuff from the Banat storage facilities. And now it was time to let this go.

Somewhere else indeed:
This sleeper cell had finally procured duty in one of the long-range missile facilities, with some doing security, some using their technical side, even a political officer in charge of staff discipline who was feared throughout the complex. They had also been working towards this day for years, and had their people placed in position. Citizen Kim finally had walked into the control booth, taking his position and all was set. He reached over to the intercom microphone and exclaimed, “Technician Kim now on duty, technical staff will report to me immediately, long live our glorious revolution, and our most wise Director.”

That was the signal. Now the political officer, Citizen Tsueng, sent his aides to gather up the supervisory personnel, ordering them to gather together the entire staff, barring security, in order to question them all about missing supplies.

And, the head security officer on at that time gathered other members of the cell, and ordered those not loyal to the cause to outer perimeter duty, leaving the interior of the complex in the hands of the cell, for a while, at least. He took two of his most trusted and met Tsueng in the large gymnasium-like common room where the rest of the staff was being gathered, and asked, “Are they all here?” With yet another glance at his clipboard, Tsueng answered, “Yes, go to the control room.” He quickly left, leaving his two soldiers behind, and listening as the door was chained shut behind him. He was barely on his way up the metal stairs to the control room when he heard the shots of automatic weapons, and the screams, but only just barely, and because he was listening for it. Of curse, in the control room, the technical staff was being led by their superior through a series of patriotic songs, and heard nothing. The security agent continued up, nodding at the two soldiers waiting at the door, and they all stepped in. Son, the staff not loyal here were asked to line up against the wall and dealt with in Dra-poelian traditional fashion. Death by massive blood loss due to gunshot wounds. Then, their hands bloody, they went to work for real. A new firing solution was laid in, this missile, with its most terrible warhead, the finest that Dra-pol had to offer was going to be fired at the capitol. Then the next missile would find it target, and the next, until this marvellous complex was emptied of its deadly cargo. It would take some time, but they had several hours before anyone would even dare to ask questions, and many more before someone was set to check. And the first missile would be off long before that. But the sleeper cell had no illusions; they would be killed horribly for this.

All over Dra-pol, except in Seoul where the disaffected youth of that city were being asked to serve in another way, explosions in ammo dumps, munitions depots, fuel dumps, aeronautics factories, etc., were blowing up. The most spectacular of the rest was the single sailor on a suicide mission that managed to fire a volley of armed torpedoes at the closed door in front of it while in its hidden berth.

It was a national disaster, it was, glorious.

The Kurosian-Jr. campaign against Hotanite Dra-pol was happening, perhaps, at the best possible moment from the conspirators' point of view.

Director Hotan had not been seen in months and rumours of his death were circulating. 50,000 fanatical Hotanite soldiers had been shipped off to Spyr to serve on the Russian frontier. The press reported that the last Neo-Suloist insurrection had destroyed tunnel networks, sewn the seeds of dissent, and killed countless people. The new Secretary Kim had begun a controversial programme of market-socialist reform and had down-sized the nation's infamous military. And now the British Empire had declared war on the Choson People's Republic.

The perfect cocktail for instability and an atmosphere ripe for confusion and panic!

____________________________

...One who thinks in that fashion is no student of the Drapoel condition. The conspirators in fact would have been hard pressed to pick a worse moment in which to strike, and no doubt it is the influence of the insane Kurosian II and the foreign Quinntonians that have lead the few hundred to act against their national instinct.

Taepo-Dong Missile Base

The take-over of a ballistic missile station during time of existing national crisis illicits a different response than it might otherwise have done.

The first missile launch is greeted, much to the conspirators' likely chagrin, by a reactive launch from Da'Khiem's armed, operational, and on-alert CS-400 Red Sky battery, which sends an interceptor racing forth, and knocks-out the ballistic missile within seconds of its lift-off. A fantasic flash beats down from above, illuminating expressions of sickening realisation and terror, the distant rumbling drowning out many panic-stricken whimpers of remorse as some of the rebellious Drapoel are over-come by their burried instinct to wash their hands of any such heresy.

Across Hwadae County the various militia organisations are shocked into life, Working Women's Home Brigade and Kuro Student Defence League members dashing from their homes without breaking their stride as they snatch uniform caps and the rifles and submachine-guns that lean against their doorframes. The British Empire has just declared war, and now enemy agents are in Taepo-Dong missile base!

An-3 and L2D4 transport planes rattle at the same time from dirt airstrips in surrounding territories, having been on far more than usually high alert, something that watching Quinntonians may well realise with interest. Even for the Unified People's Army this airborne response by regular forces is incredibly rapid, almost as if major troop strength had already been mobilising in the mountains and underground facilities of North Dra-pol's eastern half...

Within mere minutes, probably before the second missile can be launched, Banat, Red Bamboo, and UPA paratroopers are falling on Taepo-Dong and arriving at facilities to which the underground complex is linked by tunnels. Quickly following are hundreds of women and teenagers brandishing bolt-action rifles and submachine-guns, and ex-conscripts in the worker and peasant militias.

The Dragon's Throat

Undermining this complex was an unimaginably difficult task. Not only was it home to hundreds of armed troops and 'plain clothes' Banat secret police, but also to Strainist and Combinist liaison staff. If anyone would notice an irregularity, it would be a stifflingly regimented Combiner, a disciplined Drapoel, or a canny Spyrian. If ever an irregularity would be uncovered, it would be during the refurbishment and reactivation of the site accomplished only recently with Armando-Spyrian funding and shortly after a civil war that had seen Suloist conspirators infiltrate and sabotage countless facilities and collapse numerous
tunnels.

Unfortunately for this cell, unlike the team at Taepo-Dong, their works were uncovered shortly before they could act. At least, that's what they'd likely assume as, one by one, the conspirators began to disappear... along with many innocent parties, taken by the Banat so as to confuse the issue and give remaining plotters cause to hope that they had not been found out. After all, it wasn't just their coconspirators who were vanishing.

Traditional Drapoel tactics, more sophisticated Spyrian methods, and unspeakably cruel and coldly scientific Combinist methods for extracting information were soon being enforced against arrested suspects as engineers stripped explosives and the Red Bamboo evacuated large parts of the facility, the Banat placing Strainist and Combinist personnel under protective custody for the duration of the three governments' investigations into the matter.

At one stage a Banat Colonel over-seeing operations ordered the deadly gassing of an entire quarter of the Dragon's Throat facility through its ventilation system when one captured plotter gave him cause to believe that a device was about to be detonated by his friends.

At least the cell's members could tell themselves that they'd caused a minor set-back by getting several technicians killed.

It all seemed to be proceeding as if the conspirators had at the Dragon's Throat been foiled by dilligance at the very last second, and that elsewhere they had achieved surprise strikes only to be pounced upon by inhumanly rapid state response.

Of course, in Dra-pol, appearances can be deceiving...


((OOC: See Waking the Bulldog (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=543189), probably mainly just on page three, really, for more Drapoel goings on.))

The cell at the Dragon’s Throat had been found out, somehow, and the last three members of the fifteen that had been working years here had scattered and were now falling back on the only thing that they could not get informed on for. Of course, it helped that two of the ones left were secret even from their cell, but they were frightened. One of the two had even been ordered by his superiors to gas some of his colleagues recently, but had also been able to use his position to “suggest” various people that might be co-conspirators, both leading his superiors on wild goose chases and having a few dozen people critical to the operation of the Dragon’s Throat arrested to be tortured and killed, but not before they started making up names of their enemies in order to get leniency and stop the torture. And that would lead to still more arrests and more chaos. This was causing just the right sort of disaster, but it was only a matter of time before someone named him, even by random, so, he fell back on his back-up plan. Inspector Gimhae Kim had brought a suitcase into work today. He had done everything possible to pull in every favour to et the suitcase to be not inspected, not as hard as it sounds considering everyone knew him as one of three people heading up the investigations here right now, and no one wanted to run afoul of him. So, he continued to use his influence to be as disruptive as possible, “uncovering” as many Combinist and Spyrian connections as possible.

