NationStates Jolt Archive

Abassamara, 1999

"That's it, that's F-ing it, this is the last F-ing time, that's it..."

A scrawny, lanky man seethed in his dark olive skin, and for the umpteenth week running the pressure built under his tight black curls.

He never acted upon his unheard threats to F-ing F- the F-ers the F-up.

Suddenly Gabrice Aiyana lurched out of the queue in which he'd stewed all day... and deposited himself in the next one, which was moving rather more quickly, as it always did.

His heart was pounding like the African sun on the back of his neck. He gnashed and gritted his teeth in an effort to release some of the adrenaline-induced excitement from his tired body. He stood there and waited, a sick old man joining the line behind him while a mother waited ahead with her emaciated infant.

Gabrice's ears almost physically blocked-out chatter around him, which was about the coming of the new millenium... by some other culture's calendar. Not Abassamara's! Two thousand years? What was that in Africa? Barely enough time for coffee.

"No! No! You can't! I am a citizen! I demand my...! Abassamara! I am a young lion! Give me my due! No!..."

_____________________________________________________________

Young Mr.Aiyana woke to the reaching of unfriendly fingers and the lick of night's cold tongue. He groaned. A street urchin pattered away down the dirty alley in which Gabrice lay. "My card!" Robbed. Thrown out of line by the police, beaten and dumped for complaining. Robbed by a child. Another grand day in which a young man wonders why he should avoid the dens of drug and lust... what menace the virus when this is health in a continental corpse picked-over by imperial carrion birds?

Gabrice struggled from the laneway, counting his teeth as he went. Another one chipped. He passed by the door to an old block of flats now given over to narcotics (basement and ground floor) and prostitution (upstairs), then pressed on, a look of disgust on his bruised face after even the briefest consideration of what lay within those walls and upon those dank floors.

"I thought not."

A deep voice from the dark street ahead. He paused, feeling for a shank that had evidently been stolen as well.

"We saw you, earlier. We heard your argument with neighbours, last week. You're a lion, don't you think?"

"You're damn F-ing right I'm a lion! I'm a mother F-ing golden-coated Abas F-ing lion! Who the F- are you?"

Aiyana was terrified, in truth, unlikely to be able to defend himself against a cub, let alone the police or a militia, or even a wandering madman or addict.

"Come. We have much to discuss, young Abas lion. The Pride awaits."

_____________________________________________________________

OOC: Here begins an attempt to reintroduce Drapolesque menace to the world as the CPRD rests. Will I go back to it, some day? I don't know, maybe it depends upon how well this goes and whether or not there arises great interest in the Korean peninsula from other good players.

Abassamara is a proposed AMW replacement for Ethiopia, and shouldn't be considered exactly the same.

Part of the idea behind this story is carried over from something I once wrote in helping a friend to set-up an enemy for Walmington, wayyy back in the day, when WoS blundered about the NS multiverse with a bowler hat and a battleship. It never quite took off.

If my initial claim covers Ethiopia, I should like to clarify now that Abassamara is likely to attempt early conquests. However, since this is a new project (coming partly out of several abortive old ones), I don't feel like I have so much to lose as I had with Dra-pol in its heyday, so if things go belly up and part of Abassamara gets conquered or recaptured, so let it be swings and roundabouts.

I'm going to play with time, a bit, so the new menace has time to build up a little. Obviously other nations can take some retroactive steps to the rise of the new aggressive leadership.

Hey, I think that you would be welcome to make pretty much any kind of claim that you would like in AMW. Of course, there is a Quinntonian RPed relationship with Ethiopia, so that might have to be taken into consideration. As the only indiginous African Christian nation, Quinntonia has always supported it, we may have even fought at the side of King Timothy II when Mussolini attacked and occupied it, and even further back to Timothy I.

You did say something about an RP where they may even hate those that tried to help, and I would understand, but I most likley will be involved in some way, though perhaps not as directly as Dra-pol.

Of course, if you think that doing the Quinntonia was just trying to help and gets backstabbed thing again is tired, we could work something else out.

WWJD
Amen.

OOC: Ah, meddling Quinntonians! Well, when I started out -I've written a few more pieces to follow the story so far- I was thinking more of perhaps Hindustani aid and other such things when I spoke of, well, biting the hand that feeds, as it were. But I suppose that I can incorporate Christianity, or at least some isolated and extreme version of it, into Abassamara. I suspect that it will not be the only religious influence, but could actually be a handy tool, come to think of it. Well, I'll think on it. More later!

Great to have Dra-pol aboard, I'm Austria in AMW and am happily a bishop in France's bid for the world.

Go for it. Thank you, Moorington! You get a colony, ahem, I mean a cookie! *Gives him a browie shaped like Hungary*.

I for one am glad to see Dra-pol in action, as earlier I missed him in his Korean escapades. And I encountered him as an all too capable Britain, but now I think he is back to his element. As far as history goes you very well, depending on how far back you want to go, have bought weapons from the Republic of France.

This looks good. I must say I am glad I asserted some good old fashioned morality in Africa to stand up to the Lion King here.

Go for it. Thank you, Moorington! You get a colony, ahem, I mean a cookie! *Gives him a browie shaped like Hungary*.

I get a cookie! *claps hands in glee*
:)

"...and we wait in line for charity from foreigners who support the separation of the eastern province? Wait, with frail arms stretched out like beggars, for food to be given first to the weak, the sick? Young men, the future of our failing nation, are obliged to wait for left-overs because the King gets a pat on the back from India for tending to invalids and old people... the generation that put us into this mess?"

Aiyana had come a long way in the last few months, and now addressed crowds of thousands where once he thought nobody listening. Increasingly he spoke to the young. He made scapegoats of those he could not use. He soon was deputy to the warlord who met him in that street, a respected figure in The Pride.

He goaded the Pride's Father into confrontation with the King. Violence spread across the land... perhaps that's mute, violence was the norm. What spread was not violence through space but organisation through violence. And the Army was full of Lions disinterested in fighting the Pride, more loyal to Father than King. Police recruitment became suddenly challenging as the force struggled with something approaching civil war...

tag

"Some revolvers. So we can hide them and carry them always. And carbines, not long rifles. That's no F-ing good in the slum. Then some machineguns."

"Yeah, man! Vickers! Rat-at-tat!" "Nah, nah! You've got to move! Lewis, brah!" "Bren is cooler, boy..."

A huge bang, a rifle report. A member of the Pride mangled. Aiyana had got his hands on a Strathdonian ranger's elephant gun, somehow or other.

"I don't care what it's called, just get me something to shut all of you up like that in one go. I'm sick of doing it one at a time..." Aiyana spoke while reloading the huge weapon.

The Father, since he allowed Gabrice to behave as he did, was now most evidently side-lined. Aiyana was becoming political, and the old man knew nothing of politics beyond the slums.

Despite protests from the country's unpopular and ineffectual King, the Pride was now courting disreputable Roycelandian arms merchants on the border, and paying normally with stolen bounty.

Somebody was going to have to account for the mounting disorder, and Aiyana had the ideal fall-guy.

According to foreign sources the two most powerful men in Abassamara were dead, killed within a day of eachother. Father had been arrested by the police after a brutal shoot-out in which over a dozen people were killed. The King ordered his execution, expecting to break the unity of the Pride, which he regarded as a criminal gang with no honour amongst thieves.

The nation exploded, Aiyana announcing that the King had declared war upon the people. The Pride, boosted by public support and general unrest, ambushed the King at a visit to the police station that lost most in the prior day's firefight.

He was shot, beaten, speared, and strung up like Mussolini.

Gabrice declared that the Pride was taking-over from the Royal Army and initiating martial law. He was General Aiyana, and this was the Republic of Abassamara under his military junta.

Three years ago he was thrown out of line while waiting for rice in a sack shipped out of Gujarat or some such place across the Arabian Sea. Now Gabrice Aiyana was General and Father. A new African saviour, General Aiyana condemned Roycelandian imperialism only as harshly as he lashed-out at the weak Derek Igomo, and he even called Mumbai equal to Paris or Port Royal for its meddling in Eritrea... which he promised to recapture for the lions of Abassamara.

Seventy-five million hungry cubs shriek his name. Aiyana for victory!

"General."
"WHAT NOW!?"
The unfortunate Major Jaoura, the General's new aide, was the one to bring him this new piece of news.
"Um, Ethiopia just exploded sir. A new leader has overthrown the government in bloody revolution."
"Ah. Well, start a gentle approach. He may be open to deals. If he turns psychotic, we can back away later."
"Yes sir."

"Mesopotamia has been woefully unaware of developments in Ethiopia, but would welcome the chance to deal with the new regime in Abassamara"

Palais Royale, Paris, Headquarters of la Marechaussee

A great bank of computer monitors, radio monitoring equipment, and satellite feeds, among other numerous intelligence gathering apparati, hummed away operated by the Bureau staff of the Kingdom of France’s avant-garde secret police. The Palais, formerly the mansion of le Duc d’Orelans (who had since been executed and properties proscripted following his treasonous acts), and its staff of intelligent thugs had been keeping a close eye on the Ethiopian situation. After all, Versailles liked Africa just the way it was: a feeble but convenient enemy in ECOWAS, scattered spoutings from left leaning Derek Igomo, and an overall weak continent ripe for the picking. For such reasons la Marechausse kept its eye on the Pride movement. When the Christian leader of Ethiopia was strung up, a King no less!, Agent Bezu, responsible for intelligence coming out of Addis-Ababa, packed up his report and proceeded down labyrinthine corridors to the office of Monsieur le Noir, Directeur of la Marechaussee.

Monsieur le Noir lit up a cigarette, smoking it with one hand and with the other tapping fingers of his magnificent oaken desk. Behind him was the massive coronation portrait of King Louis-Auguste. Agent Bezu finished his report, by which time the cigarette was done, and Monsieur le Noir stood and gazed out a window commanding a fine view of both the Bastille and Tour Eiffel for a moment.

“This is a interesting situation,” he said, more to himself than the lower grade Intel officer seated at the fore of the desk. “It very well could go either way. They seem to be strong and militant, which I like, but their militarism is in Africa, which I don’t. And they killed their King too, I cannot abide that.” He continued to stare out the window, a for a few moments there was silence.

“However, their hate for the communists might very well keep them in stock, but still… His Most Christian Majesty has spent billions in gold and thousands of our youth to restore our African domains, and the absolute last thing we need is a militant Pan-Africanist movement, especially when victory over ECOWAS shall soon be in sight! Send in a team. We need more ‘facts on the ground’ at any rate, and a team in place could be a very handy thing, very handy in light of Ethiopia’s strategic location considering all this Suez business.”

He took a form from Agent Bezu, and stamped “approved” onto it.

