NationStates Jolt Archive


Ojai Moon (Closed. Attn: Russkya)

Zanwesia
21-11-2007, 00:06
Chief M'Tuku of the Taheisa tribe had paid well. Very well. The crude canvas sack that the Chief's headman Johnny Pots had handed to Rakira Na'ahlai was filled with glittering pink and blue stones the size of chicken's eggs. Plenty of She'guaia(1) were willing to buy what was worth next to nothing in Mazara Palani (2). Sure the rocks could be used in machinery, but that was about it. What were diamonds but signs that your pockets were deep and that your package was perhaps three sizes too small? The rocks would probably get sold to some Cohenian(3), who'd trim them, and make them shinier. Then, some dumbass halfway around the world with too much expendable income would buy them at 50 times the cost it took some slave laborer to dig it out of a muddy riverbed. Such was the way of the world. With a few shiny rocks, Chief M'Tuku had purchased the loyalty of Blue Raven Military Industries.

Which was why Basilisk High Priestess (4) Rakira Na'ahlai paced the damp, bloodstained mud of the Hammer valley diamond mine, which had belonged to Chief M'Tuku's rival in arms Captain Spider. Well, former rival in arms. His severed head now graced the top of an aluminum stake which sat at entrance to the ruined mining camp. Next to him were the impaled bodies of his concubines and his litter of misshapen spawn. Mother Na'ahlai kicked the corpse of a dead gunman. He looked no older than some of the warriors in her tribe back at home. He had died face up and eyes open in the mine's shallow waters, with a deathgrip on his AK-47. The Taheisa warriors that had accompanied her on the raid were digging ditches in the mud to bury the rest of the gunmen that had formerly served Captain Spider. The ones that were left alive had the choice to either join the ranks of Blue Raven or die ignominously with an aluminum stake shoved into their anus. Most chose to join Blue Raven. Judging by the god-awful, blood curdling screams coming from the crude lodge in the center of the camp however, some chose not to join. The Taheisa posted outside the lodge were not allowed in,lest they lose their appetite for war after seeing the horrors inflicted by the Basilisks and Ailiae (5) upon Captain Spider's gunmen.

Mother Na'ahlai dragged the young gunman's corpse out of the water and into the mud. He had fought with the utter, amateur incomptence of just about everyone else she had encountered so far in this god-forsaken country, screaming and firing his weapon sideways with the selector switch stuck on full auto. This was almost easy compared to the brutal wars she had fought in as a younger woman. The wars were small, and fought with sticks, stones, and the occasional gun that the Mazara had brought from down south and sold to her Rei'vei tribe in exchange for warm bodies. The Mazara wanted young boys and girls, some to work in the whorehouses down in their glittering cities, and others to turn into killing machines. Some were enveloped into MP Ordnance Corporation and served the Mazara directly, others served as the Temple Guards to their gods. Mother Na'ahlai remembered the Temple Guardian's cold eyes. The cold blue eyes in her camouflaged flak jacket that picked everyone to pieces. The young Rakira had killed 5 fully grown warriors of enemy tribes, and she was only 10 years old. All the children had lined up in pouring rain, naked in front of Guardian as she inspected them. In the end, Rakira's father recieved an entire crate of guns and more than 30,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as Ra'kai's (6) blessing.

The Basilisk Temple had raised her, and she fought well for them. When Mother Na'ahlai became too old to serve her god and his temple, they let her retire. The Temple had offered her a pension, but she declined. Pensions were for the servants of Ra'kai who could no longer fight, not for the able bodied. Like many veteran Basisliks and Ailiae, she had signed up as a mercenary. Blue Raven decided to post her as the head of all operations in Zanwesia. More specifically, she headed the advisors that Blue Raven had sent to the Taheisa. The mission was going well too. The entirety of the Wesi Valley and its mines full of diamonds and gold had fallen under Taheisan control thanks to the training and direct efforts offered by Blue Raven.

But now wasn't the time to consolidate. No. Zanwesia was too unstable. There were the Covies and the Jejani Liada (7), and the government of President Kennedy M'bunga. They all wanted a piece of the pie. The Taheisa were surrounded by many threats, mainly the Covies, as the Jejani Liada were too busy fighting amongst themselves to do anything, and the government was run by idiots propped up by some She'guaia pigs so that they could buy Zanwesian gold to line their pissers with. The government held onto the capital of Mababad, but beyond city limits, the rest of the country was a landmine and malaria filled hellhole.

Taheisan intelligence had received word that Covingsland Light Infantry and CovSAS was going to raid Camp Delta 1/1, an old government military hub that the Taheisans were using as a jumping off point for raids into Covie territory. Delta 1/1 was in the western reaches of the Wesi valley, hilly country filled with tropical forest and swamps. Mother Na'ahlai's job was to defend Delta 1/1 and the West Wesi valley against Covie enroachment. She had roughly 700 Ai'liae and several thousand Taheisan warriors. No airplanes though, since modern fighter jets, even old fighter jets were expensive, and Chief M'Tuku wasn't ready to shell out the rocks for those yet. Most of the Ai'liae were already in position in the West Wesi. Their leader would be flying in via helicopter in a few hours.
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(1): She'guaia: Foreigner, specifically, a white or Caucasian foreigner.
(2): Mazara Palani: Commonly known in English as MassPwnage.
(3): Cohenian: Resident of Jaredcohenia
(4): Basilisk High Priestess: Equivalent of Brigadier General in the Basilisk Aspect Temple. (which is a Warrior Cult in MP)
(5): Ai'liae: Mazara word meaning "warrior".
(6): Ra'Kai: The Basilisk Guardian. Worshipped by the Basilisk Aspect Temple.
(7): Jejani Liada: Literally in Zanwesia Patois, "Fifteen Spears" a tribal council that used to rule much of the Zanwesian back country.
Zanwesia
22-11-2007, 23:25
What is now known as Zanwesia was known as simply Mababad. The place of the Great Maba, high chief of the Zan people. Then it was known as the Great Empire of Zanbad, Zanbad of course meaning "place of the Zan." Zanbad had extensive trade links with the Mazara tribes far to the east, as well as Malgerian, Groznyjan, Sumerian, Havenian(1) and other trade links. Zanbad thrived off its deep seaports, and fertile land, from whence came spices, jewels and gold. Eventually, Zanbad grew rich and complacent and the Hill Peoples in the Wesi Valley to the north became jealous. However, jealousy pretty much means jack shit when the object of your envy's packing the latest in Mazara matchlock technology. Thus, the Wesi were rapidly conquered, and for a few centuries all was good. The Mazara were glad to pay for extra slaves, but so were a different group.

Like the Mazara, they sailed on big ships and held firearms, but beyond that, they were totally unlike the Mazara. Unlike the beautifully lithe, mahogany colored women that sailed on Mazara ships, these were pink skinned, heavily bearded men standing about a head taller than everybody else. They walked into the sunlight in heavy leather boots, speaking a strange tongue nobody else spoke through their rotting teeth. They were willing to pay with with fine steels and expensive silks for slaves. They were far more willing to part with their firearms, and even the beasts whose backs they rode upon. The Draka, as the Mazara called the pinkskins, had undercut all the other buyers on the market. Sometimes, they used violence, as when their big ships with their big cannon blew away the smaller Groznyjan merchantmen. The Mazara, disgusted with the behavior of the Draka, sank the pinkskin fleet in Xufuni harbor and then left forever, hoping that the Draka would learn to do the same.

They didn't. The Mazara Tribal Council had severely underestimated the resolve of the Draka. After their first fleet had been sent to the bottom of the ocean, they just sent another fleet out and resumed trading with the Zanwesi, always giving them guns, horses and liquor for slaves. The Zanwesi, using their newfound firepower and mobility, began to make raids deep inland, taking so many slaves, that they literally began to denude the Karaini(2) interior of people. And of course, when you begin mixing firearms with firewater, bad things can happen. As a default state, the Zanwesi were drunk off Draka tonic when wielding firearms. This was and remains not a good idea. When those became entangled on a fateful day on July 30th, 1614, all hell broke loose.

Nobody knows who first shot whom, but as best as historians could piece it together, oh fuck it, I'm not even going to bother. Long story short, there was a 15 way civil war between the sub-sects of the Zan, each sect rallying under the Lia, the great war spear of a great tribal chief. The civil war was brutal, with the various chiefdoms trading jewels and slaves to the Draka for as many firearms as they could acquire. Meanwhile, the Wesi, or the Taheisa, as they called themselves, stayed back and avoided the brutal conflict going on in the south.

The Draka, having waited more than a hundred years for an opening, finally struck on December 9th, 1667. The pinkskins came by the thousands on ships. Not just soldiers, but also women and children. Despite this, the sub-sects of Zan wouldn't put down their arms and face this new threat. At the first Jejani Liada (3) council, all the tribal leaders did was bicker and throw around accusations of sorcery and blood magic while ignoring the threat at hand. No wonder they collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane. The Draka divided and conquered the Zan, playing them off one another, alternately bribing and assassinating tribal elders, and doing all they could raise havoc amongst the Jejani Liada.

Within 10 years, nearly all the Zan were working as slave laborers on Draka sugar and fruit plantations, or performing lung bursting work in the high altitude gold mines in the Witwater Mountains. Under Draka rule, the area now controlled by the Jejani Liada was known as Republik de Ralswaegh (4), and Mababad, the former capital city of the Zan known as Roejtsburg. Roejtsburg became a haven for various She'guaia fleeing from Haven, Antarchon or Dienstad. Others, Ao'me'ia (5) like Uighurs from Upper Xen, Southeastasians and Su'me'ia (6) from Malgeria and Chechnya, arrived in the Republik de Ralswaegh as well, but because of the She'guaiae racist policies, these immigrants were driven out of the fertile river valleys into the dry veldt of southwestern Zanwesia.

The Taheisa meanwhile, managed to repulse several assaults by the Draka, with the aid of mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite. Every Draka expeditionary force was decimated by disease and hacked to pieces by angry Taheisan tribesmen who set up careful ambushes. However, they wouldn't last long either. The next wave of She'guaia that came were the English speakers, mostly Momanguisians (7). They came with plenty of quinine, and maxim guns that could make short work out of the close range ambushes favored by the Taheisa. The same Maxim guns however, ripped the Draka to pieces as well. Under the command of Johnathan Robert Coving; Momanguisian forces annihilated the Draka as a power, marginalized them in society, and prevented their language and culture from being taught in schools. They also drove the Draka away from the prime farmlands around Mababad, which again changed possession. This time, its name changed from Mababad to Westminster. John Robert Coving named the land after himself, calling it Covingsland.

The Covies lasted about as long as the first slave revolt, which sort of took them by surprise. That and the fact that Anglophile military fortunes were being reversed in a brutal fashion in multiple regions around the world, first with the defeat of the Questarian Expeditionary Fleet by the Mazara Chieftain's War Fleet off of Port Stanley in the Oz Islands, then with the decapitation of the Praetonian Lord Kitchener by the Xenizen general X'onxt. Such was the nature of the English speakers, that the demands of their cryptic alliances forced Coving to withdraw from the colony. Later, Coving would be killed by own men for being a pompous ass. However, the English speaking settlers had by that time, grown in numbers, and were able to form their own government and militias against the Zan, Taheisa and Draka.

Eventually, with the aid of a certain few socialist and communist movements, the Zan and Taheisa were able to break free of their British masters, and their philosophies. The Draka had a bit less luck since the Zan and Taheisa still hated them. The nation was now called Zanwesia, and the name of the capital reverted to being called Mababad. But the new government formed by President Robert U'gala was weak. U'gala's government only had the backing of the Jejani Liada. He certainly did not have the blessings of the Covies or the Taheisa, who essentially ruled their own nations within Zanwesia. Meanwhile, the Draka, Su'me'ia and Ao'me'ia continued to suffer under the rule of the Covies, being given the worst land in their territories, while not being allowed to settle at all in the lands of the Jejani Liada or the Taheisa.

When former army general Kennedy M'bunga overthrew U'gala's government, the Jejani Liada once again split upon tribal lines, leaving the Taheisa and Covies to fight it out. The civil war has been going on for the last 10 years now. Kennedy M'bunga still controls Mababad and the areas around it, while the entire rest of the country is under the control the Jejani Liada, Taheisa, Covies, or various independent warlords. It has been a brutal war with every side committing atrocities. As of today, the Taheisa, under their Chief M'tuku, appear to have quashed all resistance in the Wesi Valley, and are in a strong position to strike either the Jejani Liada or the Covies. Meanwhile, Kennedy M'bunga has been performing increasingly brutal sweeps around Mababad with his Havenic funded military. The Jejani Liada continue to fight it out amongst themselves, occasionally attacking government forces whenever the opportunity strikes.

--Podcast from the Gre'haia (8) Ashabel Kasim, last Tuesday.
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(1): Safe Haven: Another nation on NS.
(2): Karain: A continent. The one Zanwesia is on.
(3): Jejani Liada: 15 spears.
(4): Ralswaegh: Named after Taran Ralswaegh, a Draka explorer
(5): Ao'me'ia: Asian peoples. (Note that the term She'guaia is similar to the term '******' and thus not used when describing certain other peoples that the Mazara aren't explicitly biased against.)
(6): Su'me'ia: Semitic peoples. (i.e: Jews, Arabs etc.)
(7): Momanguise: An Anglophile nation known for its racism against the Wogs.
(8): Gre'haia: Oral historian, similar to a Griot in African nations. Very important in Mazara society.
Russkya
23-11-2007, 07:25
It was in this decidedly dynamic situation that a hundred and twenty-five men, former soldiers to a man, found themselves. Every man a Russkyan, damn near all of them were of the majority ethnicity of that nation; which is to say "Southern Slav," and thus were dark-haired, thickly bearded men with green or dark brown eyes. Savagely tanned by the Zanwesian sun, they were all combat experianced Light Infantrymen of some sort or another, here to train "Covie" militias and military forces in the finer aspects of small unit warfare.

Details of militiamen placed under PRELIKAZ tutelage double-timed in two columns to the rear of a C-130 medium lifter. The engines still roaring, the militiamen winced from the noise as the tail ramp was lowered. Found to have a disturbing level of independance by their instructors, they were being partially divested of this characteristic with constant group drilling and physical conditioning. While a certain level of independance was required for a competent combat soldier, the degree to which the Covies had it had originally interfered just enough with training that the Russkyans had come down on them as the horsewhip across the chattel's back. The purpose of this particular operation however, was three-fold. Firstly, they were recieving a new shipment of arms. Secondly, it would provide flighttime to the Covie's aviation assets, and the third reason was as described above.

Believing that the best way to gain rapport with the Covies - besides being light skinned - was to do as they did and prove to their faces the superiority of the PRELIKAZ men, the trio of instructors for each group of ten were with their charges, leading the way up the cargo ramp. They carried RMI RAR-4 assault rifles across their backs, olive drab assault vests over coyote-brown and olive drab, shade 107 camouflaged combats. The assault vests contained plenty of magazines, a quartet of fragmentation grenades, a pair of smaller RMI Mk. I 4cm grenades, awkwardly nicknamed "boombollocks" as they were issued in pairs and the size of golfballs, and water. A "Camelbak" was in a purpose-built pouch, and two larger empty pouches served as utility pouches or drop pouches as the trooper desired.

These men lifted crates containing Lee-Nordenfeldt rifles, passing them back onto the human chain of Covies where they were - "Neatly now, lads, neatly!" - stacked off the runway. Once the unloading was complete, the PRELIKAZ men jogged their charges off the runway to fall in to the standard parade formation.

"Pressups! Fifteen!"

Their officer, a Lieutenant from the Russkyan VDV who had fought alongside the Estovakians and the Aequatians in the Stovakian Peninsula, stood as befitting his rank at the head of the formation. His NCOs and the militiamen however, caught their face-first fall with arms weary from the lifting and ground out fifteen pressups. The Russkyans did this without difficulty, leaping back to their feet to demonstrate to the Covies that it could infact be done.

Miles away, at another dirt-strip airfield, the sun was casting blood red light into the clouds high on the horizon as it began to lower itself in the sky. An NCO stood infront of a group of four Covies, these men militiamen, but now sufficiently trusted to be given weapons training. Passing by this group, one heard the gravelly voice of the instructing non-com.

"Stoppage drill!"

Followed up with a mechanical chant from the Covies as hands slid over now-familiar rifles.

"Lee Nordenfeldt Number Seven, Mark Two. 6.5x55mm Mauser. Semiautomatic. Detatchable box magazine, twenty round capacity. Magazine out. Chamber clear. Check barrel. Check firing pin. Bolt group forward. Rear reciever cover up and off, Master Corporal! Bolt group back! All is clear, reassemble. Working parts forward. Reload, Master Corporal!"

When they had first came here, one of the PRELIKAZ men had been literally spat upon by one of the "Volfor," the abbreviated term used to describe the mixed bag of caucasians that the Volunteer Forces attracted. Coming from overseas, they consisted of private military contractors of an appropriate ethnicity to the Covie aristocracy, rednecks, white supremacists, the lot. The Volfor man had found himself sporting a shattered wrist, and since then, due to actions long after, the effective coyote-brown and OD-107 shade combats had garunteed the wearer respect despite their savage tans.

Disgusted by the attitude the Covies displayed to their women, a growing number of PRELIKAZ men couldn't wait to leave. It wouldn't have been that bad, but for the arrogance of the Covie Aristocracy, the fixation upon Calvinist religion, and the contempt that flowed under the crisp responses of drilled militiamen, Volfor, and Covingsland Defence Forces grudgingly entrusted to PRELIKAZ care.
An officer, a former Captain in the 31st Mountain Brigade, marched to a tent with the canvas walls roped up. A liveried servant, perhaps Turkic in ancestry, stood behind his pale-skinned master whose crisp white shirt was only just lighter than his skintone.
Zanwesia
24-11-2007, 00:39
Mother Na'ahlai tried as best as she could to swallow the steaming, nasty concoction. It burned all the way down her throat like no backwoods Fei'Chiel (1) ever could. This tasted like a mixture of battery acid and av-gas. She drew a deep, sharp breath, praying that she hadn't been poisoned, or that the mixture that Chief M'Tuku had given her had been spiked with some native psychoactive.

"Xo'e(2)... that was...strong" she gasped.

"Indeed. And you have drunk Ojai Fajala (3). Many people who call themselves warriors can slay the enemy, only a true warrior can drink Ojai Fajala." Chief M'Tuku laughed heartily and slapped Mother Na'ahlai on the back, almost winding her. He got up and left the crude mud and twig hut the two of them were sitting in, laughing as he walked into the rain.

Another Blue Raven entered through the flap of cowhide that acted as the hut's door. She was younger, noticeably paler and bore a much different than Kailae'Ikar than Mother Na'ahlai's.(4) Whereas Mother Na'ahlai bore the K.I of the Rei'vei tribe and the Basilisk Temple, this soldier bore the K.I of the Nika (5) and the Temple of Xe'lide (6). She was blond, pale as the moon and had eyes so light, they were almost cloudy.

"Lady Me'okei (7)... You didn't ask permission before entering." Mother Na'ahlai's head was still spinning.

"Did they..." Lady Me'okei's calm features shifted slightly into a look of concern.

"Yes Theo, they gave me the Ojai Fajala." Have you had any yet?"

"No Mother. There's a difference between courage and foolishness." Lady Me'okei poked the dying fire in the center of the hut with a stick. "Drinking Ojai Fajala would certainly cross into the realm of foolishness."

"It's one way to build rapport with a client. Just be glad we aren't working for the Be'guaia (8) or the She'guaia."

"Be'guaia's a bit... well... Mother, it's just..."

"Racist? Fine. Be'me'ia, happy? I'm politically Xoc'xin (9) correct now. Kris'xel (10), political correctness with be the death of me."

"You didn't grow up having to read racist spew directed towards you in every one of your textbooks."

"I'm Rei'vei. I'm a primitive like the Saka'alin (11) or the Arabs, you're Nika, your skin color is just the wrong shade to satisfy the powers that be. Let's be honest with ourselves here, the second the tourists stop coming to MP is the second the Mazara decide to launch a bloody pogrom against everyone that doesn't meet their standards."

"I look like a She'guaia recruitment poster."

"In most She'guaia societies, you'd be relegated to the role of 'housewife'. Or in the case of the Covies, you'd be married off as a 9 year old to some 60 year old pervert in exchange for some cattle."