In the near village, technician Kim Min Ho stood in his small, private domicile, knowing that the investigators, especially that hated Inspector Kim, were closing in on him. So, he simply left, and climbed to the nearest tall hill, and stood on it, saying a prayer to his ancestors- the white mans religion had never really took- and released the several small clear vials that he carried into the wind. They contained a biological agent that he didn’t really understand, but that he was told would cause heavy sicknesses, painful rashes, diarreah, projectile vomiting, and crippling dizziness, for most, the symptoms would disappear after a couple of weeks, but for those who were in poor health already, it could be fatal, effecting maybe 3-5% of the population. Fortunately for his countrymen, it only was designed to spread for a few mutations, along a predictable path, it was self-destructive, becoming non-contagious and benign within a week or two, and disappearing as mysteriously as it appeared.
At work at his station, he saw the secret policemen come into his work area, and started to sweat and tremble horribly, only to have them, with the hated Inspector Kim, taking one of his coworkers and leading him outside. His wife, working in the next cubicle over, started to weep softly, trying not to attract notice as everyone else politely tried to ignore her. He stood to use the washroom, and went out, irregularly taking his five minute meal break soon and went inside the area, and knew what he must do. He pushed one of his fingers down his throat and in moments was vomiting up the balloon that he had smuggled in today. After a moment of cleaning up the balloon, he opened it. The white powder had not opened up in his stomach, but he didn’t know that the anthrax powder was not going to get to be used. But, he walked over to the intake vent for the air system and let the powder be blown/sucked up into the vent system. Just as the last of it went in, he turned and saw his co-worker’s wife. Her eyes were opened wide and she was still crying, but she just turned and walked back into the work area, and sat quietly at her desk.

Inspector Kim, after another long, sixteen hour day, wiped the blood off his knuckles and sat down to eat his bowl of rice. He then pulled the satellite cellular phone from his pocket and dialled the number that would set off his suitcase. What was in the suitcase? A dirty bomb. A messy, little nuke. And it was just activated, hidden at the foot of the Dragon’s Throat.

At the missile facility, the first missile had been blown out of the sky, and the surveillance equipment showed hundreds of troops coming in fast, and they were only now finishing the launch sequence for the second missile, it was going to fall apart. They were doomed. So, in desperation, they manually overrode the launch bay doors and armed the warhead. Boom.

The many cells throughout the nation continued to work at sabotage, with key political officials and community leaders in charge of coordinating war materials and foodstuffs distribution being assassinated, more and more explosions, focusing on fuel and factories, and general chaos everywhere they were.

In Seoul, Kurosian had been moved from safe house to safe house and was promising, through his agents, many things to many people, people united only in one regard, their hatred of the established regime. He had no connection to, or knowledge of, the sleeper cells, and they had no knowledge of him. Only maybe five people knew where he was, and they weren’t talking.

WWJD
Amen.

The Dragon's Throat

Fortunately for the Drapoel space programme, economy, state, and people, RDDs such as the one detonated here only have the potential to work in backwater societies such as are so widely aligned against the enlightened Choson people. The possibility of spreading terror thanks to the scaremongering misinformation lavished on capitalist populations by their elite masters hardly exists in the CPRD, where the threat of 'dirty bombs' has never been raised by the Central Directorature. And the state-owned media certainly won't be spreading panic.

The blast causes some damage in the facility, which no doubt will have to suspend launches for a while, probably upsetting Sithin and others as much as Da'Khiem, but clean-up crews will arrive within days even if limited national resources cause delays. Nobody's going to stand in the impacted area for months on end without taking precautions, and so nobody's likely to fall seriously ill.

Taepo-Dong Missile Base

Damage here was more extensive. The entire facility would be put out of operation for the immediate future and millions of dollars were lost to a relatively small Drapoel economy. Several personnel at the head of the assult were killed and injured.

The Choson People's Republic of Dra-pol

Director Hotan was joined by Secretary Kim in expressing outrage and vowing revenge. Immediately NATO was blamed for the nation's woes, as is standard practice, the Secretary even claiming that a particular secret department of the US aparatus exists to conduct terrorism and illegal activity against the Choson People's Republic, from the murder of Kurosian I and the attempt on Hotan's life to the incidents at Taepo-Dong and the Dragon's Throat as well as the outbreak of a sickness that Kim attributes to poisoning by foreign espionage agents.

Across the nation military mobilisation continues, though its extent is hidden to the world through disguise, under-ground works, and careful protection of communications.

Tunneling near the Peace Line continues to intensify as new tunnels approach its fringes and old, supposedly collapsed tunnels that reach to though not across the border become busy with underground activity. More tunnels across the nation bustle with invisible activity as vast forces relocate. Aircraft have restarted shadowing of US patrol flights on the Republic's borders, and missile bases show increased alertness as the military cites obvious security concerns following recent events. Opposite Hamhung, HARTS receive extra ammunition via tunnel connections.

Nationwide a new defence programme continues to pick up pace under the observation of Yugoslavian staff, all dressed in Drapoel uniforms indicating Belgrade's desire to keep defence co-operation secret.

Thousands of miniature one-man bunkers are appearing -to those who know what to look for-, manufactured for peanuts and distributed on trucks and trains. The Drapoel application of this originally Albanian strategy adds several features absent from the Yugoslav-supplied plan. It almost goes without saying that the Drapoel version adds emphasis to defence by deception.

Sithin

Major Cheiy's first visit to the PRS sees him taking over from Hotan in the task of keeping the CPRD's most important ally informed, up to a point. The reputed head of the Banat tells the Strainists of absolute determination in the Directorature, the Party, and the Army to see Hamhung and Hungnam liberated.

Cheiy is unfailingly confident in his nation's ability to confront the United States and its allies in combat and somehow achieve victory. He says that both defence and attack strategies and tactics have evolved since the last flaring of the Reunification War. He adds that, in any case, Da'Khiem can't afford to wait. If rumours of a possible Soviet-Combine showdown come to anything, Dra-pol can expect fuel aid -already in doubt as the Combinists seem to have become a spent force- to dry up along with the parts and advice that keep Red Sky and other Indian technologies operational. The break-up of Lusaka, the demise of the friendly and generous government in the African Commonwealth, and Yugoslavia's rebuilding and security issues mean that a golden era of foreign support appears to be ending. Also, the continuation of global conflict seems likely to distract at least some of the enemies' might. With recent events in the CPRD, Hotan's years of anticipation and planning are clearly coming to a head.

In short, the Drapoel are going back to war, and they are going to throw everything into one supreme national effort against the great enemy.

Inside the Former German Dra-pol

Inside the former territory of the German Dra-pol things were stirring. Old connections were made, former friends began meeting secretively, and hidden books and pamphlets traded hands. Churches long vacant reopened secretively by night in people homes and the proclamation of the gospel was renewed in a land of immense spiritual darkness. Concern for security was paramount as Christians would only meet in the night and in small numbers. Outsiders were excluded from the services, and those that did come to the gatherings were excluded from the distribution of the sacrament. Those in the Dra-pol military or police would periodically enter the congregations and ask those assembled if they were Christians. Those who fearfully backed down and renounced their faith were lined up on one side while those who confessed their faith were lined up against a wall and shot in the presence of the apostates. After the shootings the apostates were allowed to leave but told if they were ever seen by the m that they would be killed. Once the apostates left, the paint was wiped off the believers and the soldiers helped them to their feet and began worshipping alongside their fellow Christians. It was through these deceits that many of the emerging churches were kept free from government plants.