Metema, Ethiopia

Taking advantage of the chaos following the King’s recent execution, a team of some nine foreign service agents, blacks trained in France and readied for operations in East Africa should the need arise, slipped over the border from Roik Sudan into Ethiopia. Posing as black Muslim rug merchants, quite common in the area, they soon dispersed into groups of three. Three going to Addis-Ababa, three to Dire Dawa, and three to Mek’ele in the north. They were professionals, trained to assassinate, instigate, and gather information. It was the latter they would engage in now. From most accounts being the first foreign team on the ground, they would also be useful by feeding Versailles information with their satellite phones which Versailles could then pass on to Roycelandia, and Quinntonia as a gift too, since relations between France and the USQ were warming. In time maybe they could even be used as a link to contact the new regime should it prove favorable, or, a worse scenario, warn the realm of the Most Christian King should if the Pride had any agenda to dislodge the righteous European presence from West Africa. Another item on the addendum was searching for any links between Ethiopia and the no beuno regime rising in Mesopotamia. They were also, if possible and circumstances permitting, most eager to plant anti-Hindustani and Begdellen disinformation. Indeed, most likely, that would be their first goal when they were ‘activated’.

The Quinntonian government knew about what was going on there almost as it happened. They had a massive social and missions program there, and most of their African programs, private, non-profit and otherwise had taken advantage of a large Christian population, almost 40% of the population, both putting them to work in order to help support their Christian brothers financially, though for the mot part they were employed o do things that helped themselves, with managing farms an irrigation and construction programs, etc. It was a large program, with a couple hundred thousand locals employed, and they provided food, clothing and capitol loans to the Ethiopian people, regardless of faith background. There were also several thousand Quinntonians in the country at any given time, and there was a large and active Ethiopian community living in Quinntonia.

Of course, though some of the programs were funded with grants by the government, the government had no direct stake in the nation beyond the safety of their citizens. Thus, the Quinntonian embassy in Addis Abbaba started to contact both their citizens in the country, and the government office and military heads, t try and get a sense for who was in charge and what the fate of their citizens under the new administration would be. Of course, the massive loyalty that the Christian population had for the Quinntonians would most likely work in their favor in the long-term, but in the short term it could be seen as a threat.

OOC-OK, Dra-pol, why do you always choose to do your little psycho stuff in countries in which have large amounts of missionaries, is this going to be a repeat? LOL!

WWJD
Amen.

Mesopotamia got recognition from Aiyana's government, and some trade out of Abassamara, and the General continued to enjoy his nation's relative obscurity.

"Oh my god! I've killed a baby! I'm a monster!... Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The General was playing at recreating scenes from Quinntonian television, again. Today it was one of those Simpsons bible-story episodes, unfortunate though that may be for the residents of this particular slum.

Gabrice had just attempted to cut a baby in two equal pieces by skilled application of what comes out of an elephant gun, and was now looking for a tall guy to throw rocks at.

He soon lost interest, however, when his Goliath proved unable to stand-up to much punishment. Stopping he said quite suddenly, "This place is dirty. I want it cleaned. It should be clean for the people." And he ordered riot-control hoses turned on the neighbourhood.

It was 2006 and General Aiyana had spent four years indulging himself and his officers -and purging more than a few of them- and building-up his nation's decrepit military.

His hard take on law and order had generally helped to increase stable economic activity in parts of the country, and some ambitious public works had done more, but Abassamara was still quite poor and executions and police killings had filled many a graveyard. The fact that Aiyana embraced the drugs trade and dominated it at once made him and his government a fair bit of money and also worsened the economic potential of countless users.

It was hard to say, generally, whether the people of Abassamara were better or worse for the fall of their King. Perhaps a little better, for now.

Aiyana's army had swelled to half a million, and a hundred thousand men and women were assigned to the air force (which lead to a pretty drastic case of over-staffing in that organisation given the number of aircraft and facilities at its disposal). The nation produced its own basic uniforms, imported dated tin helmets from Yugoslavia and painted lions heads where normally might have been a red star, and armed the bulk of its fighters with dirt-cheap AKMs from the Depkazi Caliphate. Shooters armed with .303" Roycelandian Enfields were assigned as designated marksmen in each platoon, extending their firing range beyond the few hundred yards of the lightweight AKM, and there wasn't much uniformity to the dispersal of Bren and RPK squad automatic weapons.

Basic training wasn't all that poor by continental standards, and it became more demanding when the General took periodic interest in his young lions and decided to include new challenges to the fitness programme.

As Christmas neared, Gabrice Aiyana put his army to work.

Taking the position, quite suddenly, that God made the virus to punish the wicked, the General declared HIV/AIDS to be the mark of evil, and, calling it a sin-seeker, he ordered the military to be purged of it and then set the army to searching-out and rounding-up viral victims around the nation. Brothels and crack-dens of course were prime targets, and the first to be hit was one outside which young Gabrice had been lain-out by the King's police. As fate would have it, one of the very first civilians to be arrested was a teenager who once counted the identification and ration-allowance papers of one Gabrice Aiyana amongst his pilfered posessions.

Troops burst into buildings across the nation, wearing handkerchiefs over their faces and clattering-off AK rounds before making violent arrests.

...if you'd only send a special death for the lesbians and communists. Amen. And the General lay down to sleep next to his mistress. One of them, anyway.

"The Day of A Million Cuts"

The headline, penned by a Roycelandian-Sudanese free-lance journalist working for the Sunday Times, broke across the Walmingtonian Empire exactly one week after the fact, for it had taken that long to get the information out of Abassamara and have it confirmed.

On Christmas Eve, Sunday last, General Aiyana of the Abassamari Republic (in what half the world called Ethiopia and Roycelandia still called Abyssinia) had initiated the slaying of the nation's HIV/AIDS victims, apparently identifying many through the siezure of confidential records held by a Hindustani relief organisation.

A gang of executioners, reputedly blessed by a rogue (misguided or quite possibly mad) Quinntonian minister to protect them against the most pious plague, set to the bloody task of sending a million people to the guillotine, so the paper suggests.

From dawn till dusk in three major towns people were fed to the terrible machine. In fact a little more than 2,000 people were killed in that way upon nine guillotines that were the centrepieces of the towns' death orgy and misdirected faith.

One missionary was decried as a heretic and stoned when she tried to cut a rope that was being used to draw-up the blade of Machine # 2 in Batambui (known to the world outside as Addis Ababa).

Most of the condemned were put to the sword, axe, knife, bayonet, and spear by around one thousand slaughtering, "lions of God" who were replaced in the night by a thousand more, all chewing on chat (khat, qot) to stimulate them in the exhaustive affair. Over 24 hours -longer than reported in The Sunday Times- a million people were killed by hardly more than two-thousand. The killers, tired-out, received a miriad of blessings and became an elite unit in the Republican Army's Special Affairs Initiative.

Heads and bodies filled three great ditches, virtually canals in terms of invested labour... Abassamara had used developmental aid to dig these, "irrigation ditches" and had put them to deconstructive use.

By the time the report was out, a Marshal Bekem Chakwe had taken a train into Roycelandian East Africa and boarded a flight for Algeria, intending to visit West Africa, no less, to, "observe the state of affairs and prepare recommendations for the formulation of our great and mighty Republic's policy in the matter".

Developments in Abassamara continue to disturb Mumbai, for reasons that won't surprise anyone. General Gabrice Aiyana's brutal government prompts the INA to reinforce its small training contingent in Eritrea by some 10,000 men, a full Light Infantry division, while diplomatic overtures are made all the more strongly to Djibouti. Few suspect that the mad General will be content to leave his neighbors alone for very long, and nobody in Parliament is eager to make the same mistake that they made in West Africa a second time.

Balochistan, however, is not so ready to dismiss the nation offhand. A diplomat from Quetta is sent to visit with Aiyana in the capital to discuss the potential for trade between a resurgent Balochistan and a resurgent Abassamara.

The Balochistanis will find a team of Abassamaran military diplomats who have between them been practicing Pashto, Baloch, and Brahui for some time in anticipation of the General's plans.

The Republic is quite receptive, it turns-out, the guests being offered peppery food, beer, coffee, and chewing chat as well as relatively well kept hotel suites with terrified and obedient waiting staff.

Aiyana, it turns out, wants to become the world's leading drugs baron, and is interested in Balochistan as a producer and a trans-shipment point for product from Afghanistan and the Depkazi Caliphate. He claims that his airports will be open to aircraft from Balochistan and happy to accept their nation's produce and re-exports. For appearances sake he should also like to trade some conventional agricultural produce and perhaps some petrochemicals or such, of course.

Aiyana already has buyers for not only his chat but South and Central Asia's opiates, and is preparing the means to defend his ambitions.

Mesopotamia will have no further dealings with Abbassamara after this totally unjustified massacre.
General Rashid is now prepared to support any group resisting the foul regime in Ethiopia.
All Mesopotamian companies are regretfully compelled to cease trading with Ethiopia, commencing immediately.
We regret that we are unable to immediately intervene in Ethiopia to destroy this regime.

((OOC: Dra-Pol, feel free to take up the shattered pieces of the Mafiya's extensive drug supplying networks...Putin broke the Mafiya apart, but even he wasn't capable of fully eradicating the local gangs and such that kept the supply chain going.))

Abassamara under General Aiyana is looking for action, action of almost any kind. The King's misrule and the natural disasters that seemed to speak of the country's disquiet conspired to sink a once proud nation -for Abassamara once was an empire and a local power, able to resist Roycelandian take-over despire the fall of neighbouring territories- to terrible and infamous lows.

Disease, crime, poverty, corruption, hunger, the loss of the empire and especially of Eritrea, inaction in an age of imperialism.

Aiyana has great room for movement and experiment, and while the populace willingly follows his brutal lead the General prepares quietly for a time when their loyalty may be stretched too far. The Special Affairs Initiative is being built in a distinct Abassamaran style and is infiltrating society as propaganda pervades. The SAI now receives tested advice from la Marechaussee.

Abassamara's military is expanding rapidly, over half a million recruits being stuffed into the army and fifty thousand in the still over-staffed air force, representing around 0.8% of the troubled population.

Equipment is so far poor, and training moderate, but already Aiyana is receiving European arms and seeking more from Russia, Italy, and Roycelandia on top of provisions from stretched France and little Tulgary. Even Depkazia, Yugoslavia, and Britain see Abassamari military officers at their arms shows.

As well as paying out-right with his limited budget for some equipment, the General is running-up large debts to Versailles and initiating new and sinister trade.

France supplies currency, what little military equipment it can spare, and technical advice in a number of areas. Abassamara is running out -by few aircraft and the railways' clunky rolling stock- domestic chat and Central Asian opiates and other locally and internationally produced narcotics, all bound for West Africa.

