NationStates Jolt Archive

Basically, a joint military exercise between two teams. So far, there's me and Antigr, so I'm looking for another two players. Places on a first-come first-served basis. Note that you must be a good RP'er, and commited. Anyone who posts in here without Telegraming me first, except Antigr, will have their posts deleted.

Someone high up had decided it was time to try and build Alfegos' reputation amongst the international community. Whilst in the senate meeting on this subject it had been furiously debated what should be done, it eventually and surprisingly was one by a suggestion from the Minister of War - to host a large joint military exercise alongside three other prospective nations to build friendship between the two military forces there. Invites had sent, and already they'd been replied to by Antigr. Just two more places to be filled.

Over on the Neo'Los military exercise area, preparations were being made in the training ground's headquarters. Being on a mostly-uninhabited colony, they had been able to take a massive area for training both normal and live-fire. Stretching 900 kilometres from the Elliptic Mountains to the coast, the training ground held almost every imaginable type of terrain, from lush rainforest to desert, from swampland to high mountain peaks. An excellent area for full-scale wars to be imitated, with battles of up to division sized forces being carried out with air and missile support. For now though, it was to be used for something much more tame.

Two teams were to start at opposite ends of the 900x200km zone. The objective was to get to a central point of the training ground to retrieve a vehicle wreck, before taking it all the way back to their starting zone. Easy, but there was a catch: both forces were able to fire upon each other. For the vehicles and anti-vehicle infantry, it was laser units mounted on their heavy weapons and all-round detectors for the vehicles. For the infantry and anti-infantry vehicle weapons, it was wax rounds, able to show when a soldier had been hit.

The rules were simple: no use of lethal weapons systems, and for forces to be limited to a maximum of batallion size. Forces would not be allowed missile artillery, and would not be allowed air support. For the air support, Alfegos was being kind in providing each nation competing a pair of L-class Aerofrigates. Armed with 4 wax-firing machineguns and laser-projectors in place of the 2x 16 ATGM racks and 2x 12 AAM racks, each was fitting with a massive network of LASER sensors to sense when impacts had been made, and from that to perform an overall calculation of when the airship was taken out.

Sitting in the training centre headquarters, Major-General Thom'lin was busy overseeing the setting up of the mission, with plans being checked and safety procedures being double checked. From all around, bright light poured through the skylights in to the building. They were in Last Hope, one of the 7 towns built in the training area by engineer trainees to house soldiers on exercise as well as cater for urban combat needs. They were in Control Tower 1, on the 15 storey of the large prefabricated structure. About them stretched uniform barrack huts each hosuing a platoon, with different-shaped structures holding the underground vehicle garages. High above him, the faint shape of a low-flying stratellite could be seen, observing the entire training ground every 5 minutes while at the same time focusing with its phalnax of cameras on specific areas of the training zone, following movements on the ground to confirm the trackers that each vehicle and soldier would unwittingly carry, thus allowing for the control to see where every single unit was. The building's built0in supercomputer would be able to calculate the positions, providing real-time information of vehicle activity and even the groups of entire sqauds, to the nearest centimetre.

The men scrabbling about below him were a mix of 5 companies chosen from seperate branches of the Alfegan Army to provide the best possible approach to this exercise. Two mechanised infantry companies shared the compound below with a Combat Engineer company, a Main Armour Company and a Support Company. Their vehicles moved about below him, throwing up clouds of dust: M1A4 Warhound MBTs nestled with LY219 IFVs and M1A3 AVRE varients of the Warhound. Hopefully, this exercise would be enjoyable for all those soldiers on service to enjoy, and for those foreign powers coming to the training area.

____________________________________________

Alfegan Exercise Batallion - 456 men

Command Platoon - 26 men
- Standard Infantry Section - LY219 IFV
- Signals Section - Type 4 Communications Trailer
- Officer Section - LY219 Command Vehicle

1st Mechanised Company - 75 men
- Assault Infantry Platoon - 3 LY219 IFVs
- Heavy Infantry Platoon - 3 LY219 IFVs
- Support Platoon - 2 LSV Trucks, 1 LY219 Field Ambulance

2nd Mechanised Company - 73 men
- Standard Infantry Platoon - 3 LY219 IFVs
- Standard Infantry Platoon - 3 LY219 IFVs
- Support Platoon - 2 LSV Trucks, 1 LY219 Field Ambulance

Combat Engineer Company - 96 men
- AVRE Group - 12 M1A3 AVREs (Warhound Varient)
- Obstacle Crosser/Clearer Group - 4 M1A3 AVREs, 2 M1A3 Bridge Deployers, 2 M1A3 Minesweepers
- Support Platoon - 3 LSV Trucks

Main Armour Company - 96 men
- Main Armour Group - 12 M1A4 Warhound MBTs
- Light Armour Group - 12 FV107 Scimitars
- Support Group - 3 LSV Trucks

Support Company - 92 men
- Driver Platoon
- Driver Platoon
- Logistics Platoon - 3 LSV Trucks
- Logsitcs Platoon - 3 LSV Trucks
- Fuelling Platoon - 3 LSV Tankers
- Medical Platoon - 2 LY219 Field Ambulances, LSV Truck

OOC:

Deleted Tag, now we have...the ORBAT!
Who's on which team? If it's a two versus two, I’d like to go with good ol' Alfegos. Just because I know him, or, at least, as friendly as you can get over a phone line and two modems. Oh, and I did a typo in my TG to you, Alfegos. Now you can look forward to Mountain Troops.

Oh, and Luslyvania, I believe that you have to have a reply from Alfegos first?

IC:

The Antigrans had anticipated this exercise with glee, and had been given sufficient time to muster what was an elite within the regular army; the Royal Mountain Infantry.
Antigr, apart from it's southern Island, was almost entirely like a recreation of northern Europe; it was cold in the north, like northern Sweden, and warm in the south, like southern Sweden. Almost all Antigrans knew how to ski, and even regular army was trained to be able to ski and shoot, at the same time, with ease.

However, the Mountain Troops were something special; they were far better trained in all aspects of arctic warfare, although the name is deceiving, for they are also all trained in reconnaissance and tropical/desert combat, although not as well as troops specially trained for such climates.

Like all Antigran Army, they are fully self-sufficient in Mechanisation, having adequate transport for all personnel integrated.

They were the elite of the regular army, and the Antigrans had sent the full allowed number of the 'original' Mountain Troops, the elite of the elite, as well as General Sandrez, Antigr's most notorious and liked General, to oversee the event.

ANTIGRAN FORCES ORBAT


Armoured Battalion - 1st Armoured Battalion, 1st Mountain Armoured Regiment, 1st Mountain Infantry Division

Battle Tank Company (x2)

- 20 MT-85 'Marauder' MBTs (60 Men)
- 2 MT-79 HBT (8 Men)
- 6 MT-140 Turretless Tanks (18 Men)

Anti-Aircraft Platoon (x2)

- 5 MT-103 Air-Defence Vehicles (15 men)
- 2 140mm Towed Multi-Purpose Guns & 2 GPH Trucks (8 Men)
- 3 MT-705 Independent RADAR/Targeting Vehicles (6 Men)

Engineer Platoon (x1)

- 3 MT(E)-85R Armoured Recovery Vehicles (12 Men)
- 1 MT(E)-85M Armoured Mineclearing Vehicle (4 Men)
- 2 GPH Armoured Repair Trucks (10 Men)
- 1 MT(E)-85AB Armoured Bridge Vehicle (4 Men)

Infantry Company (x2)

- 2 Platoons Infantry (60 Men)
- 8 MT-91 'Raider' MIFVs (24 men)
- 1 Headquarters/Support Platoon (26 Men)
- 5 MVc Oversnow APCs (10 Men)
- 3 GPL Jeeps (Crewed By Headquarters/Support Platoon)

Medical Platoon [Battalion Aid] (x1)

- Surgeons (2)
- Orderlies (5)
- 2 MVm Oversnow Armoured Ambulances (4 men)
- Stretcher-Bearers (3)
- 1 GPL Jeep (Crewed by Platoon)
- 1 GPM Truck (Crewed by Platoon)

Artillery Battery (x1)

- 12 ACP-90 SPGs (48 Men)
- 3 ACP-90 Ammunition Carriers (6 Men)
- 2 Artillery RADAR/Rangefinding Vehicles (6 Men)

Motor Howitzer Platoon (x1)

- 5 MVt Modified Oversnow Mortar Motor Carriage (20 Men)
- 2 MVr Modified Oversnow Ammunition Carrier (4 Men)

Info on Infantry Companies

Infantry Platoon (x2)

- 3 Rifle Squads (24 Men)
- Lieutenant (1)
- Platoon Sergeant (1)
- 2 KGM GPMGs (2 Men)
- 2 Miera LAWs (2 men)

Headquarters/Support Platoon (x1)

- Captain (1)
- Lieutenants (2)
- Signals Operators (4)
- 4 81mm Mortars (8 Men)
- 5 KGM GPMGs (5 Men)
- 4 Miera III ATGMs (4 men)
- 2 Stretcher Bearers

Vehicle Detachment - 5 MVc APCs

- 3 Standard Vehicles (6 Men)
- 2 MVa Weapons Carriers (4 Men)

Vehicle Detachment - 8 MT-91 'Raider' MIFVs

- 8 Standard MT-91 MIFVs (24 Men)

3 GPL Jeeps

- Crewed By Headquarters/Support Platoon

OOC:

Right. It's ready. My force might seem a bit large, but a battalion is defined as between 50 and 1,500 men. Also, here's another example of my RPing abilities (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=524423).

IC:

Luslyvania's military forces were generally regarded as a good force, at least in terms of organization, leadership, and equipment. The one thing it was lacking however, was combat experiences, and when it comes to the military forces combat experience is a might important.

For this reason, when the nation of Alfegos announced it would be holding a training exercise and the invitation was made to foreign nations to participate Luslyvania's government did not take long before making the decision to take part if possible. A single reinforced battalion of Stryker-mounted men was mobilized, the exact sort of force which might be sent in to a real combat situation.