Over time those congregating slowly increased in numbers and with each new member they began to fear reprisals from a government obsessed with destroying those who based their life on loyalty to a higher power than that of their government. It was because of this fear that several hundred thousand inconsequential materials were smuggled into Dra-pol. Although it was very tedious, eventually enough was smuggled in to provide several printing presses and as soon as the printing presses were assembled, they began to churn out Bibles and pamphlets. The small Christian congregations, divided into cells, also began to look very carefully and suspiciously for sympathetic Dra-pol military officers. They wanted to be ready when the time was right and slowly and passively a collection of church cells began to ready themselves all over the former territory of the German Dra-pol.

OOC: Spy RP isn't really my forte, would you be willing to provide me with the intelligence you think it's reasonable for British spies to have gathered? Military targets, air bases, things that I could hit with tomahawks and storm shadows from the sea. You get the picture.

The CPRD

British agents, few and far between in the reclusive Peoples' Republic, noted the sudden rash of attacks and the instability it generated with glee. Their mission wasn't to foster such attacks-- Britain's spy services had learned long ago that such things were better left to the CIA and its somewhat more... gung ho... allies. MI6's great skill was remaining unnoticed amidst the carnage and confusion of pre-war intelligence activities, and its operatives did just that. They did their best to infiltrate the lower levels of the CPRD's government, identified possible targets for air strikes and sea-attack, and generally stayed out of the way during the Taepo-Dong events.

Faced with the borderline-psychotic Banat and the frighteningly efficient Combine security corps, the MI6 agents in the CPRD went to fairly extreme lengths to stay below the radar. Information was passed through defectors to Quinntonian Dra-Pol, in newspapers and in personal mail to Hindustan, which was copied over by British agents there and sent along to London. The ciphers used were as complex as MI6 could manage, and for an intelligence agency that had successfully cracked Nazi Germany's codes and effectively mastered the use of the one-time pad, such ciphers were fairly complex. Codes were generated anew each week by MI6's head office, and transmitted through the personal mail from Hindustan and the occasional trader out of Sujava. Britain's intelligence network was perhaps the most decentralized of the capitalist states, certainly moreso than the typically clumsy-- but effective-- CIA.

Straits of Japan

HMS Triumph was at home here. The narrow but deep channel between friendly Japan and hostile Dra-Pol was a nuclear submarine's natural habitat, and the superb British design crept along at near-crush depth. An older Hound class would have difficulty finding her, emissions masked by several thermal layers and further muffled by her anechoic coating. She ran with her towed hydrophone array spooled out, logging the passage of merchant ships, the occasional enemy submarine, and even a pair of old Dra-Poel frigates. Her position in one of the many convergence zones of the Straits of Japan let her sonarmen listen to the re-echoed traces of activity far to the north and south. Acoustic signatures bounced off of rock fairly effectively, and in a narrow channel the passive set could read engine sounds, geological activity and even marine life from as far north as Sapporo and as far south as Lyong.

The current topic of interest, though, was a contact designated Master-45 by NATO parlance, a relic from Britain's days as the alliance's first line of defence in the North Sea. With membership in the reformed NATO still pending-- Washington was dragging its heels despite Port Royal's staunch support-- the Royal Navy's usage of the Master system of designating submarine contacts was irregular, to say the least.

Master-45 behaved for all intents and purposes like a Hound SSK with minor engine trouble, probably a loose fitting of some sort that the Dra-Poel crew had yet to fix. Whatever it was, it rattled with every revolution of the submarine's screw shaft, not so loud as to give its position away to a surface ship or passing submarine, but Triumph's mission was to detect just that sort of noise. The fleet for which Triumph was running interception for was still several days away, but in the mind of the submarine's commander it was about time to begin clearing the area.

There was, of course, a chance that the Hound was in Soviet or Sujavan service, but it was ridiculously far afield for a Soviet warship, and all of the Sujavan boats were accounted for. Lyong didn't use the Hound, her submarines were both more advanced and probably not deployed in what passed for Dra-Poel territorial waters. The commander's staff gave a ninety-percent certainty to its Dra-Poel affiliation, and the commander of HMS Triumph hoped they were right. His mission was essentially to clear the Straits of Japan for the fleet behind him, and without the VLF wire to connect him to base, he was authorized to act on his own initiative.

"Spool up the Type 2046," the commander said, referring to the towed hydrophone array. "Officer of the Deck, make your depth two hundred metres. Load and flood tubes one through four with Spearfish torpedoes, but do not open the outer doors. Sonar, acquire firing solution: Master-45." The officer of the deck gave him just the barest glance before repeating his orders.

"Spool up the Type 2046, make my depth two hundred metres aye. Load and flood tubes one through four but do not open the outer doors aye." The commander nodded once, tersely. The callback of orders was time consuming, but it ensured that the OOD had them right before passing them on to other officers. It wouldn't do, for example, to have ordered all five torpedo tubes loaded, only to discover that only one was when it came to a fight. The commander bit down on a grin that would have confused his officers, and held onto the conn's hand rail while the deck pitched slightly beneath his feet. He felt the barest of vibrations as the pumpjets pushed Triumph to the slightly higher depth of 200 metres, putting her on roughly the same 'level' as the Hound. Still, the nuclear boat was significantly quieter than its adversary, not least because its engines sacrificed speed-- though they could still outrun just about anything short of an Anunaki or Los Angeles class-- for silence.

"Master-45 acquired, sir." The fire control officer looked calm, and the commander would expect nothing less. Even though they were about to start a war between the United Kingdom and the Choson People's Republic, they couldn't be seen to get visibly excited. This was their job. Never mind that part of that job was killing people, they'd do it calmly and professionally.

"Thank you. Open the outer doors, tubes one and two, match bearings and shoot, tubes one and two." The commander intoned his orders without inflection, and was pleased to hear them repeated back in the same manner. Just a job. He felt more than heard the doors sliding open on their greased and Tefloned tracks.

"Tubes one and two fired electrically. Torpedoes one and two running hot, straight and normal." The commander waited, resisting the urge to cut his guide wires and dive for crush-depth. He'd just announced his submarine's presence to anything that might be lurking silently nearby, but sonar would have almost certainly picked it up. Unless, of course, there was another Hound running entirely on battery, and even then it was highly unlikely that he would have missed it. He'd been running patrols for almost a day in the area, and a Hound would have had to cycle its diesels and refresh its air supply long before that. No, the commander reflected, his submarine and Master-45 were alone out here, and there was very little that the CPRD could do to find him until they dispatched more of their fleet to his position.

"Torpedoes one and two have gone active." The commander sighed. He was off the hook. His two spearfish, the best torpedoes in the world by almost any estimation, were now on their own. His submarine had given them tracking data, position information, everything. Now they would have to find Master-45 without help.

"Close the outer doors. OOD, make your depth 250 metres and your speed three knots." He waited, then. Either his two fish would find and kill the Hound, or they wouldn't. He was almost certain that they would.

Indian agents in Dra-pol would have an even tougher time than the British if it came to going undetected, as the nation's racial homogeneity and historic introspection resulted in an extremely limited pool of potential spies for foreign nations. The British intelligence services were effective in Ireland owing to the availability of native speakers, but MI6 had never been so impressive as MI5, and would probably one day see typical blunders exposed over the CPRD. For now the sharing of intelligence with the INU, littered with Igovian-sympathisers, ex-pats, friends and relatives, and Indian nationalists, saw GSIC's plainly visible operatives in Dra-pol making regular visits to KCP offices to hand over the latest information to have passed through Hindustan.