Aiyana also exports more conventional agricultural produce and textiles, and is negotiating to produce consumer goods for feudal, capitalist, and market-socialist environments.

Batambui -ordering 9mm pistols from Italy, .50-calibre machineguns from Tulgary, AKMs from Russia, and Enfields from Roycelandia- delivers to the Roycelandian authorities in East Africa a proposal for the construction in Abassamara of a munitions plant, enabling Abassamara to supply its own .303" bullets, thus making it reasonable to import not just SMLEs but Bren and Vickers machineguns to increase the firepower and extend the range of Abassamari units armed with short-range AK-series weapons.

Also arriving, regular flights from Devils Island. Also building, large encampments and workshops far off the beaten track in rural and wasteland Abassamara. Enough shacks and blockhouses for one hundred? Two hundred thousand people?

Batambui (Addis Ababa)

"You know, Captain, I am a great man, and Abassamara is a great republic. But what if something were to happen to me? L'etat c'est moi, Captain!

"When the King of France was blown-up by an Indian anarchist it was known and understood that his son would ascend to the throne and the Kingdom would survive.

"That is not so, here. So should I make myself a king? After I have built a republic? That would be most difficult, especially while the people remember the old king and his stupidity. And this is not the sort of man that I am. I am a General... of the streets, not brought-up a royal.

"Instead I shall make another wise decision."

"Excellent idea, General!"

"...I shall amend the constitution, as I have every right to do, for I wrote it, did I not?

"My son shall become Emperor when I finish my Presidency, and I shall commit that term, and whatever life I have left, to building for the Emperor an Empire!"

Baloch diplomats are quite receptive to the general's plans, seeing in them the prospect of acquiring for themselves significant fortunes. Balochistan, as Aiyana will discover, is no INU, and its diplomats and ministers are no paragons of good faith. Officially, they respond to Aiyana's overtures with revulsion and indignation, but once out of the public view the diplomats go so far as to discuss the overthrow of Zulfiqar Makran's government and the establishment of an independent Khanate, presumably with one of the diplomats at its head. Certainly, they say, their family connections cannot hurt them, and they are hardly the only Balochis interested in replacing the Prime Minister.

For the short term, the diplomats are eager to discuss shipping arrangements between the Baloch coastline and Abassamara. Somalia, they reason, has enough going on internally for the movement of opium and opium products across its territory to look like nothing. And Balochistan's own Coastal Rangers are likely too thinly-stretched to have much of an impact, despite their reasonably high levels of training and discipline. It is also deemed imperative that Aiyana continues to antagonize his neighbors, in order to keep the potentially troublesome Indian National Army dispersed as widely and as thinly as possible.

As far as Zulfiqar Makran, Balochistan's embattled Prime Minister, is concerned, no trade or diplomatic relationships exist between Balochistan and Abassamara. But several highly-placed cabinet officials stand to benefit from the drug trade through Balochistan and are very careful to keep the budding unofficial relationship under wraps. Someday, perhaps Aiyana might aid in Zulfiqar Makran's removal from power. His army is, after all, a great deal more powerful than the Baloch Defense Forces.

Oh, Somalia would be easy, the General's men insist, as there already are several hundred Abassamari agents and soldiers inside the 'country' and the Unioners will feel Aiyana's pressure.

Strangely, the Abassamarans aren't afraid to almost openly threaten the INU's Eritrean forces in the company of Balochistanis who, for all they know, may still have some ties to the Union or those within it.

Well, if more Indian forces show-up in Africa, Aiyana can only expect more aid from his anti-Indian associates...

Semi-automatic Enfield rifles now join the crackle of Kalashnikovs over the hills near the Eritrean border, and Somali forces of this faction and that turn up dead by .303" almost as often as by 7.62mm wounds, and turboprop engines sing in the sky over the unruly and savage Omo Valley. Abassamara moves on, acts.

Aiyana to League- sponsor me in war against India!

Colouring his imperial vision for Eritrean territory with a political bottle and financial ink, General Gabrice Aiyana of the Abassamari Republic has appealed to the Holy League and other anti-communist and anti-Indian parties to put-up cash to back an assault on Eritrea and the Hindustani Defence Forces stationed in the breakaway state.

Aiyana describes Eritrea as a staging ground for a communist plan to create an East African Soviet Commonwealth that would eventually consume Abassamara and Roycelandian East Africa.

The General has this week amassed 15,000 troops on roads leading to likely crossing points for an invasion of Eritrea, and MiG-25 aircraft outfitted for reconnaissance work have reportedly ventured over the border areas in the past three days.

Though Abassamara's army is vast, much of its strength is dedicated to internal security at this time, and to ambitious construction projects, or appearssimply immobilised by its own bulk in a land of damaged and dated infrastructure and a shortage of trucks and oil that persists in spite of rapidly growing trade and significant foreign aid. The General reports to French advisors that while he can not be assured of sustained numeric superiority over Indo-Eritrean forces his large manpower pool apparently enables him to be confident in replacing attrition so as to keep full-strength forces deployed in spite of casualties until such time as the enemy is worn-down.

Aiyana's ambassador to Roycelandia has raised the idea of dreadnoughts providing fire-support against Eritrean forces, and bombardment or even blockade of the nation's ports during any invasion attempt. Offered is the prospect of opening a large processing facility with cheap labour in the enclave for major Roycelandian tobacco brands after the victory. Plus the fact that Abassamara will need to buy more rifles if it is to go to war, and might look first to whomever can present themselves as a friend.

Armandian diplomats grow worried over Abassamara's hostile rumblings; Aiyana's alliance with the League threatens the position of the Combine's progressive brethren, the Hindustanis, along with potential converts to the leftist cause, the Eritreans. With the typical Combine combination of self interest---expanding the Combine's sphere of influence was always nice---and altruism---the Day of a Million Cuts sliced deeply into the mysterious collective thing the Combine might call it's "heart"---Armand dispatches a diplomatic delegation to Eritrea post-haste, offering extensive military, economic, and diplomatic aid to the government there.

Eritrea

Indian forces continue to arrive in Eritrea in ever-growing numbers. The veteran 27th Light Infantry Division is reinforced by a brigade from the 45th, a reservist unit but one that still includes in its number a great many experienced and well-trained officers and NCOs. This expeditionary force, some 15,000 strong, is added to the massively drawn-down, but still bloated, Eritrean Defense Forces, numbering some 80,000 active-duty personnel and under de facto INA command. Abassamaran sabre-rattling is not to be taken lightly, and even under the late King the government in Batambui proved itself quite bold in its dealings with its one-time province.

Rumors of Holy League involvement only provoke Parliament to increase its presence in the country. The IN's two monitors, INS Timor and INS Miyako Jima, depart Indian waters under heavy escort, some five Bengal-A corvettes in tow, and make for the Red Sea. Crews are eager and able to challenge imperialist dreadnoughts, and should Royce send any, they will face at least those seven vessels, plus the six Rajasthan-class missile boats gifted to Asmara by Parliament.

Indians are not the only foreigners present in strength in Eritrea. Lavragerian "advisers" train Eritrean irregulars while Thais and Cambodians, one-time pilots in the Marimaian Air Force with combat experience in the Malacca War, fly Eritrea's force of Su-27s and MiG-29s.

President Aferwerki and INA General Usmon Ebadi each deliver an address in the capital to crowds assembled in the National Stadium, long used for military reviews and other nationalist gatherings. With flyovers, parades, and impassioned condemnations of the Aiyana regime delivered in at least three languages, it is an event full of energy and enthusiasm. Once again, it appears quite likely that Eritrea will face Abassamaran aggression, and Eritreans remain as defiant as ever! At least that is the popular image, and it is hoped that Abassamarans, oppressed and murdered as they are by General Aiyana, will be similarly inspired to fight for freedom and justice. Indeed, many Eritreans still remember the massacres carried out by Abassamaran soldiers in the 1970s and 1980s, during the height of the Eritrean War of Independence, and the majority is by no means keen to see such brutality once again visit the nation. This is a sentiment shared by Coptic and Sunni alike, by Tigrinya, Tigre, and Rashaida. Indeed, the threat posed by Abassamara has helped to unify Eritrea, not around ethnicity and religion but around a more universal sense of national identity.

Meanwhile, in Quetta, Balochi coup plotters lick their lips. Between Eritrea, West Africa, the Balkans, Kashmir, and Indonesia, they imagine, quite correctly, that the INA will have absolutely no spare strength to devote to Balochistan should the internal situation become unstable. Some even go so far as to ask Aiyana for military assistance. A few boatloads of Abassamaran Commandos might, it is reasoned, tie-down the Coastal Rangers Regiment for long enough. Certainly the successful overthrow of Zulfiqar Makran will yield very positive results for the General, who might reasonably expect to become the proud owner of shares in natural gas extraction and shipping enterprises.

Abassamara's military build up continues at a pace relatively less impressive than that of its smaller neighbour, but there is a long way to go and improvements are starting to appear. While Special Affairs Initiative COIN-Force Spitfires slay ever more tribesmen in the Omo valley and villages are cleared to make way for labour camps for prisoners from Devil's Island and West Africa the regular air force tries to get to grips with its Fencers, Frogfoots, Fulcrums, Foxbats, and Flankers, in which the nation is still struggling to attain quantative superiority over much smaller Eritrea.

Aiyana quickly and enthusiastically embraces mutterings of commando missions to Balochistan, and tasks the French-trained SAI with organising a force from its own ranks and those of the army that one day, he says, will constitute the Abassamari Corps of Marines, and for now will prepare for long-range deployment to Asia, possibly flying to Socotra and then approaching the distant mainland by sea or air.

Notably, the General is considerate of the possibility of co-operation with the Caliphate and its Balochistani supporters, thinking on the narcotic-producing potential, anti-communism, and formative League-reconcilliation of the Caliph's government.

Besides, Depkazi involvement in hostilities in Balochistan is sure to illicit some sort of Indian/Combine response over there, perhaps creating some breathing room over here.

As the coup-plotters look over their newly acquired arsenal of small arms, bought from one of any one of hundreds of Central Asian gun traffickers, they delight in Aiyana's heavy backing of their operation. Their representative in Abassamara supports the idea of launching the operation from Socotra, and would advise the use of a boat rather than an airplane. The Balochis cannot, after all, guarantee the use of an airport, and the acquisition of a sufficiently large airplane would, they reason, take too long. Simon Mann, the South African mercenary who so lately tried to take over Equatorial Guinea, was delayed so long by airplane troubles that the coup never went through, and he instead was arrested in then-independent Zimbabwe. A pair of old trawlers or small freighters would probably work best, says the Balochi representative, since they could be purchased soon and could deposit Abassamaran commandos just about anywhere along the coast.