Luslyvanian Exercise Battalion – 961 men

Headquarters Company – 63 soldiers, 14 Hummers, 4 Stryker IFVs

• Command Platoon
• Chaplains, S1 through S6, etc…

Medical Platoon – 32 men, 2 Ambulance Hummers, 2 Hummers, 4 Ambulance Strykers

o 1 Headquarters
o 1 Treatment Squad
o 1 Combat Evacuation Squad (4 Ambulance Strykers)
o 1 Combat Medical Section

Reconnaissance Platoon – 24 men, 4 Stryker IFVs

o 1 Light Reconnaissance Section (2 Strykers, Command Team, 1 Recon Team)
o 1 Heavy Reconnaissance Section (2 Strykers, 2 Recon Teams)

Mortars Platoon – 23 men, 2 Hummers, 4 120mm Mortar Strykers, 4 81mm tubes held in reserve

o 1 Headquarters
o 1 Fire Directors Section
o 4 Mortar Sections

Battalion Snipers Squad – 7 men

o 1 Command Section
o 2 Scout/Sniping Sections

Rifle Companies X3 – 183 men, 2 Hummers, 2 trucks, 21 Strykers (each)

Company Headquarters – 14 men, 2 Hummers, 2 trucks, 2 Stryker IFVs

o Command Section
o Supply/Service Section

MGS Platoon – 9 men, 3 Stryker MGS Vehicles

o MGS Section

Mortars Platoon – 10 men, 2 120mm Mortar Strykers, 2 81mm tubes held in reserves

o 2 Mortar Sections

Medical Evacuation Team – 3 men, 1 Ambulance Stryker

o 1 Combat Evacuation Section

Company Snipers Team – 3 men

o 1 Scout/Sniping Section

Fire Support Team (FIST) – 3 men, 1 Stryker FIST Vehicle

Rifle Platoons X3 – 47 men, 4 Stryker IFVs

 1 Platoon Headquarters
 3 Platoon Rifle Squads
 1 Platoon Weapons Squad

Heavy Armored Company – 74 men, 14 M1A2 MBTs, 3 M113 APCs, 2 Hummers, 1 Heavy Recovery Vehicle, 1 Maintenance Truck

o Headquarters Section
o Maintenance/Support Section

Heavy Armored Platoons X3 – 16 men, 4 M1A2 MBTs (each)

 4 M1A2 MBTs

Heavy Artillery Company – 23 men, 3 Hummers, 3 Trucks, 3 Maintenance/Support Trucks, 3 Fire-Finding RADAR Vehicles, 24 M109 Paladin 155m Howitzers

• 3 Artillery Batteries

"We have received word from the most worthy nation of Luslyvania that they will be participating in this exercise. Only one more reply is needed til we are ready for the exercise." The Major-General moved out of the control centre to the roof of the building. From up here, he had a brilliant view of his surroundings: to the north, the desert, a tongue of green showing where the river channel flowed from the Los'khos river in the distance. It was in flood at this time of year, bringing life to the desert on its southern shores, and swampland to the rainforest on the slopes of the Ecliptic mountains.

He looked south to one of the few civilian settlements in the training zone - Neo'vi. A large port rapidly built from pre-fabricated housing, over-running the earthern mound that ran around the original city. Above the very distant city, a couple of massive airships floated, surrounded by smaller craft: they were civilian transports, used by the military for both mass transport and for some special operations. These craft would be used by the Alfegan forces to transport supplies landed by the attending forces to their barrack area, and from there to their starting point when necessary, with infantry taking ekranoplans across the mostly-flat land of the training zone.

There was a call on his headset, which he received. The Luslyvanian force would be arriving at sometime. A brief conversation ensued as to dockyard facilities and the like, with problems of space being solved by the use of the Mulberry training harbours a few miles down the coast for the ships to moor at once unloaded. After a longer period of discussionw ith the Harbour Defence master, he eventually managed to get him the radio signatures of the Luslyvanian ships, sent to them with the forces details: they did not want the big coastal railgun batteries starting up because some young recruit was doing it by the book. Finally, a call to the airport authorities to make sure that commercial flights were only to use a single runway to allow the other to be taken by any inbound aircraft. A few minutes later, and he was on the line to the traffic control - he had forgottent to ask whether any Luslyvanian pilots weren't aquainted with the Alfegan duel-traffic shared airlanes with both airships and aircraft. A bit of reasoning later, and they decided there was no problem: it wasn't as if it was hard to see the airships. And the Antigrans inbound should have no problem since they'd been there before with the airships.

He sighed as he finished the commentry with officials, before descended to the ground floor via the stairs: he'd best be there when they arrived. He needed to meet the Antigrans, for the diplomatic reason: Alfegan officials in government had sent him word that Alfegos was thinking of getting a bit closer with Antigr. So, they'd have to be treated as well as possible. Or at least, the officers.
He swore as he moved over to one of the cars: he didn't have enough time to travel the 180 kilometres from Last Hope Camp to Neo'vi by car. He needed something a bit faster.

"Thanks for the lift!"
He cheered, a surge of adreneline passing through him as the ekranoplan roared off along the marker pathway. Floating a couple of metres above the ground, the relatively small craft moaned as it was pushed forwards by 4 turbojets on the tail. He sat by an open door, air rushing past at a couple hundred kilometres an hour. He'd definately be there on time now. Behind him, large crates vibrated in the hold, all empty and being ferried back to be replaced with the recent shipment of wax rounds and LASER units for the many vehicles being involved. He enjoyed this, especially the feeling of speed at such a low height. They have priority at the few road junctions, passing over flashing crossings as onlookers watched. The long channel they were in was 120 metre wide, marked out on either side by red markers and warning signs. That way, no-one would stray into the path of a 300km/h craft. Braking was a problem, and he could already feel the pilot slowing down. Only a 30 minute trip there, but with 5 minutes needed to come to a safe halt without ripping the bottom of the craft off, and to get the approach right through the upcoming network of traffic channels: it had no landing gear, only a re-enforced base designed for water landings, and turns were not a strongpoint.

In the distance, the white city buildings were coming into view.

OOC:

Crap posts away!

IC:

A large airlifting operation wa underway to bring the Mountain Infantry battalion to Neo'vi; there were several transport aircraft and three airships.

Only recently had Antigr cottoned on to the fact that airships were very useful, and military and police forces would be equipped with them, although never as heavily equipped with the airships as the Alfegans.

The Airships were carrying the vehicles, some in a pod behind the control gondola, the rest inside the frame of the airship itself.

General Sandrez was in the first airship, leading the way.
The looked over as he saw the captain reach for the radio mouthpiece.

"Antigran party to Neo'vi land. Airspace open, requesting permission to land, distance 50 miles and closing quickly. over"

Just so you people know, I'm having something of an RL family crisis at the moment. I'll be inactive from between Thursday/Friday to the following Friday or later.

So I'd like to RP like hell 'til then.

Looks like this'll either have to wait or go on without me.

The general lept from the side of the landed ekranoplan onto a dockside, looking up at the inwards bound airships emblazoned by Antigran insignia: it looked like they had developed their own airships. A good thing then that the Nos'Vi aerodrome was, as with most Alfegan aerodromes, a Class B airship facility. He took a car to the aerodrome along with a military escort as he watched the airships moving in.

Meanwhile, the airport traffic control issued orders to a civilian airship inbound to hold at a stack point before moving to the inbound Antigran airships.
"Greetings, Antigran airships: welcome to the colony of Neo'Los. Weather is Clear, with visibility over 20km, and a force 2 breeze from the South-west. Please proceed to landing zone A and B, two airships at a time. VOR beacon for landing areas is 182.75 MHz. The other airship, hold at stacking point 4, keeping at 1000m around VOR beacon 191.25 MHz. If you are proceeding to offshore mooring once you have offloaded, please switch to Neo'Vi Mooring on 114.20 MHz.
Antigran aircraft, you are cleared for landing on runway 19L. Once landed, please proceed to parking in the military area, following taxiway AB and from then appropriate indication from ground crews."

On the two large concrete areas designed for accepting two medium-sized airships or one monstrous airship, ground crews began scrambling as the landing alarm came on: vehicles rushed out bearing men, wielding cable restraints as well as fuelling equipment, tank adaptors and ramps for offloading equipment. Lights flashed on the area, indicating mooring loops cut into the concrete as well as hydrogen/helium/AerGas outlets and a basic outline of the zone the airship should attempt to land in.

Further away, in the military sector of the airport, the Major General inspected a line of men awaiting the inbound aircraft. Behind them, IFVs and LSV trucks were parked in a perfect line, guns pointing upwards towards the sky. Further behind them, past an assortion of AA and Artillery, fighter jets shone in the sun then beat down upon the area. Only 1000am, and the temperature was rising. Luckily, the water in the area meant that the grasslands of the most southerly part of the colony were still fertile. Further inland, a band of mountains and forest seperated two massive bodies of desert. That flatness meant that many of the ekranoplans, with modified vector engines, could travel far across the desert without any airstrips needing to be prepared. Of course, the landings weren't smooth, but then they didn't mind about that most of the time here.

(OOC: I understand your situation Antigr fully, and hope the matter resolves itself quickly for you.)

"Message recieved and understood. Preparing to dock, over"

The Captain put down the radio and took the controls again, sitting a little more upright in his seat.

"Down we go. More ballast, go down. Engines down to ahead slow"

"Engines indicate ahead slow"

"Contact light flashing orange"

This meant that the very-short-range 'parking radar' was picking up ground and surrounding areas very close.

"Systems concur"

"Whee"

"Steady as she goes, Bjorn"

"Contact light indicating...red. Contact red"

"Systems concur. We have almost docked. You know what to do, I'll go and get the stuff"

Over to the right, the second airship had slowed and was preparing to dock.
Meanwhile, the steady whirr of the aircraft engines had shrunk as they in turn perpared to land.

"Approaching runway 19L now, over. Distance 700 metres"

"Is the landing gear down"

"Ages ago"

"Watch it. Flaps up and brakes on when we contact, no earlier"

(OOC: A little bit of a helper for you Antigr - airships are practically VTOL. All you need is for it to come over the landing zone area at low speed, and for the ground crews to grab you and anchor you down. No landing gear is needed on airships, or flaps: the only control surfaces are the ailerons and rudder. The rest of control is by ballast, gas distribution and (in some cases) vectored thrust.)

"This is tower to ground - we have the Antigran airships in for a landing. Prepare to hook 'em and hold 'em."
"This is ground to tower, we've been ready for the last 5 minutes. By the way, are they fuelling here?"
"Don't ask me - they tell me nothing."

On the ground, cable reams had been unrolled, large hooks on the pad ready to grab the airship coming in low across 19L. Different to their style of landing, but then these could be the new Hybrid Airships, using both aerofoil wings and gasbags to provide the lift. More efficient than the classic designs, and soon to be introduced on I-Class airships, they gave more lift from a small craft.

"All non-essential personnel, clear the pad!"
The ancillary personnel rushed to the sides of the pad out of the way, whilst the crew responsible for moving the airship moved into a recessed trench in the concrete. Here, orders were yelled, the men preparing the hooks in correlation to the inbound craft. Soon, it was just about over the pad.

There was a loud series of clangs as the hooks engaged on the airship's underside, before a roar started as the cables were tightened. The capture crew began leaving the trench, attaching numerous other moorigns to hold down the airship, whilst the navigation crew signalled for the airship crew to change the airship position and altitude. The rest of the men now appeared, dragging the ramps up to the doors and attaching piping from the large gas outlets to the appropriate ports on the airship, attaching adapters to allow for the gas to rush and refill the depleted gas stocks.