As an aside, one piece of information that British intelligence agencies might want to discern in the event of Anglo-Indian hostilities kicking-off over Dra-pol is the face of a sprinting Trafalgar Class boat's six-knot advantage over a Soviet Anunkai, possibly the world's slowest and quietest fleet submarine.

Presently the Supreme War Soviet is doing what it can to foster conflict between Da'Khiem and NATO, aiming to make the Korean peninsula a hot-spot for the proxy wars that Sopworth and Adiatorix wish to fight against the capitalists. Despite a deep and well-founded distrust for the Drapoel state, ideological disagreements between the general populations, and an assumption on the part of the SWS's movers and shakers that the defeat of the capitalists will follow with a conflict between Igovian and other socialist methodologies, Soviet WIGs and aircraft are none the less gradually diverted from their African tasks to the job of supplying the Unified People's Army with munitions and advice (the latter of which nobody really expects them to take). Golkonda-friendly L'Angelot Maudit AMRAAMs, on the other hand, seem far more likely to be accepted.

Some of GSIC's double agents, members of the large Indian diaspora in the UK, make efforts to convince the British of Drapoel co-operation against British satellites and other interests without actually handing over any genuine proof. Likewise faulty intelligence on Soviet weapons used by the UPA is made available in an effort to convince London that export-model equipment given to Da'Khiem is more vulnerable than is actually the case, hoping to play on stereotypes about inferior Communist workmanship and propagandistic over-hyping of Soviet technology and as such goad the British into trying to achieve too much. Suddenly Hotan battletanks have substandard experimental ceramic armour and their laser self defence weapons only work on paper, cheap Golkonda jets have retro-80s sensors, Drapoel Hounds are all '60s vintage, and Red Sky ABM/SAM systems shoot down target drones a lot more easily than they intercept cruise missiles and strike aircraft.

[/horribly clumsy new-years-build-up post]

Minister of Defence Kim Jang-Soo had worked it all out; it would be the largest joint military operation in Korea’s peacetime history. He had already talked to his counterparts in both Japan and Quinntonia, and they were moving their troops into place as he finished his report, the Japanese troops would be here, two entire Army Groups –the 9th and 10th- would start to move across into Korea, and they would meet the ex-pat Nepalese fighters and a large amount of Korean troops as well. This was to be an “extended” exercise, and so work was feverishly underway to ready the vast amount of provisions that they would need, and much planning between the many Generals involved was happening in order to coordinate such a massive set of war games and manoeuvres. Of course, the Quinntonians would also be arriving from Guam, representing 5 more divisions of marines and 2 divisions of elite airborne troops arriving to participate in the exercise. It was massive in its scope and would progress back and forth over the entire nation. Their were still invitations out for several other nations to participate, it was expected that some 20,000 Canadians would be involved, and perhaps even some small amount of Germans and Australians, who knows?

He also quietly called up another 10% of his nations’ reserves to “participate in the upcoming exercise.” The troops would be arriving within days of this, the public announcement, but their full strength would take weeks to assemble. Every nation involved held no illusions. This was training, at least at this stage, but it was training with an extremely important purpose. They were preparing to defend the ROK from what was shaping up to be the next and perhaps last conflict with Dra-pol.

With this in mind, the military of ROK was being placed on fullest alert, with their Quinntonian and Nepalese counterparts in country doing the same. The Quinntonian in Quinntonian Dra-pol were doing much the same, with countermeasures already underway for the detected tunnelling activity that was occurring again.
In Quinntonia, a massive transport fleet had been assembled and was already shuttling troops on boar in order to more than replace the troops that were leaving Guam, as well as move several divisions of Marines into Japan.
But all in all, everyone was just scared. Dra-pol was coming. And everyone else was terrified.

WWJD
Amen.

Japan was returning to Korea?

It was a wise move on paper, perhaps... that archipelagic state certainly had military capacity which might be useful. But Japanese troops... Japanese IMPERIAL troops, no less, with an ultranationalist party heard loud in the Diet... were more than just numbered brigades and divisions. The Choson People's Republic had been born from the struggle against the first coming of Nippon, and it had not been alone: the scars still ran deep across Asia, from the Korean peninsula south to Papua and westward to India.

No, the value of Japanese boots on the ground might be of use to their allies, but their value as symbols fell squarely into the hands of their opponents.

It was well understood by everyone in the Korean government what the invitation of Japanese troops to the Asian mainland meant in terms of public perception, but aside from a few demonstrations that would have to be endured at home, the fear that gripped the nation was so great that help was going to be gratefully accepted from wherever it would come. Fortunately, the people that were expected to react the most harshly against the move were the ones from which no help was expected from at all, Dra-pol and Spyr. Korea was certain that China would find their populace unpleased, and in order to placate the Chinese government, it was offered that the Japanese would be asked not to participate, if China offered to take their place in the military action.
OOC-How are we going to proceed in regards to China?

WWJD
Amen.

Hamgyŏng-pukto, Dra-pol

Christianity had been a problem infesting the Choson People's Republic for more than a decade, and the incorporation of more than fifteen million southerners back into the legitimate communist state had done nothing to abate the progress of the blight.

Most northerners, those of original descent, it seemed, were immune. Educated secularists, scientific humanists, all fully aware of the unhappy symptoms imported on the cross from which hung the devil's atomic works as wrought on P'yŏngyang and Kosŏng. Those likely to turn on their comrades, those weak of spirit or corrupt of morals had, largely, gone to Hamhŭng & Hŭngnam or to Pusan, or else had been found out.

But many southerners had relocated to make best use of land and infrastructure according to the Central Directorature's plan. These populations were relatively fertile ground for the plague, but the state well knew it, watched them more closely, and located them accordingly.

New Socialist Village 31-17, outside Ch'ŏngjin

When "soldiers" entered a secret Church and asked Christians to identify themselves, a surprised comrade Kwak Do-Ik erred on the side of caution and followed with those who denied it. On being told to depart after the shootings the Banat informer went beyond mere suspicion and chose to wait not far outside. That he would be allowed to leave after being found in an illegal congregation and was not even questioned simply seemed un-Drapoel. Needless to say, this was the end for the particular congregation.

When the worshippers, "blood" stained and "soldier" alike, left, they met with the stern faces of a Hong Juk special detachment, and were promptly marched off to Facility 12, otherwise known as Osong Concentration Camp.

On arrival they might recognise the rest of the congregation, those who had renounced their faith, less one.

This was not always the way. In another similar event, the informer chose to identify herself as Christian and stayed with the group for longer. She was surprised to be shot with paint, but in time she might just learn more. Even in her case, though, those who renounced their faith and agreed never to be seen again were as good as their word! Some ended up in Onsong, others Kwan-li-so 22, Hoeryong Education Facility. Being as these people were not supposed to be seen again by half the congregation at least -the "soldiers"- their disappearances may fall short of tipping-off the Christians to the presence in their midst of an informer. If people thought that giving-up subversive activities or claiming to renounce counter-revolutionary ideas would wipe their slate clean then they had not lived long enough in the Choson People's Republic.

Still, not every Christian group was infested with loyalists. Some continued their activities unabated at least until they became known to the aforementioned woman. Others though would find that northern children are often their most deadly enemy. Drapoel children are routinely used by the Banat, even more so than are women. The innocence of a child makes it both a stealthy agent of destruction and one that is easily manipulated.

Even those not directly contacted by the Banat often deliver important leads. Every village in Dra-pol has an office containing a deposit box at which citizens can drop-off anonymous tips, and school children are encouraged to inform even on their own parents, some failing to realise the significance of such an act. Strange practices at home, odd timekeeping, unexplained absences, unusual sounds or large gatherings all are cause for a child to talk to teacher -teacher will have the answers!- or, in some cases of certainty or shyness, to deposit a note at the local security office.

Defying the Central Directorature, while not absolutely impossible, is incredibly difficult and terrifingly dangerous.