There are, of course, some risks inherent in this operation. Indian warships and patrol aircraft scour the Arabian Sea, although they are probably more worried about Holy League submarines than some unassuming freighters plying those particularly busy waters. Perhaps a greater concern is the Balochi Navy, which tends to stay closer to shore and is more worried with the drug trade than enemy submarines. But Balochistan's warships are old and lack good radars.

One team of Balochis moves to Gwadar, while another coup plotter flies to Hadiboh on Socotra in order to meet with the Abassamaran commandos when they arrive. Others organize the transport, and in Pasni two small coastal freighters, about 900 tons apiece, are purchased ostensibly for moving foodstuffs between Djibouti and Gwadar. With skeleton crews, the two ships, renamed Crescent and Ras Koh, put to sea and head for Socotra.

SAI agents have begun to arrive via Socotra's airport (OOC: if the Yemenis have built one in reality I imagine that the Roycelandians have!), unarmed and undeclared, apparently tourists and businessmen, even before Batambui raises with Royce -in general rather than specific terms- the idea of Abassamari agents travelling through his territory in pursuit of friendly aims.

It is possible that Port Royal's approval will be waited-for prior to any arms deliveries.

Back home, Aiyana's air force now counts better than one hundred and fifty aircraft of all types, and the General swears to his forces that it shall eventually have above one hundred modern fighters from Russia and possibly France just as a squadron of Tu-16 Badgers first takes to the sky under Abassamari colours.

Tsarist officials from Nigeria, KGB from Russia, and even Kargat agents from Ukraine begin to descend upon the nation and make contact with military and government officials. At this stage unofficially, they are proposing a completely comprehensive plan of weaponisation, and are willing to arm the Pride with cheap military hardware of all kinds and levels of technology, withholding only perhaps the MiG-31s. Much of this can be purchased on credit at first, with some of the price redeemed with industrial contracts. Specifically, the Tsarists are looking for a large population ruled b a government that does not mind their people being used a very cheap labour force. This could lead to billions USD in investment by Tsarists, as well as an advantageous program by which they could begin to unload the massive stores of Soviet hardware that they have everywhere in the nation. As one Kargat agent explains, “Papa Wingert wants to give the Pride some teeth.”

Tsar Wingert the Great.

And so Aiyana's ambition rolls on, along with an order for Tor M-1 and Igla-1 surface-to-air missiles, T-80 battle tanks, and whatever artillery -including self-propelled pieces- the Russians are willing to spare.

At the same time the Abassamari Republican Air Force has expressed a need for elemental and coversion trainers, and has shown interest in the new YaK-130. Though this aircraft may be new to Russia, Aiyana's staff are sure that the company would have offered it for export immediately were it not for the imposition of an absolutist monarchy, and so as a back-up agents have been asked to discern whether or not the Alpha jet could be made suitable as a conversion trainer for a force with predominantly Russian fighter and bomber aircraft.

In Abassamara work continues on work camps and indentured sweatshop factories as Aiyana proclaims a number of victories against, "the savage heathens" of the Omo valley and other remote regions, which is hardly surprising given that said heathens have been rather surprised by the goverment even taking interest in their existance, let alone wanting to destroy their way of life, and at best they are armed with what a few underhanded Roycelandian private arms smugglers have got to them from Sudan... given that they can't pay much and that Aiyana would probably behead anyone caught smuggling to them, that doesn't represent much at all.

Parliament steps-up its own military aid to Eritrea as the Holy League powers funnel ever larger amounts of arms to the regime in Batambui. While Tsarist agents discuss deals with Aiyana, Unioners and Eritreans are busy in China, buying surplus J-10s, J-11s, and Karakorum jet trainers for the ErAF, which might have an advantage in terms of quality over the Abassamarans but still very much lacks in terms of numbers. No.21 Squadron arrives in Asmara with its twelve F(J).4FGA.4s, its advanced airframes and highly experienced pilots expected to counteract Abassamaran numerical superiority, at least in the short term. Antitank Gazelles from No.119 Squadron come to Eritrea in support of the INA divisions as well, accompanied by fifteen Dhruvs from No.120 Squadron. Perhaps, if Aiyana gets his T-80s sooner than expected, the small, maneuverable Gazelles, upgraded jointly with Strathdonia to twin-engined configuration, might help to keep their presence on the battlefield to a minimum with AT.40 and AT.18 missiles. And of course, Eritrea's own rather capable air force, including twin-engined Hueys, Mi-17s, MB-339s, MiG-29s, and Su-27s, is furnished with the best ordnance and upgrade packages available.

Eritrea, however, is still a nation of four million, and next to Abassamara's 75 million or so the odds do not look good in the long term. Eritreans are counting in large part on their own sense of unity, combined with the expected dissatisfaction of Abassamarans with Aiyana's brutality and oppression, to keep any war short and costly for the enemy. Nevertheless steps are taken to arm and organize a significant proportion of Eritrea's civilian population under the banner of the Eritrean Home Guard. SKS and AKM variants are issued by the government along with a few clips of 7.62x39mm ammunition, although many Eritreans already have assault rifles of their own. Should the Abassamarans retake their one-time province, they are apt to find themselves up against an insurgency just as fierce and determined as was their enemy the first time around.

Usmon Ebadi deploys his forces just south of the capital, some distance behind the prepared border defenses. More mobile than the Eritreans, the INA expeditionary force, which still expects as many as 10,000 additional reinforcements, will swing into action when the Abassamarans breach the border fortifications, or if they try to flank them, preventing the kind of Abassamaran successes that nearly cost Eritrea its independence six years ago. Two battalions of Union infantry disembark from their transports nearer Assab and take up position around Eritrea's southernmost port along with Eritrea's own forces. The fall of Assab might prove especially dangerous, close as it is to the Bab el Mandeb, and Abassamarans occupying it could easily shell vessels traveling to Massawa. Ebadi is still wary of enemy movement elsewhere along the border, though, and observation posts monitor even the inhospitable Denakil desert and the frontier with Sudan.

Pilots from the Air Commando Group begin to plan operations of their own from Asmara, largely aimed at getting arms and ammunition to the resisting groups in the Omo Valley. A handful of Foreign Service agents make their way through lawless Somalia and attempt to make contact with the Omo tribes, while Sterlings and SLRs are stockpiled at Jamnagar.

Hargeysa, Somalia

While half the world awaited Aiyana's strike on Eritrea, clusterbombs fell around this Somali airport and Abassamari airborne troops fell screaming in inexperienced terror upon the place, Su-25s thundering amongst their parachutes. Boorama was already sinking under the weight of the General's tanks and infantry, and shells falling upon Baki suggested an advance in that direction.

Fired-up on promises of imperial glory and mouthfulls of chat, Aiyana's men, brandishing AKMs and RPGs, charged by the dozen into local forces -be they military or 'irregular'- and set to shooting, beating, burning, raping, and binding everything and everyone in sight.

Abassamara still had 15,000 troops geared-up on the Eritrean frontier, opposite Denakil, but 30,000 were heading even further south, to Somalia.

"I am grabbing Africa by the horn!" Said the General.

Dolphin Palace, Algiers, Kingdom of Algeria

Marshal Bekem Chakwe, agent of the Warlord Aiyana to the Court of St. Louis, was given a full salute by the Shripa Corps, the Algerian equivalent of the Garde Suisse. Following the salute and trumpets, Louis I King in Algeria and the distinguished Ethiopian marched side by side as they reviewed the troops.

He had been brought to Algeria to co-ordinate a relationship between the excellent and burgeoning regime in Ethiopia and an excellent and burgeoning French Colonial West Africa. Following the review, he was taken into the place interior, where in a vast a plush hall he was dined in the presence of the Algerian Royalty and several French military envoys on hand specifically for the occasion of the good Marshal’s visit. In no time at all King Louis, speaking for Versailles, sets up the immediate deployment of thousands of Algerian and even native French advisors to Adidas Ababa to help train and organize the pride. The sale of 100 Mirage III’s, recently replaced by Mirage-2000’s being produced in le Patrie, was next on the agenda, the instructions of such aircraft were to be left to the aforementioned advisors.

A sign of good faith, General Aiyana would even be given the planes on credit: a clear move that the French were intent on securing allies for their new colonial entity in the West. Small arms, and even some medium range artillery, were also signed over as tokens of a growing and good relation.

As a gift to take home with him, immediately and as a sign of Louis-Auguste’s personal good faith, the Marshal was given several large and secure cases of Serin and VX Nerve Gas, to have in the Warlord hand’s “just in case”. They also discussed huge shipments of drugs from Ethiopia into West Africa, part of a French plan, and once that seemed very agreeable to Aiyana’s aide. All in all, the Bourbons and the Pride were coming to some very fine agreements.

And though the good Tsar had already lent a helping hand, everyone was confident that Versailles, Algiers, West Africa, and the Pride would all be the closest of friends. Indeed, a formal suite of apartments was made available at Versailles, where His Most Christian Majesty awaited the arrival of Aiyala himself and the signing of a formal alliance betwixt the two new and major African powers.

Marshal Chakwe might disgust or delight the French, it may depend upon the mood of those that greet him. Bekem was a street urchin, a pauper like Aiyana, but, like others who had taken to reading on subjects such as international nobility since the General declared his intentions in empire-building, the Marshal was coming to view his early poverty differently to that of, for example, the European serf.

He, as Gabrice Aiyana would preach to his favourites, had been wasted on the Abassamari King, who knew nothing of proper governance or the utilisation and nurturing of a populace. Millions of Abassamari poor did nothing but die, scavange, steal, or else live as wild savages in remote places such as the Omo Valley, contributing nothing to the future but another wretched generation.

Under General Gabrice Aiyana the savage would be disappeared and the unemployed citizen turned into a peasant on the land or a labourer for the state and its leadership. Abassamaris like Chakwe may have been poor, but they were not even allowed to be peasants, and that gave them, Aiyana would maintain, a clean slate. They have not been paupers, peasants, workers, the lower-classes, they have been proud people abused by an improper and criminal government.

Now some of them, those with the long-hidden blood for it, are rising once more to take control of a recovering society that once was the region's glory.

In Algeria, Marshal Chakwe explains clearly for the first time Aiyana's desire to build an Empire. Not a de facto empire under the Republic, a true-blue Empire with all the fittings. He has written in to the constitution a clause dissolving -upon his death or resignation as President- the Abassamari Republic and assuring his son the title of Emperor.

"That is why the General must build an Empire now, and why Somali, Eritrea, and Djibouti must fall during his tenure as President. Once my General has completed his important task his Presidency shall end and so shall the Republic.

"Weapons and training being well and thankfully received, the most pressing matter is simply this: Gabrice Aiyana has no son.

"One is required, of good maternal stock, to rise one day to become the Abassamari Orthodox Emperor of Great Abassamara and Lion King of Africa."