A military platoon arrived, providing a guard of honor for the leaving men and crew as they were escorted towards the military sector of the aerodrome.

"Aha! We have contact!"

"Anchoring"

"The ground crews will take care of the rest. I'll stay here, you can go and begin the unloading drill"

The airship was not on the ground, of course, but nonetheless General Sandrez walked over to a side door in the rear of the forward gondola with the airship's Captain and took a leap onto the ground.

The technologies of airship docking had progressed and the leap wasn't very far at all, more of a hop, but the Captain fell over and hit his nose on the concrete.

"Get up. This is bad form, you know"

"Sorry, sir"

"They've rolled out the red carpet, all right. They've got an honour guard and everything"

Behind them, four Air Cavalrymen - the branch of the service responsible for crewing Airships as well as helicopters - had made the 'hop' and had joined Sandrez and the captain, assault rifles slung on their backs.

The General saluted as he walked out and surveyed the area. It was big, alright.

The other airship was just getting hooked by the ground crew to his right.

---

The wheels screamed and produced some smoke before settling down onto the runway as the engines throttled back. The brakes and flaps went up to slow the large transport down as it's speed decreased and it headed for the taxiway.

No sooner was it just off the runway when the other one touched down, and after it another two.
They all touched down and began to taxi without blowing up or hitting each other and stopped, waiting for signals from the ground crews.

"Well, looks like they aren't taking the steps."

The honour guard saluted as the Ground Crew head appeared, saluted, and then indicated the whereabouts goods were to be unloaded to. He took out a small map unit, before passing it to him.

"Here's your local map. By the way, GPS navigation systems won't work here - only Alfegan Military Position Systems will work. We do that to try and keep secrecy over here. Plus it makes sure any silly civilians who enter the area know that they're out of bounds, and discourages any curiosity.
Anyhow, officials please come this way. You'll be meeting up with the rest of the men here in a jiffy."

He indicated to a small convoy of cars, before leading them to them. Meanwhile, the goods master moved over t the unloading crew.

"Can you load up the stuff onto the maglev carriage there? It'll take the equipment to the equipment depot, and from there it'll be carried by Ekranoplan or train over to your barracks wher you shall be staying for the duration of the exercise."

Behind him, a long series of flatbed carriages pulled up, towed by a large train unit. There was an audible clunk as the magnets shut off, letting them sink to the ground.

___________________________

The landed aircraft soon met ground crew holding fluorescent sticks, who indicated them to park at the spaces on the open concrete in the military sector. In front of the parking areas, the awaiting men prepared themselves for their salute. At the front of them, a group of officers and officials awaited for the heads fo this operation to arrive, as steps were drawn up to the aircraft and a carpet rolled out to the front of the large military complex, where the officers awaited.

OOC:

No time for a closing IC post. See you in a week, sorry, again. Will this wait or go on without me?

(OOC: I'm sure that any posts by other players (now including Lyras) will not get to any major part that involves you. Plus I can make time a wee bit fluid, so that by the time any of the serious exercise stuff starts, that we're all here and ready.)

OOC:

*falls screaming from sky onto rock*

I have returned! BTW - have you got an important TG from Colstream?

IC:

"You spend far too much on your military; it'd be easier to get a little diesel shunter and a few flatbed carriages. Nevertheless, we're honoured, it will make life infinitely easier. We'll be unloading in a few minutes"

With that, Sandrez saluted an turned to the Captain next to him, and gave a few discreet orders under his breath.

"By the way, how far away are our barracks? I'd like to tear around in one of our Jeeps and those landing at the airport would find it quicker to hop in their vehicles and drive if the journey isn't too long.
As you can see, Antigran infantry is fully mechanised which is integrated down to company level. Makes things easier, you know.

We have arrived, your honour guard shall not have to remain here for the night. But we are honoured, sir. I'm looking forward to the exercise"

"Your barracks are at the Western Barrack unit, 95km NE as the crow flies or 150km by road. As for rail, we'll be installing that once we have enough funding: the ekranoplans are only modified shipping ones designed not to end up with glass turbines. They should be fast enough for your needs. As for us, our standard mechanised infantry are integrated at section level, with at least 1 IFV per 8 men. But if you want to have a bit of a race around during the allocated leisure time you'll have here, there's a large vehicle assault course about 40km from your barracks. It's used mainly for tank testing, but vehicles can have rather an interesting time there too. As long as you don't mind having to wash them after.

Just a climate update for your men: most of the area in the south is arid. Rainfall mostly occurs south of the mountains, around the area of tropical rainforest. North, we don't go. The border defence there is sufficient enough to keep out all northern trouble, and the garrison at the mining station there is called up if the automated systems become overwhelmed. Which is where one team will be starting in our main exercise. But anyhow, down here, expect lots of dryness. Further north, high humidity and heat, then high altitude freeze-your-balls-off temperatures. Just be prepared for all conditions.

When you're ready, just hop on the ekranoplans."

"A bit of a long drive, then, although I'll still want to tear around in a Jeep. I'm a bit of a petrolhead. 150 kilometres...

Integrating IFVs at section level will be a bit of a pain, won't it? That's an extra 3 men to every section. Is all of your military completely mechanised?
The assault course sounds fun. Antigr being like northern Europe, we've got a lot of those 2-part oversnow vehicles which can tackle pretty much anything, and our heavy trucks are actually halftracks. Well, another thing to look forward to, I've got plenty muddy in my time.

Oh, and please forgive my English, it isn't too good, I think. We are brought up speaking Swedish, but everyone is taught English as well.

We're mountain troops. As I've said, Antigr is pretty much arctic to european terrain. Most kids can ski, and a lot of Antigran standard infantrymen can ski and shoot at the same time, so mountain troops doesn't mean much. We are better trained in regards to artic terrain, but since we knew that already, they taught us how to do desert as well. We're pretty much all-purpose, you know, although I don't know what you've got in store for us.

Right then, we'll load up"

He turned round. Clearly, the captain had experience with higher-ranking officers and had anticipated the order, and was already supervising the unloading of the airships.

A Marauder II's engine revved and it began to roll towards one of the flatbed carriages, followed by an APC.

Sandrez began to walk towards a waiting Jeep. In it was his personal assistant, a Captain, and an Air Cavalryman resting his head on the bipod-mounted GPMG in front of the forward passenger seat. Clearly, Sandrez was going to drive, typical.

The goods and troops soon were moved over to the Ekranoplans, the men out on parade saluting the Antigrans as they moved over to help with the loading and such. Meanwhile, the cars were given directions to the barracks.
"It's been nice to see you. Now, whilst I'll have to wait for the other two groups to arrive before the games start, I'll be coming over to visit you as soon as. All your aircraft and airships will be cared for appropriately, as will any non-participants who are willing to stay in Neo'vi.
I think, you being mountain troops, there should be no trouble should we encounter ourselves in the mountains. Across the desert and other terrain, you might soon find some difficulties!"

The ekranoplans began to power up for takeoff, thrusters moving as ground crew cleared the area. Soon, the engines changed tone as the small groups of them cleared the ground, before the thrusters changed angle again, making them scream off away from the area.
In the leading ekranoplan, carrying troops, Captain Mi'san sat with his legs hanging from the side of the open door, watching the land speed past below him.
"You're in the western barracks, right? I think you'll enjoy it there. Nice big place, not like Last Hope where I'm staying at the moment. Quite a few big ranges there as well, for not just your small rifles. Anyone fancy the autocannon range? They've got a Xha'noa tank out there that some recruit managed to write off: a new record I reckon. Anyhow, his punishment is a nice long stay up at the mining station. But the Xha'noa, while it has all its armour and that on, is empty of all nice stuff, so it's just really a massive target. Some airship dropped a cluster bomb on it the other day, and it's still fine. The holes at the back are where they used it for target practice with the new tanks they bought from somewhere or another. But the front's still fair game."

He chuckled as he pulled his legs back in, noting the increasing rockiness of the area.

OOC:

Like I said, mountain troops don't neccessarily mean trained only in arctic warfare...the regular infantry knows that already, so, apart from special forces tactics and mountaineering, they had to find them something else to teach. Otherwise, Sergeant-Majors would be out of a job.

IC:

Sandrez had with him a handy map he'd acquired and he sat at the helm of a GPL Jeep, followed by two more, both belonging to combat companies and armed with MGs accordingly. Indeed, one had an ATGM which someone had left for storage and forgot to take out.

The General, however, was not participating. Even though it was rough living, he enjoyed being down with the troops and was generally regarded as the modern-day Rommel. He was down with the troops and he was always somewhere perilously near to the thick of it; he had the skill and tactical knowledge as well.

He somewhat regretted not being allowed to join in - he'd just be an excessively potent target, but nonetheless he'd be sleeping in the same barracks as the man commanding the battalion, a Lieutenant-Colonel Krosby.
It was rare for a Lieutenant-Colonel to command a battalion, as in the Antigran army, Majors fulfilled a proper role rather than staff, and as such, Krosby should, by all means, be in charge of a 3000-strong regiment.

And, back in Antigr, he was. However, he'd been put back in command of his old battalion for this exercise and there were many familiar faces.

Sandrez stopped thinking about this and pressed the accelerator, veering off to the directions he'd been given, with the other Jeep following.

* * *

Captain Mi'san, by chance, happened to be talking to the third-in-command, the usual commander of the battalion, Major Ostling.

"Some tank. We've got some new-age Flak 88mms, in 140mm, that I suppose we could try out at point-blank, and failing that, the ordnance board developed on massive bastard of a round. It's solid depleted-uranium AT for heavy artillery.

I think we could give your tank with the unpronouncable name a run for it's money, if that hasn't been blown up by now.
Hey, we haven't been told who's side we're on yet! We with you?"

The ekranoplan shot past the convoy of men by the side of the road, the Captain waving as they passed the jeeps before he shot out of sight. Onboard, he started chatting with the Major.
"Flak... that'll be fun. I don;t think anyone's tried it out yet. Should be a sight to see anyhow, you trying to kill that wreck. I tell you, when I was in Last Hope in the ruins, I saw one guy drive straight through an 8-story building in that, with only paintwork damage. They're brilliant vehicles.
As for team though... I honestly am not sure at the moment, but I am hoping you'll be on the Alfegan team: that way, I'll be able to show your lot a few tricks of the trade."

(OOC: Commencing 'reminder' sending to those involved.)

OOC:

So, when should my party of (one) Generals arrive? What speed the the eraknoplans go at - faster than a speeding Jeep driven by a nutter?

(OOC: Sorry, that's stupid me, with the most excellent of timing... I went out just as you posted! Anyhow, ekranoplan goes at about 250-300mph, jeep at about... 100mph? Your general will be there about just under an hour, whilst the ekranoplans only 20 minutes. I don't mind a wee bit of fluid time for this, but I hope that Lyras and the other guy will post soon!

