NationStates Jolt Archive

Chennai-Madras, Tamil-Nadu Soviet State, 1984

This young man didn't so much as throw a cursory glance across the court as his ears filled with his own chuckles. His whining father always used to say that reading Krokodil made him nervous, afraid that he may laugh too hard at the political satire within its blotchy pages.

Perhaps that was just the old man being jovial. The son, first generation immigrant to this second rising of Soviet Communism, was inclined to dismiss reports of disappearances as sensationalist stories, probably originating in the minds of those who feared that the soviet state would actually find them work!

Yevgeni Rykov folded the satirical publication under his right arm -best to keep the other free for a salute, since the 241st was due through Chennai, today- and headed out across the grey -but tidy- forecourt of the coffee shop at which he'd just spent a large part of his Hero of Socialist Labour bonus. There was no real coffee shortage, at least, as it was imported on the back of profits from heavy industry, but the state still charged a lot for a cup of the good stuff. The beans, apparently, came from an Ujamaaist enterprise in the Allied States of Lusaka. It was all quite reassuring, and the staff had even served him politely. One was clearly Geletian, and he'd noted that the man working the next counter was a Tamil, and didn't look at all unhappy.

Communism was certainly getting back on track, and less than two years after the official resurrection, too. Yegeni had to stop suddenly to avoid being clipped by an AvtoVAZ sedan, the driver of which had been distracted by her favourite pop tune on the Third Programme, but managed to react with power steering and ABS breaks. It was the first such car he'd seen, actually, the product of Russian import and captured Principality technology blended by Indian Soviets. Now that was cutting-edge!

There was enough rebuilding to be done after years in the cold, and taking a command line to the economy was working, again, for now, even if the off-spring of Krokodil still had plenty of fodder. Hey, here comes the 241st, too. Is that one of the new tanks, at the front? A Cobra?

The young man hurried across the road and turned to wait, stopping to check that his new medal was shining sufficiently. He didn't normally get excited about a few tanks passing by, but it felt different since he, a long-unemployed youth who'd only ever had seasonal jobs in the tourism industry back in Crimea, was given work at the expanding August Shipbuilding Porthmadog works, Ashpo, and did it so well that he was made a Hero of Socialist Labour.

Some of the passing soldiers didn't think much of Rykov, standing there beside the road with a magazine under his right arm, throwing a close-fisted salute to the sky with his left, and weren't moved by his civilian medal. Others in their ranks would later chastise these men for looking down upon the sort of labour hero who worked to make their lives better while they fought to make his safer.

Gradually, new sorts of respect were working their way to the surface in a second Soviet state, this Igovian Soviet Commonwealth. Yevgeni was glad to have escaped at the first signs of unrest in the Estenlandic Soviet Socialist Republic, and still could not understand why his father had fled to Ceylon with Llewellyn's government when the Communist Party of India rose-up in 1982.

As they rolled through the Tamil Soviet State, though it extended only so far as the Palk Strait and did not include the Ceylonese territories, the soldiers -Geletian, Tamil, Adivasi, Oriya- were bound for a new border of old significance, the fighting -and working- men of many states, united!

(OOC: This is in reference to my post on the recruitment thread about some retrospective RP/storytelling to flesh-out various aspects of the Commonwealth and change its significance in the modern form. Some of it is taken from a side-project I started in the mainstream and quickly abandoned on deciding to go to Aus (and as such to have less time for NS).)

The roar of artillery shells was a sound the General could never quite get used to; gunshots, screams, even the deadly hiss of mustard gas he could easily brush off, but the ear splitting crack of artillery was for some reason beyond his capacity to withstand. There was something about the way it tore the very air asunder, how it seized the atmosphere and gave it a vigorous shake, that unnerved the mustachioed man.

Perhaps I'm not cut out for this, nervously thought the newly minted General.