"Do they really do that?"

"Yes. They really do that. It's horrible come to think about it. And their sexual attitudes are decidedly..."

"Primitive?"

"No, Theo, that's what everyone else calls us, the Covies are downright barbaric in nature. They still practice female circumcision... but as their medical manuals put it, only in cases of 'masturbation' or 'hysteria', or just because the 60 year old man you're married to gets off on torturing young girls. I would be more shocked and appalled, but the same thing happens in the back woods. Only we actually call it as it is; torture, not 'hygiene'." To emphasize her point, Mother Na'ahlai threw a Covingsland medical manual into Theo's hands.

The blood drained from Lady Me'okei's face as she read, making her even paler than usual. Even the blood red pigment from the Kaliae'Ikar on her face seemed to drain.

"I... Any of their officers we capture. I swear to Wolf Coven (12) I will make them understand the pain that they cause."

Both Mother Na'ahlai and Lady Me'okei sat in silence for a long time, contemplating what various tortures they would put captured Covie prisoners through. Many of them were quite horrible, and most writers of horror fiction would have paid good money for their ideas. Then, Lady Me'okei looked up at her watch.

"Now's about the time when the Chief wants me. I wish you the best of luck Mother."

Lady Me'okei left the hut, and left Mother Na'ahlai time to come off her Ojai trip. She walked across the muddy camp, sheets of rain sliding across her MAS vest. As a high ranking officer, she held no rifle, only an L-23A2 pistol in a shoulder holster on the side of her vest, and a standard issue field Akri (13), a heavy bladed bushknife capable of splitting a helmeted skull open. Her long blond hair was braided into cornrows and pulled behind her head. It would be easy enough to push down if she was wearing a helmet. Despite the inclement weather, the camp was a bustling scene of activity, with Taheisan tribesmen clustered in their lodges, singing, dancing, playing cards and drinking Ojai Fajala. As the operational commander of a battalion of Blue Raven mercenaries, Lady Me'okei's responsibilities included discussing strategy with Chief M'tuku.

She entered Chief M'tuku's dugout in the ground. It was dry and reasonably well furnished. A diesel generator hummed in the background, providing power for the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

"Welcome, welcome to my... well, I will be buying the mansion afterwards. Just have a seat Lady May'okey." M'tuku motioned at the various pieces of handmade wicker furniture. Furniture that was as uncomfortable as hell, but would sell for a fortune to people wanting to give the appearance of being in touch with other cultures. Me'okei declined correct his mispronunciation of her name. Mazara was a difficult language, and M'tuku got it close enough, especially with the difficulty of transliteration between Mazara's logographic writing system and the Latin alphabet. Me'okei took a seat on a wicker chair close to M'tuku.

The chief pointed to a crude map that was hanging from one of his dugout's walls.

"As you see here Lady, this is Zanwesia, soon to be known as Taheisia."

"Why Taheisia?" asked Me'okei as the chief searched for his laser pointer.

"Because there will soon be no more Zan. Everyone in Taheisia will be Taheisan, or they will perish."

"We didn't come here to perform ethnic cleansing for you. That's gonna cost you 50% extra 'Ai (14).'

"No, no. Ethnic cleansing is too much work. I will merely give people the choice of being Taheisa, or being nothing. Maybe I cleanse no more than 25% of the nation, maybe less, maybe even only 10%. I'm not even sure how Mother Nahally would respond to that in any case."

"Mother Na'ahlai wouldn't respond well to that Chief. I can tell you that right now."

"Well, I guess I have to make Zanweisa into Taheisia myself then. You will help against the... Shaguay-ay, right?"

Lady Me'okei nodded. She was impressed. Chief M'tuku was learning. And he had just found his laser pointer.

"Ok, this is Camp Delta 1/1. Now as per Nahally's advice, we have entirely abandoned, it, or given the appearance of doing so. We have the area sighted with our artillery."

"Good, have the ambushes been set up yet?"

"We are in position to immediately strike once the Covies give any indication that they are in the area. We have 105mm AA guns and other anti-air assets at the ready. My men are ready to move out at a moment's notice."

"Good, stay put, the Covie air force hit one our decoy fuel convoys this morning. They'll be making a raid on what they think is our regional av-gas reserve tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on whether their night vision devices are acting up. I'll have my troops hunt and ambush the Covie Recces so that they won't report back to their superiors. Meanwhile, your men will ambush the main attacking body only when the Covie's planes run out of gas and start heading home. Do not let your men break cover, otherwise it will be a massacre."

"Understood."

"And your artillery is not to open fire until Mother Na'ahlai, or I give the signal, lest the Covie gunships light them up too."

"Yes. When do you expect them to come?"

"My troops are watching the sky already. They'll be coming within two hours. You can either let me handle it, or watch the fireworks in person. Up to you really."
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(1): Fei'Chiel: An MP liquor. Name translates to "Burning Rain."
(2): Xo'e: A curse, roughly twice as strong as "fuck" in English.
(3): Ojai Fajala: A drink made from the Ojai Lilly. Tastes horrible although it smells really, really good.
(4): Kaliae'Ikar: Identification tattoos, on a woman, usually on the left cheek.
(5): Nika: A group made up of a mixture of Mediterranean and Norse peoples.
(6): Xe'lide: The Valkyrie Wolf Goddess of War. Worshipped mostly by the Nika and by people that listen to too much black metal.
(7): Lady: Colonel. Blue Raven uses Basilisk Temple ranks to address one another. Her official rank is "Priestess" thus.
(8): Be'guaia: ******
(9): Xoc'xin: Fucking
(10): Kris'xel: Exclaimation similar to "oy vey".
(11): Saka'alin: A people from southern MP.
(12): Wolf Coven: The body of people that worship Xe'lide.
(13): Akri: A heavy field knife similar to the Khukuri
(14): Ai': Sort of like "love" or "mate", see other terms of address in British derived English.
Russkya
25-11-2007, 02:44
For those members of the Volunteer Force and Covingsland Civil Forces who'd chosen not to spit at the tanned Slav soldiers in their camouflaged combat uniforms, they were being taught how to survive their first five minutes of combat. Armed with Lee-Nordenfeldt battle rifles, the round those weapons fired was sufficiently high-powered to knock its way on through some of the thick Zanwesian trees and other foliage. Because of this, a former MORPEH soldier found himself explaining the concept of the "Drake Shoot" to some of the CCF and VolFor men who were sufficiently fit that they'd been organized into more than a "Local Defence Force" for defending outlying villages in a static role.

"Right lads. The idea here is to knock the kaffirs out of action by shooting them without nessecarily seeing them. This doesn't mean you blast away at a bush, because you've only got a twenty round magazine and its bad drills even if you've got the section auto. However, there are six of you in a patrol. Six times twenty is more than enough rounds for this even in dense terrain like this bit of jungle here in the foothills."

Shifting his RAR-4 rifle from one hand to the other, he motioned for the CCF "patrol in training" to form column. Having finally become "fluent" in silent hand signals the day before, they complied quickly. He nodded approval before continuing.

"What I found in the FLRJ was that it was easiest to think like them. If I was going to ambush six men with small arms fire, where would I want to hide to do it? Eventually, as you're walking, you're not only looking for them, but thinking where you'd like to be to kill your mates if the roles were reversed. So that bush there, about a foot out from the base of that tree to our three o'clock, with the flowering bush behind it. That's where I'd like to site a man with an automatic rifle, since it looks down the trail we're on here - For training purposes only, mind, don't follow trails in the bush. Got it?"

"Yes, Lancejack, never follow a trail in the bush."

"Good lads. Now, that gap there has a bit of hard cover close, so if he's a lefty he can fire around the treetrunk and mostly stay in cover. If he's not, that flowering bush behind him breaks up his outline nicely, he's concealed from one side thanks to the other bush, the other side thanks to the tree, and if he's feeling afraid he can roll behind the tree. Now, what we'll do if we make contact but there's no obvious source of fire - something you'll determine in about half a second under fire, trust me on that - you all turn outwards herringbone-style like you've been taught, then fire up. Double-tap everywheres you'd want to be to ambush you. Without ever seeing your target, you just may kill them all off, or at least inflict quite a bit of damage. Questions?"

Six comprehending faces looked up at the former Russkyan Naval Infantryman, a veteran of the Sorachoak and FLRJ campaigns. He nodded again. "Good. Let's move on then, quietly and carefully as always. What don't we want to do out in the bush - Nichols."

Nichols, a pale-faced boy from the capital city, barely eighteen, answered quickly and confidently. "We don't want to make much noise, so we're careful where we put our feet, and we're careful to make sure our gear is snug and silenced. We don't want to move too quickly, because that draws the eye, so we're deliberate. We don't want to move too slowly, because then we're too bloody slow, so we keep a decent pace and stay in good physical condition. We don't want to accidentally trip off a round, so we keep our fingers outside the trigger guard until we make contact. And we don't want to get killed, so we keep our eyes open, sniff the breeze, and listen to everything."

"Good on, lad. You take point this time, and get in greenface."

The Russkyans had quickly learnt, that with the "Covie's" racist attitudes towards damn near everything, the only way to get them to hide their pale skin was under a mixture of camouflage greasestick and sunscreen. Green and browns were the predominant colours, two different shades of green, mostly. The Russkyans themselves were willing to work in "Blackface" for certain operations against the "Tribals," and this was shared by a handful of the more practical CovSAS and CovRecce. The less practical, were mostly dead in some failed raid on the Wesi River Valley's western mouth. PRELIKAZ men stationed near "the Valley" had learnt of the failure from unsecured and unencrypted panicked broadcasts by surviving Covies before they'd been cut down, listening in over their own radios. A bloody shame. And a large part of the reason PRELIKAZ was here, to improve the combat effectiveness of their forces.

Covingsland Defence Force officers however, supremely arrogant and disdaining of the aetheist or Russian Orthodox Slavs, had forbidden the PRELIKAZ mercenaries from instructing anything more than the Volunteer Forces and CCF, as well as "Number Three Brigade," a mixed bag of artillerymen, armoured corps troopers, and Infanteers not held in high regard by the "Covie fop" officers as at some point in their ancestry, their fathers or mothers had been over-fond of a Uighur or Turkic slave. Not encountering the same disdain and overtly racist attitude from the Russkyans, they'd earned the respect of the Slavs by fighting hard, applying themselves totally to their training, and adopting slightly more civilized attitudes towards women. This enabled elements of their reconnaissance groups to actually conduct interviews with the local population outside Covingsland that gave decent intelligence information, rather than the typical half-lies half-outright fantasy that generally accompanied a "now fuck off, chickenskin," to use the Inglada parlance.

Being "subhuman heretics," the Russkyan officers amongst the PRELIKAZ employees were fortunately not invited to the "Gentlemen's Clubs" where many Covie officers held "meetings," thinly disguised alcohol-sodden gang-rapes. From the girls who'd been hired to help clean the primary barracks for PRELIKAZ men near No. 3 BDE's battalion-sized encampments, the Russkyans learnt that they had all the reason in the world to disdain their "counterparts" in the CDF. Being professionals, they did a good job of hiding this.

Vadim Chelyako had one combat boot on his left knee, brushing away mud while a frail white girl sat on a chair across from him with a dustpan and broom resting across her lap. At Chelyako's insistence, she was detailing some of her life and times under her former owner, before she'd been discarded at age fifteen as "too old." Vadim looked up, thinking he'd misheard.

"Excised?"
The girl, Sarah, nodded mutely and made a motion with her fore and middle finger as if a shear's blades were opening and closing. Seeing Chelyako's face change from neutral to 'homicidal rage' caused her to seemingly shrink into her chair and rush to explain herself. Vadmin Chelyako, veteran of the Groznocheskoye battle on the Sorachoakai Coast, held up a hand to stop her explanations.
"I understand, I understand. This is common, Sarah?"

Still afraid of her 'master,' though the Russkyans loathed that term, she again nodded mutely. He felt the effort of smiling, forcing his expression away from anger to reassure the girl. He turned slightly in his chair and called across the room to a comrade in their native tongue.

"Khey, Seriyozha! Did you hear what Sarah had to say?"
"Slishyu nichevo, Vadim."
"These krasivaya are just as bad as they say they are. Cutting the clitoris off girls, probably all the rape stories are true. Remember that guy in Two Battalion who told us that they sometimes shot "wives" who got too old? I don't doubt it, now."
"Nekulturny somshokhii! I swear on their fucking god that I'm going to leave Zanwesia, and when I do I'm taking some of their women with me."
"Can't take them all, Seriyozha. More's the pity."
"I fucking know that, Vadim. And they want me to fight for these ****-fallen durakii? Fuck that, if we're ever being overrun I'm getting the fuck out, but not before I tie up some of these so-called "officers" for the tribals to have fun with!"

Vadim tapped the right side of his neck as if brushing away a fly. This was one of the "serviceman's informal hand signals" symbolizing that the user was in agreement with what was being said, but it was time to be quiet and calm down now. Vadim, genuinely agreeing with Sergei's commentary, snapped the fingers of his right hand, simultaneously touching the forefinger to the left of his trachea and the middle finger to the right. Then he pointed to the Covingsland flag hanging over the doorway beside the Russkyan national colours. Sergei, still across the room, laughed and patted his RAR-4, nodding agreement.

--

Glossary:
- Khey: Russkyans will sometimes have difficulty with the "H" sound as found in English, calling it like the Cyrillic character "X."
- Slishyu nichevo: Literally "I hear nothing" in both Russian and Russkyan. In this context, meaning "I didn't catch that mate, sorry."
- Krasivaya: Literally "Beautiful" with the feminine case ending. In this context, meaning "Foppish," "Fairy-boy," "Faggot," a general term of disrespect when applied to a male, especially a member of any armed forces.
- Nekulturny somshokhii: Uncivilized motherfucking sluts. "Somshokhii" is a very vulgar insult heard only in prisons, particularly the SIZOs, and in certain Russkyan Military units. There is no effective English translation, as contextually it can change meaning. Applied to an officer, "motherfucking slut" is close enough.
- ****-fallen: An implication that your mother didn't have any difficulties giving birth to you for reasons of promiscuity and that you literally fell from the uterus. In Russkyan, "shlukha-desant." (Slut-jumper, literally)
- Durakii: Plural. Literally means "Fools."
Zanwesia
25-11-2007, 04:24
The two guards standing on the polished granite floor outside of President Kennedy M'bunga's office looked disturbingly like Doomish (1) Legionaries. They were tall, dark skinned, and carried DR-83M assault rifles. They wore the ceramic plated MAS vests with PALS standard webbing, they wore the standard Spectra helmet of the legionary, with the hinged cheek guards and anti-glare coated polycarbonate visors, they even wore the black and gold ceremonial uniforms of the Doomani Augustoclavii (2).

Except they were not legionaries. Despite the labarums, gold crosses and the way they held themselves, they were not soldiers from everybody's favorite psychotic dictatorship. No, they were merely the guards of President Kennedy M'bunga. President M'bunga lived in a huge palace on the northern outskirts of Mababad, far away from the capital city's slums. The money that foreign powers had given M'bunga was spent on decking out his military men in the most lavish of equipment, and not on humanitarian aid, as stipulated by the original donors. Kennedy M'bunga himself was a tall, muscular man who wore the most expensive suits and ties Mazara haute couture houses could come up with, the watch on his wrist was a handmade timepiece from the Macabees with diamonds cut in Jaredcohenia. He took health supplements made in Pacitalia, and his personal trainer was a six-time Olympic decathalon champion from Willink. On television, he cut an imposing figure, with his height and rigid military bearing. Given his vast wealth, and his well equipped military, he could have been the Prime Minister of any first world nation.

The fact that he controlled only the decaying city of Mababad and the surrounding districts was just an incidental problem. The fact that people inside the city were starving because the military ate all the food and burned all the fuel oil was another problem. But those problems could be ignored, because Kennedy M'bunga could retreat to his well groomed 30,000 acre estate where he entertained foreign dignitaries, and convinced them to part with their money. Kennedy M'bunga had nothing to fear when traveling abroad because he owned a pair of sleek black Shukusei fighter planes which escorted his ZMI made private jet wherever it went. Kennedy M'bunga had nothing to fear on the ground because wherever he went, his troops in their crisp uniforms and expensive rifles made sure that nobody got close to him.

Kennedy M'bunga was on top of the world. Even though people were growing food in decaying rooftop gardens and in Mababad alleyways, even though they starved as M'bunga ate richly, even though there was a total breakdown in civilization in Mababad, Kennedy M'bunga, President for Life of Zanbad and the Wesi Valley was about as happy as a man could get. His military kept it that way. After all, if you wanted to eat, learn how to read and have a dry roof over your head as you slept, the only option was to join Kennedy M'bunga's army. There, you got 3 square meals a day, clean clothes and your very own DR-83 assault rifle. If you were in Kennedy M'bunga's army, all you had to do was hack few villagers apart with a machete, rape a few women and children, and voila, you were living the high life. It was certainly better than living in some shithole village farming peanuts and getting sodomized (literally at times) by invaders that swept through practically twice a day. It was better than dying of AIDS or malaria in some hospital ward run by the Pinkskins.

And it was certainly better than than giving into the Jejani Liada and forming a coalition government with those primitives. They were the ones that got Zanwesia stuck in the whole mess with the Pinkskins in the first place. M'bunga's government was the way forward, and those backwater imbeciles couldn't see that. The M'bunga regime was recognized as being the proper, rightful rulers of Zanwesia by nearly every other government on earth. Not the scum-sucking Wesi, not the pink-skinned Covies, but General and High Marshal Kennedy M'bunga, President for Life of Zanbad and the Wesi Valley and he, General and High Marshal Kennedy M'bunga, President for Life of Zanbad and the Wesi Valley, would make everybody else see that, no matter how many people had to die.

In order to enforce its authority beyond the borders of Mababad, government forces regularly performed raids outside of land that was solidly outside of government control. Sometimes, the raids slashed deep into Jejani Liada territory, especially down the Maba river, so that the tribes further downstream would learn not to fuck with the delivery of materiel bound for Mababad. There were consequences to these raids, most of which will be dealt with later. But for now, let's just say that the raids brought in a human cargo.

Many of the slaves captured in the raids were sold to the Doomish in exchange for weaponry. The sexually Doomish had no use for the girls that famine kept model thin and any Mazara pimp or madam that tried to make a buy from Zanwesia would find their establishment shut down immediately, but that didn't stop perverts the world over from flocking to Mababad's slave markets. Your average 10 to 13 year old girl went for roughly $1000, a boy that age would go for the same price. An unbelievable amount of wealthy, nominally heterosexual men prowled Mababad's slave markets, looking for young boys they could purchase for their own use.

Among the crumbling concrete buildings of what was formerly called Westminster by the Covies, the deep voices of the slavers boomed.

"SLAVES! SLAVES! GET YOUR SLAVES HERE! WE'VE GOT TALL, THIN, YOUNG, OLD, YOU NAME 'EM, WE GOT 'EM! WE GOT SLAVES HERE!"

A fat white man in a bad, brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt came up to a fat black man in a bad, brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt. They spoke.

"I want that one in the corner" said the white man, pointing at a scared looking girl, one of the few non-blacks huddled in the mass of slaves.

"Ah good choice sir. She's a Sinoagal (3), the troops had to go in deep to capture her."

"You can't find good chinks on the market these days. And god knows nobody wants to fuck you niggers."

"Why can't you find any chinks anywhere else sir, if I may ask?"

"Heh. They shoot back my good man. Not worth the trouble."

The slave trader nodded. "Would you like to check her teeth?"

"Yes." The fat white man walked over and pulled the trembling girl's lips back. He roughly pried her mouth open, and pulled out a small flashlight. "She's got a good set of chompers, all of them. I'll give you $1500 for her."

"I want $2000."

"$1500 no more, no less. Take it or leave it."

The slaver thought hard for a while. "Ok, $1500. You have it in cash?"

"13, 14, 15 hundred NS dollars. There you go sir."

The slaver unchained the girl from the other slaves, being careful to leave her manacles and leg irons on. Two of the fat white man's bodyguards in neatly ironed black suits moved up seemingly out of nowhere and put their hands on the girl's shoulders.

And then the fat white man looked the little yellow girl in her eyes, drool forming in the corners of his mouth. "Little girl. You and I are going to have some fun. Lots of fun."