As a note to all, are these OK for teams: Me and Antigr versus Lulsyvania and Lyras? Plus once everyone's arrived and settled in I'll start dishing out the map. )

A big, if old, Lyran MRH90 came rumbling in towards the landing zone, bearing the Lyran command party. Brigadier Miller was present to oversee the events from exercise control, but the actual fighting elements would be commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Raphael Sorrowthorn, CO of the 32nd Mechanised Battalion, 8th (Wolfspiders) Mechanised Division.

Some of the terrain around Neo'Los was striking. Some of the areas to Lyras' north, near Highcairn along the Fehnmari border, were similar. Certain lookouts near the city could take in a 360 degree panorama, showing the arboreal forests along the Faen river, in South Fehnmar, to the mountain ranges of the north Lyran ranges, to the open plains of the Os river valley, and the gentle slopes from the northern ranges down towards the Bredubar lowlands.

Neo'Los was different, certainly, but there were similarities... and Sorrowthorn took comfort in this, as he always did when coming into a new theatre of operations.

Sorrowthorn had commanded the 184th Battalion since the promotion of Natasha Krell. He had taken it through three seperate international conflicts and, having built on the stellar work of his predecessor, the 184th was the premier unit of the 8th, itself one of Lyras' most highly regarded formations since the opening salvos of the Verenberg civil war. Most of Lyras' cutting edge hardware came to (or through) the 8th, and the 184th along with it.

Sorrowthorn was very keen to see how the most recent advances in equipment and training would play out against a capable opposition.


184th Mechanised Battalion ORBAT

Lyran Mechanised Infantry Soldier (Doctrinal)
Disruptive Pattern Multi-spectral camouflage
Main weapon (assault rifle or LMG, usually) + cleaning kit
L45 sidearm + 3 magazines
12 magazines (assault rifle) OR 6 collapsible magazines (LMG)
LY33 LSRAAW (except anti-armour personnel, who have something bigger as primary)
Cromwell II-datalinked helmet, with “Bat's Eye” autofocusing lowlight visibility system
“Dauntless” Ballistic armour
“Blacktalon” combat gloves
“Mamba” tactical boots
Modular chest webbing (adaptably integral to 'Dauntless' armour)
6 x HEDP grenades
“Lycos” acid-edged combatant machete OR “Badger” Multi-use Entrenching Tool
Compress quick-release backpack
Low-weight sleeping bag
Type 2 self-diagnostic and trauma kit
Spare batteries
Hootchie
1 meter of rolled hootchie-cord.
4 lightweight non-ferrous tent pegs
1 sewing kit
3 pairs of “enduro-weave” combat socks
1 day's rations


Lyran Mechanised Section (Doctrinal)
Number 1 Scout (AR44 Designated Marksman Rifle)
Number 2 Scout (AR44)
Section Commander (CPL) (AR44)
Section 2IC (LCPL) (AR44)
Gunner (LY19 LMG)
Number 2 gun (AR44)
Number 1 Assault (AR44)
Assault gunner (LY19 LMG)
Number 3 Assault (AR44)
Number 4 Assault (AR44)
LY219 Light IFV

Mechanised Infantry Heavy Weapons Section
Section Commander (CPL) (AR44)
Section 2IC (LCPL) (AR44)
First MG (LY60 14.7mm HMG)
First MG assistant (AR44, Spare LY60 Ammo, tripod, C2 sight)
Second MG (LY60 14.7mm HMG)
Second MG assistant (AR44, Spare LY60 Ammo, tripod, C2 sight)
AT Missileer (Javelin III, 4 missiles)
AT Missileer (Javelin III, 4 missiles)
AT Missileer (Javelin III, 4 missiles)
AT Missileer (Javelin III, 4 missiles)
LY219 APC


Lyran Mechanised Infantry Platoon
3 Sections
Heavy Weapons Section
Command Section (LT, with a platoon SNCO, SIG, two medics and a sniper - LY219 APC)

Mechanised Infantry Company
3 x Mechanised platoons
Company HQ (2 x LY219 Command variants), COY CMDR (MAJ), COY 2IC (CAPT), CSM, 2 x SIG, and the COY QMS, 2 x QCPLs (and his two CPL-ranked assistants).
Mortar platoon (3 mortar sections, LY516/219 Stormdrake and LY219 APC ammo carrier each)
Direct Fire Support platoon (6 x LY219 Mobile Gun System, 1 x LY219 APC)

Mechanised Infantry Battalion Support Company
Engineer platoon (2 x LY219 ARVs, 1x LY219 Mine warfare/APC variant)
Air defence platoon (3 x LY220/219 Shepherd, 3 x LY83 Fox 4x4)
Anti-armour platoon (4 x LY219 ATGM variant, 2 x APC + 12 pers AT section)
Medical platoon (3 x LY219 Ambulance, Mobile Level 2 treatment facility, four LY83 Fox 4x4s)
Recon, Surveillance and Target Acquisition (RSTA) platoon (1 sect ATVs, GSR sect, UAV sect, 4 x LY83s)
Signals platoon (2 x LY219 Cmd variant, 1 x LY219 EW-variant, 1 x ARV, 3 x LY83)

Artillery “Gun”
1 artillery piece (LY300, in the case of the 184th Bn)
1 LY219 ammunition carrier/loader
6 personnel

Artillery “Gun platoon”
HQ “Gun” (LT, with a platoon SNCO, SIG, two medics - LY219 APC)
3 “Guns”

Artillery Battery
3 Gun platoons
1 Mechanised infantry platoon
Battery HQ (2 x LY219 Command variants), BTY CMDR (MAJ), BTY 2IC (CAPT), BSM, 2 x SIG, and the BTY QMS, 2 x QCPLs (and his two CPL-ranked assistants).


Armoured Platoon
4 x LY7

Armoured Company
4 x Armoured platoons
Company HQ (2 x LY7, 1 x ARV)

Mechanised Battalion
BHQ (2 x LY219 Command Variant)
4 Mechanised infantry companies
1 Mechanised infantry battalion support company
1 Armoured company
1 Artillery battery

"Here we go: the Lyrans are coming in to arrive! I hope the welcoming party is ready."

The parade quickly moved back to their positions, preparing for the reception of the party from Lyras. The final descent details flashed across the sky as the plane came towards the landing zone, ground crews moving into positions as the plane finally touched Neo'los for the first time, cutting through the heat haze of the runway surface as it slowed to a standstill. Directed to the military area, it soon was met by the red carpet rolling out, and the commander of the base moving out with his accompanying officers and honour guard to greet these newcomers.

"Good day to you. I hope the flight was pleasant for you."
Behind him, the battalion came to attention, the many men stamping hard producing a deafening crash. A group of seagulls took to the sky from one of the building tops in fright, circling around the scene before moving off to friendlier roosts in Neo'vi.

OOC: Eraknoplans arrive? What do these barracks look like, et cetera?

(OOC: My timing, as usual is impeccable...)

The ekranoplans slowed as they moved over to a concrete landing circle, thrusters vectoring to stop the ekranoplans, making them hover above the fresh surface. Dust blew away from the centres as they eventually touched down with loud clangs, leaving the engines to spin to a halt. The silence now let all hear the wind outside that had sprung up.

"OK Antigrans: let's go. The Boreas wind is picking up, and I don't think you'll want to be outside when the full wind hits us: there'll likely as not be a dust storm following it. Our logistics men will carry all non-personal equipment to the stores. For now, you lot go to the main assembly hall."

Across from the landing circle, a series of long buildings stretched out across the arid land past the sparse grass, each easily identifiable as being made from prefabricated plastic panels on a cheap metal frame, the buildings about a metre off the ground. Narrow windows were build into the sand-blasted buildings, blackened panes amongst a grey plastic structure.
At the head of each group of 9 long buildings, a much larger hall-like building made from the same plastic as the others rose above the desert, waving an Alfegan flag. Equipment was being loaded onto lorries, for transferral to the long buildings, each having being allocated before a platoon which would reside in each.

As the Captain walked briskly past, doing up the scarf around his neck and pulling a set of goggles over his eyes, he first passed the vehicle garage sections for up to 6 vehicles, folding aluminium slats already corroding around the edges as they cut off the concrete roadways that lead up to them. Continuing on, the lorries had started unloading in the supply sections of the buildings: one building was a quartermaster's headquarters, a large armoury dug deep into the ground. Another, an ammunition dump, where wax rounds were being unloaded in preparation for exercises. Finally, they reached the parts where the men were to live: spacious areas for bedding and personal equipment, along with communal showering facilities and kitchens. Alfegan non-officer personnel always cooked their own food, though in this case the guests would be treated to delivered meals from the Alfegans who resided the barracks for most of the year.

They finally reached the tall, arched hall as a loud siren sounded atop the building: the 10 minute sandstorm warning.
"See what I mean? Let's hope the guys who took the road get to an emergency shelter before they get hit." He got inside to allow the wind's whistle to die form his ears, instead meeting a hall of chatter: the Antigran men were being lined up as they talked into separate platoons by the Colone and staff in charge of the barracks, before being given the keys to each barracks and told to wait. The lights flickered as the power lines were hit by the approaching storm, followed by a loudspeaker announcement.
"Silence in the hall!"
The place quietened down as the organisers rounded up any latecomers.

"Right then: welcome all to the Western Barracks. We are on the left-hand side of the barracks complex, which also houses Alfegan forces on separate exercises and the airship crews for the detachment posted here. You wont notice much of them at the moment, since they've gone south along with their airships to escape the inbound sandstorm. As a result of this, any trips outside must be as brief as possible. You will not be allowed to go to any of the main communal facilities of the barrack site due to the weather conditions, but will be able to once the all-clear siren sounds.
Please enjoy the facilities, and we hope that you are not disheartened by conditions at the station."

He smiled, before staff started pointing out directions. Outside the hall, the primary dust clouds were starting to creep into the area.

_________________________________________

A helicopter came to a hover over the convoy passing at high speed towards the camp.
"Please may members of the convoy look to their right. That massive brown cloud in the distance is a sandstorm coming in. You have about 10 minutes to get to cover, and will have to weather the storm out for about an hour, depending on the wind strength. Hopefully, it will be less than that, but it will not be good for your men.
There's an emergency refuge for people about 5km ahead: note that vehicles will have to be left outside, so we recommend you take all precautions as to preventing damage to them or letting dust enter the vehicles, and get underground as quickly as possible. Thank you."

The helicopter almost rolled as it was hit by a powerful gust as it moved away. It passed low over the road, heading off south as it passed the emergency shelter: to those on the surface, all that was visible was a small concrete entrance. But the more trained would note the entrance that led down to a large underground bunker, sealed to provide protection against anything from sandstorms to nuclear strikes. Just the place for people to move to. Underground water sources and facilities could cater for the men for the time necessary until the sandstorm ended, safe from the abrasive winds.

OOC:

The only response I can think of is 'well, about that...'