And perhaps there was a bit of truth in that statement. After all, the Combine Revolution was still a recent memory, fresh in the minds of the populace. A bloody struggle for North Sienna had just drawn to a close as a new one over Nina (Khuzestan) had erupted. The rush to war meant that the Armandians had been forced to hastily assemble an army from the remnants of the British-Armandian Corps, a militia of Armandians the British had used to quell Indian uprisings. Thus men like the General had rapidly advanced in the ranks, often on nothing more than luck and charisma, both of which he had a vast supply of.

But he was unfortunately lacking in any sort of large scale warfare experience---most of those who did had fled with the Higher One to Tulgary. The vastly inexperienced and underequipped Armandian army was no match for the well honed Elian force it faced; the roars of Armandian artillery the General hated so much began to quiet as a sign that their Elian counterparts were picking them off, one by one.

Emergency aid from the Soviet Union meant that at least some of the tanks rolling into battle were decent, but the majority of the force was limited to aged British equipment that the fleeing colonial masters had left behind. Some men were even flying WWI era biplanes in suicide runs against Elian infantry, only to be easily torn to shreds by cutting edge anti-air cannons.

What was even more depressing than the sight of bayonet armed Armandians charging, in unison, against machine gun armed Elians, and then dying, in unison, was the state of the Armandian society. Although the Armandian group mindset remained, the incredibly long stretch of occupation had worn it down. People noted that they found it intensely difficult to finish each other's sentences, and that disagreement on matters ranging from simple home recipes to matters of foreign policy had emerged. Any other nation in the world would've seen the Armandians as still far too repressive and conformist, but for the average Armandian seeking to bring about the long promised Restoration, could only see these tiny acts of incohesion as a drawn out series of cracks in the structure of society. To top it off, the economy had been utterly devastated by the British pull out, the difficulty of converting to a Combine Economy, and of course, the war.

But at least the Elizabethans have been banished, at least the long night of occupation has ended...

The General sighed as another artillery round detonated, smashing a row of four by four vehicles along with his nerves.

It's going to be a long twilight...

Yevgeni headed home, slightly puffed-up by the enjoyment of a refreshingly sharp edition of Krokodil and the experience of showing-off his medal to the brave lads of the 241st.

Since making such progress at the Ashpo shipworks, Rykov had been -unknowingly- bumped up the list of young comrades waiting to leave the family home, such as it was. In fact it was only his unmarried status that kept him from being assigned an apartment weeks ago, along with some confusion over why he did not seem to share his father's surname.

Yevgeni arrived home expecting to share with his mother some happy small-talk about the day's experiences. He felt that he would probably dominate, given his day. She'd be proud. If dad knew that Yevgeni was now a hero he'd probably regret his decision to flee with the royalists. But the young worker was puzzled by his mother's uneasy disposition.

"Mama?" He said, with a concerned inflection.

"Yevgeni." The deep voice of his stepfather resounded around the little apartment. "Yevgeni." It came again from the little kitchen in Apartment 27, Floor 14 of the fifth towerblock to be raised in post-revolutionary Chennai. "Come here."

Later, after his parents had gone to bed, leaving him to convert the living and dining room into his nightly resting place, which he achieved by folding out his cot and recovering linen from the line on the balcony, that Yevgeni stumbled upon two more letters bearing his name and the seal of the Communist Party of India. God, why hadn't his stepfather shown him these with the other?

...it was because the old guy didn't want to tell Rykov that he'd been granted an apartment in the morning post... and relieved of it by special delivery not four hours later. He showed the boy only a third letter, delivered almost without notice in the afternoon, congratulating Yevgeni Rykov on being called by his Party representative to enlist in the Soviet Army. It wasn't an invitation.

Pvt.Rykov awoke under the deep, sickening thud of a second fistfall.

"Hey, man, get up! What the fuck is this?"

Yevgeni looked up from his bunk as the yelling continued.

"Do I look like an arsehole? I tell you, clean my footlocker. Is it clean?"

Another thump.

"No! Is not! You want me to get punished when the officer comes to inspect? EH?"

Yevgeni was being hazed by Second Year recruits, as was the imported tradition. Some guys couldn't take it and ended up dead. Yevgeni wanted to get through it, thinking that he'd break the cycle when he was one of the older lads. Many told themsevles that. One of the guys beating him now had said the same last year.