Out on the concrete docks by the Maba river, the same thing was happening, with men, women and children being sold, some for as little as $200. Such was the price of human life in Zanwesia.

Maybe the fat white man would go to the arms markets next, where a man in a bright orange t-shirt of a Jeunese (4) soccer team had just given an arms dealer a white plumed chicken in a cage. The arms dealer handed the man in the Jeunese soccer t-shirt an AK-47 and several magazines.

"You Daqing United fan?" asked the arms dealer?

"Yea, I'm fan. I use my new satellite dish, watch many games."

"Ah, I'm fan of them too. You get free web-belt from me."

Then Daqing United would take the AK. Maybe he would tag along with a military raiding party. Maybe he would bring back some slaves too. Looting and slaving were one the few ways to stay alive. That and maybe prostituting your daughters out. Daqing had six daughters, all of whom, even the 5 year old, sucked truck driver and longshoreman dick for money. His wife had died of in childbirth earlier. He would soon have to find another one, because his oldest daughter, at 15, was getting on in years, and he had to create another investment. Maybe if he ranged out into the back country, he would find some more liquidity for his investments without having to buy a wife down by the docks.
_______________________
(1): Doomingsland: Everybody's favorite psychotic Catholic dictatorship.
(2): Augustoclavii: Bodyguards to the Doomish Emperor
(3): Sinoagal: Form of "Sinoagala", groups of mostly Chinese immigrants that settled in Zanwesia many years earlier to escape oppression in their home countries.
(4): Jeuna: An Asian nation
Zanwesia
26-11-2007, 09:00
"Please... please... I have a family...." The Covie SAS officer tied to one of M'tuku's wicker chairs looked like he just wet his own pants in fright. His blond hair was matted with blood and his face was streaked with dirt.

"I'm aware of that. You kept their pictures pinned to the inside of your uniform...Captain...Roberts is it?" Lady Theodoru Me'okei paced about the poured concrete floor of the dugout. Meanwhile, Captain Douglas Roberts just sobbed quietly. "You know Captain Roberts, it's people like you that make everybody that happens to share your skin color look bad. I got picked on in school because of people like you. They called me a slave owning redcoat, and I'm not even a Brit like you." Lady Me'okei kicked over Captain Roberts' chair so that he landed on his back and had only the ceiling to stare at. "And what's worse is that I get shit from the locals here. I can't do my job because everybody thinks that because I look like you, that I must automatically believe the same sort of bullshit you do."

"I-I don't believe in any of the hogwash that they taught me in church...honest. I-I only go because it's illegal to not go. And-and I don't own any slaves, I swear, I live in a hut, I-I only re-enlisted because my crops were failing and I couldn't...." at that point, Captain Roberts just sighed in resignation. "I couldn't meet my landlord's quota. You know what. I'm pathetic. I couldn't lead a simple raid to destroy some goddamn fuel tanks even though I had the fucking GPS coordinates for them. I couldn't even grow my tobacco crop worth a damn. I can't feed my wife and kids, and since you've captured me, my family's going to be sold into slavery to pay off my debts. You should just kill me right now. I'm a useless waste, just another goddamn serf like the rest of my men. At least they died with their dignity intact."

"Since I don't think anybody else that doesn't know it already is still alive, I'll let you in on the secret; the fuel tanks were decoys. That's why nothing happened when your 4 bombs hit it. Your fire control was superb, and as a commander, you performed excellently given the circumstances of your mission. You actually managed to save the lives of 3 of your men. I'm impressed by your leadership skills."

"Wait... 3 of my men are alive, where are they?"

"Receiving medical treatment. They weren't worth interrogating, and we figured that shooting or impaling them wouldn't have been the politest thing to do."

Captain Douglas Roberts breathed a sigh of relief. The men he was responsible for weren't being tortured to death.

"What we want from you Captain Roberts, is merely a bit of information. We've learned over the years that there's not really much difference between asking you politely and hammering bamboo splinters under your fingernails, especially since you're likely to lie when we're doing the hammering. Now you can give up this information freely, or we can shoot you and your men in the infirmary. Also, a little bit of database tracking work using the information on your dog tags meant that we managed to find your family. If you don't cooperate with us, they will be tortured. For laughs of course, since I don't think they have any useful information. If you do choose to divulge the information that we want, we will not only spare your family, but we will also shove a nice fat aluminum stake up your landlord's anal cavity."

It didn't take much time for Captain Roberts to consider Lady Me'okei's offer.

"Alright, what do you want to know?"

"Let's start with the name of your landlord, and where you live."

"I live in the East Moorshire District, next to New Jamestown." Lady Me'okei held up a single finger to stop him after he had finished his sentence.

"According to the most recent edition of the Covingsland peerage, that would make your landlord the Viscount Queensbury. A complete rat bastard from what I know, but I would be too if my name was Gaylord Fairsworthy, 14th Viscount of Queensbury."

"You don't know the half of it. He seizes land and crops for the most ridiculous of matters, he declares that he has the right to hunt on anybody's property, and worst of all, he has claimed not only the right of prima noctis, but also the right of secunda noctis."

"What's that?"

"Prima noctis the right to deflower any virgin in the realm. Secunda noctis is the right to sleep with anybody any subsequent time."

Lady Me'okei's pale blue eyes widened in the dark.

"Xo'ekri Lide...(1) And you... What else does he do?"

"If you want more, you shall have to untie me, or at least right my chair. Staring at the ceiling is irritating."

Lady Me'okei righted the chair and pulled out a combat knife from her belt, the Captain's own weapon. She cut the ropes holding the Captain.

Captain Roberts remained seated in the chair. For a second, Lady Me'okei thought he would have tried to take the knife from her and escape, but no, he sat there, talking, talking about how his lord stole his money and his crops, how he enslaved his daughters and had them excised, how the Viscount raped everybody's wives on a regular basis, and other various sickening misdeeds.

"You see, one of the reasons I'm talking is because I would give anything, ANYTHING, to get my revenge on that bloody arsewipe Queensbury. And, I know you're Mazara, I don't what kind of back jungle tortures you crazies have made up, but if what I've heard on TV's right, you people can think up fantastically gruesome ways to end peoples' lives."

"If the information you give us helps us expedite his capture, I assure, we will flay him alive, gouge his eyes out and roll him rock salt before we subject him to Pal'kerchjai (2)."

"What's that?"

"It's where we sew him up in the skin of a freshly slaughtered animal and leave up tied to an anthill. The ants around here aren't like the ants back home though."

"Is that bad?"

"Oh no, it's good. The ants back home are too voracious, they'll eat him too fast. Your ants are small and slow. They'll take a long time. Would you like a drink and something to eat?"

"I'll take anything you've got."

Lady Me'okei turned to one of the guards in the corner. "Guardian (3), get this man something to eat and drink, and a few wet towels. Get me something too."

"Kaf'nan. (4)". The guard touched the Kaliae Ikar on her face, nodded her head and left the dugout.

"While we're waiting, let's talk more about... you. Tell me more about Covingsland's military."

"Well, there's the Covingsland army, air force and navy and---"

"No, no, I know that, tell me what it's LIKE. The culture, the people, the customs. I memorized the technical details before I got in theater, you don't need to parrot them back to me."

"The VolFor are something you should know about then. Basically, all the Barons and Earls and what have you have been importing people from around the world that believe in their archaic idiocy."

"What kind of people?"

"Mostly Questarians, Willinkians, Franberrians, Londinians, Praetonians, Mississipians, Momanguisians, Guffingfordians, that sort of trash. They've even got a company of bloody Russkyans."

"Russkyans you say?"

"Yes, Russkyans. They've been bloody effective though. They've actually managed to teach marching order and basic marksmanship to the VolFor, which is better than what the fops have managed to do, which is to get those bloody idiots killed. Most of those poor lads don't even know what corner of the world they're fighting in."

"How... intriguing. Have you received training for the Russkyans?"

"No. Neither have my men. It would have done the poor bastards some good. Too late now."

"Then there's the CLI, the stupidest people ever to jump from a plane. The government would never let the Russkyans even touch their precious air cavalry unit."

"Your government thinks anybody that doesn't look like well....you, is subhuman. They wouldn't let a bunch of Slavs teach purebred Anglo-Saxons how to fight, would they?"

"I don't believe so."

"Indeed, the food's here."

The Guardian came back with two platters of food, a few towels, a couple of cups and a thermos. The bamboo skewers on the platters held whole, fist sized perfectly seared squab, with slices of fresh mango, fresh hot chili peppers and cassava porridge on the side.

"Tile'te Ria'aia. Hio te'lis. (5)."

The Guardian put the food and towels down on the floor where Lady Me'okei sat and resumed her spot at the door. Lady Me'okei continued while eating the squab whole, bones and all. Captain Roberts toweled off the blood and dirt from his face and hands.

Lady Me'okei poured two cups of steaming... whatever from the thermos. It smelled heavenly. She took a sip. Not wanting to look bad in front of her guest, she didn't spit it out, but the expression on her face was unmistakable.

"E'nakihul'il Rev'eve Me'okei. E'wox'ot'lis Ojai Fajala Te'ul'ont'lis Lio." (6) The Guardian's expression looked sheepish and had more than a bit of false innocence in it.

"Salik! (7) This stuff tastes like battery acid!" Me'okei took a deep breath.

Roberts chuckled. "Can't handle the Ojai? Not many can. I drank this stuff as a boy. Three times a day at each meal. It won't hurt you, I promise. Never hurt anybody."

"Never hurt anybody? I think that sip just took ten years off my life!"

"Then you must intend to live too long err..."

"Lady Me'okei."

"Lady Me'okei then. A long life without Ojai is a life too long."

"I suppose. I don't know if I have the stomach to finish this."

"I just witnessed the massacre of several hundred comrades in arms, including many of my close friends,I saw their flayed, impaled and possibly violated corpses as I entered the camp and my wife, son and 2 daughters are going to be sold into slavery. Also, I'm committing high treason by merely associating with Kefas(8) like you. If I still have the stomach to even live, you have the stomach to drink the Ojai...Lady." Roberts nearly spat that last word.

Lady Me'okei glared viciously at Roberts, then tipped back the glass into her throat. She shuddered as the steaming lime green liquid burned all the way down her throat.

"Actually..." she gasped. "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

"Anybody can kill. But it takes a true warrior to drink Ojai"

"I suppose that's why you're Covie SAS. Anyway, once you're finished this meal, you're free to go. But in the meantime, let's go over the locations of a few outposts in Covingsland..."
__________________________________________________________
(1):Xo'ekri Lide: The equivalent in Mazara of "Jesus Fucking Christ."
(2):Pal'kerchjai: Literally "Forest skin sew."
(3):Guardian/Ria'aia: Sergeant
(4):Kaf'Nan: No Madam. Literally "no, honored one."
(5):Tile'te Ria'aia, chio te'lis: 'Thank you Guardian. As you were."
(6):E'nakihul'il Rev'eve Me'okei. E'wox'ot'lis Ojai Fajala Te'ul'ot'lis Lio: My apologies Lady Me'okei. I didn't know that you didn't like Ojai Fajala.
(7): Salik: Shit.
(8): Kefa: Covie version of "Kaffir"
Zanwesia
27-11-2007, 04:07
The Auoluwe'ura'xioltchi (1) or just 'Aut' for short was the gem of the East Mazara Sea, its glittering steel and glass towers rose above the verdant, pristine jungles that grew seemingly randomly at street level. Always in tune with nature, the Mazara planted hanging gardens in the rammed earth terraces ringing their skyscrapers so that flower and fruit bearing filled vines and trees trailed down buildings 1000 meters high. During the day, monkeys played in the multi-level streets, swinging on the vines that grew on street signs and birds with fiery plumage more brilliant than the crown jewels of the most distinguished monarchies soared on the currents of warm, spice perfumed tropical air. During the night, the trees and towers were literally ablaze with the luminescence of billions of fireflies and glow worms and the noise of the crickets and frogs was almost deafening. Riotous greens, blues, reds, blacks, oranges, cobalts, pinks, viridians, cinnabars, greys, mahoganies and purples made up the urban landscape where normally, the boring color of concrete would only dominate. Even cars that traveled on the Aut's huge highways, and boats that traveled in its wide canals were painted brightly, in quiet support for the palette nature offered.

The Aut was the greatest of the Great Mazara tribal lodges (2). 3.5 billion people called the Aut home. Amongst the great cities of the world, like Timiocato, Kingston and Schultaria Prime, Auoluwe'ura'xioltchi was certainly the most diverse, and the most colorful. Anybody of any color, faith, and creed was permitted to live in Aut, and everybody did. The people were just as varied as the the plants and animals that lived in the lodge. They were wildly differing clothes and spoke wildly differing languages, but they all came together as one. It was about as far from Karain as it got. There was no hate here. Only Cin E'ik Lia (3), peace and love.

The Mazara were the most ancient of peoples, theirs was the the first history to be written, the sacred words of the Gre'haiae painstakingly carved into stone tablets. The Mazara reached far and wide, nurturing younger peoples, helping them grow. Unlike the kneejerk phobia most other peoples exhibited at outsiders, the Mazara showed kindness and understanding and a willingness to learn. They accepted as long as they were accepted . The Mazara disdain for European civilization came from the fact that they did not accept others, they only sought to dominate, oppress and exploit others, even the Mazara, the first humans to call themselves human.

The first history of the Mazara people was recorded by nearly the same people that recorded yesterday's. The Gre'haiae were important, not only keeping history, but making sure its lessons were kept successfully as well. The Gre'haiae promoted understanding between the tribes, settled the grudges between peoples, and kept the record straight on what was really what. Inevitably, history repeated itself, but that was a good thing. It meant that human behavior repeated itself. To understand that was to understand humanity.

The interview was taking place in an empty classroom in Aulowe Central University in Aut. Aulowe Central had many empty classrooms, because somebody thought it would be funny to make a grand educational institution, then choke off enrollment until nearly nobody went there. For an institution designed to support more than half a million people, there only 10,000 students. What was most noticeable was that there were 5 times as many staff as there were students. Aulowe Central was a great place to be if you were an egghead, but you hated people too much to actually impart your knowledge onto others. Its mostly empty conference rooms were perfect places for Gre'haia to meet and discuss various points, especially where there were disagreements.

Teja Ootong was a bit apprehensive. The feeling was almost... violating. Teja was pretty, she had the high cheekbones, smooth chestnut skin, black hair, and the bright smile that marked her out as an ethnic Zan. But nobody really paid attention to that. Everyone just wondered why her left arm ended in a jagged scar at her left collarbone. Nobody really asked anything else. They just sort of left her alone after that. As a Gre'haia in training, one of Teja's assignments was to learn what it would be like to be on the other end of the tape recorder. The head of the Department of Karaini History, Nan'Gre'haia (3) Ashabel Kasim, realized that not only would Teja fulfill the conditions of her assignment, her own research into the Zanwesia conflict would be greatly enhanced as well. Eyewitnesses were even better than video, because video couldn't tell how anybody felt at the time. They only showed you the pictures.

This left Teja sitting in the empty classroom, waiting for Gre'haia Kasim to arrive. She fingered the scar on her empty left shoulder. The wound had been held together with thorns after the ill-trained medicine man had cauterized most of the area shut by burning a few fistfuls of gunpowder on it. She'd spent most of the trip to the shore and the long boat ride over to Mazara Palani in a delirious half fever/half coma. Gre'haia Kasim stepped into the room maybe ten minutes late. She was a tall woman, dressed smartly in a designer business suit, given her higher status amongst Gre'haiae, it was natural she'd be paid more.

"Teja, Teja. In order to test your skills as an orator, I am going to transmit live for my weekly podcast. Shall we begin?"

"Ummm... Before we begin, could I voice a concern of mine?"

"Sure. You're my best student after all. Normally I would just start recording, but I'm aware this might be a sensitive subject for you."

"I just... this is really probing deeply. I've never really talked about this to anybody before."

"Fair enough."

"We can begin now, Nan'Gre'haia."

Gre'haia Kasim went over the standard opening for her podcast.

"Today, we are live with Teja Ootong, who came to Mazara Palani as a refugee from Zanwesia as a child. Teja, tell us your story."
___________________________________________________
Transcript from Gre'haia Ashabel Kasim's podcast: This Wednesday.

My name is Teja Yoru Ootong, I am from the Oblani tribe, from the central Zanbad highlands. I fled from the Zanwesian Civil War as a small child. Currently, I am a Gre'haia in training at Aulowe Central University in Auoluwe'ura'xioltchi, specializing in Karaini history and anthropology. In order to enhance knowledge regarding the situation in Zanbad, and in Zanwesia in general, I have decided to tell my story.

I grew up in a small village that specialized primarily in subsistence corn farming, with some cattle on the side. Maybe 200 or so people lived in my village, which had only single road leading through it, and no neighboring villages for kilometers around. For the first 8 years of my life, I lived in a one room hut with my father, who was a cattle herder, my mother, and my older brother Jay, who helped my father tend to the livestock. I went to the village school like all the other children. I was too young to remember how the Jejani Liada collapsed, but I heard first my mother and father, talking. Talking about Mababad, and Kennedy M'bunga, and how the Jejani Liada were going to vote to reject M'bunga. Then I heard the village elders talking about how the Jejani Liada couldn't agree on something. The laws. The bones. They forgot the bones. I didn't know what that meant, so I asked my father. He just got angry at me, and told me that I shouldn't be asking that question, although the apprehension was on everybody's faces. Even as an 8 year old, I could feel it. More of the men and boys carried their guns into the fields or pastures as they worked. My brother and father started carrying guns too. Beaten up old DR-78s from god knows what corner of the earth.

But the guns didn't help. The first raiding party came around from the Kwezi tribe. The Kwezis, they were the poorest tribe. They were the angriest tribe. So their young men, poor and angry, drove around in beaten up old technicals, the dirt cheap Mekugian ones that never broke. They mounted machine guns to them. Doomish made ones that would take the abuse of being welded to some steel tubes and the bed of a pickup and still function. In the meantime, Medical International (4) had just finished inoculating all the children in the village for polio. The doctors had just packed up and left when the Kwezis came. This gang, they called themselves the Fuck Off Boys. They called themselves that, because they probably watched too many movies, and didn't understand what the words meant, but they wanted to sound hard anyway. The Fuck Off Boys, they moved fast. They drove up to our village at night, took us all by surprise. They came in with the headlights on their trucks off, so the first and last thing most people heard was the heavy machine gun tracers and rocket propelled grenades tearing through their flammable huts.

Everybody's first reaction of course, was to scatter, but the Fuck Off Boys, were ruthless. They surrounded the village, cut off every escape route. Then, they got out of their trucks. Some of them held us at gunpoint and herded us near the Chief's house. Others pulled out their machetes. One of the FOBs pulled out a severed head from a sack he was keeping in the bed of his pickup. It belonged to one of the Medical International workers, the same doctor who had given me the polio shot. The FOB threw it at the Chief's feet. Remaining defiant to the last, the old man didn't utter a sound as the FOBs tied him between two of their trucks and slowly pulled him apart. Then they worked their way down with the Chief's family, they pulled his wife and children apart too. But they screamed. The rest of us screamed too. Then, they stopped pulling. They made a fire, using our burning huts as kindling. They poured some water in this big pot they had, and hung it over the fire. They let the water boil. As that happened, they checked all the children, to see which arm had the needle mark from the shots. One by one, they stuffed the arms into the boiling water, boiling the flesh off each child's arm. Then, they just took a machete and hacked off what was left. I remember when the FOB checked me over. He grabbed me and dragged me over the pot, I kicked and screamed. My father shouted "Be brave, be strong!"

And then they shot him in front of my eyes, then they shot my mother, and maybe a few other people for good measure. I didn't feel the flesh being boiled off my arm. All I felt was sadness. Sadness and pain. I had just watched my parents get shot in front of my eyes. I didn't feel anything besides a bit of a tugging and a spurt of blood when they tore my arm off. I didn't scream. I just sobbed quietly when one them, in a medicine man's headdress, cauterized my shoulder with a torch and a handful of gunpowder. The medicine man applied the torch randomly it seemed. Many of the children had already bled to death in the grass.