IC:

The Alfegans dissapeared as quickly as they arrived, taking their helicopter with them.

"Damn. Just our luck"

"What do we do?"

"Don't be utterly stupid"

Sandrez stamped on the accelerator and swung the wheel around hard, turning the Jeep around with a squeal of dust underneath the wheels. The wind hit him in the back of the head and a small rock pelted him in the back of his neck, so he whacked his helmet and goggles on as the long-suffering car hurtled away, while he buckled the tin-hat up.

"Sergeant, you know how these things work?"

"I've used a Jeep before, yes, sir"

"Get the tarpaulin out and fold the windscreen down"

"But we're moving at sixty-seven miles an hour"

"Do you ever want to be Gunnery Sergeant?"

The Sergeant slung his rifle onto his back and began to get the packed tarpaulin out, without further ado. The almost lost it in the increasing wind, but it had handgrips built into it for this purpose and he got it down. Putting it between his legs, he engaged a catch and the windscreen came down, engaging another catch as it thudded onto the bonnet.

Looking at his watch, Sandrez leant back in the seat as the engine began scream then quieten as he shiften gears. The sergeant saw it too - the shelter. The Jeep behind them was still there, and it parked as close to the shelter as possible, having taken similar precautions.

"Secure the tarps, fast"

The men did so, hurriedly, before closing the radiator slats and heading for cover.

In the assembly hall, the men had settled down into a state of annoying chatter again, although quiter than before. A Lieutenant spoke up.

"How long do these things last, sir? If it's more than five minutes, I'll get some sleep"

(OOC: Thought that I'd do something for the description and RP'ing aspect of the landscape...)

The emergency shelter was already host to 8 patrol men, who had left their Gecko FAVs up on the surface in the shadow of the shelter, away from the sand. They had had their engine units wrapped in a large sheet of Aerofibre: the material that made up the skins of airships had many a use apart from the original envelope design, being almost impossible to rip, even harder to burn properly and being almost as light as a feather. A series of long bungees showed on top of the grey fabric, coloured that way by the Kevlar that constituted a large proportion of its make-up, these khaki elastic straps tightly holding it around the engine unit. Another had been wrapped around the instrument panel and part of the exposed driveshaft, with the slots on the top for the machinegun empty and covered with an empty bag. The two large boxes on the back were absent from their slots, obviously inside.

Down the flight of concrete steps to the upper level, the observer would find almost natural lights coming from the ceiling, courtesy of the shade of the bulb glass. A large interior hall held the 8 men from the surface, their two vehicles tied down to face the sandstorm. From down here, it was relatively quiet, the only sound the hum of the generator that had been started by the patrolmen.
These men were obviously from the desert area of the training zone: orange-brown digital camouflage BDUs, supplemented by a khaki headscarf, neck scarf and tinted goggles. Rifles were painted by hand in the desert colours, with the underbarrel rail holding a grenade launcher. Onto this was strapped many an object: a field cleaning kit was tied to the underside to act as a handgrip, whilst a torch was similarly tied on with a thick dirty twine.

The head of the squad, a Corporal, walked over to the newcomers retreating downstairs.
"Welcome to Refuge 9. You're quite the unlucky ones, being newcomers to the training zone. Don't you worry about the sandstorm though: hopefully it'll be over in an hour. The reason why we shelter during the sandstorms is because of the dust: you can suffocate quickly if you aren't careful. In addition, there are the rocks the Boreas wind carries. Hopefully we won't have problems with them, but I did have a mate who knew someone who was smacked in the head by a large boulder.
Until we get an all clear, you lot are best to brave it down here. Want any water at all?"

He gestured to a few large pallets of water in a store room off to the side of the main shelter hall. Others held pallets of ration packs and equipment. He noticed the large influx of people, whistling.
"My my, quite a large party. If you need to, I'm sure that no-one would mind any of the men going into the lower shelter: this part just acts as a sorta stores depot and quick shelter. The real hideaway is a few hundred metres underground."
He turned to look at the back of the chamber, before noticing the bulkhead was shut.
"Never mind. That steel slab won't shift for anyone lower than an Alfegan Captain. No-one here satisfies the criteria, so it looks like you'll be crowded. Toilets are over there, and chemical. The radio system doesn't pick up the entertainment network in this weather that well, so it'll have to be whatever CDs you lot carry. Or MP3 players, if you're allowed any.
If anyone really wants a kip, they'll have about an hour over in the bunk room. Mind you, space for only 24 in there."

___________________________________________


Meanwhile, at the barracks block, the wind was evidently reaching a peak, making the building groan in the gusts.
"Sorry mate: looks like we'll be here for up to an hour if we're unlucky. Maybe even 3, if the wind's really strong. But don't kip on the floor in here: you'll be going through to the barracks. Since you're an officer, go find the officer barracks: if you wait a minute, we're going over there. Just don't face into the wind and run: then you'll be OK. It ain't the full sandstorm yet."

Helpers were already taking the men a platoon at a time to the barracks, pulling up their scarves and goggles as they rushed them across to the barracks entrance.

The first squad taken across entered the long barracks building in the residential part, through a heavy door. Inside, a linoleum floor stretched past an open residential part, three large tables made from the same plastic as the walls were surrounded by canvas chairs. Further inside, a small kitchen held a microwave and water boiler for any cooking the men wanted to do, a small refrigerator hold some bottles of coke and a jug of fruit syrup. Finally passing this area, the men would get to the bunk room: 12 two-stage bunk beds, each with proper bed linen and a single pillow. Large equipment lockers lurked at the back of the room, lit by a warm light. Outside, the wind whistled as the attendants showed the men each part.
"If you need any help at all, just go over to the phone in the wall. The list of numbers is by it. If any of you are lucky enough, the place has wireless internet access. The TV in the main room comes with standard Alfegan Satellite, so can access all Sunrise, APTV, ANN and TvNET programmes in addition to the occasional programme from places like Zaheran and Mokastana and the Alfegan Armed Forces TV channel, which is mainly a mix of popular programmes along with many military-orientated informatives.
Enjoy your stay!"

The helpers rushed out again into the sandstorm.

Sandrez felt a bit depressed at the high-tech-liness of it all, what with the aero-whatever and the lights, for a few. Then again, simple can be better, as thoughts of the AK47 and roast beef came to mind.
Looking around, he sat down in a long-suffering worn wooden chair and pulled one of the metal canteens from his belt.

His XO gestured to the bunks as he drank and he gave a small nod - the aircraft delivering them wasn't easy to sleep on and the men were feeling a bit sleepy, inconvenient at best.
Two of the men followed him and tested the matresses, before promptly collapsing.

"I feel a bit hungry. Is there a place we can cook? The sarge here was a chef back in Bjorkvik, his home city. He can work wonders with that dried turd they give us. Even the Generals get no rest, which shows you that the Antigran army will never take over the world in this state"

____________________


The platoons wouldn't fit into the barrack blocks whole - at thirty men each, they wouldn't be with best mates, but due to the nature of the Battalion - an elite within an elite - people who came tended to stay and almost everyone was on a first-name basis, if no officers were around or they had a friendly officer.

The Major was bunked with his HQ men and as he went outside, the wind took him back a pace. Regaining his composition, he stepped forward as he lowered the helmet's tinted visor over his eyes.

"No real place to cook up here. Tell you what though, since the ventilation is good, I'll set up some stoves for you."

The Corporal walked over to where one of the large metal boxes from the two vehicles lay, flicking open the large catches. From inside he took out 2 gas cylinders, each with a small bag with it. He flicked open the bags to reveal a folding metal pot-stand, which he screwed onto the nozzle. A match later, and the gas was happily hissing through the nozzle, flickering blue flames on low.

"These are the spare cylinders we carry along with rations. Since we managed to save a day's worth of rations for ourselves courtesy of buerocratic errors, would you like some Alfegan rations?"
The box further revealed itself to contain 4 cardboard ration packs, each with large imposing stamps labelling them to carry 1 day's worth of D-menu rations.
"D menu... that'd be a breakfast of sausage, egg and baked beans. Or a dinner of modified chicken stew with noodles and vegetables. Sweet things anywhere in between, as well as quite a bit of fruit syrup sachets, a fruit salad pudding, and some cocoa. What do they give you for food?"

Behind him, the men continued doing what they had been beforehand: a pair sat together on the floor where their ta'go robes they wore during leave were laid out. On top, two large machine guns lay stripped down, where they were being cleaned, oiled and repaired. One held a large spring, dust cascading from it as he wiped it with a cloth.
"Thing is, I'm surprised how well these guns work: even though this one had about half a kilo of sand in it, it can still fire well."
He slotted the primary spring, after oiling it, into the rear part of the stripped down weapon, before inserting back in the secondary springs, bolt and casings. He turned to the barrel, using a large pull-through device to start cleaning out dirt from inside. The man sitting next to him was busy fiddling with part of the mechanism, oiling the robust moving parts inside.

"The AMG 60 is pretty unsurpassed in Alfegos. You've got your AK series, we've got these. Pretty impossible to jam within the first belt unless you're a complete simpleton. Plus they borrowed the barrel from the AMG 50A heavy machine gun, so they can take some of my hand-loads."
"Which you don't do any more."
The corporal smiled, before turning back.
"Up till recently, a lot of the men hand-loaded their own rounds. Whilst most people managed to use these to perfect accuracy , there were the occasional ones who went for 'cram as much powder in as possible', meaning we had some nasty accidents. Officially, it's banned amongst all infantry, though the authorities do let it stretch for those who have powder licenses."

He smiled as he twiddled a round from a magazine in his hand: a steel casing stained red, with a large copper-jacketed bullet held in the neck.
"Here's a hand-load one. We're allowed to buy shiny red casings, we provide our own powder and bullets. I load these rounds back at the barracks in line with my rifle's ballistics, just to try and get the best from it. Excellent on the range, and great if I need to pop a few in combat. Best thing is, it pays for itself: I have a few shots on any of the sniper rifles, and load the rounds for them. They pay me by the batch to load them for them, and I get a nice profit. The army gets a higher head count. Brilliant."

He smiled as he put it away, taking a swig from a plastic canteen.

"Well, it saves us getting our stoves out. They're essentially bunsen burners, and they are harder to assemble than yours. Which is why in the Antigran theatre of operations, all the knocked-out tanks are burning - easier than the stoves"

He smiled.

"Antigr has a good diversity of stuff to eat. We don't have set meals, supply says making stuff more fluid helps. 'Cept for the food, that makes it into soup.
Well, let's see -"

Sandrez his bergen down. It was the standard-issue 'patrol bergen', smaller, more comfortable, and holding less stuff since you never need everything.

"I've got a tube of dried rice, you just add water and cook"

He got out the two flat, square, open tins packed upside-down into each other and revealed a knife, fork, and spoon.