Korea Strait

It was rare for the People's Coast Guard to venture this far south, and the British were right to assume the single Hound alone in the water. Last time any Drapoel were here, they were sinking a Hindustani ship and preparing to meet their end.

Amnokkgang was here to recover Banat operatives from Cheju-do ahead of wider planned operations, but was yet to rendevouz with them. The launch of torpedoes caused the old captain, a veteran of the Quinntonian Aggression, to close his eyes for a lingering moment as he accepted that his fears were realised. They were too late, and the British had already arrived, or, less likely, the Quinntonians were launching a first strike.

Oh well, nothing for it but to try this improbable technology delivered by the Yugoslavians. They'd got it from Muslims, so Sangchwa I Chul heard, and he was less than confident that Muslims knew anything about maritime affairs this side of a dhow, but even if he doubted the technology's ability to save his life, his crew, and his boat, I had to test the Coast Guard's new weapon.

Being as the Amnokkgang was on a long range espionage mission it was not outfitted for hunting of foreign vessels and rather was concerned with defence. As a consequence the response was sufficiently rapid as to give the Hound a chance, and perhaps even stun the British.

With no regard for stealth, given the nature of the situation, the command and acknowledgement Defence Proceedure 4! was yelled back and forth at the top of many lungs. Then even more thunderous eruptions from the deep as fifty-knot launches were undertaken from four of the boat's six forward facing tubes, and shortly, rocket motors ignited driving supercavitating torpedoes above two-hundred knots. Less than 100% certain of Triumph's range despite having an unconfirmed fix on the launch location, Captain I directed two of his weapons against the Spearfish, hoping to destroy them, cut their wires, or at least damage or deflect them, while only two were pointed towards the British boat's suspected position in the hope that evasive action would be taken, causing the cutting of wires.

It was uncertain whether the two half-new Shkval -built in eastern Depkazia, delivered to Yugoslav intelligence prior to former-President Tchokareff's attempt to align with the Holy League, and sent to Dra-pol for operational evaluation- would reach Triumph before running out of steam, though if they did it could be curtains for the British, but, I hoped, they would be even less sure than he, and would have to at least try to evade, giving him some chance to escape.

In any event, he was off, deploying more primitive countermeasures and turning tail, abandoning any idea of recovering the Banat operatives and running his battery to its limit. It took several moments for the Captain to quiet his men, who, on launching their secret weapons, had begun to sing the song of General Hotan (whose name had superceded that of Sulo during the glorious Battle of Da'Khiem and the defeat of the Germans).

On Jangbaek mountains, there are bloodstains.
By Amnok river, there are bloodstains.
Those holy stains throw light over
the bouquet of free Dra-pol today.

Da'Khiem

Uproar. Japanese forces back on Korea. This could not be let go. It represented a chance for revenge if nothing else. Let them send the whole Japanese military if it gives us the opportunity finally to strike back!

Missile bases to a one -save the one badly damaged by terrorism- went to full alert as soon as the Directorature heard of Japan's intentions. Even if they backed down it would at least be a propaganda coup. The Quinntonians and their allies are still imperialists in it with the Japanese, and the Japanese are still cowards when faced with Drapoel steel. If they did not back down, so much the better for blood and allied indignation.

((OOC: I honestly don't remember where the other colonial territories were in Dra-pol, but if anyone remembers Raysian Dra-pol and finds it in conflict with the area I've reported for its replacement, German Dra-pol, er... remember that the Banat is watching you, and it's only through their good graces that you've still fingers with which to type your ridiculous revisionist history!

As for China, it's a problem. Is Xiaguo coming back? If so that means China's in the early stages of another break-up. In the past, Xiaguo flip-flopped more than most in respect of Da'Khiem, selling us defence technology one minute and sending 50,000 soldiers across the Yalu the next. Even if we do have the old fellow back, that only covers parts of the north and leaves Taiwan and the former Sino up in the air. I suppose China maybe deserves its own OOC thread to discuss this, don't you think?

Gurg, in some degree I've copied RL military facilities. Some that ceased to operate in reality still exist in AMW. Pyongyang is our airforce's home and has major command and control facilities, Hotanang is rising east of Da'Khiem, itself in the central mountains NE of Pyongyang and west of Hamhung-Hungnam and is increasingly industrious and a showcase city. The old DMZ still has major fall-back defences running on skeleton crews, and the new border dissecting Andong in the east, sweeping up through the central highlands to end just south of Suwon has significant new ones slightly less strong. HARTS -hardened artillery sites- are at those lines and facing Quinntonia's Peace Line defences around Hamhung-Hungnam. We've dozens of missile sites, many based on RL ones, and we've six superguns scattered around, all built into hillsides and mountains. A lot of basic intelligence is available to Quinntonia at least, based on their experience. They can at least tell you that what you see from the air or space is just a fraction of what's sunk below the earth. Dra-pol is the world's most tunneled nation, and most defence factories are at least partially under-ground. Even airbases are now decentralised, with dozens of short -often dirt- strips sometimes partially hidden in hills, and likewise coastal facilities are sunk into cliff faces and concrete bunkers.))

OOC: Well, I don't really plan on getting sucked into a ground war, but rather just launching some attacks to show the UK's displeasure and then calling it a day and returning, if you will, to the cease-fire from before. Still, good to know. Honestly, I don't want to make Dra-Pol a major combat zone for the British, they've had their fill of expensive, draining wars of attrition after WWI (which as I'm sure you can attest, is still something talked about in history classes with horror) and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam.

Yeesh, Shkvals. I'm beginning to sense that Dra-Pol has a taste for wunderwaffen, am I right? I'll respond IC within the next couple of hours, right now I'm too tired. Insomnia is not my friend.

((OOC: You're not wrong. Modern technology has enthralled many because we were totally isolated until at least the 1980s and thought that the piston engine was pretty nifty until then.

We've a catamaran frigate, but it doesn't work quite so well as we hoped. We've super guns capable of shooting-down satellites, but that wasn't enough so we built one to launch satellites, but we can only afford to maintain it safely because Sithin and others pay us to launch theirs. We've tunneling equipment to put the Chunnel to shame, but Quinntonia now listens for it along the Peace Line. We tried to build an aircraft carrier despite a lack of escorts but ran out of money and sold its hulk to the Soviets. We pioneered the use of new frequency-hopping radios, because we have nobody able to build supercomputers or microprocessors that might help us create or crack modern codes. We've got the thickest AAA grid on earth because we can't afford to keep our fighters flying, the largest special forces on earth because we've nothing to do but train people in martial arts and torture techniques that come free, the largest coast guard on earth because we failed to produce a bluewater capacity, the highest per-capita standing military ratio on earth because we're outnumbered, the most tunneled and fortified nation in history because we keep getting bombed, and perhaps after Armand the most intense discipline and indoctrination in the world because the place is crawling with spies and terrorists. And it's all an attempt to distract from the T-62 knock-offs, AK-clones, evolved Shinden fighters, and Tashio machineguns.

Oh, if anyone figures out where we got them, they'll probably guess that our Shkval arsenal is limited. Yugoslavia got some and part of the technology needed to replicate it from Depkazia, which inherited the only production plants in the USSR and probably set-back the Tsarists a long way in doing so, but then Belgrade and Samarkand fell out so we don't know when we might get more. We'll try to copy it, of course, but who's to say how well that'll go.

That dragged on a bit, I'm going to shrink it for appearances sake!))

HMS Triumph

"Supercavitation! Range is 8,000 metres! Six fish... their rockets have gone active!" Triumph's sonar officer spooled off his report with deadly calm. "Range is now 7,500 metres. Courses appear to be diverging. Two are making for us, the others... my best guess is our torpedoes, sir." The Triumph's commander nodded. In the seconds since launch, he was balancing ranges of the Spearfish, the supercavitating Shkval torpedo, and the distance to target.