Thump.

"Enough!" Half the dorm looked up. The other half -the elder half- continued to beat Rykov. "Little shits! I said enough! You punks don't listen? Little rats! I'll have you up on charges!"

The Second Years never listened to the officers. They spat on them. What could the old guys do? We're already in the Soviet Army. We've already been hazed. We're the guys, now.

The newcomer seemed to back down, leaving Yevgeni to his beating. Rykov tried to protect himself by staggering to the shower block and shrinking into the corner so that at least he could only be hit by one or two guys at a time.

But, not three minutes later, the stranger was back, joined by two huge Geletians in blank uniforms. Party Militia, attached to GSIC, the Gelert Sentinels. The intruder hadn't been a Soviet Army officer, which the conscripts would have noticed if they'd paid him a glance. He was the Party Commissar, the outfit's representative from the Communist Party of India.

The Second Years, five of them, were forced -by the two Sentinels- out of the shower block and into the courtyard where they were beaten more badly than they'd beaten Rykov. More badly than they'd been beaten in their first year. More badly than their fathers had beaten them with their belts as kids. No use throwing a punch at a two-metre titan who grew-up with classical Geletian wrestling as a pass-time.

Eventually they cracked and identified comrade Smertin as the ringleader. He spent three months in solitary confinement and two in re-education in a remote facility in the western ghats before returning to the Ukrainian Brigade with an extra term (of six months) attached to his conscription duty.

Hazing would be beaten out of the Soviet Army, the Soviet way.

Yeola on the Godavari, Maharashtra State, 1984

The sight of a man in uniform is hardly an uncommon one on the Mumbai-to-Bhopal line, oftentimes requisitioned to move whole divisions from their headquarters near the capital to the Armandian border. Nobody takes much notice of a single traveling soldier, or ex-soldier, and most are thankful that the already crowded, hot, and poorly-furnished train car isn't packed full of his comrades. This state of affairs is fine for Corporal Raja Ramsingh, who doesn't much want to talk anyway.

His copy of The Hindu having ceased to be interesting some hours ago, Raja watches the countryside pass by him, and, for sure, it is not dull country. Now and again the ruins of an old fort, a reminder of India's feudal past, appear in the distance, overgrown and barely visible through the creepers, but imposing in its age nonetheless. Farmers out in their fields harvest cotton, rice, tea, other crops that Raja can't immediately identify, and, now and again, a little sky-blue Ambassador can be spotted puttering along parallel to the railroad. Soon, distance markers posted with reasonable distances to the Yeola Train Station come up alongside, and, before long, the concrete platform is visible.

"Ten minutes to Yeola platform. Have your baggage ready."

Raja grabs his duffel bag as the train conductor, smoking a large home-rolled cigar, brushes past him. He steps out onto the platform, and catches a whiff of the lush home air for the first time in two years. The sights, the smells, all come rushing back to him. Wheat fields, rice paddies, cotton fields rustle in the wind as Raja starts down the dirt track that will take him home, and, in the distance, he can already spot the outskirts of the orange plantation where he grew up. Nestled within its hundreds of hectares is a low-built compound, newly fitted with electric lights and boasting all of one turntable for entertainment. It served as home years ago and, for the near future, will do so again. Raja whistles and thinks about his old friends and his uncle there while the sun sinks low on the horizon.

Union Territorial Shipbuilding, Diu

"One, two, three, heave! Heave! Heave!"

"In god's name, don't they have cranes to do this kind of thing nowadays?" exclaims Ibrahim Tarar as he and two other shipyard workers man a pulley, lifting a large acetylene torch up the height of a half-built freighter.

"Get a move on, down there! I haven't got all day!" yells the welder from several stories above, only to be met with threats and curses on the part of his co-workers.

"Shut your trap, you lazy bastard! Come down here and pull this rope yourself! Then you'll tell us to hurry up!"