"We have this for eating, although you can just unclip the lining and stuff from your helmet. Where the designers actually did good, the helmets are meant to double as pots. I've got some overly dead meat, that's beef, pork and some chicken, though we don't get too much of that.
I managed to commandeer myself a big tub of fresh pasta from the proper mess, or as fresh as it gets. We get stews as well, cook 'em in your helmets. That's what the pork is in, and there's some corn and a bit of carrot in that. Most of it's pick 'n' mix. We also got mushrooms as an extra, and Jeff here has some bread. Seeing as the men will almost always club together, different guys get different stuff.

I have chocolate and I've actually managed to get myself some waffles and syrup, although it's been in a tub for a couple of hours.
We haven't had lunch yet, and it's mid-afternoon, so I think I'll get the pasta out. Sauce?"

Getting out the big tub, he resumed the chat, glancing at the weapon.

"That looks reliable. We have our Sabres and the SeG-series. Especially the SeG-77 and the prototype SeG-80, they are unexeptional but really reliable.

The Antigran's aren't as sophisticated - if we want range, we set up a V60 Heavy MG. Fifteen-millimetre, better than even that old russian 14-somethingorother millimetre, so we just mount one on a Jeep and come up the back of an APC with it. Just pull the trigger and start shredding"

The Corporal chuckled.
"Excellent grub you've got. Thing is, we can't use our helmets for cooking since the heat melts the plastic. You'd never believe one of these was bullet-proof, but then that'd be kevlar for you.
As for your cutlery... we get something quite useful. Have a look at this."

He took from a webbing pocket a small mug, stuffed with a few sachets of cocoa, sauce and syrup. These held in place a small multi-tool object, with 5 attachments visible.

"Multi-tool: knife, fork, spoon, tin opener and bottle opener. Easy to clean: just need to boil it up, and the coating makes it come off a treat. Plus since all the hot meals are boil-in-bag, we can just make it up in the metal cup. I can just slot this upside down over my own gas cylinder and stove top, and I have an entire pocket spare. Enough for another water canteen. Trust me though, you need it out here.
As for my nice big burgan: I've just got that here because we cart them around on the roof of our dune buggies, with the machine guns and the tarpaulin. You see, that fabric we got from airships was absolutely revolutionary. You'll find many objects, even clothes made out of it, because it is so light, warm and durable. If I gave you a big 100 metre roll of that stuff, you could probably lift it easily. It ain't the cheapest of materials, but we get the cuttings for free from the airshipyard in the capital a few hundred kilometres further down the coast. And the factory there reels it off by the kilometre, making all of it from the waste from the oil refineries and the coal gas stations. Excellent stuff."

He threw a sachet of extra hot sauce from his webbing over to the man cooking, smiling.
"Here, try some of that. That one is labelled as extra hot, but it's tame compared to what I've tried. Made from Iaberno peppers, so should give quite a bit of flavour."

He smiled as he smelt the cooking food, before sitting down and spreading out a sheet, placing his assault rifle down on it. He pushed in two catches, one on the underside and the other in the stock, before removing the stock and firing mechanism. Another catch allowed him to separate the bolt assembly from the gun, from which he stripped down the bolt, springs and firing head.
"20 seconds for a basic strip down. Another 25 to put it back together. Excellent stuff, this is, especially since I only need tools if I want to perform an advanced strip of the rifle. Here, I'm just cleaning out the gunk."
He shook the parts, before taking a wire brush from the cleaning kit he had, rapidly scouring out working surfaces of the parts. Flicking it every now and again, he soon revealed the extent of the dirt in the main mechanism. After a quick clean of the simplistic ammunition feeder, he took out a small vial of oil and began to oil the rifle.
"You see, with the earlier models, the AF series suffered from over-complexity. As a result, they had to make it less complicated. The ammunition feeder now is a basic as it needs, and all the mechanism is encased as much as possible in a separate box area. We keep the weapons clean all the time though, to minimise jams and maximise service life and firing power."

By now, the men with the machineguns had almost finished reassembling them, brushing away the drifts of dust from around them.
"Thing is, you've got your 15mm heavy machine guns, but how fast can they fire? How many rounds can you carry? I could quite happily cart a 1000 round crate with me to feed this beast, and the vehicle holds a couple crates. It does us well enough for anti-infantry, and when we do need some heavier support we just call in the rest of our platoon. We've got one with a stinger launcher on it for AA support, and another with a roof-top AAT-67 missile launcher. We just give anti-infantry support, and rapid patrol of the area. Better we are than the border patrol lot, who are either Whiteshields or the Penal battalions."

"It's selective fire rate. Since they have exactly twice the bullet size as the KGM and family of 7.5mm stuff, we can't carry that man rounds with us usually. It can be switched between 240rpm and 750rpm, which is really quite good for an infantry HMG. They weigh as much as a Browning but everything is lighter, as it would be for something more modern.

For really rapid fire, we have the KGM. MG42/MG3, but better. Unlike all other Antigran weapons, it uses a direct copy of the HK roller-locking bolt for the extra rpm, which is 1300-300rpm variable, and there's a gas regulator which allows for anything in between. One guy managed to, with the help of engineers, get it up to almost 2000 before the gas tube exploded.
I'm not that good in weapon design, but things can take a certain pressure very well, for a long time, but you mess about, you die.
My brother's fingers learnt that when he dismantled a hand grenade. He's in the Royal Grenadier Guard, a Brigadier. They are elite, they protect the royal family, more important royal monuments and property, and the President and co.
Our helmets are made of steel and stuff, it's heavier but it stops a bullet well. A man I know got shot in the temple and lived, although he was near official maximum effective range"

The 'man cooking', Corporal Harvey, caught the packet.

"I was brought up swimming in curry" He grinned from ear to ear. "Let's see what the Alfegan army can do"

He tore it open and added it to the pasta and meat and vegentables gently simmering in his helmet, before getting out his bayonet, washing it lightly, and stirring it.

"Don't worry, I haven't stabbed anyone today"

Eventually, he found the ladel in his bergen, his prize possession, and stirred it properly this time before scooping some of the probably deadly mixture up.

"Stew's up!"

"We keep with the single standard machine gun to try and keep the logistics to a minimum. But we do have a couple of other support weapons to give us a bit of cover. In addition to a heavy machine gun in the 12.6mm calibre, we have access to 25mm Auto cannons. Crew-based of course, but excellent for the extreme level of fire used in a breakthrough. Then there's a fully automatic crew-mounted 40mm grenade cannon. Fully automatic, and very good for clearing out a small town. As you get bigger, ammunition size increase to the point that you find it much harder. For the 40mm grenades, 1 round takes up the space of about 16 7.62mm ones."

He clicked the machine gun into place, before aiming it at a far wall, and making sure the chamber was clear, before lying it to the side and lying out his own assault rifle. He smiled as he heard the food was served, throwing over his cup. The corporal chuckled as he whispered to the cook.
"The machinegunner can't hold his chilli: you just watch."
A cupful of pasta later, and the man suddenly slammed down his cup. His face had gone red, and sweat was forming. He swore very loudly, before running off towards the toilet area with a bottle of water.
"See? He does need it though to build up his tolerance. That way, he'll be able to eat pretty much anything."

He calmly ate his pasta slowly, turning it over in his mouth smiling. A cough later, and he smiled.
"It's good stuff. As well as flavouring, you can use it as an insect repellent or killer. Brilliant to put in enemy water supplies to make it undrinkable. Plus it acts as a really good deep cleaner for the outer parts of the rifle. Diluted of course."

OOC:

I has da time for POSTZ EDITZ

IC:

"Oh, we have 25mm guns too. We use them in open mounts with a gun shield a lot, so the infantry can use 'em. Like on amphibious vehicles and stuff, where there's room for them. And the 40mm is quite common in Antigran service. We have modified Bofors guns in 40mm CTA and also we have grenade machine-guns, just like you"

He dished himself some of the 'pasta' mixture and tasted it.

"That's hot. I've had hotter, but not since I was back home"

He began to eat and watched as the Alfegan gunner ran around in distress.

Brigadier Miller returned the salute, then brought his arms back down to his side.

"Pleasant enough. The terrain is spectacular. We look forward to the exercise. It has been too long since we served side by side."

Lieutenant-Colonel Sorrowthorn, standing at the Brigadier's rear right, watched, and nodded at the Brigadier's last comment. Sorrowthorn had fought in Mokastana, and had a great deal of respect for Alfegan troops.

"When and where do we begin?"

"Well sir, you will be staying in settlement area 3, once the sandstorm is over. You'll be staying there for a couple of days to acclimatise and get used to the terrain, as well as prepare equipment and collect ammunition. Vehicles will receive the LASER warfare training units.
On the night of that second day, you will be issued with your briefing and start location. Highest commanders are asked to come to the training control centre to co-ordinate movements from there in accord to decisions by the heads of the exercise."

"Thing is, when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter how fancy your gun is. It depends on how well you can use it, and maintain it. The best test for a good gun is here: giving it to a platoon of soldiers, and dropping them out in the middle of nowhere to try and find their way out. With people hunting them down. If your gun can keep itself going through the mountain icefields, marshy forests at their feet, and the great dividing desert... that is something to respect. It's compulsory training for us to suffer that sort of training, depending on the infantry branch we're in. If we've trained for mountain warfare, the Mountains of the Moon in Alfegos are the place you're thrown out into. Aeromarines... anywhere. I had a friend whose platoon were dropped out in a combat zone, with them thinking it was still training. The survivors of that are true soldiers.

But me being light infantry, I was kicked off a truck by the river that cuts through the desert, with hardly anything. We managed to set up an ambush on one of the patrols sent after us, and ended up with a radio to call in a pickup. It did come... though after we got chased south through a proving range for tanks. You think that being shot at with rounds is being scary, try hitting the deck as a training round passes over your head, with about a centimetre to spare. Now that is a sound not to forget.

But light infantry comes with its perks: for a start, we get the Gecko FAVs. The dune buggies you saw up on the surface. And they're excellent, because they can jump across the dunes while your tracked vehicles just crawl along. Then they come with optional extras, depending on company preferences: bulletproof glass side panels, smoke grenade launchers, go-faster stripes... our lot just get by with the basics, save for a few 'adjustments' we made to engine tuning. One of the guys in our platoon was a mechanic before he joined up, though I don't know what possessed him not to join the maintenance branch. Courtesy of him, we keep running longer, and with much more efficiency and power. Just that precision tuning instead of standard military numbers in a book, and you get so much more from the engine.

Enough with the boring you about me, what branch are you in?"

By now, the machinegunner had finished cooling down, a look of rage on his face. He coldly ate from his own ration pack, deliberately scooping slurry from a foil sac into his mouth.

OOC:

May be absent for a day or two while our Norton antivirus subscription runs out and we wait for our Kaspersky disk to arrive.