Then, the guard next to my brother made a mistake. He relaxed his grip on his weapon and cheered loudly. That was the opening Jay needed. He grabbed the FOB's weapon and tugged hard, wrenching the rifle from his grip. The other FOBs opened fire on him, but they didn't know how to shoot, and every bullet went wide. Jay took his time, aimed carefully through the sights and shot three of the FOBs. This was the opening the rest of the villagers needed. They rushed forward and tackled many of their guards. In the chaos, Jay grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder. He shoved the rifle into an FOB's head and told him to drive. That he did. As the FOBs scattered in every direction, my brother just shot the driver of that and pointed his rifle backwards and shot the machine gunner in the bed. I don't know when I lost consciousness. I remember coming to every once in a while in the truck, when my brother was trying to seal the blood vessels shut with bush thorns after blood started flowing again. It didn't hurt. None of this ever hurt. It just felt unreal. Reflecting back on it, I was a freshly maimed 8 year old, riding in a stolen technical operated by her 13 year old brother. I don't remember when the truck ran out of gas either, but I do remember Jay carrying me. I'm just surprised we didn't die in the bush. I'm not even sure how we got to the ship in the first place.

The next thing I remember, I wake up a month later in a hospital ward in Mazara Palani. The first thing I saw was a hummingbird, bright blue and green, taking a sip from the billowy white Orchids that grew in the planters outside my window. Jay was working as an errand boy for the hospital to pay my medical bills. For six years, he worked there, trying to feed the two of us, while paying off my bills, while we lived in a small apartment in the hospital. An MP Ordnance (5) social worker checked up on us every once in a while to make sure we were alive, and that we both were in school. I remember my first day. I didn't speak Mazara or English. All I spoke was Inglada, which what I spoke in the village. I remember how the kids jabbed my left shoulder and asked me what happened. And I tried to explain but I couldn't quite get the words out. The other kids just laughed, teased me. I ended up with the other refugee kids, the war kids, some of them from Zanwesia. A lot of them were like me, missing limbs, or blinded, or crippled. There was this one girl, Cindy, from Covingsland, she looked fine, except she sometimes just froze up and sat there, trembling every time somebody so much as pointed even a finger gun at her. She prayed a lot too, almost constantly. The other kids said she was crazy. The teachers told me she was like me with one arm or Tei in the wheelchair, except she hurt her head. Not like when kids fall out of trees, but when people see things they shouldn't see. Ever.

I wondered what the others saw, because they probably saw things like I did. Jay acted the same way Cindy did sometimes. Sometimes, he'd talk to himself, and rock back and forth in room in the hospital. I wanted to know what the others saw, so I began reading. More about Zanwesia. Later, I began asking my friends what they saw back there. Most of them couldn't talk about it. I know I couldn't talk about what happened to me. We just talked about the basics. Where we all came from, maybe what we dared to remember. Because we didn't dare remember the truly horrible parts, how our worlds collapsed around us, and the darkness that was in each of us. One day, Cindy opened up to me. What happened to her was that a Taheisan raiding party attacked her village. Her parents were shot in front of her eyes, then her brothers, then her sisters were raped in front of her eyes before they shot them too. The Taheisans put a bullet in her head and left her for dead in a mass grave they dug at the edge of the village, where she spent the next 48 hours in the sun next to her dead family. She pulled back her hair, her perfectly blond hair, and showed me the spot behind her right ear where there was a metal plate where normally bone was supposed to be. She said she saw god briefly when the bullet entered.

I decided to become a Gre'haia from that point. Everybody has a story like that to tell. I know Cindy felt better after telling me what happened. She still freezes up anytime somebody makes an air gun at her, and she still goes to church 7 days a week, but at least she's still alive, still functioning. Jay never opened up to me. He hanged himself after I graduated from secondary (6). I found him dangling from the ceiling. His suicide note simply read "sorry."

I still get the stares from people, but I understand why now. They want to know my story. They know I have one, just like I know they have one. Maybe the Paradise Birds, maybe they have a story too.

This podcast is dedicated to Jay Ootong. Without you, I would never have lived to tell this story. Maybe you rest in peace.
______________________________________________________
(1): Auoluwe'ura'xioltch: Literally, "The combined tribal lodge."
(2): Lodge: A tribal lodge in Mazara is a gathering of many people in a close area. Basically a city.
(3): Cin E'ik Lia: Peace and Love.
(4): Medical International: A humanitarian organization.
(5): MP Ordnance: Essentially the government.
(6): Secondary: Secondary education.
Russkya
27-11-2007, 08:21
Vadim Chelyako was acting as a field advisor for a patrol from 1 Volunteer Force Battalion, the organization designed and built by the PRELIKAZ advisors at the behest of their Covingsland employers, who quite simply couldn't be assed to organize the Volunteer Force any other way. Prior to 1 Volunteer Force Battalion, most of the "VolFors" had been killed trying to fight competent Taheisan forces organized as a standard CDF Infantry Brigade with a third of the required equipment. The survivors of this, hardened, and quite frankly frightened by their previous experiences, had been remolded into a paramilitary Light Infantry force that was motorised with mineproof vehicles such as the South African Buffel and Casspir. Chelyako sat next to a chain-smoking Questerian who was seated to the side of a Londinian. The Londinian - Karlstone - had shown quite a bit of aptitude with the local languages, surprising everyone in the Language Familiarization class, including himself. Behind the section riding in the Casspir, a Buffel was laden with Covington schoolchildren.

Chelyako was discussing the state of the world with the other Russkyan in the Casspir, a tremendous man from the lowlands in the Eastern Oblast aptly named Medvedev, nicknamed of course, "Bear." Medved, as in Russian, was the Russkyan word for that particular mammal. Medvedev, patience of a saint, listened to Chelyako reiterate himself in his mother tongue for the third time this trip.

"And if the fucking aristocracy," the disdain in this last word was such that the Anglophone-only VolFor men in the Casspir all glanced at him in surprise "Ever got their shit together, we wouldn't be escorting what few kids can go to school to a building that's fifteen fucking kilometers from their village in a mineproofed truck. What do you want to bet that half the girls in that Buffel have been carved up and raped by whatever fucking duke or earl or fucking Tsarnik cocksucker controls this part of Covingsland?"

"I wouldn't bet an empty casing on it, mate. You weren't on stag last night, that short fuck was "just visiting" the Chateau again."

Whatever Chelyako might've said was cut off as the air was seemingly blasted out of the way, dirt erupting around the vehicle in a tremendous roar that left all aboard deafened. The man on the pintle-mounted GPMG fell backwards, blood streaming from his eardrums and eyes rolled back in his head. Not knowing what to make of that, Medvedev threw him against the forward bulkhead as the vehicle collapsed forwards and to the left. No-one aboard heard the thump as a PG-7VL slammed into the side of the Buffel's troop bay and blew a few schoolchildren into red ruin. Chelyako was first on his feet, huge voice filling the small space of the Casspir's troop compartment and spilling over the sides and through the thrown open hatches. Piling out the back, the Volunteer Forces shouted as they went into battle.

Their shouts consisted of one repeating phrase: "Our right! To the right!" Jejani Liada militiamen poured Kalashnikov fire at both vehicles, some rounds actually directed at the rapidly debussing foreigners who spread into a skirmish line and laid down fire to their front. Karlstone, not seeing a clear target for himself, emptied his loaded magazine in the practiced Drake Shoot, and was surprised to see a puff of crimson mist emerge from behind a small, knocked down tree. He reloaded and resumed his controlled firing.

Medvedev found himself standing to take control of the GPMG, ripping the mangled ammunition box from its stand and letting the miraculously undamaged belt drape into the troop bay. He fired, not caring for the barrel, pouring down a withering stream of full calibre fire into the brush, rounds hammering their way through trees, he proceeded to kill muzzle flashes, puffs of smoke alongside the road, and ceased fire only when the belt ran dry. He stooped to pick up a fresh belt when the fragment of a 7.62x39mm steel-cored round smashed off the GPMG's mount and sliced into his back. He fell.

Chelyako, for his part, was directing the fire of Element Two. Their fireteam leader screamed until another round smacked through the meagre ballistic protection afforded by the useless vests that the CDF had provided the VolFor. He gurgled, made wet noises, and died. Chelyako glanced backwards as he changed out magazines on his RAR-4 rifle, then returned to hammering 7.5x42mm rounds into the brush with singleminded precision. A JL tribesman stood to flee, a bright yellow shirt on. He acquired sight picture, pulled his trigger twice, watched Yellow Shirt twist around fully and fall. The front of that shirt was smeared crimson. He found another muzzle flash and engaged it simultaneously with Karlstone. The tribesman's head and center mass wilted from the impacts and the corpse went limp, hands tightening from death reflex. The Kalashnikov he had held rattled off the last of its magazine into the dirt between the burning Buffel and the Casspir. The incoming fire stopped, and no one moved. A high pitched scream competed with Chelyako's trained voice, booming out commands, overriding the fear that the VolFor men felt, believing this to be the firefight that would end them all as it may very well have under a Covie officer's incompetent leadership. He ordered Element One forward and to the left to sweep across their front, Element Two to support by fire, and smacked Karlstone's helmet. The rifleman looked back.

"You're a Corporal now! Keep here and don't shoot your buddies!"
"Sir!"

The Russkyan pulled himself up into the back of the Casspir and found his friend on the floorboards with blood slicking his tactical vest. He pulled Medvedev forwards and out of the vehicle, treating his wound with the man's aidpack. He sprayed it with "Triple Cross" aid spray, using half the bottle. He stuffed high-absorbent gauze into the wound, tied a large Russkyan Army olive drab field dressing over the entry, finding no exit wound, and slapped Medvedev's face until the man's eyes opened and focused.

"You got shot in the back! That's what happens when you go to moon the fuckers!"

Medvedev smiled, croaking out his response. "Fuck you, Vadimka. It was a fragment and you know it." Vadim smiled and ran to the Buffel. A child's corpse smouldered on the ground outside the door, the two VolFor men riding with them were also dead. The entire vehicle was dead except for the driver, an Uighur slave from the village belonging to the so-called Mayor, a minor noble, who had taken it upon himself to simply sit still in a killzone instead of reversing out as he'd been ordered if the lead vehicle was disabled. He cowered behind the Casspir now, clutching a wound as minor as his "noble" master's in his calf. Chelyako found the man, treated his wound, and walked back around the Casspir to find Karlstone on the radio with a PRELIKAZ contractor on the recieving end. They'd be reinforced by two airmobile sections and have their disabled vehicles removed by recovery platforms within the hour, and until then they busied themselves with counting the dead, evening up their ammunition loads, and digging fighting holes incase the "Jay-Ells" returned.

--

Sarah quietly opened the door to the room shared by Sergei "Seriyozha" Vorodyen and Vadim Chelyako. Wiping powder residue off his RAR-4's bolt carrier with a towel, Vorodyen looked up to make sure it was Sarah and called out a greeting. Hearing her - as usual - meek reply, he fit the cleaned bolt carrier and bolt together and slid them back into his rifle. Tapping the reciever cover securely back into place after replacing the remaining components, he pulled back the charging handle and let it go. The metallic crash made Sarah cringe, and he called out to her again.

"Just me, Sarah. Need to make sure it works."

Not turning from her broom, she kept her head down and nodded. Vorodyen stood from his chair and turned the girl around with one hand, intending to comfort her. He took in the sight of a nasty bruise on her collarbone and a swollen purple-black left eye, and crouched infront of her with his rifle across his legs. "We're all ex soldiers here, so we'll all be carrying our rifles, yes? And not one of us is going to hurt you now. Understand?"

She nodded. Her and the other Kishkii had a hard time accepting that the PRELIKAZ contractors could keep discipline without the sjambok, weren't sexually abusing them, and kept them well fed and entertained, required only to perform light cleaning duties in return. They were also taught conversational Russkyan. The Uighurs and Turkic slaves bought by PRELIKAZ (all of whom were males) recieved equal treatment, although were expected to help the Quartermasters and Vehicle Maintenance crews. All the Kishkii found it equally difficult to believe that the Russkyans paid no major heed to religion, though many seemed to pay homage to a handful of ancient Forest deities as part of beliefs acquired from their military service.
Vorodyen's voice was calm and soothing, level and his face was easy to trust. His woman back in Russkya constantly espoused to her friends how good Sergei was with children, and as the man was in Zanwesia, made plans as women were want to do involving a family and a small horde of children. "Seriyozha," for his part, was unaware of this. He found himself asking Sarah in his gently persuasive manner just who'd beaten her. A thin, shuddering voice gave him his answer.

Fifteen minutes later, Vorodyen kicked in the door of the local CDF Officer's Club, sending the Turkic slave serving as coatman and standing by the door sprawling. Entering with the war-shout that put screaming fear into the bellies of those opposing it, he threw a lit thunderflash behind the counter and saw the barman, a Covingsland Army Staff Sergeant with fashionably pale skin scramble out of the way. The resounding blast echoed off the walls and inhaled the air in the room, shattering the glasses near it. Air rushed back in, and Vorodyen's hundred ninety-two centimetre height advanced towards a white starched service dress jacket sporting the gaudy insignia of a CDF Captain.

"Godwinson!"

Hauling the cowed man up by the collar, Vorodyen loosed the CZ-97B from its dropleg holster and rammed the muzzle into the soft flesh of Norbert's chin. "So you like beating my property, do you? Get off damaging my goods?"

Enraged, as most Russkyans are, by the mistreatment of a female, let alone one still young enough to qualify as a child, Vorodyen was not sufficiently pissed to forget to use terminology the Covies would easily understand. A shocked Lieutenant Colonel in shirtsleeves stood from his chair, shattered glass of sherry pooling beside the wooden feet of the leather-bound Victorian-styled furniture. He demanded that the Russkyan reholster his weapon, which Vorodyen did. He smacked Godwinson next, an open handed strike that seemingly started a kilometer behind him and slammed the pompous Captain to the painstakingly polished wooden floor. Then the Captain, spluttering from his spot on the floor, demanded satisfaction. Absolutely puzzled by this, it took the Lieutenant Colonel to explain that Godwinson was challenging the PRELIKAZ contractor to a duel. Formerly a Mountain Infantryman, Vorodyen laughed heartily and accepted, stating that the sjambok would be the chosen weapon, with the duellist's choice of knife on his belt "to add flavour, my dear Lieutenant Colonel Killick." As to when, they agreed to fifteen minutes past 16.00 hours local, with refreshments to be served afterwards.

Returning to his barrack room, Sergei Vorodyen arranged for a PRELIKAZ medic and a female orderly from a nearby Red Cross-run hospital to take a look at Sarah's wounds and salve them as appropriate. He honed both edges of a commando dagger, hanging it from its long sheath from his belt so it hung halfway down his right thigh, securing it in place with a doubled length of paracord. Smiling, he strode confidently towards the parade ground at 16.15 hours.

Each man was handed the long hide-made whip, taking a few moments to get the balance of the weapon. Seriyozha saw an intricately decorated knife the size of a small sword hanging from Godwinson's belt, sighed inwardly, and crossed points. Godwinson's second - Vorodyen had none - raised a staff between the two weapons, parting them with an upwards swing and stepping smartly back. Godwinson, trained in the classical style of fencing, rammed his weapon at Vorodyen's chest. The latter stepped smartly backwards, unsure if there was a stiletto's blade concealed in the tip of the flexible whip or not. Shouting in apparent triumph, Captain Norbert Godwinson swung sharply down from the left, aiming to cut the flesh of Vorodyen's neck down to an artery. Vorodyen had other plans.

Turning to face the left, he absorbed the blow with a half-step backwards and ignored the stinging rush of pain and sensation of cool air on his upper chest as his undershirt and battlejacket had been sliced open. Feeling a fractured rib, Vorodyen swung his sjambok backhanded and across his opponent's eyes, slashing the sight from him with graceful ease. He bellowed as he had earlier in the Officer's Club, drowning out the frantic screams, pulled Godwinson's weapon from his belt and discarding his whip as he stepped in close, dropping the "knife" a moment later. He seized the man's shoulders, worked a leg behind his, and threw him to the dust coating the parade square's hardpacked dirt. It was drilled on only by the common soldiers of the CDF; of course there was no need to surface it for their benefit. Vorodyen pulled the dagger from its sheath and sliced it deeply across the CDF officer's soft midsection. Entrails steamed and bled, and the pressure of Vorodyen's knee on the man's solar plexus only caused them to bleed more. He rammed the dagger into the meat of Godwinson's shoulder, and proceeded to use bare fists to pound the man's face into a bloody mass. Shards of ivory flecked the torn skin as cheekbones and eye sockets broke under the methodical beating. With each blow, Godwinson's head slammed off the ground with a ever-softer thud, the impact before it softening the rear of the skull. Eventually his pathetic mewling stopped.

Having made his point bloodily, decidedly not eloquently, Vorodyen retrieved his weapons and cleaned them on Godwinson's pant leg. A medical orderly pushed him aside and tried to find a pulse, failed, announced Godwinson's death.

Vorodyen paid the Officer's Mess in full for the damage done by the thunderflash. He'd shown the realities of a tribal melee on the swept-dirt parade grounds of a CDF Brigade Base, the chalked floorboard fencing niceties of Covingsland nobility be damned. He later learned that he'd earned some kind of bizarre grudging respect from the CDF officers who'd witnessed the duel, after his ribs had been bound up by the same medical orderly who'd applied a topical painkiller to Sarah's recent bruises. No-one but Chelyako would ask about the cause of the dressing or the blood-stained and damaged uniform.

--

Glossary:
- Tsarnik: The Russkyans have a less than pleasant history with Tsarist Russia. "Tsarnik" is a slang term denoting a Monarchist, a member of the Aristocracy, or really anyone involved with the administration of a Tsarist territory.
- Stag: Sentry duty.
- Vadimka: The familiar form of Vadim.
- Kishkii: Slang term unique to the PRELIKAZ contractors in Zanwesia. In this form a plural, refers to any female slave bought by one of the PRELIKAZ men for reasons of protection. Singular form "Kishka." Term derived from the name of the daughter of Brigadier (Retired) Kirill Shostganov.
- Sjambok: See Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjambok).
Zanwesia
29-11-2007, 06:22
"We've got a lot of confirmed Covie base locations, locations of training camps, general concentrations of defense. Unfortunately, your military is not quite capable of launching an attack into Covingsland yet. Your jungle patrols can more than adequately defend themselves against She'guaia reconnaissance incursions, but can't quite launch raids on Covie soil yet, and your lack of armor and vehicle fuel means that your capacity to wage war against Covingsland is extremely limited. We're still in a position where they can take the war to us, but we can't take the war to them." Mother Rakira Na'ahlai stared at the still crude, yet freshly drawn map of Zanwesia on the wall, not quite paying attention to the thin middle aged man seated next to her.

Chief M'tuku nodded. "You are basically limited to reconnaissance in Covie territory without any ability to take action. I understand."

From his desk drawer, the chief pulled out a tin can. It used to hold canned lychees from Southeastasia, but now it held diamonds, glittering pink, amber and blue stones from the stream beds feeding the Wesi river. The fat can, which held a kilogram of lychees in its former life, was so full, that the rocks inside didn't even have room to rattle when M'tuku shook it.

Instead of taking the can, Mother Na'ahlai turned to her laptop nearby. A satellite phone was plugged into one its USB ports. She dialed a number using an encryped VOIP channel, then waited.

"Nahally... aren't you going to take the jaba(1)?"

"Chief, I will do that eventually, right now, we need to get your finances sorted out. You have a 200 million Kuana (2) worth of diamonds sitting in your office in an aluminum can. Don't you see anything wrong with that?"

"I am but a simple warrior of the Taheisa, Mother Nahally. Modern finances, too complex."

"You were educated outside of Karain. University of Timiocato if I'm not mistaken. The Pacitalians are the greediest bastards in the world."

"I know, which is why I paid my tuition with the same rocks too. What is your intention anyway?"

"I'm going to first fly an accountant over to help manage your finances. Then, I'm going to call a diamond broker to deal with the whole...conflict diamond mess you've got here."

"Mess? But these are good rocks, gem quality rocks."

"I know Chief. But see, people don't want to buy diamonds from war zones from some stupid reason, at least people that aren't willing to pay the premium prices. The broker will help you find a buyer that will give you proper market price, instead of some wholesaler raking half the money for himself, under the guise of covering up where the rocks came from."

"I...I barely understand, but ok." The Chief looked nervous, as if Mother Na'ahlai was somehow subverting his authority.

"Oh relax. This doesn't take much to understand."