The Hound was 8,000 metres away, well within range of his Spearfish torpedoes. They had already gone active, their tracking information fed to them by the Triumph's fire control computers. If they survived the attack by supercavitating torpedoes-- who knew that the Dra-Poel had access to them?-- they would almost certainly achieve a kill. Meanwhile, it was time for his boat to do some running of its own.

"Cavitate. OOD, make your depth 250 metres and your course fifteen degrees west. Helm, give me turns for sixteen knots." The orders were repeated back, and the commander held on again as his boat pitched noticeably. The dive bell was ringing, warning his crew to grab hold of something near to their duty stations. It was a prudent concern; Triumph's deck was now a flat, sharp downward slope that listed slightly to the side. Any unsecured items, of which there should be almost none, were presently sliding across the decking as the people around them clung awkwardly to their boat.

"Range to torpedoes is forty-five hundred metres," the sonar officer called out. "Pattern suggests late-model Shkvals, likely VA-111 Mk. 2s." The commander winced. Though less accurate than the more traditional Spearfish, the VA-111 Mk. 2 had both the range and the guidance to-- theoretically-- hit Triumph. But the Royal Navy submarine was fairly quiet even at sixteen knots, and the Shkvals made noise like nothing else in the sea. There was nothing stealthy about supercavitation, and as a result the big, loud undersea rockets were not best suited to attacking targets at the edge of their range. Triumph was opening that range fast, fleeing at sixteen knots on a diverging course that would both open the distance between itself and the torpedoes, and keep Master-45 in detection range. Of course, at the speed with which VA-111s closed, there was no outrunning them. You could, however, take advantage of their ridiculously high speed in avoiding them.

"OOD, sound manoeuvre warning throughout the ship." Used rarely, the manoeuvre warning was used to inform the crew of emergency manoeuvres that could cause significant stress on both boat and crew.

"Range is two thousand metres," the sonar officer said, ignoring the sudden bell that clanged in response to his commander's order. "One-eight-five. One-six-zero." He continued to count off the range as the enemy torpedoes closed. At 'zero-eight-zero', the commander turned to his OOD.

"90 degrees starboard, flank speed." The order was repeated back, and suddenly the commander found himself yanked sideways as his boat used all of her formidable engine power and dive plane control to wrench herself to a course directly perpendicular to the one she had been on. Somewhere, something went 'plink', a minor component giving in to the massive strain on the submarine's frame. Even so, there was no way that an object moving at 250 km/s could make the same turn before it ran out of fuel, and the commander smiled with the thought that his boat and his crew-- as well as he himself-- were safe.

The Spearfish torpedoes were not terribly sophisticated instruments in theory. They were a standard plastic explosive wedged into a tube with a guidance computer and a pump jet. On the other hand, they were also the most reliable torpedoes in the world, edging out the Mk.48 ADCAP for that distinction in icebound range and targeting tests that effectively convinced everyone involved that the Royal Navy had something to boast about. Using the same guidance principles as their more famous Quinntonian cousin, the Spearfish were guided by their launching ship until terminal phase, at which time they began to fire off pings from their miniaturized active sonar suites.
It was just that which torpedoes one and two were occupied with when Master-45 launched its barrage of Shkvals.

A torpedo is a small, fast moving target, but it is not the most evasive of one either. Spearfishes, designed to hit and sink enemy units most effectively, performed no particular evasive manoeuvres. They could, but the Triumph's tactical officer didn't really expect anyone to fire torpedoes at his torpedoes, and so had set them a basic attack pattern that involved little more than running straight into the target.

On the flip side, it was doubtful that the hurried torpedomen of the Amnokkgang had time to give their four Shkvals much of a contact to go off of, and the supercavitating torpedoes were not known for their feats of manoeuvrability either. Torpedo One, leading its fellow by the barest of margins, was caught by two Shkvals that exploded nigh-simultaneously, crushing it in the undersea explosions that their rocket motors and warheads caused. Torpedo two was luckier, shrugging off the explosion with only minimal damage and minor course corrections, and then searching for the rather loud Hound as it attempted to escape. The Shkvals tracking it came close enough to have caused a kill if either had detonated, but their own engine noise made it difficult for them to re-acquire targets after an undersea explosion, and they eventually drifted to a halt and sank unexploded. If ever a commercial submersible ventured into this area of the Straits of Japan, it would run the unintentional risk of setting off a pair of large, silent torpedoes that sat placidly at the bottom of the sea.

Torpedo Two found its target again nearly half a minute later, and its engine spun up for the last few hundred metres of its range. Some power had been spent circling, as Spearfish did automatically when they lost their target, but nearly 3,000 metres remained in available fuel-range. Its pump-jets pushed the torpedo to its maximum velocity, seeking the large acoustic signature of a submarine and its assorted countermeasures. With no way to detect the enemy units besides its own active and passive sonar, the Spearfish was given a number of targets to choose.

OOC: I'll let you decide if your boat sinks or not! Uh, I sort of guessed at the VA-111 Mk.2's capabilities based off of reading Wiki and a few other sites. I have no idea how accurate the thing is, but it is traveling at tremendous speed inside a bubble of air. I can't imagine that it's greatly adept at acquiring targets. I could be wrong, though, so if you have better information please feel free to call me on it.

Amnokkgang's surprise weapons had made something over 350km/h by the time they met their assorted ends, but having launched -in the case of those chasing the enemy submarine- against a target at the extent of their range, their limited agility proved something of a let-down. If he survived, Sangchwa I Chul would have to admit that his friend aboard Rimjin'gang was probably right about the proper setting for these odd Shkval weapons, especially at extreme range. Oh well, it means that we can surprise them again next time, by using the same weapons in a different manner... if anyone ever hears about this.

It was, unfortunately, true at this stage that the confusingly-named I was unaware, almost negligently, of the slight fault in his running gear that made this potential hole-in-the-sea Hound the creaky old lady that she was. On electric motors, Hounds were really quite impressively quiet for such elderly boats, provided that they were kept in good order. Though standards in the Drapoel military had climbed significantly in the last two or three years, it was now becoming evident that improvements hadn't entirely caught up with the demands of weary equipment stockpiles.

The last running Spearfish, as it circled, ignored the first countermeasure launched from Amnokkgang's port flank, but latched on to a signature, somewhat ironically, when I -suddenly notified of the faint noise given off by a newly detected imperfection in the propulsion set-up- launched more noise-makers. One of these was attacked by the Spearfish within moments of its deployment, and the shockwave that rippled through Amnokkgang made the prior glitch seem insignificant once again. Fixtures fell from their mounts, circuits disconnected, and valves blew in several compartments. For a moment, the whole boat was dark.

When emergency power kicked in, the Captain, dismissing a few minor injury reports, cursed -quite mildly- as he was told of a critical problem with the ballast. Air had been lost, and valves weren't responding. The boat was dead in the water, and slowly, slowly descending. Before long she would be on the bottom.

Fortunately (in the short run at least), the waters of the Korea Strait were not deep enough to test even a Hound's crush depth, provided that it's structure wasn't seriously compromised by... well, the near-miss detonation of an enemy torpedo. Still, Amnokkgang was likely to come to rest on the seabed at deeper than ninety metres, some distance from home waters.

On Cheju-do, a group of Drapoel special forces reached the conclusion that something unpleasant had happened, and made first use of the satellite phone they'd been newly issued. Presently the Unified People's Army would realise that Amnokkgang was in trouble.