IC:

"We have something like that, but more to test intelligence. There's a rather obvious trap set up, but no-one seems to notice, and those that do you will find on the officer's payroll. We set an armoured unit on another unit's tail and chase them into a heavily concealed fortified location with a company in it. Anyway, I'm from the Air Cavalry, but they've made me General of whatever I want to be now. They've made he 'head of foreign land operations', although occasionally I get a few heavy cruisers to play with.

The others are from Mountain Infantry. They're the original regiment in all the service"

He spooned another portion of pasta into his mouth.

"Our guns are tested something like that, but in a somewhat more controlled environment. Occasionally, we submerge them in a bog. And that's what the Antigrans do, now you can laugh at our lack of sophistication. We still use ordinary bolt-action rifles"

"Well... there is a problem inherent with bolt action rifles. As I'm sure you're aware, there was a study that examined the cause for death or injury for all soldiers in multiple conflicts. The study found that combat only occurs at short range, and that most injuries are random: they are not caused by accuracy. Instead, they are caused by the volume of firepower, with the amount of rounds being laid down directly proportional to the number of casualties. Thus, a rifle that provides an infantry section with high firepower means that they are more likely to win a firefight. Whilst accuracy is still important, focusing just on that for your soldier will not help him kill. Rather, accuracy is important with more precise weapons such as anti-material rifles.

Anyway, I hope you aren't that primitive when it comes to anti-tank warfare: I think they used to use spring-launched projectiles to take out tanks. Far to risky, and if you're trying to hit something 3 kilometres away..."

OOC:

This post is so short it should be OOC spam

IC:

"Like I said, the Antigran army is more simple.
If we want range, we use something called 'howitzer'. Works wonders.

So, what assault rifles have you guys got? We've got the serj-77, or that's how we pronounce it. SeG-77 (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=3718), it's called.
Reliable, at least"

OOC:

PC is going to be away over the weekend to be fixed, so expect some inactivity. Sorry, all.

"Assault rifles... we mostly are equipped with the AF-07, the standard assault rifle. Works on 5.56mm AF cartridges, just like NATO but with different casing shape. Nice fire rate, working mechanism kept simple and enclosed to increase durability, many variants. The vehicle crews use the AF-07S, a carbine version; the Whiteshields are taught on the AF-07W, which is a semi-automatic version with a much more basic layout; the AF-07P, which uses a larger cartridge and is in service with special forces and the Aeromarines; and of the course, the AF-07M, a target version with a much longer barrel.

The AF-07 is good because of all the add-ons you can get. There are three different rail groups on the rifle: the scope group can hold at least 30 different types of sights, depending on user preferences and operational circumstances. I've got the standard 2x-5x zoom scope with the crosshairs option. Comes with little caps here, so it doesn't get the sand in it, and has a coating to allow for sight in lower light.
Here's the tool group, which is mounted on the left hand side. Torches, laser sights and other bits go on here. And then, there's the most used. The under barrel rail holds all sorts. Grenade launchers, shotguns, laser designators, extra handles, special magazines, more flashlights ... lots of things. Most of the time, we get pretty basic stuff, though I like to collect things and add on to the rifle I've got. Even some of the under barrel stuff comes with ammo-holding rails.

You get any toys in the Antigran army?"

OOC:

I'm back! Just so you know, the SeG-77 has a knew writeup on the NSD, which is the link in my last IC post.

IC:

"Toys...well, we have a few. Our medium transport planes come in attack versions. Bofors guns, MGs, and a 140mm gun firing through the rear doors.
We don't scrap our old battleships - we fit CIWS to 'em, and some defence missiles, and send them out with the fleet. Ten to thirteen-gun 380-millimetre behemoths, great against the odd pesky bunker or motor launch.

The Serj has only one accessory rail, which runs along the top, but there is some kind of set-up along the bottom of the foregrip with a few attachment points and clips as well as a type of saddle arrangement along the side, so if you want a side-mount torch attach the saddle to the top. Crude, but it does work and it's much more comfortable to hold.

'Part from that, can't name anything. Although the Air Cavalry idea has become something of a trademark to the Antigrans"

"Loads of widgets and the like can be fond on our side. The aerofibre stuff is, as I said, good for loads of things. Then there's airships and missiles... boy do we love them. Airships for everything, from repairing themselves to levelling small countries. Not even a carrier fleet could protect itself against an airship flotilla. We've now got SAMs that can hit aircraft 2500km away. Inter-regional ballistic missiles that are near impossible to track. Amazing things.

But before this becomes a national boasting competition, lets change subject. Hows about your homeland? I come from Il'vi, in Zevkhay province. Best thing about it isn't the beaches, as all the tourists will say. While yes, you've got a few kilometres of near-pristine beaches along the city coast and a lovely old town, you just don't get near the feel of the mountains. The Mountains of Solace are the southern range in Alfegos. Quite tall, very impressive, very... mystical. I spent most of my childhood up in the mountains there, climbing and that. An amazing experience to be honest though is to climb even one of the smaller ones, and look either side at the peak. The south, Zevkhay. The north, Milkavich province. Completely different places, if you can see them through the clouds.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Antigr isn't temperate is it?"

Sandrez laughed, briefly.

"Yes. Well, no. Antigr is artic through cold to mediterranean in the south. Northern Antigr, next to the sea, has a land-sea border consisting of mountains, all the way from northeast to northwest, with lots of little bays and what the Norwegians would call fjords. Antigr is like Norway and Sweden in many ways. The climate and terrain is very similar and Antigran, the language we are all brought up on, is a Germanic language derived from those of northern europe, although it's an independent language now.

So, north is arctic, a bit down from there - well, right down to near the southern coast, is snowy, although as you go south the snow cover changes from permanent to seasonal. Then, further south, it gets fairly ordinary, and it finishes on the south coast in a mediterranean climate. Although I'd say ninety-five percent of Antigr is snowy, but it does get quite hot, even with snow. You'll find Antigran naval vessels, except for inflatables, all have steel hulls, thick ones too. It helps against cannon fire, but the actual reason is so they can get through the ice. Quite often, the icebreakers are off somewhere else so we send out a frigate instead.

Myself, I am from Karlsfors, third largest city in Antigr. Snowy, of course. You can ski all year round, you could go there sometime and have a taste of our beer"

"Complete contrast to main Alfegos: most of the country is tropical, with the large mountain ranges defying that. The mountains are skied in on occasion, though most of the mountains have either been taken over by airship companies, the military or are just too plain dangerous to ski on.

The main sport of the rich in Alfegos is air-yachting in small airships, though those less so often fly gyrocopters for fun. You see, in Alfegos it isn't that hard to find places where you can train to fly, and the government fee is kept low to encourage as many as possible to fly. Whilst aircraft aren't that cheap, you'll still see many flying clubs where aircraft are hired out for flights.

Airship flying though is just plain impossible if you haven't trained. You've got your normal aeroplane controls for the control surfaces, yes, but then there are controls for the engine, flaps, gas adjustment... a preserve of those very talented. But once you get it flying, and these ones are the tiddlers, it's just amazingly fun. In airships, when flying at low altitudes, you don't need a flight plan: you can just take off and fly, provided you stay in designated areas. Of course, rigid ones need hangers if you're going to keep one, which is why those who don't have the land or that much money buy limp structures, so they can fold them up and drive off with them once done.

I hear that Alfegos Aeronautics has been starting up contracts with Antigr, as well as the Antigrans designing their own makes within Alfegan guidelines to increase compatibility. How often do you see them over Antigr? Is it just every week or so there, or is it like Alfegos where you can often see at least 5 at any one time?"

OOC:

I hope this lasts long. Need to keep up post count. Looks like it will last long - yay!

IC:

"Airships in Antigr aren't so common. We all think of them as a trademark to the 'Mad Alfegans', but there's an occasional one in the sky. They are endlessly useful for large airlifts, I'm surprised how fast an oval balloon with engines can go. The problem is, they are vunerable, big target and all that. And you can bring anything down if you pump enough ordnance into it.

We'll see them more than once in a week, but as I said they aren't all that common. More secretly, Royal Civil Union and Sergey-Roksholm are making one rather large one with howitzers, countermeasures galore, and lots of missiles. Some of our generals and admirals aren't that smart - the navy has got hold of a couple of airships too, and in the way of protection Admiral Odegaard suggested "fitting submarine-style bulges".
He obviously hasn't heard of cruise missiles or SAMs the size of a hunter-killer submarines"

"You'd be surprised at how much an airship can take though. If you've ever been aboard one of our military ones, you'd notice. The AAS Gungho, for instance, weathered 1/2 an hour of being shot at by city defences at one time, and still managed to complete its objective. And as for big cruise missiles, they often just punch straight through without exploding, or when they do explode cause relatively small damage. Plus since airships have been upgraded to be completely covered by countermeasure units, any hits are rare if at all existent.
Anyhow, you wait a moment and I'll go check how the storm is getting on."

He stood up from his bowl, before walking up the stairs out. Opening the door at the top, he let in a cloud of dust and the sound of the wind roaring. He shut the door again, pulling off his goggles and unwrapping his scarf.

"Still going. It'll be over some time soon. By then of course, you'll need a new paint-job on your vehicles where they're exposed to the storm. Cleans the rust out a treat though. Just make sure you empty all the dust out: it gets everywhere. Once you're up north however, it should be fine for you. It'll be the snow you're complaining about."

"It's a Jeep"

Sandrez said.

"An Antigran Jeep. It may be rubbish, but it's tough as nails, and the tarpaulins should keep some of the sand out.
I'm sure airships aren't invincible...countermeasures run out, and then woe betide an airship coming up against an entire city-full of Bofors guns. I love Bofors guns, even with old technology they can knock out most MIFVs and APCs. And pretty much all of them with newer ammunition - we've modified ours to use a newer, Cased Telescoping round.

Really, have you ever seen one of those 'world war two' films? The two pound gun was obsolete pretty quickly, but a Matilda could take out a regiment of Panzer IIs, only limited by ammunition stowage. A Bofors gun is a fully automatic two-pounder. Call me old-fashioned, but I loved the old days.
None of this electro-thermal-chemical stuff either"

"Yes, airships do eventually run out of, well, airship holding them up when they enter a flak storm. But whilst they're there, it takes quite a time for them to actually be brought down. Then there's the matter of what happens when one of these comes down...

But, let's stop going on about whose army is best: this is a friendly exercise after all. I'll put some cocoa on, and hopefully once we've finished the storm will have died down enough for use to start inspecting the damage."

OOC:

Where'd the other two go?

IC:

Sandrez laughed.

"You sound very reassuring. Cocoa sounds good; we get given sachets of hot. Hot what, I'm not sure, but I guess it to be grit with some chocolate flavouring.
Back home when I got cocoa, I used to melt extra chocloate into mine. My parents said all my teeth would fall out, and they did"

"Hah! They did? Well, maybe you melted a bit much in, though in Alfegos your cocoa is not swimming with sugar. It's got much more body than most people find comfortable, but you have a swig of it and you'll decide you won't want that rubbish most people have again. There's the cocoa beans, yes, but then you have additives you won't normally get. The milk's from sheep, there's a range of spice leaves from various trees in the rainforest, and sometimes you get some of the stronger ones."