"Maybe it's easy for, for somebody that came from a big, powerful nation."

"No Chief. You know where I'm from? A damp little shithole village in the jungle that hasn't even discovered agriculture yet. Up until 50 years ago, we worshiped outsiders as gods because they knew how to use iron tools. I too am simple, and if I can figure the world out, you can too."

"How much money will this accountant take?"

"The accountant draws a fixed salary of approximately $200,000 Kuana a year, plus hazard pay, no biggie. The diamond broker draws a 5% commission on all sales, although your profits from sales should rise roughly 20%."

"The accountant...If I can remember correctly, I pay Lady Mayokey less than this... accountant."

"Because Lady Me'okei played with green plastic soldiers when she was growing up and the accountant played with an edition of the Havenic Finanical Report. Should I make the call now?"

"Go. Do it then. In the meantime, we have strategy to discuss."

The nervous looking young man Blue Raven Accounting sent into theater a few days later probably regretted saying that he would do anything for a promotion. Sure he had career ambitions, sure he enjoyed using his money to compulsively womanize, and sure, his broad shoulders and heavy musculature made him look far stronger and tougher than the dainty, elfin Ai'lia that guarded Chief M'tuku's dugout. He wasn't. He only bulked up because he was afraid of the bullies when he was in school, not because of any desire to improve himself. He looked into the hard eyes of the men and women in Chief M'tuku's camp and found no solace or solidarity. Even after he descended into the dugout, Chief M'tuku seemed more than a bit surly and reluctant to speak with him.

"The...the...first thing we need to do is set up a bank account. Chief...Mootku is it?" M'tuku just looked annoyed as the accountant spoke. He didn't want to deal with this. He wanted to concern himself with killing Covies and Zan. Through the explanations of the various types of funds and funding offered by Blue Raven Accounting, M'tuku maintained his surly scowl. Only when the sweating accountant finally revealed M'tuku's net worth to him, did the old Chief's eyes light up.

"This... net worth. You can take care of everything. I don't want to know the specifics. Just make my net worth high and keep it that way. You shall tell me my net worth at any hour any time I ask for it. Understood."

"Yes... yes sir."

The accountant and M'tuku discussed some other things, before coming to the can of lychees.

"Was this? Is this....?"

"It was good fruit. What do you want with it?"

"I want to cash some of these stones in. Both Lady Me'okei and Mother Na'ahlai tell me you don't have enough to buy fuel, and your accounts show a certain shortfall in that area of expenditure."

"That's my own money. Part of my...net worth as you call it. I have other stones. Better stones. I will let the broker look those over."

"I'm just saying... You're spending a lot of money on vehicle maintenance, and you never use them."

"I will then buy more fuel." M'tuku fished around in the pockets of his robes a bit. He produced a rock bigger than an orange. The entire dugout lit up in a dazzling display of light and fire. The accountant's jaw dropped. "How much fuel will this buy me?"

"Umm... uh... a lot? A whole lot?"

"Indeed."

"My question is... you're an enormously wealthy man. Why do you store the entirety of your liquid assets in your...your robe?"

"Why not? Nobody can cheat me. And if they wanted to steal from me, they'd have to kill me for it."

"Yes, but it's... it's safer to keep the money in a bank, and you can access your money anywhere in the world. What if you put on the wrong robe in the morning?"

"Then I will fetch the right robes."

"What if you were abroad? You might have to go abroad sometime. You know that."

"You make a good point."

"And in the meantime... hold onto that rock, I think the broker might like to see that."

And later the broker came in. He wasn't anywhere near as large as the accountant, but he stood proud and had a confident smile.

"Ted Hamilton, from Goldman Jewelers...........................holy shit. That's a huge stone you've got there, biggest one I've ever seen." Hamilton held the enormous diamond up to the single light bulb in the room, gazing up at it in awe.

"Care to guess how many of these I have on me right now?"

"I-I...I can get you a billion Havenic Pounds (3) for that."

"Give it to me in Kwana."

"About... 750 million Kuana I'd say."

"Take the rock. I want the money wired to my new bank account by tomorrow."

"You have a deal. I can get a buyer in hours."

~*~*~*~
"You hear about that Willinkian... Kia're? (4) He brought the diamond for 762 million Kuana."

"It's called a 'rapper' Mother. Have you been living under a rock for the last 30 years?" Lady Me'okei shook her head, paying rapt attention to whatever was playing via the eyepiece mounted in her helmet.

"I'm getting old aren't I? You haven't even been alive for 30 years." Mother Na'ahlai sighed. She was pushing 50 and still sitting around in some god-forsaken hellhole. She stared through the thermal scope. The RR-06 recoilless rifle felt heavy on her right shoulder. Every time she hefted its 25 kilogram bulk up, it just kept getting heavier. It didn't help that she was probably suffering from the onset of osteoporosis. The lead Covie train car came forward, a red mass on a green background. It was just coming out of a railroad tunnel, spewing thick diesel exhaust that glowed hot on the scope. The only indication that Mother Na'ahlai wasn't in the line of sight was that there was an indicator in the upper left corner of the field of view that read "streaming".

"Should we go ahead and fire Mother?"

"Your call Theo."

Lady Me'okei tapped a button on the radio on her shoulder and spoke. "Anti-tank sections open fire."

Mother Na'ahlai fired first. The Blowtorch was a tandem charged top attack anti-tank guided missile with a range of 8 kilometers. The locomotive had slat armor to protect it against the RPGs the Jejani Liada were fielding, and thick armor behind that if anything got through. The missile shot into the sky, then arched downwards, slamming into the conductor's cab. There was an explosion when the both charges of the missile hit the top of the locomotive full on, then another, and another as more Blowtorches hit, huge ones that sent bluebell flames shooting into the sky.

"There goes one of their av-gas shipments. Air fucking mobile my ass." Mother Na'ahlai slung the RR-06 onto her back and jumped into the back of the VAL 6/6 Mine Protected Vehicle, followed a second afterwards by Lady Me'okei. The driver of the VAL took a main road. It was even paved. It was a road the Covies were certainly watching, and the vehicle proceeded almost lazily up the mountain road.

"You let our existence slip?" asked Lady Me'okei as she sat serenely in the passenger seat of the VAL.

"We are the bait Theo. All they know is that we were going to be in this area."

"They probably think they can take us alive."

"Well, that's the first of their vehicles a few hundred meters behind us." Mother Na'ahlai pulled a remote from her pocket. She pressed the single button on it. In the distance, the vehicle, a Buffalo MPV, exploded. There were more explosions in the background as RPGs and anti-tank missiles slammed into the soft bodies of Covie vehicles.

"I just wonder how the Covies will react when they see Mazara attacking their convoys?"

"Our government can ignore a tiny backwater. We're 100, 150 times bigger than them. Do you think anybody cares about this whole Xo'cin continent?"

"Well..."

"No. Nobody cares about this place."

"When do we break contact?"

"Ten minutes for the choppers to arrive. We've managed to get enough fuel for the gunships. We've got 6 GH-118s with full loads and 16 H-118s for picking the girls on the ground up. The extraction has to be made before the Covie Air Force scrambles fighters to intercept us on the ground."

"If they do?"

"We're fucked then. But if the Covies are good enough intercept a bunch of low flying choppers weaving in through the mountains, they deserve to hit us."

"MANPAD teams?"

"We have IRST, DIRCM, 30mm cannons and scout patrols on the ground. What do we have to be afraid of?"

"True. You know, I wish you would tell more about what you're thinking. I hardly know what you're doing with the Taheisans, only that they'll be there at your word."

"We-"

"We need to coordinate better Mother. All that you've told me so far is that the primary objective was to attack the fuel train, and that I should come along. And why did you override my command and deploy my troops? Why didn't you tell me the choppers had fuel?"

"Because I had to act fast with the knowledge I had, and because your plan of raiding civilian areas like churches and schools would not only have accomplished no strategic goal, it would have dropped our legitimacy to nothing in the eyes of just about everyone else in this godforsaken place. You can do that with the Be'guaia, you can terrorize them, but with the She'guaia, you'll just anger them."

Lady Me'okei gritted her teeth slightly. A real world analogue to Mother Na'ahlai's use of 'She'guaia' would be for a white person to use the word "******" around a black person. "So you're saying that..."

"I'm saying that where you're headed is good. You're throwing chivalry out of the window by being willing to attack civilian populations. Your strategy would work against many societies, our own included. But with the She'guaia, you see, they're not like us. Their soldiers are entirely separated from their civilians. It's not like us, where everybody in one tribe lives together in one huge lodge that you can burn down. That's where the Be'guaia are similar to us see? Their civilian population and their military are far more intertwined than the She'guaia. You machine gun a village knowing that it will kill off their soldiers, and their support system. You machine gun a She'guaia village, their boys come back from leave. They're going to be pissed."

"So you're saying I'm a bad strategist, aren't you?" Lady Me'okei had too much self-restraint and respect for Mother Na'ahlai to beat her into a pulp.

"No, your strategies are good. Not quite excellent yet, but good. And you will get better. For example, you considered your opponent, but did you consider all your opponents fully? Did you consider cultural differences, disposition, morale, or target selection? You haven't had enough COIN experience, so right now, you're operating under First World Syndrome."

"Are you saying that..." Lady Me'okei had this indignant, self-righteous look on her face.

"First World Syndrome. You're a soldier. When doing COIN, you have to think police too. You have to think spook, you have to think in the shoes of everyone you're working with. Madness? No. This is Karain."

"This is Karain. TiK?"

"TiK Theo, TiK."
_____________________________________
(1)Jaba:Stone.
(2)Kuana: MP's currency. Worth ~$3
(3)Havenic Pound: Currency used in Haven. Worth roughly $2.25
(4)Kia're: Literally "thinggie".
Russkya
29-11-2007, 23:50
Two Battalion, "North Covingsland and Argyll," The Highland Brigade, had been assigned security for the stretch of track on which the supply train now detonated. Attached to the Headquarters Platoon, two PRELIKAZ contractors sat on the hilltop watching the carnage unfold nearly two hundred meters below them. Behind them, they heard a battalion commander screaming insults at the unseen attackers between shouted orders for his Operations Staff to get his picquets off hilltops and reinforcing the patrolling groups. He left the sentry groups on the two highest terrain features he commanded to help coordinate the chase if any enemies were spotted.

Roman Devyatyev spoke quietly to his attentive partner. His partner was prone on the hilltop with two sandbags bracing the bipod of the tremendously large OSv-96 antimateriel rifle they'd lugged up the hillside with them. Devyatyev gave range and windage one final time.

"Agon. (1)"

In the split second between Vandko pulling the trigger past its breaking point, where it would release the sear to slam the rifle cruelly back into his shoulder and send the heavy custom-built BZT-Dva projectile into the hood of the six by six vehicle they were tracking, a firefight errupted on the heels of an explosion whose noise flew past the pair of Russkyans on the hillside.

The explosion caught the corner of his open left eye and he nudged the rifle's muzzle fractionally to that side. It roared, and one of the foppish Covingsland Defence Force officers from the Logistics Liasion screamed at the unexpected shot. The Highlanders glared at him in contempt. Slapped about the ears by the muzzle blast, Devyatyev watched the splash of the round slam into the roadway beside the targetted vehicle. There was no chance for a follow up shot as it sped out of range. He instead observed the firefight as the Highlanders bumped into strong irregular forces.

He swore. So did his Vandko, who spotted a target and ranged it himself with the stadia on his optic. He smiled a predatory smile and pulled the trigger. He swung the barrel through five degrees, froze, and shouted out to Devyatyev.
"Antiaircraft!"

He fired, adjusted quickly, fired again. A red puff appeared in Devyatyev's field of view. He got to his feet and caught the battalion commander's attention.

"Sir, it would appear that they lured us into an ambush and are waiting for an opportunity to shoot down some aviation assets. I'd strongly recommend you cut your losses and regroup. They have MANPAD, they may also have mortars and other assets to light us up with."

Vandko policed his brass and the Scots-descended Covingsland officer turned on Devyatyev.

"Have we bloodied them?"
"It would appear so, sir. At least three platoons are now in contact and are attempting to outflank the enemy to their front. I would say we've broken their nose."

The commander of Two Battalion turned back to his operations staff, ordering a withdrawl to a point where they could link up with transports from Brigade motorpool and ride out of the AO. The Third Battalion and another unit of the Highland Brigade were not in contact, and were preparing to police the trainwreck and ensure nothing was left for the enemy.

The Scots had been over-aggressive and in their haste to pursue the enemy they thought responsible, had stumbled straight into an ambush. On the upside, they'd been much more receptive to the training Devyatyev and his colleagues had provided and were culturally much more in line with accepted Western norms. Far fewer beatings, slaves, rapes, et cetera. Devyatyev rather liked the diminuitive Battalion commander he was standing beside now, the man had reportedly kicked a Covingsland fop in the ass with his combat boot until the latter had relented and allowed PRELIKAZ to work with the North Covingsland and Argyll Highlanders.

There was a soft sigh unheard by any of the men on the hilltop, and a explosion threw shrapnel and shattered rock around and through the command group. Vandko and two officers fell to the ground shouting in pain, and the Covingsland Defence Force logistics man screamed in fright, a high-pitched shriek that followed him as he bolted towards the valley.

Vandko crawled over to a fallen Scotch officer, dragging one near useless leg behind him. He treated his own wound and tossed the bottle of "triple cross" aid spray to the Highlander, who applied it to the nasty gash he'd picked up across his ribcage and one cheek. Shallow cuts all, or he'd not be treating them himself. The other officer was being tended to by a medic, and Vandko felt himself lifted off the ground by Devyatyev, slung across that man's shoulders, and handed his antimaterial rifle with the stock collapsed for transport.

Devyatyev, formerly of a Naval Infantry Reconnaissance Company, seemed not to notice the extra weight, adrenaline pumping and a fallen comrade on one shoulder with all his kit. He crouched next to the battalion commander as another 60mm mortar shell blasted shrapnel across the hill's top and side.

"Sorry boss, that was our fault! The big bitch rifle and all, caught their attention. We should go now, perhaps?"
"Aye!"
"I'm sure Vandko apologizes!"

From his spot across Devyatyev's shoulders, Vandko shouted his apologies to the wounded Scots officer holding a field-dressing to his sliced cheek. The officer bled into the gauze pad and gave the Russkyan a thumbs up, waving off the apology with a shake of his head. Ballsy bastard.

As they'd been drilled, one of the platoons left on the taller peaks attempted to spot flash or smoke from the 60mm and direct their own battalion's organic 81mm mortars onto it. They had little success, but the countermortar efforts did allow the command platoon to scramble off the hilltop with their wounded.

--

"This shit is unbelievable!" Shostganov threw a thick dossier onto the tabletop of the civilian who headed PRELIKAZ. "Look at that!"

The civilian refused to be cowed by the retired Brigadier, as he'd been working with Kirill for half a decade now. His analytical mind was processing information as he read and listened to Shostganov flood obscenities directed at every Covingslander mentioned in the reports.

"Kirill, that's Karain for us. We knew Zanwesia wouldn't be particularly... cultured, so we sent the boys who'd seen things like this before. I don't like thinking about how bad it is if they're telling us it's bad."

Brigadier (retired) Shostganov leaned in over the rosewood desk.

"Get my boys out of there. Can we?"

Normally immaculate in his sentence composition, in that strangely self-concious way many highly intelligent people are, Bogdan Sidorov knew Kirill was contemplating something dire to protect "his boys" from this.

"Contractually we're obligated to stay on until two weeks after Third Brigade is combat ready."
"Fuflyorsha! (2)"
"Quite. Let's talk to immigration and probably someone else in the government as well about this solution our boys found to some of these problems."
"I'm sure they'll appreciate that, Bogdan. Just as much as their paycheque."
"Yes, quite. We're all doing quite nicely from this particular job. We'll continue until the contract expires and then blacklist Covingsland and the rest of Zanwesia for grotesque human rights violations."

Shostganov, the selective moralist, didn't respond. He was savoring the last sentence report filed by Vorodyen: Proceeded to kill Captain N. Godwinson, CDF, in a gratuitiously violent, unmilitary fashion. This appears to increased rapport with witnessing CDF officers.

--

"Play me some Charlie Charlie Romeo, miss. It's all lonely out here, over."

A PRELIKAZ long range radio operator ensconced in a communications hut in one of the Third Brigade camps was conferring with an Aequatian PMC across the border in Zhardesia. As he'd requested, the sounds of CCR's "Green River" drifted through the speakers rigged to the outside of the hut, and a passing contractor stopped off inside to high-five the operator on his success with "Radio Zhardesia: All Rock, All the Time."

Well, he reasoned, it was a better use of unused radio frequencies than dead air.

--

Hours later the Scots officers and the two PRELIKAZ contractors debriefed over a friendly glass of whiskey in the Officer's Mess, where the only female was not in thrall and quite happily - especially considering her paycheque - serving alcohol to friendly Highland officers and two foreign contractors, one who moved his leg only stiffly. At the end of the debriefing, prior to them breaking off to return to barracks, the bartender recalled this scrap of conversation.

"Well sir, I'd say that was a bit of a cock-up. Notice that they struck from ambush effectively and engaged the AMR with a light mortar?"

The battalion commander nodded grimly, hoisted his glass.

"To the new enemy. Whoever the fuck they are."
"To the new enemy."

--

1 - Agon: The phoenetic pronounciation of the Russian language command to fire. Used by spotters to denote when it is safe to fire and all variables remain constant.
2 - Transliterated form of <<Фуфлёрша.>> "Cocksucker." In certain contexts can be translated to mean "Cocksucking slut." Note that the "u" indicates a long O sound in this case.
Zanwesia
30-11-2007, 22:21
"I swear I heard a.... It was like a high pitched shriek. Very... limp wristed, you know what I'm trying to say?" Lady Me'okei struggled to find the words to describe what she heard. She stared up at the ceiling of the hut they were in, counting the glowing green scorpions skittering through the ceiling rafters. The only light in the room was the moon glinting off her pale blue eyes.

Mother Na'ahlai sighed. "Look, I know maybe the ambush could have gone a bit better, but I don't think any of the girls need that kind of insult from their CO."

"No, no, no. It didn't come from our side. It probably came somewhere from their side. It sounded like the shriek that some little kid gives before he wets his bed at night because he saw a monster in the closet."

"What do you think it was then?"

"I'll be honest. I have no idea. The war must be getting to me."

"No...I must admit. I think I heard something too. I just dismissed it as a mortar round or something." Mother Na'ahlai snatched a scorpion skittering across their crudely hewn table. She held up the 8 inch long creature by its tail as it thrashed around, snapping its pincers. The glowing arachnid illuminated the two women as they spoke. In a single practiced motion, Mother Na'ahlai put the entire thing into her mouth and chewed, spitting the stinger out onto the table. "These scorpions taste like this Xoc'in continent."

"Like what?" asked Lady Me'okei as she picked up another one of the arachnids.

"Kwe'Salik(1) Theo."

"You're right... these do taste like shit." Lady Me'okei finished chewing. "Xo'ekri Lide, I miss home. I miss taking hot showers, I miss my girlfriend, I miss living in a nation that doesn't resemble the fucking stadium toilet that the gods shit in."

"At least you have somebody to go home to Theo. My Ren'ahva (2) died years ago. My son couldn't give Gol'Ai'Salikae (3) about his dear old mother."

"What happened?"

"I wasn't ever around. The Xaol'nis (4) always kept me deployed. I didn't get the opportunity to raise him. Naturally, I was object of blame when Ta'oken died. Blaming me was the easiest, most convenient thing to do."

"Ta'oken was...your Ren'ahva'ae (5) name?"

Mother Na'ahlai nodded. "Yes."

"How did he..."

"How else? Slowly and painfully. Colon cancer. I was around the world in a Salik'eyuil (6) just like this one. I almost got killed because I couldn't stop thinking about what was happening back home. Mission profile was classified to some unholy level. Nothing went in or out."

"Kris'xel E'va (7)... I feel sorry for you."

"Ont'nakihula (8) Re'eve Me'okei." Mother Na'ahlai held her hand up. "Now, we do as the Gre'haiae do."

"Which is?"

"We swap stories. You have to tell me about your Rev'aeve (9)."

"She's..." Lady Me'okei pulled a picture out of her vest. Unlike Captain Roberts' battered family picture, she had put hers in a plastic sleeve.