Unfortunately, most Abassamaris hadn't seen that particular Disney flick, and the title sounded a lot more dignified to their ears. Especially when delivered in Amharic. Perhaps best to just crown him Patriarch as well.

Union diplomats try their best to convince the government in Djibouti of the dangers posed by Abassamara's insatiable appetite for land, if they cannot see it already. India, they say, promises to come to Djibouti's aid if, or, more appropriately, when, it is attacked by Aiyana's forces, and the emplacement of friendly forces before the fact would only improve the tiny nation's chances of retaining its independence. Governments in the former Al Azad are contacted as well in the hopes that some mutual goodwill still exists, and Madagascar too is sent a communique inviting Antananarivo to contribute forces, should it find itself able to do so. Certainly it is hoped that the restoration unto Madagascar of island groups once claimed by France has made a positive impression.

The Armandian Combine, although Parliament expects to regret it, is asked for assistance too. Perhaps Constance will see involvement on the Horn of Africa as a chance to gain influence nearer the Suez Canal in addition to as a barrier to the expansion of Gabrice Aiyana's domains. And the Combiners are respected soldiers, experienced in their wars with United Elias. Alongside the Soviets, they would doubtless be a welcome addition to any expeditionary force arrayed against the Abassamaran Army, which holds nothing if not a clear-cut superiority in numbers.

Monitors and their escorts abandon their station off Asmara to take up position off Somaliland, itself afforded diplomatic recognition on Mumbai's part along with Puntland. Though Hargeysa is outside the reach of their 15" rifles, Land Eagle cruise missiles can reach the place easily, and as marines prepare to disembark in Berbera sailors prepare to fire their stand-off ordnance against Abassamaran advance elements. Next to the rest of Somalia, though, Somaliland is relatively defensible, with a respectably large militia of its own. It is the southern part of the country that Unioners really worry about. Aiyana could do something there with the INU being able to contest it even more weakly. The first Unioners to arrive in southern Somalia are intelligence men, although these don't stay long. Their destination is the Omo Valley, but before entering Abassamara efforts are made to develop relationships with the local militias. A patrol ship also takes up position off of Mogadishu, although it does not look set to influence events on the mainland with its Bofors L/70 and Polstens.

Kochi, Kerala Soviet State

"Dear brothers and sisters, dear comrades and friends, we are no longer alone, here!"

Graeme Igo too had left the Final Soviet in Raipur, convinced that the stupid faux-capitalists -Graeme recognised capitalism as a distinctly more Smithian theory than anything practiced by the greedy and iniquitous westerners- would not back down over the Suez issue so long as Emperor Royce had enough pennies under his hammock to buy at least a few rollies and get his loud shirt dry-cleaned. He was now speaking to one of history's larger assemblages of manpower as Guardsmen and women filed down through the docks and aboard their transport ships. Hundreds of vessels stretched out across the horizon in two streams, one coming back from the Red Sea where the convoys had been blockaded and one heading out to Eritrea where the Guard would form-up for the obliteration of the Abassamari Republic. And maybe more. Union forces had been invited to crowd aboard Soviet vessels if they had not enough room on their for all the willing freedom-fighters, and the Combiners too.

"Mumbai and Constance join us. We are marching, arms linked, in step to the sway of liberty's lately dim lantern.

"Today in our world the light is fading. We can measure this scientifically and call it global dimming, or we can think on the selfish and short-sighted barbarism of those causing it, those money-grubbing capitalists and war-mongering blue-bloods. And I say this, comrades, Indians, Soviets and Combiners, Unionists and refugees, as you salute your loved ones and steam into battle, only this...

"...Rage! Rage against the dying of the light!"

Marathon transports rumbled over head, escorted by AEW and tanker versions and swarmed by Springer, Hobgoblin, Kan-gel, and other jets lugging droptanks and missiles. Concern number one for most pilots was just how long they'd be loitering over Eritrea before their comrades found places to set them down in the poverty-stricken nation. One hoped that Indian engineers had helped prepare the way sufficiently well during Aiyana's aggressive militarisation.

"Across Europe, Africa, Australasia, and North America children are being raised crooked in the sickly dark, taught to believe only that if you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down!

"Well, I say that the hammer of the workers wears a claw on its reverse and that it is bound for the flesh of the clumsy manager!"

A mist began to cover the scene as WIG vehicles arrived to take on people and equipments.

In their tradition the Indian Soviets had made no declaration of war, but Batambui could hardly fail to see what greyhounds and dragons were surging towards its gates.

Graeme Igo continued to speak from an improvised tower as the troops passed in their thousands, repeating himself for each new body of men and women.

Rage against the dying of the light! Jai Hind!

Gabrice Aiyana's reaction to word of the Indian mission was one of an emotionally charged man with a history of contrasting experiences. Of course the General couldn't accept that he was probably about to be beaten and over-thrown, and so launched himself into organising a likely futile resistance.

Messages were sent to Versailles implying that, basically, Abassamara was wanting of more slave labour. Criminals in the nation were being sentenced to hard labour for stealing bread and for serial murder, and HIV/AIDS sufferers who survived the day of cuts were rallied at treatment centres that in truth were also work camps. 'Primitives' from regions such as the Omo Valley were also obliged to work for their lives. This was in addition to the thousands of prisoners sent from Devil's Island and from West Africa. But Aiyana was arranging a new round of conscription, and the conventional work force was about to be hit hard. Subsistence farmers would be called-up, meaning that somebody had to be found to provide food for their families.

Batambui was frantic. The militias in Somaliland were giving Abassamara's forces enough trouble, though they certainly would have been beaten in time, and Aiyana didn't even think that he was ready to face Eritrea's fairly capable forces (hence his decision to strike first towards the Horn). The possibility of communist troops marching against him was reason enough to sink the country further in to debt acquiring arms from Roycelandia, France, Russia, Italy, and Tulgary.

Large forces began to move towards the Eritrean border, currently faced by only 15,000 troops on top of border security units, but Abassamara would take probably longer to get forces half way across its own territory than the Indians would to get twice as many across the Arabian Sea.

And even with his population base of almost seventy five million, General Aiyana could only call eight million men fit for service. Likely his new round of conscripts would include many not usually likely to make the grade. And many hardly out of the sitxth grade...

Batambui hosted another military parade in which troops displayed FA-MAS and AK-101 rifles (actually used only be a few elite units) and marched with T-80 tanks over-flown by Fulcrums and Flankers.

Plans for a mission against Balochistan seemed, logically, likely to be scrapped... but in fact Aiyana's men were setting out from Socotra with all the more haste.

Spirits are high in Eritrea as the first Soviet fighting men and women step off their transports in Massawa, expanded (albeit only slightly) by Union and Omani engineers. President Aferwerki has less reason to be happy, with so many anarchists arriving on his very doorstep, and heavily-armed at that, but he doesn't have much of a say in the matter. Better, at least, than the Abassamarans.

Mass mobilization is seen as an extremely favorable development. By giving guns to so many Abassamarans, it is thought that Aiyana might end up arming a huge number of people who have no love for him or his regime. If the Indians inflict a massive, early defeat on the Abassamaran military, some officers expect it to collapse entirely. At least the massive call-up will leave Abassamara in a state of collapse even if the Indians never come close to Batambui. Perhaps, like a great many dictators, Gabrice Aiyana will keep his best units close to himself, and away from the fighting, leaving the Indians to cut through formations of conscripts.

V Corps in Eritrea, reinforced to include some 30,000 INA regulars (mostly reservists) plus a handful of marines, is ordered to move south towards the Denakil, the threat to the northern part of Eritrea having been judged manageable by the EDF on its own, and by the arriving Soviets. A consequence of the fact that the Corps includes only some 43 tanks and barely twice as many tracked vehicles, it is able to move relatively quickly, and will hopefully be able to conduct its operation before the Abassamarans can respond in force. In the volcanic Denakil depression, the INA plans to carry out its first crushing of Holy League forces in this Third World War.

Roycelandia remains a concern for the Unioners, who, now especially, have to face the prospect of the Roycelandians outright declaring war on India. Abassamara, in all likelihood, can be taken care of by the Indians, but Roycelandian involvement would not bode well for absolute victory on the Horn of Africa. Hopefully the Soviets will put enough troops in the country so as to cover the border with Sudan as well, although it would not be out of character for Royce to invade into Abassamara, on any number of pretexts.

Meanwhile, in Balochistan, the first steps are taken in the coup against Prime Minister Zulfiqar Makran. From their bases in North Pakistan, secure under the protection of the Caliph himself, Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives make their way across the porous border by night, along with significant quantities of arms and explosives. If there were any border police around, they would do well to stay clear of the heavily-armed parties of militants. Khans also gather their personal arms and form companies, intent on doing battle with the local police units, while, on the coast, a signaling party arrives at the put-in site for the Abassamaran commandos, just east of Gwadar port. With Abdur Khan Khattak and most of the army off trying to capture Kandahar, the Coastal Ranger Regiment, 2,500 men strong, is charged with protecting the whole of Balochistan. It might be a commando unit, but certainly Balochistan is a nation far larger than a formation of that size can competently guard. So long as the small freighters get past Talwar and Pulwar, Balochistan's two aged Type 15 frigates, they will probably be able to land without much in the way of opposition.

Worrying news does reach Makran's ears, however, even if interdictions are few and far between. His bodyguard forsakes its usual L9 pistols for Norwegian-made AG-3s, while at the same time policemen set up sandbagged machine gun emplacements in Quetta. The capital's airport, usually home to a large garrison of gendarmes anyway, is reinforced by an armored car troop from the Kalat Mobile Force, while a Twin Pioneer is kept fueled and protected in a mortar-proof shelter. Of all people, Makran least of all is confident in his ability to remain in control of Balochistan, and wants to be able to leave if the situation does deteriorate.

Between the towns of Aksum and Adwa, the creeping body of the 87th Field Division moves on orders from Batambui to defend the Mareb crossing to their north against possible Soviet and allied incursion.

Ideally, Aiyana would like to discourage the enemy. Really the best that he hopes for is to encourage skirmishing before the enemy is quite prepared for concentrated operations against him, and perhaps to make such stand-offishness characteristic of any war, rather than waiting until the enemy unleashes a blitzkrieg against the still-troubled Republican military.

To that end, the 87th has a good number of towed artillery tubes, including mortars, and rocketry, and a lot of trench-digging equipment and sandbags, and is moving-up with far more manpower and trucks than real armour. Air defences are brought along, despite Aiyana's officers suggesting that the valuable Franco-Russian systems will be too close, too vulnerable, and not available to defend the nation in depth as is better demonstrated by Yugoslavia, Dra-pol, and the Soviet Commonwealth itself.