Dozens of UTS workers, dressed in trademark blue overalls emblazoned with the yard logo and white hardhats, adorn the skeleton of the ship, riveting and welding, while a pair of gantry cranes hover overhead, dropping the biggest pieces of equipment into place. All things considered it is a quick and efficient operation, measuring up to the yard's famously high standards.

Granted, the construction of new freighters takes a back seat to warship work. Mumbai unable to afford too many new hulls, UTS has its hands full with refit work. The tops of Parliament's Admiralty Rs, Cs, Type 15s, and Battles are as thick in the drydocks as are trees in a forest, and the profusion of radars and gantry cranes look a little reminiscent of treetops. Few can recall a time when UTS wasn't busy. Certainly continuing tension with the Bedgellens means that the yard workers shouldn't look forward to any slackening in their workload in the near future.

Ibrahim leaves the yard just as the night shift starts to arrive, and catches a lift aboard a severely overloaded Ambassador. The stalwart little car seems to handle remarkably well even with its frame loaded down with no fewer than eight grown men. It only bottoms-out on the more extreme bumps, which the driver tries to avoid anyway. Powered by grain alcohol, the car putters across the causeway that connects Diu with the mainland as ferryboats head southeast across the Gulf of Khambat, bringing tired workers back home. For Ibrahim and his companions, home is relatively close-by, in the town of Una. Their building isn't a pretty one, but it has electricity and it has indoor plumbing, thanks to the efforts of the council. It does, after all, house two hundred voting members.

After a short supper, Ibrahim stumbles down to the common room, intent on besting his friends at table tennis before turning in for the night. There isn't much else to do on a Tuesday evening in Una, and for this Ibrahim is thankful.

Alaric-Galle, Victoria Salvadoria

"You know that they're calling it Sri Lanka?"

The Lieutenant-Colonel was talking about the communists and their manner of referencing Salvador. He was wearing a brilliant white pith helmet and tidy if slightly conficted olive and tan uniform, while the officer beside him wore the same save for the powder-blue colouring of his helmet, which indicated his membership of a different Geletian clan. Oh, and he hadn't the same number or arrangement of echelons on his sleeve, being somewhat outranked in this company. Having been spoken to, the junior officer finally had chance to open his own mouth, which he did out of nervous frustration after several painfully subdued hours in a tense morning.

"The Roiks still call it Ceylon, I hear!"

Little reaction from his superior. The Roiks probably only just stopped calling it Serendib.

Llewellyn had given the names Victoria and Salvador to the Andman and Nicobars and Ceylon respectively, meaning in doing so to reference his salvation from communism and the impending victory of the crown. Calling Salvador by the name Sri Lanka had become the habit of the anti-royalist agitator, and was punishable by, well, extra-legal persecution, at least.

The vacant conversation echoed on for a while, making little progress, the Lt.Col. breaking its tone for one moment to yell, "Pot that chap, somebody!"

A Royal Indian Army NCO obliged, cracking the air with the report of a 7.62x51mm cartridge dispensed from his Tulgarian-made FAL rifle, the bullet landing square between the shoulderblades of a Tamil Sepoy spotted in an attempt to flee the half-built defences of the embassy district.

"Right, carry on, you lot!"

Work continued on the sandbagging and wire-stringing of the main roads leading to Roycelandian and French consulates, amongst others. A few top Geletian officers and a healthy spattering of white NCOs stood and paced about, either silent or engaged in the hollow conversation of the Lt.Colonel and his chum, watching over the labours of more than two hundred darker fellows.

"Insurrection be damned. No man, even if he is a rabid communist, is getting past barbed-wire with this many bayonets behind it." The Lt.Col. astutely observed.

Off Trivandrum

With Llewellyn's retreat to Victoria & Salvador, Parliament had itself put in the odd position of fighting both Bedgellen states, which were themselves fighting one another. Certainly none in Mumbai were apt to ally themselves with the hated Bedgellen Prince, but equally few were ready to court Sopworth Igo, with the same ambitions on Union territory and disagreeable ties with Chernenko's Russia.