"Stunningly beautiful? It's girls like her that make me wish I was Gol'(10) sometimes."

"One of the kindest, most patient people I know."

"The deployments are hard on her I take it."

"On her, on me, on everyone. How many lonely nights can anybody spend before snapping?"

"I wish I could give you an answer, I really do. I know my son snapped early. I know I haven't snapped. I still visit my father and cousins out in my old village when I'm on leave."

"What's it like?" asked Lady Me'okei.

"Not much different from here really. You still have tribe on tribe, blood for blood. But..."

"But what?"

"The best way you can put it is that it's my kind of blood. It's my kind of hate, and as long as it belongs to me, it's better than the hate here. She'guaia, Be'guaia, even Ma'Guaia (11), we're all people. There's no difference in how we all hate."

"Few truer words have been said."

There was a knock at entrance of the hut. One of the Blue Ravens had a tray of food in her hands.

"Tile'te. Just set that down."

"Kaf'nan Ev'a Na'ahlai."

After the soldier had left, Lady Me'okei surveyed the food. The slices of jackfruit and pineapple were palatable enough, but the chicken and peanut stew, and the flatbread didn't all that good. Me'okei's opinion on the white moth grubs were mixed. They were deep and nutty, but tended to be a bit watery in texture.

"Just shut up and eat. You think most Taheisans can afford this meal?"

"You have a point. We're not in the first world anymore."

As the two ate, the conversation continued between bites of flatbread and grubs.

"What does your girlfriend do?"

"Junior Gre'haia at AC University."

"Impressive. It takes a special kind of person to be a Gre'haia."

"You sound a bit a surprised."

"It takes a special kind of person to be a Gre'haia, as I said. She's so pretty that people might spend too much time drooling over her to take her seriously as a Gre'haia."

"Well... I wouldn't know about that." Lady Me'okei dipped some of the bread in the still bubbling stew, which had peanuts, chunks of shredded chicken, tomatoes, squash, and okra in it.

They ate.
~*~*~*~
(More later, but for now, the glossary).

(1): Kwe'Salik: Like shit.
(2): Ren'ahva: Male mate. (Mate is used in the animalistic sense here)
(3): Gol'Ai'Salikae: Two shits.
(4): Xaol'nis: Temple. In this case, the Basilisk Temple
(5): Ren'ahva'ae: Possessive form of Ren'ahva
(6): Salik'eyuil: Shithole
(7): E'va: Mother
(8): Ont'nakihula: Don't be sorry (literally: No apologies)
(9): Rev'aeve: Girlfriend
(10): Gol': Two, well, in this case, "bi" as in bisexual.
(11): Ma'Guaia: Racist term for Mazara, used mostly by the tribes in the backwaters.
Russkya
05-12-2007, 05:26
The sun had long ago disappeared beneath the highveldt's horizon, and sentries from the Third Battalion paced the Brigade's positions. Challenges were quietly exchanged between returning cloverleaf-pattern patrols and listening posts, wary Highlanders examined the dark shapes in the shadows cast by the vegetation in the moonlight before permitting them to pass. One such man adjusted the night optical device's focus until it showed objects crisply at two hundred meters. Satisfied, he knelt in his hole while his partner rested beside him, rifle diagonally across his chest. The Russkyans had taught them how to stay awake even on the longest and most boring stag routines. A nocturnal rodent chirruped merrily in the tree branches, was assassinated by a Urumba in rapid pawbeats and breaking twigs that had the sentries scanning the jungle to their front in a heartbeat.
One turned slowly to check the flanks of the OP and the cleared area behind it that was the fire-field for the encampment's inner perimeter.

And the debriefing continued after the action in the mountains that had seen the destruction of much of the aviation fuel required by No. 1 and No. 12 Wings, Covingsland Air Force. A large amount of the fight had been within bayonet distance, "knee to groin" distance, and the improved tactics and technology demonstrated by their Taheisan opposition had raised eyebrows amongst the Highland Officers and NCOs, to their credit, as well as the more experienced PRELIKAZ contractors.
Some difficulties were being had with identification of the new enemy. It was reported that they were generally shorter than the Taheisans by at least a head, female, and seemingly Asiatic. They were mixed in with the Taheisan personnel, armed in a likewise fashion - which suggested that the Taheisans were being uniformly well equipped - and demonstrated equal personal camouflage to what the CDF Highland Brigade did, making use of greasestick camouflage paints and natural foliage, and were more than willing to close to hand to hand combat distance. It was suggested by a few of the Intelligence officers that the enemy was Mazara in origin, backing M'Tuku's Taheisans for unknown reasons. The gathered officers, senior NCOs, intelligence staffs, and PRELIKAZ contractors examined the few weapons that had been captured in the bloody ambush and short lived battle that developed from it, concluding that it was most likely the enemy was some form of Mazara mercenary.

Much further south, inserted quickly by a helicopter flitting along the ground a scant five meters from the average treetop, a small patrol from 1 VolFor Bn were led by Vorodyen and Chelyakov. The pilot, totally absorbed with his task, flicked the switch that started the signal light in the troop bay of the helicopter blinking. Chelyakov knelt, both hands on his RAR-4 rifle.

"Up off your asses! Nichols, van Roux, with Vorodyen! Halle, Klerk, with me!"

The patrol rocked up onto their feet and crouched in the troop bay of the helicopter as the nose pitched up and it slid into the landing zone. Vorodyen leapt out the left, Chelyakov the right, and the helicopter was gone in under three seconds. The grass stilled, no longer abused by the down-wash of the SA-330's rotors. They smelt the characteristic sharp tang of decay that was endemic to Zanwesia.

Both Russkyans carried a long range manpack radio in addition to a full battle load of ammunition, water, and a full 'ratpack' combat ration. With slightly heavier loads thanks to the FAL-like Lee Nordenfeldt rifles, the VolFor followed. Every man was careful to apply the lessons learned earlier while training. The village was within the artillery fan of Third Brigade, and if they made contact they could rely on 155mm guns for fire support. And the close air support of the CAF, who were all too eager to bomb things.

It was van Roux who signalled the halt, sinking down to one knee and then pointing at the dirt with his free hand as he went prone. Behind him, the patrol did likewise, shifting sideways and getting behind foliage to conceal themselves. They heard voices, Taheisan villagers talking. Then they heard whining truck engines and a strange rhythmic thumping. Villager's voices rose in alarm. Chelyako was on the radio, quietly informing 3 BDE and "X-Ray Nine," the fire-controller assigned to their patrol, as to their coordinates and that they had auditory contact with the enemy. Chelyako arranged for a neutralization fire mission to be placed onto the village. A practical man, and a mercenary to boot, he had every intent of returning home to enjoy his paycheques.

The patrol quietly and tensely spread out into a wedge as the truck engines and thumping noise grew closer. As it closed to within two hundred meters, it was clear that it was American rap playing from boomboxes strapped to the hoods and roofs of unseen Toyotas. Vorodyen looked over his shoulder at Chelyako and rolled his eyes. Chelyako smiled a thin, tight-lipped smile and nodded agreement. Weapons fire rose from the village, barking CR-15 rifles and the heavy chatter of Kalashnikovs. Screams. Silence. More screams.

Vorodyen looked to the patrol commander. Chelyako waved them forward with a slight gesture of his left hand. van Roux rose to one knee, then silently disappeared into the brush. Maintaining their formation, the patrol followed.

They halted, within fifty meters of the village. Toyotas were parked haphazardly around the village grounds, fresh blood glistened on the dirt, was splashed in tar-dark stains on the side of huts. "JL" militiamen roamed around, massacring the old and young with machetes. Raped anything female age 12-30. Vorodyen's hand tightened reflexively around the pistol grip of his RAR-4 rifle, but his finger remained off the trigger's curve. Chelyako waited. The VolFor patrol was witnessing tribal warfare, and this data would be valuable for analyzing the JL. A large number of "Jay-Ells" were strung out along the ground in varying death poses, the Taheisan tribesmen's fire discipline outstanding for "kefars." The Russkyan's grim face tightened further at the thought of Covingslander contempt for these "untamed savages." All the villagers not laying dead were being systematically tortured, sometimes raped first, sometimes raped and tortured simultaneously. He counted fifteen Jay-Ells and confirmed this count with Vorodyen, opening and closing his left hand three times, fingers fully extended each time.

Vorodyen nodded. The VolFor men were assigned area targets by pairs. Vorodyen and Chelyako radioed X-Ray Nine and 1 VolFor's TOC, as well as 2/3BDE battalion's TOC. They waited, and when a man burst from a hut holding high a set of intricate beads, the patrol commenced firing.

Nichols felt his Lee-Nordenfeldt kick smoothly back into his shoulder, the action pushing another round into the chamber. His face twitched into an involuntary smile as he gained another Jay-Ell in his sight picture and pulled the trigger twice. He heard the rhythmic thudding of Vorodyen's RAR-4 and felt his rifle click forwards on an empty chamber as he expended the magazine. He changed magazines without raising his head from the sights, pulled back the charging handle, fired twice more before hearing the shrieking howl of Chelyako's metal whistle. Chelyako and van Roux burst from the bush, sprinting forward ten meters, dropping prone, and firing. The whistle was still sounding as Nichols and Vorodyen sprinted forward twenty meters, dropped prone, and fired. Halle and Klerk ran forward next. The bounding overwatch finished off the last of the confused Jay-Ells and put down any Taheisan running for a weapon. The majority simply lay where they were, hands over their heads, screaming shrilly over the sound of rifle fire and shouted orders in gutteral English and Afrikaans, the whistle having fallen silent.

They secured the area. A Jay-Ell rose shakily to his feet, intestines hanging from his torso. Nichols calmly turned and fired twice into the man's face from a distance of no more than five meters. The head exploded. The body crumped. His face was still locked in that God-awful smiling rictus. Klerk demonstrated the same expression, both men horrified by it but unable to stop. Combat stress, Chelyako explained. His "tell" had been utter silence, something that had terrified the Sorachoakai as they attempted to overrun this former Corporal's position early in the fighting near Groznocheskoye. He was hit with the iron stink of fresh blood and the earthier stench of released bowels.

The beads were still gripped in the hand of a Jay-Ell, with a small boy trying to free them from the deathgrip. Chelyako gently moved the boy aside, drew his combat knife, and pried through the knuckles to free the beads, handing them to the boy. The boy then ran to the body of the village chief, around whom his immediate family was gathered. Chelyako followed, kneeling next to the oldest son, somehow unharmed in the chaos of the "Fuck Off Boys" attack just prior to the patrol's intervention.

The Russkyan mercenary took the boy aside after his father died and sat him down. The first question was as to who the "Jay-Ells" were, which tribe they were from. Did he know where their village was? If so, PRELIKAZ would be more than happy to help the Taheisans revenge themselves. The second question was also in the local Inglada patois.

"Dese CR-15, no come from no arms market here. You tell me who help'ng dis vill, or I let dem Fuck Off Boys come back. You no want that here."

Chelyako found himself staring at a mutely shaking head. He shrugged and called Halle over, instructing him to try and figure out the boy's sign language and one or two stuttering words, or see if his ability to talk returned once the "Greenfaces" made clear they were helping the villagers and posed no further threat unless one of the Taheisans went for a weapon. He radioed in to all relevant callsigns and requested reinforcements. The VolFor had recently been assigned officers drawn and trained from their ranks to replace the ineffective Covie leadership. Drilled in COIN, the Major jumped at this chance to effect some change in his area of operations.

Two SA-330s departed the packed-dirt helipads. A full rifle section was aboard with an attached pair of medics. Chelyako, the consummate professional, was registering artillery fire points around the village in the event that any "Jay-Ells" or other Taheisans interfered. The Puma helicopters flew low, one empty in the event that extraction was required. They'd have sufficient fuel to orbit for an hour and provide "skycover" to the VolFor force on the ground.

--

Glossary:
- Urumba: Karain's answer to the Jackal.
- Kefar: Equivalent to Kaffir.
- Jay-Ell: Slang term derived from first two letters of Jejani Liada, denoting a tribesman from that ethnic background. Also occassionally referred to as a "One Five," for the English translation: 15 Spears.
Zanwesia
05-12-2007, 16:24
It had been bloody. Dead Covies and Taheisans littered the jungle floor between the pockmarked trees, the streams nearby ran bright red with blood. The gore and entrails of Jejani Liada, Taheisans, Covies, VolFor, Mazara and Russkyans mixed freely in the leaf litter and dirt. The vultures swooped down from the pale grey sky, picking at the corpses. Certainly, the vultures didn't distinguish between the dead hairless apes littering the ground. Male, female, short, tall, thin, fat, didn't matter. Sure they tasted of gunpowder, hate and fear, but a feast was a feast. What did the politics of skin matter to birds?

It certainly mattered to the Covies.

"Uin'hai (1), get 10ccs of Keta (2) into the patient, this She'guaia won't stop struggling!"

"Kaf'nan Ere'haia. (3)"

The wounded Covie soldier lying on the crude operating table that was once a table somebody once at their dinner on, thrashed around despite the sucking wound in his abdomen, and the two medics that were trying to hold him down. The thin needle slipped into his arm, and then he stopped the thrashing, he still had enough strength to scream though.

"What the Xo'il (4) wrong with you She'guay? (5)"

"You're a Kefa! I don't want to get Sodo(6), I DON'T WANT TO GO TO HELL! DON'T TOUCH ME!"

"Just calm down before you bleed to death... I'm sure you won't go to hell..."

Ere'haia Souhaila Xe'riwe scratched her head. None of the Covies would accept any form of medical treatment. Some of them had shot themselves with one last bullet before the Taheisan and Blue Raven medics could get to them. The ones that were left alive were convinced that anybody with skin darker than theirs spread Sodo, or as most other societies called it, Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The VolFor didn't have any problem with the Mazara. After all, any other medical treatment was better than Karaini medical treatment. Ere'haia Xe'riwe had the bad luck in this situation of being somewhat darker than a piece of anthracite. This helped with the Taheisans. Ere'haia Xe'riwe had brought them clean water, vaccines and medicines. Years of experience with back country and battlefield medicine showed Xe'riwe that soldiers fought better when not dying of malaria or dragging their legs along because they weren't inoculated against polio as children.

"You know what, I'll find you a...a... white doctor."

Shaking her head in disgust, Ere'haia Xe'riwe ran out of the chief's hut, which had been serving as an operating theater. She ran into the rain, to one of the other huts, housing another temporary operating theater.

"Rourke! Rourke!"

Ere'haia Tiffany Rourke sighed. It wasn't just a sigh, it was a *SIGH*, the sort of deep, sick, primal frustration you could only get when there was literally a queue of wounded forming outside your hut, you were running low on anesthetic, bandages and patience. It was the sort of sigh that you only heard when dealing with a horde of racists.

"KIA'XO'TE!(7) NO, I'M NOT TAKING ANOTHER ONE SOUHAILA!"

"Whoa...easy there..." Ehr. (8) Xe'riwe could hear the bullet fragments clatter into a stainless steel pan as Ehr. Rourke turned her head up. Without taking off her bloody surgical gloves, she snatched a Covie Nordenfeldt sitting in the corner and stepped outside, carefully chambering the first round as she did so. She addressed the growing queue of wounded Covie soldiers.

"You trust me because what? My eyes are green? My hair is red? My name doesn't sound funny to you? Because my skin's peeling off in sheets in this fucking hellhole's sun just like you!!!?!??! TRUST ME WHEN I SAY YOU WON'T GET AIDS FROM BLACK PEOPLE! NOW IF ANY MOTHERFUCKER WHO CAN STILL WALK DOESN'T GET OUT OF THIS QUEUE AND GET THEIR FUCKING ASS TO THE OTHER OPERATING THEATER IN THE NEXT MINUTE, I WILL PERSONALLY EXECUTE HIM! DO YOU FUCKING RACIST ASSHOLES HEAR ME!?"

Normally a quiet, painfully shy loner who avoided even her fellow Blue Ravens, Ehr. Rourke was left gasping for breath by that outburst. She had said more in those few seconds than she would have normally in 2 months. And true to her word, she shot the first two men that hadn't moved yet. They were only lightly wounded before a double tap's worth of 6.5x55mm bullets slammed into each of their craniums. The rest of the holdouts carefully inched away from the queue, allowing Ehr. Rourke quicker access to the critically wounded, some of whom had already died for lack of treatment as their comrades were jockeying for position to get their scrapes and shallow cuts treated by the white girl. Rourke placed her weapon on safe and threw it back into the mud. She walked back into the hut, continuing to do what she did best.

"Umm... thanks Tiff!" Souhaila Xe'riwe didn't know how to react. That had been an unusually violent outburst from somebody that was downright meek. Oh well... Ehr. Xe'riwe stepped back into the operating theater.

"Did you... did you...find a proper doctor for me?" The Covie seemed in a bad way, and probably had lost too much blood to understand what had just happened outside.

"No." Xe'riwe snatched her pistol from her chest holster. "But, if you don't shut the Xo'e up right now, I will put a bullet into your brain. And even if your comrades recover your body, they won't have enough of it to bury, or even to know it was you. Now shut up She'guay, you're bleeding out and I'm your only hope for survival. You can either go to hell when I touch you, or you can go to hell for committing suicide for refusing treatment. Your choice."

The Covie finally shut up. Finally. The rain fell outside, but finally, things were going much more smoothly than they were previously.

~*~*~*~*~
Mother Rakira Na'ahlai paced the streets of the village, which had now become an armed camp. She didn't know what the hell just happened, and neither did the Covies. At least that's what the Russkyan tied up to a post in the village square had told her. Mother Na'ahlai had trouble figuring out what kind of brutal death should be administered to him, if any. After all, they were kindred. Both were paid enormous amounts of money to help these sub-human Karaini scum butcher each other with greater efficiency. She withdrew the Russkyan's own combat knife from its sheath and placed somewhere uncomfortably close to his genital region.

"I'm only going to leave you to the Taheisans if you don't start talking."

"I'm sorry, I can't let you leave me to the scorpions."

"So you'll talk?"

"About certain things, yes."

Mother Na'ahlai stared at the Russkyan. Somehow he wouldn't talk about PRELIKAZ. She knew it as well as he did.

"So... what can you tell us about the Covies that we don't already know?"

"You're smart. You know that they're slaving, clit-carving monarchist bastards."

"And where are the bases of these slaving, clit-carving monarchist bastards?"

"I can give you a long list, and the coordinates to every gentleman's club in Covingsland. Just get that knife away from my bubyentsy(9), I want my girlfriend to have something to look forward to when I get back."

Mother Na'ahlai lowered the knife.

"Now the question is whether I untie you or not."

"Common sense dictates that you keep me restrained. Professional pride dictates that you allow me a fair shot at escaping."

"When I let you return to your unit, I will untie you."

"But I have so many things I wish to talk to you about. So many things."

"Like?"

"Like the full TO&E of the Covingsland Defense Forces, the residence of every Lord and Lady in Covingsland, the disposition and doctrine of everyone of essentially all your opponents and just what goes on in the average Covie base."

"Why do plan on telling us this?'

"Because if you worked for the Covies, you would want to see them all get impaled one of your stakes. How many are you doing here?"

"4 bodies to a stake. I think most of them are your boys, the pinkskins. We managed to catch what was left of the Fuck Off Boys in this area but between the Taheisans and you all, there just weren't enough of them left. The Covies had a lot of KIA."

"That's because those tsarnik nekulturny somshokhii decided that they wanted in on the glory. Every Lord Fucking Cocksucker and Highlander Laird in the area rushed in with their militias."

"As I understand, the unit to the rear of your VolFors broke. I'm surprised you managed to extract yourselves."

"First Covingsland Guard Dragoons Regiment. Manned by nothing by the flower of the noble youth... errr... Mother Na'ahlai."

"How did you...?"

"You have your name, rank, serial number, blood type, religion, the name of your spouse, name of your...son, tribal allegiance and corporate allegiance tattooed onto your left cheek like every one of your soldiers. I assume you were the Basilisk Temple, Pathfinders?"

"Correct. How do you know Mazara?"

"Phrasebook, some dictionaries...many, many, many of your fine porno mags. Your soldiers look much like the centerfolds. It's hard to shoot at pretty girls like that."

"Can't aim because you want to get one last glimpse of center mass?"

"Certainly E'va Na'ahlai. I even keep a few of your magazines back at base. Your women are easier on the eyes than the ones here."