Aiyana reasons that to send men forward in hopes of provoking skirmishing and to leave them without direct air cover is more likely to provoke carpet bombing... even though the General has been repeatedly reminded that neither the Soviets, the Unioners, nor the Eritreans have noted bomber forces ("Ah, but what of the dastardly Combine?" he would retort, and take much satisfaction from the hapless looks on the faces of his unknowing officers).

Aiyana's forces continue to fight in Somaliland, but the 30,000 have received no reinforcement and the rate of resupply means that they have failed to progress beyond the first towns encountered, and are becoming little more than a (at times much needed) heavy handed police force there. International journalists -those brave or mad enough to venture near by- have encountered frequent rumours of mass abductions by the Abassamari forces, and speculation ranges over topics from genocide to forced labour.

The Battle of the Mareb was joined in terrible fashion not very long after the arrival of the Abassamari 87th Division and some time before the bulk of Soviet ground forces had even arrived in Eritrea.

Revolutionary rapture came on the first clear day available to Soviet 3rd Corps's vanguard. 1.4 square kilometres of the land hosting Aiyana's forces rose under the feet of dying men as the first Evolved Pinaka to open the barrage landed its bomblets.

Plunging at far beyond the speed of sound the warheads landed so tightly that even mice caught in the open had little chance of survival. It was fortunate for the Republicans that only a single battery was in place some ninety kilometres from their position, and so only a further 4.2 square kilometres would be saturated in the opening volley.

It was over in seconds, the first barrage, and followed immediately by Springer air-interdiction fighters and brand-new Sirkeer close air support jets, the former loosing Parliament missiles against surviving radar threats and the latter attacking targets of opportunity with 30mm cannon, 80mm rockets, cluster-bombs, napalm, and Totem-3 anti-tank missiles. Only eight jets in total, they carried a serious punch and arrived moments after lifting-off and right on the heels of the rocket strike.

Parliament missiles rushed into the fray with target location clutched in their digital memories, making the canny Yugoslav tactic of deactivating previously active radar little use if the Abassamaris even thought of it.

A flight of stealthy Puffin strike fighters and cluster of almost astronomically high Morrigan UAVs thrust at the canvas of battle with the precision of a pointalist after the roller-brush effect of the Pinakas.

This fight hardly looked more fair than Aiyana's machine-gunning of stick-fighting, cattle-jumping tribesmen in the Omo valley.

With an acrid firmament of dust and death still thick over the 87th 225kg and 450kg satellite-guided bombs began to explode at selected bridges, roads, and installations, dropped from quite distant drones over the Eritrean border. The Pinaka battery had already begun to lay its second volley upon the enemy rear, hoping to disrupt reinforcement or turn retreat into route, and rocket-deployed mines began to deploy there and on the flanks of the pelted division.

Then came the helicopters, deadly Ja-36 Yellowbat, their pilots directing thousands of rounds per minute in 17mm fire from rotary cannons directed by helmet-mounted sights. And less than six minutes after the first strikes, Dhruv light helicopters and Preston light transport planes popped-up from behind the Eritrean hills to deliver Soviet Paras and Marines into the flanks and rear. 280 semi-elite troops would be organised on the ground inside the first ten minutes of the Battle of the Mareb while a mechanised regiment lunged at the river's crossings a few kilometres away.

Instances of confusion and loss of direction in the devastated scene were met invariably with shouts of, "Always towards victory, comrades!"

Officers on the ground realised it in dying moments of horror, but it would be some time before a furious General Aiyana grasped the scale of Indian commitment and ferocity in attacking the 87th. He had hoped to provoke a stand-off or at worst skirmishing that would bog-down the war from the get go and leave him with a chance of survival.

The 87th Field Division, though, was reeling from a charge as if by an elephant, or from the pounce of a tiger or perhaps the bite of a Celtic hunting dog?

Abassamari Army tents, pre-fabs, trucks, and trenches didn't stand well against the concentration of heavy rocketry far out-ranging their own Russian-made 122mm pieces. Many rear-guard elements were obliterated while moving-up to join their equally luckless comrades. Men in their billets hadn't a chance.

Russian battlefield defence SAMs were squandered, offering no resistance to Soviet firepower, wasted in a vulnerable position with too little time to react. A couple of French-made Crotale survived largely due to lax operating procedures which left them inactive, their radars cold, when the missiles came in. Unfortunately most of their crews were killed or isolated during the attacks, and survivors weren't much thinking about couping themselves up inside glowing targets anyway.

A few AKMs sounded defiant, but they were too few, too poorly aimed, and not nearly packing enough punch to repulse the airborne landings. A Second-Lieutenant managed to rally a few men and put together a squad out of those who survived missile saturation due to the luck of some uneven terrain, and they waited for the approach of a gunship. Unfortunately the frustratingly agile machine easily evaded their unguided RPGs and shrugged-off their rifle fire before going into a sort of funnel move impossible for most conventional helicopters and mowing down the entire assemblage of resisters.

A half-way spirited attempt by 4th Company of Reconnaissance to flank the landing helicopter troops came a cropper upon a minefield that nobody remembered sewing, and in less than a quarter of an hour the 87th Field Division had virtually ceased operating.

Still, remote from the front, divisional command, in the person of a Colonel Meles, was able to secure a strike mission by two Su-27 configured for limited bombing, and the pair deployed from the west with little concept of the scale of the enemy incursion.

OOC-Who controls Chad and the Sudan? I am really lost when it comes to who’s who in Africa. That is one of the reasons I haven’t really gotten involved here before.

News of the massive Soviet invasion of Africa has not been ignored by the Tsarists, who move swiftly to begin to load many cargo ships with weapons, equipment and supplies for their war effort. Most of it is mothballed Soviet-era stuff that is brought out of one of the hundreds of warehouses in which it is stored and taken by train to the Black Sea where it is loaded on the next available ship that isn’t already engaged in Operation: Yugoslavian Spear. Then, it is moved into the Mediterranean behind the blockaded ships awaiting their turn in the Suez. For once, the Suez is working in the Soviet favour, though that is likely small comfort.

This effort is coupled with a more immediate airlift effort using parts of their large transport plane fleet, using An-12s “Cubs” the old but serviceable aircraft able to quite easily make that range carrying up to 40,000 lbs. of cargo and the Ukrainians alone able to press some 100 into service, who can make that trip once per day. The newest plane, the brand new An-70, unlike its hardier and older cousin, is only able to land at prepared landing strips, instead of any flat surface large enough, is able to also make the trip, though in far fewer numbers. Of course, this is offset by the 103, 620 lbs. of cargo that it is able to deliver each time it makes its daily trips, allowing it to delver much heavier equipment that will no doubt be useful against the hated interlopers. This is definitely a combined feat of logistics for the Russians and Ukrainians, and though they know it to be a band-aid rather than a cure to the problem, they throw themselves behind it wholeheartedly. The planes used are just indications of the types that will be used, the main criterion is the range, for the thousands of kilometres needed. Of course, in more of a PR effort that anything, the largest plane in the world, one of only three Tsarist Antonov An-225s, is committed to this project to both bolster morale in their African friends, and act as a living symbol for the power with which the Tsarists can bring to bear. This beauty can bring an awesome 551,000 lbs. in a single load. Of course, at this range, there has to significant use of mid-air refuelling for all of these types at full load capacity, which limits the tonnage of supplies in some cases, but the massive logistical infrastructure left by the USSR is put to good use for that purpose. Of course, this does show that the airlift campaign has definite limits, but it is hoped that the seagoing supplies can take over soon, should the Suez blockade be dropped.

From Nigeria, General Mubarak, Regent of the great nation of The Tsarist People’s Empire of Nigeria, attempts to contact the leader of this nation, as they seem to have a common goal. His armies are currently engaged in the liberation of the oppressed peoples of Niger, and thus his significant transport fleet is in disposed, but help could be arranged by various means, and since they have a common threat in the Soviet horde, perhaps they could coordinate the mutual defence of their native continent. It is no secret that Mubarak had hoped to unleash his forces at the earliest possible convenience on the Red stronghold of Libya, in order to seize the valuable oilfields for the Restorationists. But he will not be able to hold those areas should half a million Soviets start marauding about the continent. Perhaps his borrowed Tsarist military power could be best used in the service of the Pride?

He awaits the response.

An-225
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225


Tsar Wingert the Great.

Denakil Depression

News of the 87th Division's destruction is received very well amongst the Union troopers in V Corps, the INA's contribution to Eritrea's security. It is not long, therefore, until the men and vehicles under General Usmon Ebadi's command are headed towards the Abassamaran frontier themselves. Fox and Ferret armored cars, modified and equipped with 73mm recoilless rifles, are the first Union vehicles to roll over the border. They break into Abassamara at a reckless speed, moving swiftly over the volcanic landscape, occasionally stopping to engage an enemy bunker with 73mm projectiles or GPMG fire. Overhead, although just barely, the Gazelles of No.119 Squadron penetrate Abassamaran airspace, four AT.18 anti-tank missiles hanging from stub wings.

Using the terrain, flatter than that to the west but still far from featureless, to hide from air defense radars, the Gazelles seek out the enemy's division in the Denakil ahead of the ground reconnaissance screen.

The main body of V Corps follows close behind the reconnaissance screen. Thirty Centurion/75s from the 6th Guards Tank Regiment, fitted with mine plows, advance at the head of the 39th Light Infantry Division, a reserve unit brought only recently from the Indian Subcontinent. The 18th Division and the 27th Division, meanwhile, cross the border slightly to the north of the 39th, the thought being that the force will be able to catch the Abassamarans in a pincer maneuver. Usmon Ebadi, the force commander, rides with the 6th GTR, put up in a command variant of the FV439. To be very far removed from the actual battle site is not normal behavior for an INA commander, and General Ebadi's command APC has a recoilless rifle bolted to its roof that hasn't gone unused in the past.

Each divisional group has its organic artillery batteries, 105mm light guns and 130mm towed MRLs, plus 82mm and 120mm mortars. These rattle along behind Mahindra-built light trucks, which are careful to stay in each other's tire tracks for fear of hitting Abassamaran anti-tank mines. It isn't up to Soviet standards, but the Unioners can at least claim to match their enemy in terms of numbers and in terms of technology, and are very likely superior in terms of training. Their R.130s can fire twelve high-explosive rockets out to ranges approaching fifteen kilometers, and, if need be, can be broken down and transported over difficult terrain on foot. Ebadi hopes also to call upon the support of his own F(J).4s and Eritrean MB.339s in the upcoming battle.

Surat

Four Indian freighters, or, rather, troopships, sit on the quayside at the navy anchorage in Surat. With their cargo holds replaced by bunks for around five hundred men each, plus light equipment, they stand ready to convey some 2,000 Union marines to Berbera, meant to support Somaliland's militias in their fight against the Abassamaran corps sent to capture their country. Marines finish loading their gear and settle in for the trip to Somalia, escorted by the first Lion Class corvette built by UTS.