Lieutenant Omar Hafiz Khan, therefore, found himself off the coast of Beth Gellert on the 16th day of May, 1984, captain of INS Godavari, a Porpoise Class diesel-electric submarine received from the Royal Navy only recently. Best, they decided, to treat Beth Gellert as one unit again, each side to be attacked with equal fervor and determination.

Indian Navy destroyer men made a name for themselves just about since independence as a daring, efficient, and supremely skillful bunch of sailors, undisputed masters of their vessels and kings of torpedo fighting. The same could not be said for the submarine arm. Overwhelmingly reliant on outdated equipment, RN-surplus T Class submarines especially, and lacking experienced officers or decent tactics, the IN's submariners are roughly handled by Bedgellens in their Hounds, far better craft than the ancient T's, U's, and Amphions. Lieutenant Khan, a relatively young officer, but confident and capable where Union submariners are often fatalistic and incompetent, left Mumbai with every intention of improving his navy's record.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I do not intend to return home until we have netted ourselves a destroyer."

Off Trivandrum, Godavari came to periscope depth, four Tigerfish and two Mk.8s ready in her bow tubes. A dangerous place, near Cape Comorin. Not long ago the Indian Navy lost another Porpoise, Sutlej, not at all far away. Any number of things could have sent the boat to the bottom.

Khan's submarine crawled along at two knots, as quiet as possible, while the sonar operator listened for screw sounds. With luck, they would make it to Colombo, and there find an enemy warship to torpedo.

Gandhi's garden of India is known to the Soviets by yet another name, Igovo. It is the centuries-old home of Clan Igo, one of Kerala's dominant Celtic families, one-time British collaborators turned independence leaders during the violent struggles of the mid-century. From here rose the great orator Graeme Igo, a man repeatedly censured by the Principality until his wild son stormed parliament and the risings in distant Madras chased Llewellyn from the mainland.

Off shore there is little to contest Union domination. The royalists have most of South India's modest fleet, lead by the white elephant Ood, Llewellyn's supposedly revolutionary trimaran frigate, in practice dramatically under-armed and built at such expense that it was destined never to have a sister. A few Hounds, reasonably quiet and apparently able to chug about for decades without much dedicated care, still sport 485mm torpedo tubes famed for their near inability to hit targets as much as for their unreliability when called upon to explode... outside of the submarine's magazine.

The only danger to Khan while near Soviet waters is in the highly unlikely event of being detected by infrequent Preston ASWAP flights and showered with depth bombs. The fact that Preston crews rarely bother to deploy sonar buoys and typically just buzz around looking out of the windows probably improves the Lieutenant's chances of making contact with royalist shipping before the Soviets spot him.

So far as anyone can tell, the Indian communists have a few FACs and inshore patrol boats, a handfull of improvised and under-used maritime patrol aircraft, a squadron of mine warefare vessels, and possibly one or two Hound Class submarines. A lot of merchant vessels with hurried modifications suggest an invasion plan in the making, but a lack of armed support makes it a questionable enterprise to cut doors and ramps into grain ships.

The Prince, meanwhile, has his one mostly-for-show trimaran, one similarly dodgey nuclear attack submarine -the never-replicated, deafeningly loud Alpha-Test-, a squadron of Hounds, all the mine warfare vessels you can shake a stick at, a healthy array of PT boats, and a few armed military logistical vessels, along with a growing vest of naval guns around his heavily-mined coasts and a few imported ASuW helicopters. A baffling proportion of Llewellyn's maritime strength remains sheltered at Port Alaric in Galle, the rest, a few dispersed PTs aside, at his capital just to the north.

Things are different out of water, of course. The Soviets have a huge infantry corps newly furnished with Russian assault rifles, and an expanding armoured force for which they have begun local production of T-72 and BMP-2 derivatives. In the sky they have MiG-21s in droves and are beginning to receive and perhaps soon to produce MiG-27, while also working to restore Springer production capacity. Llewellyn has French and reputedly some Israeli tanks, Tulgarian small-arms, and, at the spearhead of his small but well-funded airforce, two squadrons of fairly well-flown Viggen, and has spent tens of millions of dollars on Roycelandian artillery to defend his beaches.