"Zanwesians. They should develop a new style... AIDS chic. I'm sure every perverted fashion designer would want that kind of look." Mother Na'ahlai motioned for a nearby Guardian to loose the Russkyan's bonds. "So, what's your name She'guay?"

"Sergei Vorodyen."

"Mountain Infantry?"

"Indeed."

"Hungry?"

"Famished."

"I'll get something for you to eat. Now... about these Covie bases... there's somebody else that you might need to talk to, a couple of people in fact.

~*~*~*~
"Excuse the quality of the food. It's worse than usual." Lady Me'okei seemed a bit apologetic.

Vorodyen shrugged. "It's not that bad. I've always enjoyed Mazara cuisine."

"And this is our cuisine at its irradiated, mostly dehydrated finest."

"Well, we have food." Chief M'tuku shrugged in his purple robes and chewed a bite of MPCR (10) menu item #40, Bamboo Shoots stuffed with chicken and sausage.

"As I was saying...the most important base in this area is the Norveidt Camp. The specific coordinates to the gentleman's club in the base are as follows..."

At least one Taheisan warrior and one Blue Raven Ai'lia began taking careful notes.

"Disposition of the locals?"

"Sunny as usual. Many of them are the Draka slaves of the Covies. Give them guns and AZT(11) and they will fight for you."

After a few more questions: "Where's PRELIKAZ based out of?"

"Manchester Citadel."

"Let me guess, the coordinates to the officer's club again?" Lady Me'okei chewed her food silently.

"Indeed."

"You know what? Take this. Take this and tape it to the underside of the Covies' poker table. I'm going to call in a favor the Navy owes me." Lady Me'okei pulled out a hand held GPS device from her webbing.

"What are you going to do?"

"Have a plane drop a bomb on the officer's club. It's not going to be large bomb. It's going to be maybe... the size of a couple of grenades. But it will be enough. Otherwise you are mostly free to go."

"Mostly?"

"Well... you see, we can't quite return you to unit unless..."

Sergei Vorodyen found himself at the edge of the village stark naked with the GPS device in his hands, and a backpack full of anti-retrovirals for the slave girls that the PRELIKAZ contractor had told Lady Me'okei about. Unlike the 80 something pills per day that only the richest of Zanwesians could afford, the Mazara drugs required only one pill, once a day.
______________________________
(1): Uin'hai: Nurse/Medic
(2): Keta: Ketamine
(3): Ere'haia: Shaman, in MP society, this is analogous to "Doctor"
(4): Xo'il: "Fuck is"
(5): She'guay: White boy.
(6): Sodo: HIV/AIDS
(7): Kia'xo'te: Contraction of "what the fuck do you want?"
(8): Ehr.: Abbreviation for Ere'haia
(9): Bubyentsy: Russkyan for junksack
(10): MPCR: MP Combat Ration
(11): AZT: Azidothymidine, an anti-retroviral.
Zanwesia
06-12-2007, 04:15
From: Blue Raven CHQ Information Services (chqinfo@blueravenwar.co.mp)

To: Rakira Na'ahlai (rnlai@blueravenwar.co.mp), Theodoru Me'okei (theo@blueravenwar.co.mp), Ehr. Souhaila Xe'riwe (sxri@blueravenwar.co.mp), Ehr. Tiffany Rourke (trourke@blueravenwar.co.mp)

Re: Zanwesian public health situation.

Sorry we weren't able to get this information to you all more quickly, but better late than never. You may have figured out much of the information included in this memorandum already, but here are just a few quick facts regarding the umm...well, the *lack* of medical infrastructure in Zanwesia.

Fun Facts About Zanwesian Health and Safety:

*According to Medical International, more than 50% of all Zanwesians are HIV positive, although The Scalpel (1) suggests the number could be more than 10% higher than that.

*Interestingly enough, HIV/AIDS or "Sodo" as it's known in Inglada, is believed by most Zanwesians to be spread through any sort of contact with homosexuals or anybody of a different ethnicity/skin color. This tends to lead to interesting methods of containing the spread of HIV, mostly by randomly accusing people of homosexual acts, and then proceeding to stone them. If you couldn't tell, this does nothing to stop the spread of the virus, and if anything, makes things even worse.

*Even if Zanwesia didn't have HIV, there's still the good old malaria parasite. I think nearly everybody has that. You should know Rakira, because of the 4 people that this email is being read by, you're the only one to have gotten malaria before. That's what you get for growing up in a swampy backwater.

*If you don't contract HIV, and you avoid mosquitoes for the duration of your trip, watch out for landmines. Zanwesia is the most landmine infested warzone on Earth short of Doomingsland. A somewhat funny sight (if you have a sick sense of humor) would be a small child hobbling along on an ill-fitting prosthetic or two. Most humanitarian organizations just drop items like prosthetic limbs from aircraft, because they're too scared to actually go down there. Another funny sight would be people beating each other to death with their crutches over limited supplies of limbs.

*It doesn't end there. The absolutely contaminated water supply might not be polluted with chemicals, (thanks to an utter lack of heavy industry), but Zanwesians haven't quite learned the art of plumbing yet, so they are fond of pouring their sewage and dead livestock in their drinking water supplies. Also, the water is contaminated with various types of worms. Almost everyone in Zanwesia is riddled with parasites, besides the Covies, but that's only because they live in a drier environment with less water.

*Lastly, watch out for tuberculosis. Due to the depleted immune systems of the locals, everybody and their cousin (who they probably bred with) coughs up rivulets of HIV tainted blood. If anybody sneezes in your face, you're pretty much fucked.

Anyway, those were just a few fun facts about the health situation in Zanwesia. Enjoy your stay there.
Russkya
08-12-2007, 19:25
<<Грег, ты хуеглот, Я буду измудоху тебя.>> (1)

Vorodyen ignored the umpteenth mosquito bite since he'd been released. He was far more concerned with watching where he was putting his feet so as not to cut his soles or step near a scorpion, especially that unbelievable "Death Stalker" equivalent that seemed to abound in this part of Karain. Nearly flourescent green, fast and ill-mannered, he knew instinctually and intellectually there was no way Mother Nature hadn't made that animal as poisonous as she could. Flourescent green truly is Mother Nature's "fuck off" colour, Sergei thought.

He repeated his mantra. Greg, toi khuyeglot, ya budu izmudokhu tebya. A mosquito landed on his arm and bit him directly above the flashing of the Mountain Infantry Regiment he'd been a part of in his Russkyan Army days. Like many of the elite soldiers in the Russkyan Military, unit pride was such that they'd tattoo a "permanent sleeve" onto their arms with such things as Regiment motto, crests, shoulder-flashes, that kind of thing. The "Golden Anchor" of the Naval Infantry was commonly found on the left upper arm of damn near every Naval Infanteer.

He stopped, ignoring the tree-leech that dropped from a leaf and landed on his upper back. He flexed the muscle and shook like a wet dog to try and dislodge it, just incase it wasn't a tree-leech, felt it bite in, shrugged. If it was something poisonous he'd find out soon enough. At the moment he hoped it was a tree leech. He thought about the bastard that kept trying to hone in on his girlfriend while he was in this godforsaken shithole and swore pungently under his breath, consulting the GPS. I swear, if you touch her again I'll rip your fingers off. And I can't rip your fingers off, because I'll also rip your cock off, and how would a cockless man sew if he has no fingers?

Sergei was sufficiently pissed not to care that his thoughts weren't making much sense at the moment. He was happy though to have all of the equipment he was issued with at birth intact and carried a new respect for the Blue Ravens, who appeared to be the tactically competent adversary supporting the Taheisans for unknown reasons. Most likely not political, probably entirely economical. AIDS-Chic, he recalled with a chuckle. The cholera, yellow fever, countless other vaccinations he'd had before he'd been permitted to go on operations with PRELIKAZ were now earning the needle-time they'd required, he thought, as yet another mosquito bit him. And the constant rounds of malaria pills. Those were worth the minor inconvience, given how many of the locals were afflicted and the ever-present "mozzies."

A snake slithered past him. He froze. It stopped.

Ah fuck.

It carried on. He clubbed it violently across the back of its head with a brutally swift, efficient arc. The head shattered, he left the corpse for scavengers to find. He wiped the blood - and possibly venom - off the base of the GPS, using a leaf to do so. He then moved on, stumbling towards a rendezvous.

Something he didn't know is that the GPS was broadcasting its location. The CDF may not be able - or if they were, care - about picking up on that signal, but PRELIKAZ most certainly was. An entire platoon from Third Brigade was moving to that particular rendezvous in their Ratel-20 esque combat vehicles.

Kilometers away, van Roux and Chelyako moved through the bush very cautiously. They left no sign that none but a highly experienced tracker could follow. Green shadows in the soft green-hued light of the Karain forest, they stopped for water. One man drank, the other covered, then they switched out roles. van Roux kept watch while Chelyako referenced his map. He caught van Roux's attention. "K and a half, mate. Almost there. Feet?"
The VolFor soldier responded with a curt affirmative nod and a thumbs up. "Good man. Let's get going then."

The SA-330 Puma had encountered a previously unknown device of the Taheisans. Nicknamed "The Anti-Air Katyusha," the device was a rack of MANPADs triggered from inside the cab of the "Tahei-wagon" toyotas. Somehow, most of the missiles hadn't collided arcing in after the Puma, and it was only due to the dead pilot's tremendous ability that they hadn't been blotted from the sky in a ball of fire. That didn't stop the tailrotor being sheared off, the cockpit turning into a charnel house, and the helicopter slamming into the ground from a scant ten meters above it at nearly a hundred knots, but at least some men had survived.

Chelyako had lost contact with Vorodyen, and all others aboard the helicopter except for himself and van Roux had been killed. Unknown to him, Vorodyen had been thrown dozens of meters from the chopper, landing in a patch of "briar," and subsequently been taken prisoner by the Taheisans. There'd be an interesting meeting when they arrived at the RV.

--

As to the Taheisan attack, it had been focused on 1 VolFor Bn's encampment which had shielded an artillery battery. The gunners, screamed at by PRELIKAZ men to abandon their guns at the risk of being shot with an RAR-4 instead of a Taheisan CR-15, had depressed their barrels and unloaded blasts of 155mm canister into the assault.

They'd gotten through the perimeter wire, no small feat. Less well fed than VolFor and PRELIKAZ, their attempts in the melee had been fierce but not particularly skilled or powerful. One Russkyan had hammered down three Taheisans with the stock of his rifle, cracking their skulls open, before he'd widened enough space around him to change out magazines. That contractor was being zipped into a body-bag, a machete having half taken his head off as he strangled a tribesman on the floor of the fire-trench. Theoretically someone should have been watching his back, but when you're the last man alive in a position, it doesn't work out that way.

Two patrols had been returning at the time of the attack. They'd combined forces and assaulted to support an element of the 1 Covingsland Guards Dragoons, who then promptly broke and ran under fire.

They'd been beaten off with enormous casualties on all sides. The wounded were being CASEVAC'd(2) and the dead were loaded onto trucks. The position had been demolished and the First Volunteer Force Battalion was preparing to conduct a route march to the Second Battalion of the Third Brigade's positions, leaving in good order with a strong rearguard.

--

A former Podpolkovnik (3) with the 27th Mountain Infantry Brigade (Independant), Viktor Novrinko's voice dripped with derision.

"Say that again."
"Well, it's quite simple. The Volunteer Force broke and ran, and it was only the actions of the Guards Dragoons that saved the day. It's quite obvious, old boy."

Novrinko resisted the urge to shoot the high-born Covingsland bastard right in the face with his Breyr 9.8mm. Leaving the slab-sided combat pistol in its holster, he leaned across the table.

"Let's look at the after-action report, shall we? The First Volunteer Force Battalion, m'lord, fought and died in their positions, holding their ground despite tremendous casualties as the agreed-upon reinforcements from First Covingsland Guards Dragoon Regiment did not arrive - more on that later. We later found out that upon the noise of the 155s firing, Guards Dragoon was in disarray to our rear and streaming back past Third Brigade, effectively leaving my battalion out to dry. You took numerous casualties because you're too incompetent to call for supporting fires, shot one of my Ratels and killed ten of my soldiers, one of your tanks rammed another and became immobilized on the field, whereupon you left those crews to their fate, and then streaming past my force in disarray you proceeded to leave us out to dry as well."

Viktor Novrinko had previously been invited into a gentleman's club and only his incredible self-control had prevented a massacre. Right now he had a long-fingered hand against the forehead of a slave girl underneath the table, holding her back from his crotch. Once she understood he wasn't looking for anything but to be left alone, she had sat back on her haunches with relief and rested.
What Novrinko was referring to was how the Guards Dragoons Regiment had been taken by surprise by ATGM fire which then proceeded to break their will to fight and cause them to flee by the time the gun-howitzers at the battalion encampment had been brought into action. The combined patrol from the VolFor had managed to capture the ATGM operators.

"Now, I'm not sure what your AAR says, and you're of course free to call me delusional and a dirty liar and suchforth, at which point I would be obligated to challenge you to a duel and probably beat you into a bloody pulp that would be denied an open-casket funeral, my lord." Novrinko's voice carried over as much contempt for the man's title as could be contained in his title.

"But I've got a dozen Taheisan bodies, one captive, and three NCOs outside, and while you're free to call me delusional and tell me not to file this AAR, I will not tell my lads that they didn't see what they saw and they didn't fight who they fought. You're welcome to try, though."

Looking down his long, most likely inbred nose at Novrinko, was the commander of the 1st Covingsland Guards Dragoon Regiment. He sneered.

"Our tactical withdrawl, my dear Lieutenant-Colonel, was conducted in nothing but the finest order and for reasons you no doubt cannot understand."

"Because they make no fucking military sense. You had a strong position on a reverse slope, clear of the ATGM threat, which you then abandoned to the enemy and I had to retake to facilitate my withdrawl from shattered positions - which *does* make military sense."

"You'll find that we do things differently in Karain, old boy." This was put in by a Colonel Farthingdale across the table, who shuddered slightly at the look directed his way by the dust-coated and blood-spattered former Mountain Infantry officer.

"I've noticed that, Farthingdale."

One of the NCOs outside, PRELIKAZ, stepped into the mess to mention that the prisoner was anxious to meet "her fine opposition." The former Warrant Officer (VDV) introduced Sister Nika Kasera to the assembled officers. Novrinko stood and shook her hand, complimenting her on the efficient use of antitank weapons and inquiring as to how she'd been treated upon capture. Well, it transpired, as the PRELIKAZ contractors had kept her well away from the bloodthirsty VolFor men.

All of the CDF officers recoiled as Novrinko shook hands with the Sister - equivalent to a First Lieutenant, according to his understanding of their ranking system - and immediately believed him to be contaminated with "Sodo." She, all five feet of her, was eager to be returned to her lesbian lover and her unit, and pointed squarely at Colonel Farthingdale.

"Shouldn't reuse needles, Colonel."

He spat back: "And what would you know about it, kefar?"

She smiled sadly and Novrinko turned his head to address his NCO to hide the half-smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

"Gentlemen, you'll find that Sister Kasera is singlehandedly responsible for the elimination of numerous main battle tanks and armoured cars. Colonel Farthingdale, your Squadron was stopped and suffered fifty percent casualties because of this five foot tall kefar lesbian. I would strongly suggest that we stop profiling our enemy based on race and start taking the threat seriously, yes?"

He excused himself, taking Sister Kasera with him. His NCO followed.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. We'll return you to the tender mercies of Warrant Officer Mikhailov here" - Mikhailov grinned welcomingly - "who'll get you a decent meal out of a few of our ration packs, because the local cusine in Covingsland is somewhat atrocious. You'll be repatriated to your unit after the Warrant gets you that list we've prepared of Covingslander "Gentlemen's Clubs" and their associated coordinates. No, it won't be an ambush, and if it is its because of something the Covingslanders have arranged on their own without our knowledge. You and I are not that different, fighting for money. My men - myself - have a hard time dealing with the beastial nature of these, what is it your employers might call them... "Pinkskins." Take care, Sister."

W.O. Mikhailov gestured towards the passenger compartment of a Casspir that carried his detatchment. By sundown Kasera would be returned with the majority of her equipment to an area known to be frequently patrolled by the Blue Ravens. Novrinko returned to the club.

The "debriefing" continued for two tedious hours, at the end of which Novrinko made his way back to the remains of his battalion. He'd be able to debrief Chelyako and in particular, Vorodyen there. The information Vorodyen had in particular, would be of great interest. After the insults sustained by Novrinko at the table in the "Gentleman's Club," he was more than willing to say "fuck it" to the end of contract bonus due his current employer by the Covingslanders.

--

1 - Translated, this would mean: "Greg, you passive homosexual, I'm going to beat you to within an inch of your life in the most brutal means possible." In less polite English, a more accurate translation is: "Greg, you cock-swallower, I'm going to shitkick your fucking head in."

2 - CASEVAC, CASEVAC'd: Casualty Evacuation, Casualty Evacuated. Removing wounded personnel from the combat zone by any means to an aid station, regimental aid post, or field hospital.

3 - Podpolkovnik: Lieutenant-Colonel.
Zanwesia
09-12-2007, 05:39
"And an 8 year old boy is now the chief of this village." Lady Me'okei sat on a cushion in one of the huts, staring at the screen of her laptop. Her attention wasn't focused on the screen if only because of how absolutely ludicrous the whole situation was.

Johnny Pots shrugged. Judging by the size of his enormous muscles, he was probably one of the few people in Zanwesia who had gotten enough to eat as a child. Well... more than enough to eat. The diminutive Lady Me'okei got to about his midriff. Maybe it was for the better. After all, as Chief M'tuku's Headman (1), Johnny's sole purpose was to represent the will of his Chief. What better way to do it than to stand tall and...

There was a crunch as human grey matter oozed out between Johnny's fingers. The single lantern hanging from hut's single ceiling beam flickered as a dying man's soul left its mortal vessel.

"Huh? We had a prisoner in here?" Lady Me'okei's pale blue eyes seemed to flicker. She really wasn't paying attention.

"I was torturing him for the last two hours. You didn't hear his screams?" Johnny seemed unconcerned, his voice remaining deep and slow as always.

"No... Not really." Theodoru craned her neck to look up at Johnny's 2.5 meter height. She looked back down at the crumpled, headless body of what used to be a VolFor soldier. "What was his problem?"

"He wouldn't shut up. Normally, I would have done nothing, but he called one of your doctors... that Tiffany girl, a Kefa."

"What? But..." Now Lady Me'okei was just confused.

"Everyone's Kefa to them. Everyone is a... how do you say in Mazara, a 'Guaia (2), a subhuman."

"I guess that's true..." Lady Me'okei turned back to her laptop screen. It had all the Covie bases Vorodyen had pointed out marked already.

Johnny glanced over at the screen. Not too interesting to him. M'tuku had given him command of operations against the Jejani Liada. The Covies were Mother Na'ahlai's responsibility. What Johnny couldn't help wondering about was what the Lady was thinking about. She hadn't been paying any attention to the ear splitting screams of the VolFor man as he bled to death all over the floor of the hut. Lady Me'okei checked the dead man's dog tags.

"His name was Franklin. Franklin Valamt Klerk. From Hamptonshire."

"Yes... and?"

"He had a friend with him. Name started with an 'F' too...ah... Fredrikus Nichols."

"Fredrikus? That doesn't sound like a Covie name. It sounds Draka."

"It is. Otherwise, somebody that looked as white as him would have gotten a spot in Cavalry. He's almost as....Caucasian as I am." Lady Me'okei struggled a bit on 'Caucasian', as if the word would bite into the ears and poison the souls of anybody listening.

"Do you...Aren't you embarrassed by the...idiocy of your people?"

"The Covies? If you mean the Covies, I don't identify with them at all."

"But you look the same."

"What's that supposed to mean Johnny? We shared ancestors. Distant ones."

"Does it mean anything?"

"It's not supposed to at least. At least nobody's ever given you shit about the way you look. I grew up with everybody telling me I was a shaved Nazi loving baboon. I used to dye my hair black out of shame, and the tanning salon bills nearly killed me."

"Killed you?"

"My wallet. At least I didn't die of skin cancer like a couple of my friends did."

"Odd. I read...Playa(3), I see a lot of...white people, I see a lot of black people too. I see all kinds in that magazine."