OOC: IC in a minute, first a few things!

Sudan is part of Roycelandian East Africa (cursed place!).

And Chad is independent but has good reason to fear the Holy League, since it once was a French colony and might reasonably expect to be invaded at any moment. The closest anyone's come to relations with it is the Lusakans, with 'Papa Africa' Derek Igomo making diplomatic efforts to the pan-African cause and self-determination, and Soviet forces have long flown-over the country en route to Libya, offering a small but relatively significant bounty in no-questions-asked medical aid and fees.

The An-225, though. Only one was built, and two more were part-built when the idea was put on hold. The Indian Soviet Commonwealth now owns all three, having acquired them from Putin's Russia in a short-lived era of co-operation in which we took-over the lion's share of the former USSR's space programme, inclusive of the Buran-transporting An-225s. They are actually involved in flying Indian supplies to Eritrea, not Russian supplies to Abassamara =)

Smashing through the forlorn reactionary forces, Soviet Marines and Paras exercise limited mercy, shooting some to secure the quick capitulation and co-operation of others. Officers are almost always the targets of this aggression to the benefit of enlisted men, in hopes that, free from their (assumed to be cruel) oversight, these sorry fellows might be convinced to ditch any loyalty to the wicked and failing Aiyana.

The mechanised force, currently only regimental in strength -for probably ninety percent of Adiatorix's Soviet 3rd Corps is yet to arrive in battle-ready condition- rumbles on, but in the air things are at least a little more interesting.

Flankers are quickly detected by an AEW Morrigan drone loitering over the border area and two NT4C Hobgoblin -a significant portion of a surprisingly small Soviet commitment to the air war, totalling little more than the four squadrons seen in Yugoslavia but covering a planned personnel deployment one hundred times larger than the Balkan mission- are dispatched from CAP over northern Eritrea.

The fighters never illuminate their Russian-built adversaries with their own radar, but loose an expensive quartet of missiles with the drone's help... and once more from suspiciously far outside the estimated maximum effective range of ApTi's L'Angelot Maudit AMRAAM.

OOC-OK, I honestly didn’t know that. I will accept that you have three of them, though it is a little tough for me to do, but if I can just get AC to confirm that this took place, specifically mentioning the aircraft, I will amend my post. I have a tough time believing that AC would do that, even when you were RPing that cooperation, so if he doesn’t remember making that plane specifically part of the deal, I am going to assume that it didn’t happen, but if he did, that’s cool. Though, the two airframes would not have been sold at all, because they were not having been Russian, but Ukrainian. You know, Antanov, Ukrainian state owned company. The frames wouldn’t have been delivered yet. And Wingert would have never sold them to the Soviets. So, you would have one, and if you spent the resource stripping that one down, and building the massive facility that would have to be specifically designed to build new units, you might have built another two, would that be better? That would give you your three, but they would have probably been far, far more expensive than previous.

When AC settles this, I will still have one plane of that type operating in the exact same way, but I will just consider that the one plane was sold to the Soviets and Antonov in Ukraine proceeded to finish one of the frames, and is in the process of finishing the next. So, the post will still stand, but I won’t have two more in reserve. Would this work for everyone involved?

WWJD
Amen.

OOC: Ah, well, there's no question of it not having happened. We flew the Buran 'shuttle' out of Kazakhstan aboard An-225, and also took most of the useful elements of your space programme with us =) We were/I was surprised, too, but Putin was not immediately concerned with space, being engaged in a major war on corruption and crime instead, and the restoration of Moscow's power in the region.

Unfortunately we also helped to repair and reorganise many of Russia's aged and inefficient defence production facilities, which is the only reason that your airforce is still as good as it is. That isn't one of our happiest achievements, it must be said.

Most of the evacuation of materials -and also of people- took place leading up to and during Putin's annexation of Kazakhstan. There are large numbers of Kazakhs in the Commonwealth as a result, some wishing to restore Soviet order in their home country and others merely opposed to/afraid of Putin/the Tsar, and a lot of the USSR's space-brains are now in the employ of the Soviet Commonwealth. Some things were given to us, some essentially traded, and, in truth, the Cosmodrome was kiiiind of a little bit looted by the Soviets on our last flight out. What: Kazakhstan was being invaded, anyway! =)

On more specific matters, now. The First An-225 was completed and was in Kazakhstan when the Soviets took it over. The other two partial ones, in reality, were in storage. They may not have been in Ukraine. Significantly, Antonov didn't do all the production of its aircraft, because that was in opposition to Soviet doctrine which spread such works over multiple republics, partly to protect capacities against war and conquest and more importantly to prevent individual republics from maintaining a cohesive independent defence capability that might be used against Moscow's interests. Novosibirsk in Russia and Tashkent in Depkazia were used for some elements of Antonov production.

Ukraine can't build a lot of Antonov designs, today, because the facilities are in Russia and Mid Asia, not in Ukraine.

In AMW the Soviet hardliners evacuated even more industry to Mid Asia (Kazakhstan, where much was taken by the Indians, and Depkazia), and it's doubtful that they just let Ukraine keep hold of things when Wingert's forces started to revolt.

I seriously doubt Ukrainian posession of any complete or completable An-225s.

But now it sounds like I'm being an ass about it, so I'll have to go away and think. I've got to get off-line now, sorry!

Meeting the Soviet regiment would be a line of infantry only dozens strong and very, very afraid for its flanks and rear area, but with the handy support of three Russian 125mm anti-tank guns, well hidden with help from their low profile configuration, two here and one apart from them some distance away.

An enemy tank receives the attention of a single gun-launched missile from the lone piece while the other two lay silent, hoping to engage with HEAT rounds from even-we-won't-miss-from-here-,probably range.

The two Flankers were to be further expensive casualties of the youth, corruption, purges, and uneaven moral of the Republic's military and of the General's rampant over-ambition and impatience.

The lead pilot was conversing with control -he was reporting the detection of a large UAV apparently part of the Indian intelligence network- when the incoming missiles acquired terminal-stage active radar lock and his young wingman uttered half a prayer and completed the first half of a would-be evasive turn before perishing still short of the battle scene.

"...that is negative, Lion One, negative clearance. Stay on mission. Twentieth Squadron will intercept from Gonder North."

The last message sent to the first Abassamari casualties of the air-war, and one that would not be received by the already-dead pilots, it referenced the scrambling of a Mirage jet to co-ordinates given by Lion-One as the last known location of a suspected Morrigan AEW drone in hopes of shooting a Soviet eye down from the sky.

At last, a success for Abassamari forces as their Mirage catches a valuable Morrigan and gets away with it, for now.

Later reports will suggest that the UAV did deploy some countermeasures and that a second pass was needed to land a fatal blow, causing the drone to crash on the border after a four minute battle by distant controllers to rescue the machine ended with a loss of control-uplink.

The report will also relieve Soviet 3rd Corps of any suspicion of wrong-doing in the drone's apparent vulnerability, claiming that the Battle of the Mareb had been a success pulled-off only by stretching Soviet resources to their limit. The swift and significant victory could not have come about in the manner that it did if Adiatorix had waited for more air cover to be made available, possibly by the Armandian Combine.

The General-elect said during the aftermath, "We won so spectacularly because we stuck out our necks. Thanks be to the efforts and enterprises of the revolutionary masses that, when the axe fell, if was over the head of a robot!"

For now, back in Abassamara, 3rd Corps is still fighting to secure the victory.

Countermeasures aboard a forward MT-3 Peripatus send an inbound AT-11 before the anti-tank gun, located with use of the tank's Mirror laser self-defence weapon, is blasted with a HEAT-MP round and the regiment moves on.

The other two anti-tank guns are quickly laid under fire from 37mm cannon aboard CICV-4, and by Sumpit put to work other than its usual air-defence duties. But not before another CICV-4 fighting vehicle is delivered a mission-kill that ruins its reactive armour and forces troops to cram aboard following ACPs.

In the minutes following the airborne assault several Abassamari soldiers are -while being asked to abandon loyalties to the General- handed 9.3mm Dag pistols with single rounds of ammunition and invited to execute the worst of their commanding officers.

As the regiment closes on this scene, the Eritrean military is sent a request for deployment of forces to secure gains made by the Soviets.

Mareb Front

Morale amongst the officers and men of the Eritrean 7th Armored Brigade could not be much higher, as they drive across a landscape littered with destroyed Abassamaran equipment and Igovian shell craters. Instead of the Abassamarans invading Eritrea, the Eritrean Army is, for the first time, heading in the opposite direction, though not exactly in strength.

As one of Eritrea's very few mechanized units, the 7th Brigade seems more suited than most army formations to accompany the Igovians across the not-so-impressive Mareb River, and to do battle on Abassamaran ground with whatever of Aiyana's forces might still stand in opposition. Mechanized does not necessarily mean modern, though, and in large part the Brigade is carried by BTR-60s and BTR-152s, themselves once in Abassamaran service. T-55/75s, up-gunned by Indian and Strathdonian engineers, can at least expect to penetrate the armor of any enemy tank, even if they themselves are also terribly vulnerable, and a handful of Chinese trucks act as prime movers for D-30 and M-46 howitzers.

Just inside Abassamara, the 7th Brigade takes up defensive positions on a low ridge overlooking 3rd Corps' line of advance. Should an enemy counter-attack materialize, the Eritreans will be well-placed to interrupt it, and another Brigade, the 11th Infantry, stands by on the right bank of the Mareb in case the Abassamarans try to flank the 7th through Eritrea. A pair of Eritrean brigades, though, poorly armed and equipped, and not entirely well-trained, are probably the least of the Abassamaran soldier's worries.

A further two Brigades, the 5th and the 6th, are marshaled in Barentu, the site of heavy fighting during the Abassamaran-Eritrean war of 2000. Five Mi-35s are present to provide air cover, as well as an INA forward air control contingent. Intelligence as to the disposition of enemy forces in the northwest corner of Abassamara is requested from the Igovian headquarters, as Eritrean generals prepare for a move towards Gonder.

Usmon Ebadi drives further into the Denakil Depression with his V Corps, meanwhile, intent on destroying the Abassamaran division in the area. INA troopers advance along three main axes of attack, alert and eager to engage the enemy.

Berbera

In Somaliland, meanwhile, the 3/25th Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, is disembarked. About 700 Hindustani troopers land in Berbera, including a logistical section, an armored car squadron, an artillery battery, and an anti-aircraft battery. The Indians are, in spite of their considerable numerical disadvantage, extremely eager to engage the Abassamarans, inspired as they are by the Igovians' example. Light and mobile, the marines start off towards the southwest in the company of Somaliland technicals and a handful of barely operable M47 tanks, all the while screened from air attack by Indians equipped with Javelin and Starstreak missiles.