Okishima, Lyong

Okishima island, sitting where the waters of the Revolutionary Sea flowed into the Japan Strait, was likely known to NATO-SEATO planners, its shore-launched anti-ship missiles having range enough to threaten vessels passing through the narrow channels which gave Quinntonian ships access to the Sea and to their protectorate at Hamhung, while its ASW aircraft could mount patrols for hostile submarines attempting to sneak up the Strait or north to target the port at Gochu. In recent days, its garrison had been reinforced in case of enemy invasion, though there was still uncertainty as to whether such a danger would come.

Okishima was also home to something more characteristic of the information-thirsty Lyongese than missiles and troops: Northern Theatre Monitoring Station, where data from the SRA’s undersea listening posts is gathered and analyzed. The Party's primary concerns lay in the littoral waters of the Revolutionary Sea and Japan Strait, a difficult environment to monitor but one which they had come to know through decades of paranoia over Quinntonian assets operating out of Hungnam. The waters of the Korea Strait and East China Sea, through which sailed Strainist merchant vessels bound for Sujava, were also subject to close observation, deeper waters providing a somewhat easier environment for the task, and it was likely that there was some impression that someone had sent a new submarine into the Strait, even if its exact location, or who was in command, was uncertain. The echoes of supercavitation and underwater explosions would certainly set claxons blaring and technicians scrambling to try and identify exactly what was going on.

Alerted by a sound within the human range, computer systems already set about their work. Confirming a Shkval was a simple matter... theirs was a noise which came through both clear and distinct. That meant someone with Russian links, but given the corruption and crime after collapse of the USSR the information didnt narrow the field. Most likely, the Tsar might have sent his sharks on the prowl, or it might be a Chinese boat inherited from Xiaguo... confirming that the CPRD has access to such weapons will have to wait until the data filters up to those with access to other sources of intelligence. Drapoel involvement in the area, though, was far more certain: the Strainists recognized a Hound when they heard one.

There is much cursing of the Shkvals, regardless of their source: such noise makes picking out other sounds much more difficult, a problem made worse by the fact that the sources are British... years of experience have given the Lyongese a potent library for identifying vessels and ordnance used by Pacific and Indian Ocean powers, but their monitoring has not pushed into the Atlantic and so automated identification is not so easily accomplished. After a few hours, the process of elimination will leave the UK as the only power likely to have moved an unfamiliar object into the theatre, and that conclusion will see reviews of earlier unusual signals in an attempt to identify patterns and determine course. The Triumph has certainly earned itself designation as a target-of-interest, and could expect significant attention should it be caught on hydrophone again.

The Amnokkgang was of equal interest, though its survival would not become cleared until the waters calmed and the sounds of stressed metal or a panicked crew began to echo out. Posessed of a submarine rescue unit in case its own submersibles ever ran into trouble, the SRA would likely be more capable of retrieving the crew than the CPRD, but given the attention such would draw, the Choson might well have reson to keep silent and seek other means.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2239/strainistsignaturelb6.jpg (http://z7.invisionfree.com/A_Modern_World/index.php?showtopic=12&view=findpost&p=13773433)

Da'Khiem

Faced with the buildup of Soviet troops along the borders of its Indian teritory, diplomats from the Armandian Combine begins to apply pressure to their ostensible allies in the CPRD, to issue public condemnation of the Commonwealth for its warmongering actions. It may be a difficult choice for the Drapoel, a choice between free-flowing petroleum or Red Sky air defence missiles, Vympels or L'Angelot Maudit.
The Combine is equally firm with the Strainists, through whose ports Soviet goods must come if they are to avoid the predatory British who have just made their presence known in the Strait of Korea. In times past, the Lyongese have proven diffficult to shake in their support for Dra-pol, but they are not so used to deprivation as the Choson, and their need for oil is hardly insignificant in these troubled times.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6903/combinesignatureur5.jpg (http://z7.invisionfree.com/A_Modern_World/index.php?showtopic=65&view=findpost&p=15977959)

It might seem hard for conflict between Britain and Dra-pol to be made to sound important in Samarkand, but sound important it just might. Eventually.

If British and Spyrian intelligence knew that Shkval had been deployed, it wouldn't take long for them to think of the Caliphate. The torpedoes, after all, are manufactured in Bishkek, northeastern Depkazia.

For now the Caliphate knew nothing of the confrontation in the Korea Strait, at least, and so had thus far failed to do anything at all about it. But Chingiz was heading for the high seas himself, pushing his borders on towards Gwadar, and it wouldn't be long before the Strainist world became suddenly part of his universe as he looked to Muslim interests over-seas.

Already, in fact, Caliphal envoys were acting on orders to sound-out Sithin over its F-94 fighter technology and its widely believed-in ability to confront Russian forces on the battlefield using derivatives of Russian technology. Despite having briefly voiced vague opposition to the Sujavan invasion of Indonesia and sending soldiers to fight the Combine-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Samarkand still intends to eventually confront Moscow and expects to do it with MiG and Sukhoi aircraft built in the dying days of the USSR. Presently military chiefs fear that the Russians will be able to render Flanker radars useless and rob the Air Force of its best weapon.

Dra-pol, meanwhile, is of interest as a buyer -even if through Yugoslavian middle-men- of Depkazi military technology and perhaps a future development partner in rocketry and nuclear power and weaponry, and may yet be somehow significant, Chingiz feels, in the development of Xiaguo and his plans in China.

Having plans to conquer half of it, the Caliph has suddenly come to feel that the world is really an awfully small place in which to be confined.

Straits of Japan

HMS Triumph heard the sound of exploding torpedoes, and there was a tense quiet as the sonarmen listened for the telltale sounds of a hull breaking open. When none came after a few moments, the sonarman shook his head and whispered,

"Torpedo 2 appears to have been intercepted by countermeasures. Possible damage to target, no engine noises." A few of his mates in the sonar room let out an audible sigh, but he motioned for quiet with his right hand. "Wait... I've got an impact sound. Tracing..." he bent over his instruments again. "Target has hit bottom, but I'm not detecting any hull leakage on a scale that would suggest immanent breakup. They're dead in the water."

The commander nodded, sparing a moment's sympathy for the Hound's doubtless terrified and uncomfortable crew. What little intelligence was to be had on the Dra-Poel suggested that they had rescue equipment up to the task, so the commander felt little urge to stay in the area.

"Helm, make your course fifteen degrees North-northeast, seven knots. OOD, secure from general quarters and pipe the hands to dinner. Let's put some distance between us and the combat zone, then we'll come to communications depth and unspool the VLF buoy. OOD, secure the watch. You have the conn."

"I have the conn, aye." The commander, a man with a deeply lined face who had spent his life in the Royal Navy's submarines, ducked with practised ease beneath the piping and wiring that obstructed his exit path from the conn. His name was Stephen Crane, he was the son of a banker and the proud father of a teenaged girl and a younger boy. He wondered what they were doing now, and spared a glance at his watch. A bit of mental math gave him the time in Colchester, nine in the morning. They would be in school, his daughter probably puzzling her way through calculus. If he was home, he'd be able to help her.

But he wasn't at home, he was inside a tube of metal in the Straits of Japan. The Triumph was, in a sense, his second wife. His crew were their children. It wasn't an uncommon relationship for a captain to have with his submarine, but it made him uncomfortable when he thought of his real wife at home, scouring the news reports for word of a Trafalgar class submarine. Mae was in her early forties, still beautiful and possessed of a head of red hair that had made her stand out the day they'd met at university. Crane ran his hand along the rail, tracing the outlines of his Triumph. Two lives, one lived in the bright sunlight and the love of a beautiful woman, the other in the narrow halls of his submarine. Two lives, incompatible and yet connected. Crane would have long retired from the navy, but for his conviction that someone had to be there at sea, protecting Britain in an unfriendly world. If that had to be him, he was glad to do it.