"True. But that's just porn. The perverts in Aulowe will fuck anything."

"If you aren't from Aulowe, where are you from?"

"Nikagard."

"Nikagard is a beautiful place. I've had many women there."

"Oh so have I..."

Johnny grunted and began to edge away. Slowly. Then he stopped.

"Sorry. Force of habit."

"You need to combat these myths about HIV. What are the chances that I have it?"

"Next to nothing Lady. It's just... it's just what I was taught by my parents and by my village elders. I know better."

"Good... oh and speaking of Playa... I have the most recent edition right here." Lady Me'okei pulled the rolled up copy out of one of the pockets in her BDU capris. "You want it?"

"Why... thank you." Johnny took the glossy, somewhat torn magazine in his hands.

"Do you have anybody? Wife, girlfriend, concu-?"

"My wife is dead. My sons are dead. I don't have anybody else"

"All you have is hate?"

"I wish I could answer in the negative to that question."

~*~*~
Fredrikus Nichols lifted his forehead up off the ground as he finished the fajr, the morning prayer that most of Covingsland's Muslims were too afraid to perform for fear of getting stoned to death by the local lord.

Captivity felt good to him. It felt good to worship his own God instead of the Covie God whose message was that he was going to hell no matter what he did, since only the elect went to Heaven, and the elect were obviously the nobles and clergy, and only the nobles and clergy, not poor Fredrikus Nichols or his family, or his friends. He reached into his pants for his wallet. He paid the owner of the hut, a grizzled old woman, what little money he had in there. He paid the woman in Havenic Pounds because the Covie Pound was worth less than the paper it was printed on. The old woman shook her head and refused the wad of money that Nichols proffered.

"No, no. You are nice young man. I keep your secret, you keep your money."

"Sorry ma'am, force of habit. When I was younger, I used to take the bribe money to my building's landlord so that he wouldn't report us to the CivStands (4)."

Still didn't keep the bastard from sleeping with my sisters... he thought as he put his wallet away. "Could I at least help you with your morning chores then?" Nichols wanted to do something that would show his gratitude. Sure he had a good start already with not burning down that nice old lady's house, and keeping the Jejani Liada from doing the same, but this was something extra.

"You help me fetch water for breakfast then. My granddaughter is down at river already." The old lady pointed at a large wooden bucket in the corner of the hut. It was about half as wide as Nichols was tall. Nichols bent down and looked into it. There was a strip of cloth sitting at the bottom of the bucket. He picked up the bucket in his hands and began his walk down to the river.

It had rained again the previous night, and the water didn't run red with blood anymore. Other villagers were gathering the quickly flowing water too. Nichols squatted on his haunches and collected a bucket of water. A couple of Blue Ravens stood guard on the opposite bank of the river. Many of the villagers, mostly women and children carried guns on them as they collected water or washed their clothes. Nichols lifted the bucket or at least tried to. It wouldn't go anywhere. He gritted his teeth and dragged it out of the water. He panted. That filled bucket was at least 40 something kilos anchored to the mud at the river's bottom. He lifted it up and began a rather slow duck walk back to the old lady's hut.

Somebody else carrying water passed Nichols, and giggled at him. Nichols would have brushed it off if it weren't for the fact that person that giggled at him was a girl no older than 12, balancing an equally large bucket of water on her head.

"Come on mister, you're slow", she giggled again. Nichols got a better look at her. Then it got really humiliating for him. She leaned against a single crutch fashioned out of an aluminum tube because she was missing her left leg at the hip and her left arm above the elbow. Her clothes were dirty, torn and ill fitting... and looked disturbingly like they were cut from the fatigues of a dead CDF soldier. Her right eye was covered by a patch that was definitely pillaged from the dress uniform of a dead nobleman. A CR-15 rifle hung across the sling on her chest. It looked well maintained.

"Put it on your head mister."

"I don't know how to..." Nichols thought for a moment. He looked at the girl. "Let me just try this...." He lifted the bucket and put it on his head. It slid around.

"If you stand up, you'll spill it."

"You got that right... How do you...?"

"Put the cloth between your head and the bucket."

"What cloth?"

"There was one that came with the bucket."

"I don't know what you're talking about it."

"I can see it hanging out of your front pocket mister."

"Oh..." Nichols put the bucket down, then put the cloth into a flat ring on his head like the girl did.

"Put the bucket on your head, it shouldn't slide around anymore. Now stand up. Come on, it shouldn't be that hard. Even I can do it."

Nichols stood up shakily, carefully using his hands to support the load on his head. The water felt much lighter.

"There you go mister. I'll race you back to the village."

Nichols arrived at the old woman's hut. He hadn't spilled the water, but the giggle of the half dismembered girl sitting in front of the cooking pot told him that he had lost the race.

"Congratulations Mr. Nichols, you are back." The old woman was smiling. "I see you met my granddaughter Kemba. My other grandchildren, they will come back soon."

2 other children, both boys, skinny but not starving, came back in carrying bundles of firewood. They were in considerably better shape than Kemba was. They also had CR-15s strapped to their chests, although the weapons looked enormous on them. They ate breakfast, which consisted of porridge, and dried fruit. At first, Nichols refused to take the food.

"No, no, young man, you fetched water. You have to eat with us now."

During breakfast, Nichols' conversation revealed the old lady was named Mrs. GB'urguru, her two grandsons were named Siba and Waneh. They were 7 and 9 respectively, Kemba was 12. Mrs. GB'urguru was raising her grandchildren after her son and his wife were killed fighting against the Jejani Liada.

Nichols struggled to swallow the mouthful of his porridge after he heard this from Kemba:

"I killed 3 Covies in that battle." Kemba tried to hold up three fingers, but her remaining hand had only 2.

"What? I...I..."

"They were running in the other direction Mr. Nichols."

"Oh..." Nichols understood. The Covies had too much money for their own good. Lost equipment could be replaced, right?

"Would you have run away Mr. Nichols?" asked Kemba

"You know what? I was running away. I was in a chopper when you all shot it down. I think I only lived because of divine intervention. I remember my hair and uniform being on fire..."

"Your hair is a bit singed, that's all."

"Were you scared?" asked Siba.

Nichols thought of how to answer. Combat is the sort of thing where everybody is scared shitless, because you don't want to die.

"Yes, yes I was scared, I just...didn't want to die. When people start shooting at you, that becomes your first priority, to not die."

"My first priority is to defend my village and my people Mr. Nichols. My life is already forfeit. I don't care whether I live or die."

"Forefeit... pretty big word there Kemba..."

"Yes. I know other big words too. How about cowardice?"

As much as Nichols hated to admit it, he deserved to hear this, if only on the behalf of his...comrades. If Covies only fought as half as hard as these people...no...these demons, there would be no conflict, there would still be Covingsland on the map today, not Zanwesia. Not a good alternative, but a better one than this...mess. Then they finished breakfast in silence.

"Kemba, get Siba and Waneh ready for school."

"School? I thought..."

"Young man, you must understand something, our people take pride in fact that we value education...unlike Jejani Liada (5)."

"Well, that's one step above my people isn't it? All they value is obedience."

"And also, next time, don't speak Inglada. We find it offensive you address us in same language you use with Zan savages."

"Understood Mrs. GB'urguru. Well, I'm off then. Thank you for your kindness."

"You might want to follow Kemba and her brothers. Many of your comrades are in the other village."

Nichols turned and left the hut.
Russkya
15-12-2007, 03:12
An uncomfortable forty-five minutes bouncing around in the back of a Ratel-20 ISC with six Turkic/Caucasian soldiers from Third Brigade was now many hours behind Sergei Vorodyen. He had never realized how much he appreciated pants and a jacket until he'd walked through the jungle without them.

It was night. The girl around whom his arm was wrapped giggled and pawed at his chest, playing her role to the hilt. The sentry at the door was bored beyond a state he thought possible and simply let them pass. Vorodyen asked for a drink from the barman as he passed by, heading to a table near the poker table in the center of the room where most officers invariably congregated. The table he'd chosen sported a fresh white linen tablecloth that reached to the polished floor. The girl slipped under the table, as they usually did in this "gentleman's club," and simply sat crosslegged, having been told earlier not to bother with anything. His drink arrived.

Vorodyen stopped the barman with a calloused hand tightening around his sleeve and pulling him in close. He whispered; "Leave in fifteen minutes, mate, go out back for a smoke, anything so long as you're not in here." The barman nodded assent and departed. The Russkyan finished his drink and thought of the Mazara's more photogenic and flexible examples of womanhood. His left hand reached under the tablecloth and unbuttoned the cargo pocket of his combat trousers, pressing the GPS transponder onto the underside of the table. It adhered and he felt his hand stopped by the delicate hand of the girl under the table. He ran his thumb along her knuckles and withdrew his hand.

His eye was caught by a Covingsland officer, a young Major. To be that young and yet a Major indicated connections. In Covingsland, this almost always meant a brutally-minded high-born bastard who found nothing more amusing or arousing than a bleeding and screaming little girl. Despite his disgust, Vorodyen returned the man's knowing grin and waited two more minutes, eventually taking the hand of "his girl for the night" and leading her from the club.

At 24.00 NLT, the gentleman's club adjacent the officer's mess was acquired by the GPS guidance package of the Small Diameter Munition low-capacity high-precision bomb attached to a weapons hardpoint of a MP Fleet Air Arm (445th Squadron) MRF-09 Ritual fighter. The Mazara pilot, a five foot one inch nut-brown professional of legendary sexual deviancy - as was common in the Fleet Air Arm - already had one kill under her belt, a Gulfstream-IV private jet that had spiralled down in flames to the savanna below. It exploded in a tremendous flash against the dark ground, and her wingman congratulated her on the kill. She swung back up onto her planned flightpath with a nudge of the control stick and a tap of the right rudder pedal.

The fire control system signaled its readiness and a strong thumb depressed the bomb release. The SDM fell clear, its fins guiding it as its fifty kilogram weight smashed through the roof of the gentleman's club a minute later. The Ritual fighters were long gone, undetected by Covie radar which had been focused soley on the border with Zhardesia this night. The bomb squarely impacted the very table at which Vorodyen had been sitting. It detonated a ten kilogram warhead.

Shrapnel from the table, floor, nearby furniture, the bomb's casing itself, and other miscellaneous items shredded the bodies of nearly a dozen and a half Covingsland officers just as the blast wave crushed internal organs into a soupy mess.

--

"They find Inglada offensive, Corporal?"
"Yes sir."

Nichols was standing at ramrod-straight attention while Chelyako was reclined in a padded leather chair. This wasn't his choice, it was his barber's choice. The reason Nichols was standing at such a stiff attention was due to the presence of a certain Colonel Stanley Killick, recently given the nickname "Steel Hand Stan" by his troops. The Covingsland Special Air Service, decimated by two attacks into the Delta 1/1 region, had recently been placed under PRELIKAZ tutelage by the CDF General Headquarters. The Covingsland Reconnaissance, or "CovRecces," had been disbanded and redistributed as organic "reconnaissance commandos" to various formations, namely those that were not attached to PRELIKAZ contractors for instruction or even battlefield leadership.

"Steel Hand Stan" had earned his nickname during the recent "purging" of what little remained of his command. Angered by the instance of various Squadron Commanders, all sons of the nobility, he'd shot one in the knees and attributed his wounds to a Taheisan sniper as the officer led his troops bravely into battle. During the debriefing he'd managed to keep the last few sentences from dripping with sarcasm, but it had been an effort. With the "fluff" removed, the CovSAS were now a lean two squadrons of parachute-qualified special operations personnel fluent in Taheisan and were beginning to approach the capabilities of "C" Squadron, Rhodesian SAS.

"Don't call me sir, Nichols. Officers are untrustworthy scum, heeled by the gentry. My name is Chelyako. Present company excluded of course, Colonel."
"No offence taken, Chelyako."
"Stand easy, Nichols. Have a seat. Bai, you rogue, don't cut my throat with that or I'll have my signalman disembowel you."

Bai, the Uighur slave bought by PRELIKAZ, given education, healthcare, and training in various disciplines, and effectively liberated from Covingslander oppression as long as he remained within a PRELIKAZ-controlled compound, smiled and nodded.

"Very good, Sahib."

Nichols nodded and relaxed. The Uighurs had taken to calling a handful of the Russkyan contractors "Sahib" after they'd watched films depicting British officers in India, circa 1800. The Russkyans delighted in mocking the CDF officers with stiff British mannerisms, one having gone so far as to acquire a full set of "1904 Pattern Colonial Khaki Expeditionary Uniform" and pith helmet.

Lathered with a boar-hair brush dipped in shaving soap, Chelyako relaxed as Bai scraped three days of wirey hair from his face with a straight razor. Killick leaned forward in his chair, affecting the gruff and 'common man' tones of the Russkyan contractors.

"Fucking fascinating, really. These Blue Ravens seem to be fighting quite nicely, repatriating that Lieutenant was a bloody marvelous piece of work, got us back Corporal Nichols here and a few of my lads. And all we have to do in return is blow up these fop bastards? I thought I'd never see the day, lads, never see the day."

Stanley Killick, Colonel, Covingsland SAS, was motivated by a deep desire to obtain a knighthood, challenge the Viscout of Queensbury - whose name was Gaylord Fairsworthy, a fact anyone familiar with colloquial North American English could not help but find amusing - to a duel, and subsequently "slaughter the prinked up bastard," to use the Colonel's own words.

Fifteen minutes later, shaved, showered, and dressed in camouflage fatigues scrubbed clean in cold water so as not to add the scent of detergent to the uniform, Chelyako, Vorodyen, Nichols and Killick were stepping across the threshhold into the air-conditioned and soft-lit interior of the Wardroom built in the kaserne of No. 2 Battalion, 3rd Mechanized Brigade.
"Third Mech" consisted of Uighur/Caucasian and Turkic/Caucasian "half-breeds" who'd been pressed into combat service by PRELIKAZ, trained and equipped, and since been used to back the operations of the First Volunteer Force Battalion, which was now a bloody shambles after their kaserne had been partially overrun by the Taheisan forces under Blue Raven tutelage. Discriminated against by CDF GHQ, it was found that the only way to ensure that the Third Brigade wasn't slaughtered against hopeless odds was to find leadership-minded personnel, train them as officers and NCOs, and put them in command of the Brigade. They were then placed under the command of the former LCol Novrinko, effectively a Brigadier General with his new responsibilities.

"Brigadier" Novrinko was now sitting at the head of a table with each of his four battalion commanders on the left side. The new arrivals sat across from these Colonels and Lieutenant-Colonels, their rifles leaning against the table beside them. In a nation such as Zanwesia, one carried one's rifle everywheres. A bottle of Scotch was produced, poured into crystal tumblers, and when the libations had been served all in attendance stood from their chair and raised the glasses to shoulder height. They spoke as one:

"To the Brigade, to the Battalion, to the Company, for our children and their sons. This is Karain, and we fight as such."

The assembled crowd sat again. The "Brigadier" detailed the responsibilities of each man, introduced his two Infantry battalion commanders, his one Armoured battalion commander, and his Support battalion commander. To those Colonels and Lieutenant-Colonels he introduced Col. Killick, whose responsibilities were already known to the men at the table, Chelyako, who had a firm grasp on the morale and sentiments of the PRELIKAZ contractors in Zanwesia, and two of the repatriated men who'd been in captivity with the enemy, Vorodyen and Nichols.

"So far we've ensured that the beastial treatment of enlisted men in the CDF will be lessened by a reduction in the numbers of officers in the CDF hierarchy. Due to efforts from some of the men here," Vorodyen nodded in acknowledgement, "we've seen that the Taheisans, or at least the Blue Ravens, have the ability to call in airstrikes on precision targets. Further, we're certain that they have targeted more of these хлочъое (1) 'gentlemen's clubs' and officer's messes.

Unfortunately they seem to think that this gives them free reign to attempt to abuse our men. Their upcoming offensive into territory controlled by the Jejani Liada, with the ultimate aim of securing Mababad and possibly killing M'bunga, should take the pressure off of Third Mech. Unfortunately that leaves us with a Brigade, an understrength battalion, and some SAS operators to control this frontage and protect our interests here. Are there any problems with the Infantry battalions?"

The commander of One Battalion laid his glass down on the table. "One problem. The trigger solenoids on the Ratel-90s keep burning out. The Ratel-20s have been suitably upgraded, but the nineties still present problems. I'd like to try and replace these with some of the Rooikats that Jiang has in the Armour battalion; the larger GT12 gun on some of those would also be far more effective in the direct fire support role as well."

"Well said, Hu. We'll requisition the funds later, won't be a problem. Vorodyen, Nichols, what can you tell us about the opposition?"

"Blue Ravens are highly skilled, almost all of them are small and lithe, suitable for the jungle they're in, Novrinko. The Taheisans are much more educated than we'd been led to believe, and are a very tough people."

"I talked with a little girl who shot three Covingslanders the day I was captured, sir."

"As Nichols says, they're all capable. I've been told what Sister Kasera managed - I wish that all of the gunners in my antitank platoon when I was in the Forces (2) were that good. We seem to have an informal understanding, we don't fuck them and theirs up outside of combat, they don't fuck ours up. I'm okay with that, I like not being tortured to death after getting the shit knocked out of me in a chopper crash."

"Sorry mate, you looked dead."

"Да, знаю это Вадим. (3) No worries."

"It's good for our boys' morale if they know that dealing with the Blue Ravens outside of a firefight is a pretty safe gig. See some pretty ladies, have a drink of that potent shit they call alcohol on Taheisan lines, do some good work with the villagers, all of whom are pretty friendly so long as you're not being a dick, y'know? I'd like to run some patrols in that area and knock out the Jay-Ells that keep coming in and fucking with them while they're dealing with the Covingslanders."

Killick spoke up. "Preemptive attacks on the Jejani Liada are my speciality, Chelyako. Brigadier Novrinko, is there anything you can do to keep the CivStands off my lads? I've got them crawling around my encampment back at the airfield inquiring as to the "state of Methodism within the Covingsland special operations community" and on a witch hunt for Muslims. Starting to get on my tits, mate."

"We can arrange a move and get those Squadrons up to Three Battalion's positions. You have room, Jiang?"

"Yes sir, if I'm giving half of a Rooikat squadron to One and Two Battalions, then I definately have the room."

"All right then. You bunk with the Armour, since they're not too far off from an airfield you can use to launch operations. They don't like coming up around our kasernes, one of their groups disappeared for some reason, I suppose they ran into a minefield."

Hu smiled to himself and recharged his glass from the tall bottle in the table's middle. The Support Battalion commander, Xiao, had barely touched his own libation.

"I don't have enough transport to get up there in one lift, and I don't want to do it throughout the course of a day. Those bloody CivStands will probably talk to GHQ. Brigadier, can Third Mech lend a hand?"

Novrinko looked at Xiang, who simply nodded affirmative and tilted his glass in Killick's direction before draining it.

"Marvelous, then. We'll be in position by, say, 2200 NLT on Sunday, Novrinko."

Immediate internal needs completed for the moment, the discussion turned to greater operational aims. Tired of the uncivilized behavioru of the Covingslanders and the inability to uproot the senior noble classes, the PRELIKAZ men would leave at the end of their contract. Unfortunately, their contract had been extended by another two weeks for an exorbitant amount of money. This left just over four weeks for the Russkyans in Zanwesia.

When they left, it was likely that Third Brigade would be turned into a charnel house by the inept tactical and operational decisions of the CDF officer corps, so plans were made to evacuate the force cross-border. The Volunteer Force Battalion was being reconstituted, its original bloated size no longer possible after the wholesale slaughter inflicted earlier as the Guards Dragoons had failed to come to their aid. The new operational focus would be on aggressive patrolling, air-assault operations to destroy the Jejani Liada's capabilities in nearby sectors, and safeguarding PRELIKAZ assets from a highly risky assault into Mababad. The Russkyans here were mercenaries and less than enamoured of their employer, they fully intended to return home and enjoy their wages. The men they'd served, fought, and bled with, those of VolFor and 3BDE, were considered too valuable to be squandered in a harebrained operation dreamt up by the CDF GHQ.

--

1) хлочъое - A form of the English curse "fucking" considered moderately vulgar in Russkyan slang.
2) Forces - A reference to the Russkyan Military, primarily the Land Warfare components thereof.
3) Да, знаю это Вадим - "Yes, I know that Vadim."