Quite some time later...

Last year Adiatorix's Soviet 3rd Corps had ruined General Aiyana's plans by obliterating the 87th Field Division without losing a single man in reply. But now Adiatorix was gone, a member of the Supreme War Soviet, and his Soviet forces reduced after handing over to the Armandians... whose nation had since collapsed.

Eritrea now relied largely on Hindustani support, and Aiyana was ready to try again.

The General concluded that it was now time take the plunge. Marshal Chakwe was instructed to redouble his efforts to secure a royal bride for Gabrice, junta leader at the head of the Abassamari Republic.

The royal houses of Europe were contacted as Abassamari soldiers once again prepared to assault Eritrea and Somalia.

Rome, Italy

Caesar Romulus jumps at the call of Marshal Chakwe, an alliance with the Abassamari is too good of a thing to let up. Though Romulus' family is small, he is sure to find some fitting bride for the prince within the realm of Rome. Romulus looks through his family tree before finding Livia Anni, a daughter of his only brother who was eleven and almost at the ripe age for marriage. She was living in Naples at the time, if the Marshal wanted, Romulus could have him meet her.

Hail Caesar!

Now Aiyana is left with a sensitive decision. Not only is Livia Anni, the Caesar's niece, suggested to him, but his emissaries bring word of vague interest in Versailles and of the also-youthful Catherine, granddaughter of the Czar. Spain has been too quiet for too long, and Tulgary's regal credentials already too much based on hanging-on to tailcoats, so the Abassamari General is actually pleased to receive not only the attention of the League's top powers but what he regards as the respectful silence of its lesser appendages.

Of course Gabrice is in some ways less than the ideal son-in-law from a regal European perspective.

He is a Christian, but he belongs to his nation's own particular Church, that of the Abassamari Orthodoxy, which some may regard as tainted with peculiar traditions and animist superstitions amongst its believers, and a third of his countrymen are Muslims, Protestants, or believers in traditional spiritualism.

He is absolute lord and master of almost seventy-seven million citizens whose mothers produce typically more than five children a piece, but he -like they- is no picture of white European supremacy. Not quite black, not quite Semitic, the ruling Abassamari majority of which Aiyana is a part may still turn heads in European courts.

And his roots are humble. Gabrice once was little more than a street urchin who chose to take up arms, and there after refused to surrender to any indignity. Still, if one such vagabond can rise to become Caliph... and Gabrice, thirtieth birthday already behind him, is several years Chingiz's senior.

Still, if the League is willing or desperate enough to take him on, Gabrice Aiyana might deliver a land in which more than twenty million remain to be converted to Christianity and which has already established its intentions to conquer the Horn of Africa.

The Tsarist Empire is interested in adding another African nation to its hundreds of millions strong Tsarist alliance, and the official embassy, which up until now had been supplying the sitting government with tonnes and tonnes of mothballed Soviet era military technology at rock-bottom prices, if nothing else to support another thorn in the side of the hated Soviets.

And so, the inevitable offering of the vaunted first daughter of the King of France and the Queen of France, Tsar Wingert’s own eldest daughter, and slightly younger paternal twin of Peter, the heir apparent to the Tsarist throne. Of course, the fact that she is only 11 years of age hardly seems to be an issue, the betrothal ceremony could be done shortly, after some negotiations about the legal nature of their eventual union, and of course, the dowry.

Tsar Wingert the Great.

Eritrea may now be largely empty of Soviet troops, and promised Armandian reinforcements may never have materialized, but this does little to discourage military planners in Mumbai and Asmara, who have been preparing themselves for a long and bitter struggle against the likes of Gabrice Aiyana for some time, and who are by no means about to abandon the rest of the Horn of Africa to Abassamari domination. Intelligence sources within Abassamara are seriously lacking, but UDF planners are not about to give Aiyana much of a chance to exploit the situation.

With Usmon Ebadi's promotion to Field Marshal comes the up-rating of V Corps to the INA's 5th Army, and it isn't long before a Hindustani convoy shows-up at Massawa to deliver the first part of a planned six INA divisions to Eritrea. If things go as planned, what was once a 45,000-strong force should end up closer to 150,000 within the space of two or three months. Mumbai's planning is, as usual, done in very strict secrecy, but Abassamari and Holy League agents will doubtless begin to notice a very sharp increase in ship traffic through the Bab el Mandeb. Initially slated for deployment to the West African theater, the INA troops that will soon make up the core of the 5th Army are certainly pleased with their new assignment, which ought to see them in battle within a matter of months rather than the year or more that the 4th Army's deployment was expected to take. Massawa is, after all, much closer than Conakry, and on a coastline that is already very much under Union control.

Should an Abassamari invasion materialize before the arrival of heavy INA divisions the INA still has three light infantry divisions on hand, along with supporting tank and artillery units. That is of course on top of an Eritrean Defense Force with a full-time component at least as strong and a force of trained reservists approaching 200,000 personnel. The maintenance of one of the world's largest militaries, in per-capita terms, taxes the already-straining Eritrean economy significantly, but Eritrea did not fight a 30 year long war of independence only to see Abassamara re-assert control. It is not an ideal situation, but the sacrifices made are seen as pretty necessary by the greater part of the populace, who know that, if they fail to defend their borders, another very trying time is bound to follow.

League support does not much worry Eritreans, who fought the USSR-backed Derg to a standstill already, and who are therefore confident in their ability to do it again, with or without the assistance of Hindustani soldiers. And, back in the 1970s, it wasn't outdated equipment that the Russians were supplying.

Berbera, Somaliland

Somaliland also wastes no time in readying itself for a renewed offensive on the part of the Abassamaris, their army bruised but not quite broken by the Soviets on the Mareb. With the government evacuated to the port of Berbera, planning begins in earnest for the recapture of Hargeysa and the eviction of Aiyana's troops from the entirety of the country. It will be no easy task, given that Somaliland's army is at a severe numerical disadvantage next to the enemy invasion force. Mobility, though, is in the Somalis' favor. Heavily-armed raiding columns containing a bewildering variety of technicals, Land Cruisers prominent among them, are organized in Berbera, and these head off towards Hargeysa with the goal of disrupting the enemy's lines of communication. Another 2,000 Hindustani marines are landed in Berbera as well, many of them transported aboard Land Cruisers and armored cars, along with two IAF helicopter squadrons.

Diplomats from Somaliland meanwhile make frequent trips into Djibouti, joining those from Hindustan and Eritrea in their efforts to present something approaching a united front against Abassamara. Puntland, Somaliland's erstwhile rival, is also invited to join its defensive efforts with the rest.

Whatever happens, General Aiyana is apt to find a great many people on the Horn of Africa quite opposed to the idea of him ruling them.

Chakwe, on Aiyana's orders, is plunged into a tour of Europe as he attempts to negotiate his master's wedding. The Kings of France and Italy and the Czar are all -directly or indirectly- consulted by the Marshal and made mutually aware of Aiyana's situation and the interest of various parties. Abassamara does not wish to offend one League state by snubbing their pick for mother of East Africa's future Emperor, and hopes to come to some agreement that is understood by all.

Russia, it seems, has been the nation's chief supporter, but France has recently taken a significant interest and its royal family is perhaps seen as the League's real leadership. Italy, while less powerful and only newly regaining interest in Abassamara, shares some painful history with the African nation. In the mid C20th, more than half a million Abassamari soldiers and civilians perished during the Fascist Italian invasion of their country. Would marriage to a Roman help to heal old wounds, or would it risk poisoning the population against a half-Italian ruler born of such a union?

On the fringes of Somaliland, Aiyana's troops launch fresh operations and do so with some significant force and enthusiasm but relatively little clear strategic planning or tactical leadership. The General, it seems, has purged a great many of his most experienced officers, seeing many as complicit in the previous establishment, calling some Communists, and blaming all for the fact that Eritrea is independent in the first place. His AKM-weilding infantry are glad to be drawing a military wage, but a large number of them are still every bit as interested in rape and pillage as in national progress.

Gabrice remains supremely confident, however, failing to appreciate that his powerful-on-paper airforce has fuel enough only for a short campaign of any serious intensity, his politically-favourable officers have no idea how to lead a military campaign on two fronts, and his Russian military aid is of much the same vintage as that which his predecessors received years ago while the Eritreans are cuddling up to a military that has fought the Drapoel and the Chinese to standstills and even retreat. Aiyana even seems to think that he will be valuable to the League for his nation's potential to invade Egypt, having no apparent grasp of the qualitative gulf that divides his straight-leg infantry and Mirage jets from the nuclear-armed and fully mechanised forces of post-Federation Egypt.

((Just had to post on this, shame on my manners for the delay DP-mon-ami. God it feels good to post!))

Versailles
As rumors circulate that the Most Christian Kingdom of France, and, alongside her, the Catholic Kingdom of Spain, have halted military operations against the Soviet and Indians on a near total capacity… even long after disengaging any form of African offensive altogether; as the world watches while Western Africa goes from flame boiled to generously sizzling, His Excellency le Duc de Liancourt, Minister of the Maison du Roi, technically a man possessed of even more power than Prime Minister M. Sarkozy, holds conference with Marshal Chakwe in the beyond opulent edifice of his office in the Diana Salon.

Following a renegotiated ‘Treaty of Amity and Alliance’ between the Kingdoms Of Spain and France, the Russian Empire and the Imperial Republic of Rome with Ethiopia, and a succession of at least fifteen liqueurs and cakes, le Duc, a man of the highest aristocracy, heartily supports the Kremlin’s nomination of Her Serene Highness, Catherine Charlotte de Bourbon et Groznyy, Princess of Corsica, Grand Duchess of Tsarist Lavrageria, An Elder Daughter of the Church as the perfect candidate for ‘the General’s’ bride. Of course, while they can be betrothed immediately, the ‘Act of Consummation’, as the lingo goes in Europe’s shining courts, will have to wait until Catherine Charlotte turns eighteen, well, sixteen, if the General insists.

As literally hundreds of artisans, performers (especially of the newly created Theatre Royale: Cirque de Soleil) stream into golden Versailles—the war continually expanding had forced even His Most Christian Majesty to enact budget cuts—as Louis-Auguste loosens France’s purse strings for his personal benefit yet again M. le Duc de Liancourt goes even further. Following a short of orange cordial and the lighting of a smooth, smooth cigarette, he elaborates:

“The nessacary cessation of active hostilities with the communists, and the assumption of duty by our new African ‘allies’ naturally gives us an opportunity to reconsider the benefice of your well being. It is the intention of Europe’s Kingdoms to see you well and secure, monsieur, and that well shall.”

Further, massive arms shipments were discussed for Ethiopia, now a not-far neighbor to several Holy League friendly African states.