He lay down in his bunk and closed his eyes, tossing his cap to the floor. He would take a few minutes rest, just something to take the edge off. Submarine hunting was a tense, terrifying business, and he needed a moment to collect himself before...

Crane was asleep three minutes later.

Entrance of the Straits of Japan

Strainist ELINT platforms would no doubt detect the HMS Adamantine, easily one of the largest things in the ocean at a given moment. It was surrounded by a number of smaller escorting frigates and destroyers, and trailed by a pair of rather less impressive supply ships. Together, this concentration formed the Coral Sea Station, a unit nominally based in Wellington but currently on a rather more adventurous mission to probe Dra-Pol's defences. With the cooling of belligerence in the last few weeks, Admiral Baynes was no longer empowered to launch airstrikes against the Dra-Poel, and in truth she had no particular interest in doing so. Her mission was, for the moment, confined to flying a few airspace-intruding missions and generally being seen. In that sense, it was an ideal shakedown for the long laid-up Adamantine and its unpractised squadron.

The Combat Air Patrol was landing, she noted. A pair of Harriers touched down gracefully, their places taken aloft by another pair. No.843 Naval Air Squadron was tasked with CAP duty this week, and its pilots were enjoying the experience of launching off a STOBAR carrier, so different from the Royal Navy's usual design ethic that demanded STOVL operations. Baynes rather preferred the latter, which allowed for a more diverse range of operations by her aircraft. The other ships of the Adamantine class had been so built, and Quenfis in the Mediterranean had no problems fielding a typical Royal Navy air group. But Adamantine herself was an old, old ship and her design showed it. The hull, in theory the same design as that of the others in her class, had been stripped of its minimal armour long ago. It lacked many of the modern systems of the new carriers, relying upon somewhat suspect Phalanx systems that were due for replacement with Goalkeepers. That there had been no time during the recommissioning to do the requisite updates was no comfort to Admiral Baynes, upon whose shoulders fell the somewhat frightening task of prodding the hermit kingdom with a stick.

"Captain," she said evenly. "Render honours port as we pass Lyong, if you would be so kind. And remind Major Syfret to respect Strainist airspace, we don't really need an incident this early in our cruise." The captain, a man recently transferred from being the chief of staff for a destroyer squadron, saluted and passed the word. At least he was efficient.

From Wonsan the People's Coast Guard belatedly launches a rescue attempt as Amnokkgang lies stricken on the seabed. The Kowan sprints out at an unimpressive twelve knots, 160 hands jammed aboard the two thousand tonne-plus catamaran determined to find their comrades despite not knowing their precise co-ordinates.

Kowan flies the Choson flag and is armed, but only with six 14.5mm heavy machinegun dual-mounts, and she is widely known to be the force's only submarine-capable rescue vessel. Ultimately it appears that the Coast Guard has elected to deploy her without more heavily armed escorts in hopes that she will not be attacked. If she is, the KCP will have already prepared reams of propaganda material and, indeed, a crude documentary film on the Kowan has been partially shot in the hours before her departure, featuring extensive footage of the smiling crew, an awful lot of whom are young women.

An aside

As Kowan sails and her captain waits to hear from Da'Khiem on precisely where he ought to be heading, which may be a problem as the Central Directorature doesn't want to admit that nobody knows for sure, it is perhaps worth looking at available information to learn more about the ever mysterious Choson People's Republic.

KCP Secretary Kim Hyun-ki, in a closed session of the politburo, the nature of which is yet to be revealed to the wider world, has promised the father of all wars to finally signal the decline of the United States as a true global superpower. Of other nations, only the People's Republic of Spyr has yet been directly informed of the immediacy of Da'Khiem's plans against Quinntonian Dra-pol, and they only very recently, while Hotan's grand deception still has half the world unable to tell for sure if the CPRD is a spent force or once again up to something.

Hotan is now unquestionably Dra-pol's most popular leader in recorded history. He is the chosen successor to the man who ended Sulo's cruel reign, he is a war hero, the almost inhuman superhero survivor of a Christian terrorist assassination attempt, a traditionalist who lives simply as his people, and the leader under whose watch Seoul has been returned to the Choson people. More importantly he presides over relative good times for the economy, buoyed by extensive Armandian fuel aid and the gradual introduction of reforms based on Strainist developmental experience. The little things also help: beer is now brewed in Dra-pol for the first time, served as a soft drink despite its above-average strength. Wang Kuo-fang was once a sporting hero for his brief contribution to the famous 1966 World Cup run that saw Dra-pol's amateurs obliterate Australia and defeat the storied Italian defence, and so promotes football especially in the south as a means of entertaining the younger generations there, accustomed as they are to luxury. And farmers able to produce a surplus are even allowed to sell it at regular state-run markets, perhaps to earn enough for a couple of soft drinks on the way home...

For nations that may come into conflict with the Drapoel as a result of their struggle to reunify their peninsula and drive from it the forces of occupation, the people of the, 'world's shortest nation' remain, to say the least, enigmatic.

Like many in the Christian west, many Drapoel perceive amongst the community of nations good guys and bad guys, though of course they differ on which governments fall into each category. What may surprise many is the absolute conviction with which Wang Kuo-Fang, better known as Director Hotan, holds these beliefs. The Drapoel take on the notion of yin and yang, or eumyang, as represented in red and blue on the national flag, has been firmly co-opted by Kurosite Socialism and remains culturally important.

Director and Secretary in their speeches, teachers in their classrooms, drill sergeants on the training ground, and state media in print, radio, and television, as well as the all-consuming Mass Games, all refer frequently and graphically to the atrocities of the enemy, which are far from difficult to discover. Though the US and other anti-Choson forces are frequently linked to the injustices of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the African slave trade, colonialism in south and central Asia, the World Wars, and the genocides against the Amerindian and aboriginal Australian nations, more recent and Korea-centric matters take the fore.

Da'Khiem openly admits that, from the beginning, the CPRD has been painted by the west as aggressor, oppressor, and brutaliser, but Drapoel school children all know what the puppets and capitalists in the south did during the First Korean War. How many Quinntonian school children know that tens of thousands of Koreans -including ROK citizens- were executed without even show trials, women and children amongst them, for such sins as being accused of associating with an alleged socialist sympathiser? Certainly everyone remembers the nuclear weapons dropped on the peninsula by the capitalists.

Conversely, Drapoel citizens, unlike many exposed to the free press in the 1st world, watched footage of Unified People's Army soldiers in Indonesia, shaking hands with grateful Christians saved from extremist Islamist repressions by Choson soldiers, with not a US Marine in sight. Notably, residents of the Quinntonian enclave in Korea would have to tolerate jamming and severe media restrictions by the authorities if they were not to see the Drapoel brothers in the UPA guarding Christian congregations against Islamist and other reprisals as the Strainists liberate Indonesia.

So, even today, if was returns to Dra-pol, foreigners will tend to find that many UPA soldiers and militia fighters are at arms not on pain of death or torture, but because, as every school kid knows, after the fall of Seoul, the capitalists started to eat South Korean babies...

Raipur

In a move that must surely be of interest to analysts around the globe, the Drapoel ambassador to Soviet India, on the same day as Kim's secret war speech, issued an official, "statement of concern" with regard to the Commonwealth Guard's build-up of forces on the North Siennan frontier.

Da'Khiem has resisted Combine pressure to present a clear condemnation of the Soviets, suggesting the possibility of a misunderstanding as it is not clear that an impending invasion is implied, but the People's Republic is keen to indicate that it is in no danger of becoming a Soviet puppet such as Namibia or even Bangladesh and to reinforce its Sphere commitment. The language is hardly harsh, but coming so soon after the Calcutta-lead reconciliation between Commonwealth and Choson it is the closest thing to criticism yet ventured by a still needy Da'Khiem against its Indian benefactor.