Moving over to the stove, he placed on a large mess tin, before filling it with water and a scoop of crushed leaves from the hitherto concealed sac in his rucksack. Soon, a smell began emanating from the tin as he added a scoop of cocoa/milk powder mix from another sac, leaving bubbles to rise up though the mix along with sweet fumes.

"Leave it to simmer a couple of minutes, and we'll have something rather nice."

Sandrez listened to him with interest and growing alarm. Looking at the cocoa simmering, he put on a puzzled look and asked;

"Does you Defence Ministry know you're carrying out experiments on live human beings? Take a swig I'm not sure, a sip maybe, but it sounds a bit more like a kind of curry. Spices? Well, let's hope I don't lose my no claims bonus on my health insurance.
I suppose we'll find out, and one day I'll have to go to Alfegos proper - I've been there four times, but only through the airports. Any stereotype things distinctly Alfegan that I should get for kicks?"

"Don't you worry about what we use in our drink: it's all legit in most units. I've heard stories of people sticking in Foresight leaves and going crazy for a while, but I can guarantee you that we have nothing that strong in our drink. Just a few calming ingredients you wont taste, and some flavourings you will definitely taste.
You want to get a kick? There are quite a few plants you'll find where you can get a bit more from. Most were legal, until the narcotic criminals found ways of concentrating the power from them, or creating strange mixes. Take for example Zen, the most publicised one in Alfegos: it pretty much cuts the conscious mind from the body during the period it's in the system. Now an overdose of that... it happens permanently.

Anyhow, the brew should be ready by now"

Taking the mess tin handle, he lifted it up and poured slowly into some waiting cups, letting the dark brown liquid cool.

"Wait for it to cool and taste it: just make sure you're prepared for the first flavour impact."

OOC: New smilies. But the gunge one hasn't gone.

IC:

After it had cooled, Sandrez picked up his cup and took a gulp, and gave a funny face afterwards.

"Well, you were right, it has more body. I prefer the sugary stuff, but...wow. It's got a nice aftertaste too. I see why you like it"

Taking another liberal dosage, he rested the cup to let it cool a bit more.

"Well, all we really have in Antigr to give you a kick is, well, we've got the plants, and a farmer with a pitchfork tied to a shotgun. If you go to Antigr, though, don't go up the slopes and lie down, I've had a cousin buried that way. All military units study avalanch formation, in peacetime we can rescue victims and in wartime we can bury an enemy.
People think it's just some fluffy snow, and you can just crawl out, but you simply can't"

He leant back and took another gulp.

"Avalanches... luckily enough I've never been caught up in those. When I've been to the mountains, at one time for a brief posting at Station Luna II, they had big problems with the snow on the side roads. Their solution was to blast deep channels across most of the mountain, to move the snow down by controlled explosion whenever it builds up too much. Thing is, even then they ended up building long concrete walls across the mountain face to stop any stray slides.

Nice trick to use that to an advantage though: in our case, the snow channels act as hidden crevasses in some cases, meaning a crossing group of men end up being engulfed by a chasm about 15-20 metres deep. Here, even better, we have cloud-seeding methods to try and alter the weather of an enemy target. Droughts in one area and floods in another are very good, and even better if you can whip up a sandstorm like this. Though this one is tiny compared to some. At one time, I sat through a great storm when we first arrived here, which lasted for 8 hours. By the end, most of the buildings had been fully sand-blasted, to the point there was no paint left. Then with the big pebbles and boulders, we ended up with lumps the size of MBTs landing in our forward areas.

The best thing with a sandstorm, to a defender, is that helicopters will get completely ripped to pieces in the winds, or sandblasted so that it's impossible to see out the front. They say a grain of sand can unbalance the rotors, though you can take that with a handful of salt."

OOC: Hate it when you have no time for three days?

IC:

"Some cold weather doesn't affect our helicopters so much, though, especially when they're designed for it. However, I'm sure a rock the size and weight of a Main Battle Tank would knock a chopper off-course, even an airship. We've had great success using avalanches in our last civil war in the 1950s. Made our defences seem a bit too tempting and aimed the howitzers at a nearby mountain. A whole brigade's worth of infantry drowned in a sheet of snow, it was encounters like that which turned the war round.

If not, I might be in here aiming for world domination and Antigr would be some kind of federalised neo-fascist dictatorship. Our territorial guard, which is the 'part-time' armed forces, are tasked with doing things like that, and what helps even more is that there are a lot of them. because practically all Antigrans can ski and the soldiers can shoot while doing so, a recently published book on Special Forces said that the whole Antigran army could technically be described as a massive 'elite force', although he exaggerates, I don't see skiing as a major feat of humanity, but it came naturally to me.

The full-time contingent of the armed forces are comparatively tiny in Antigr; on paper, it seems that we could field only a very small amount of soldiers, but we have a large amount of territorial guard reservists, and they're trained just like the regular army. We have a special system for notifiying all of them and on full mobilisation we could field a massive army. Each reservist keeps his rifle and uniform at home, tucked under the pillows, I expect"

"We don't really have a reserve as it were: there are four seperate sub-divisions of the Alfegan army. There's the professional army, who you'll be fighting. If national alert goes to DEFCON 3 or higher, then there's the conscript army who are called up, trained, and sent to bulk up the professional army. Most men shoot in our country or have experience of flying aircraft, so that at least is good. There's the ministerial branch of the army: almost an entire private army who defend the government, act as military police and do lots of 'secret' work. Then there's the Whiteshields. Every Alfegan male, when he reaches eighteen, has to do a year of military training and service. Most of the time, they end up on the borders, such as here. They train on all the older military equipment not in main service.

But that point you made about all being able to ski: that is a very useful skill I must admit. In Alfegos, since most training is in Milkavich province, all troops have a very good experience of combat in forests and rainforests. Plus we have a very low rate of professional soldiers becoming victim to IEDs and booby traps, thanks to most of the jungles in Milkavich being scattered with the leftovers of the civil wars. A couple of monthes ago, one contingent training at Station M9 in Milkavich came across an unfired biological weapon. Turns out they were extremely lucky not to let out the Tulameria it was containing. But the whole of Milkavich is scattered with UEDs, both conventional, chemical and biological. Which is why your recruit suddenly pays attention to the ground in front of him.

The training we do is dependant on what our final goal is. You can join as a regular, both officer and non-officer, and as a support/logistics man, both officer and not. When you join as a regular in the main army, you undergo a one-year course covering all aspects of soldiering, with regular tests at the end of each module. After that, you serve for three years in one of the regular regiments, before you specialise. Medics, engineers, armour and gunners follow a different scheme, but the whole lot fits together as one amazing course. I did my specialisation in FIBUA, Basic Airship fighting and support weapons, and took the basic NCO course that allowed me to become a corperal. As a result I am able to be deployed as an extremely versatile section head with the ability to officially use: the AF-07 assault rifle with or without AFGL-98 Grenade launcher; the 'Minimi' Light Machinegun, which I must admit is an absolutely amazing weapon to use if you're detailed in a defensive role, especially when you use them with detachable stocks; and the heaviest I can officially use, the 7.62mm FN MAG GPMG. All amazing weapons, all fun to fire, as my two gunners know very well. They've got a different machinegun for the simpe reason that they are more reliable in desert conditions such as here, and come as the mounted weapons on the Geckos.

As to history... I'm sure you've heard of how the first civil war didn't end in communist victory? We Alfegans have never been too subtle in using powerful weapons, which is why chemical weapons form part of every soldier's basic training. I know just about enough to use the Type 87 Backpack gas dispensing unit, though I'm not qualified to use it even with CS gas. And CS gas is the weaker non-lethal gas we use. If you ever see a massive Alfegan Army advance through forests, the main attack is always preceded by a cloud of smoke and tear gas up to 50 metres high. It's something that definately strikes fear into those in the path, especially if we get given a non-yellow gas order. Gases are identified in the devices by the colour of the stripes or stars on them. Anything with a star on it is extremely dangerous, and should be reported if it ain't in a highly secure area. Yellow band denotes tear gases, and white band denotes stun gases. Red, green and blue are all toxic, and hardly ever used.

But back to the point, we never eneded our first civil war with a howitzer and a mountainside: no we went much worse. The only live atomic weapon ever detonated in anger was at that time, and the results were... shall I put it as devestating? And after they rolled back over the contaminated areas in radiation-protected suits and lead vehicles, they found out they'd made an even greater mistake than the slaughter of near 50 000 men. They detonated it in an area not known at that time for the large concentrations of Uranite especially close to the surface, where it was detonated as a ground-burst attack. The radioactive residue scattered across most of Alfegos, meaning background radiation is always much higher there. As a result, the rates of cancer are higher, birth defect levels are heightened, and white blood cell counts are some of the lowest in the world. Couple that with a few genetic loopholes in the Fegosian race, and you end up with extremely rare diseases such as Langley's Syndrome developing. The immune dampening made sure that these could become prevalent. As I'm on an offshore posting, I have a much higher white cell count than my friends back in Alfegos, so will not be suffering from anything like that anytime soon."

The rest of his squad had been listening in as he talked, and all sat silent as the monologue from their leader ended. Outside, the wind was beginning to die down, the distant din of it rushing past the surface entrance building subsiding slightly.

"I've seen an Alfegan advance or two, but I never knew you made such vast usage of the gas. Antigran standard lethal gas is VX stuff. We used to use Soman, but VX is much more lethal. As protection against gas we have a kind of multipurpose gas mask, but nothing is truly the jack of all trades and it is rather crude. VX gas has been said to be the most deadly military gas ever created, and we've had it used against us. As protection from it, each and every man carries an atropine injection, although it must be administered rapidly. I've always been concerned about gas, myself, although gas is getting more deadly and potent and our technologies, I'm afraid, haven't advanced with it. What do you use against it? If it's better than us, I'll have to see that we copy you. Not to say that we aren't trained in chemical warfare; however - these fellows have had two courses on it in training, at the very least how to avoid it. Ah - the storm's dying down, I hear"

"Gas warfare tactics are, as I said, a great focus of Alfegos military doctrine. Alas, the same can not be said of cleanup afterwards. The normal feature used for protection is the Basic NBC kit each soldier carries. Here, I'll show you."
The corperal opened the side pouch of his bergan, taking out a gasmask and three rolled bundles.
"The gas mask uses a duel charcoal filter, so is pretty effective against most gases. There's also a chemical impregnation that reduces the effect of some nerve gases not trapped by the filter. As for skin protection, there's the elasticated smock and over-trousers, which fit tightly over standard clothes. The smock hood is tightened over the head, with the gas mask on top. There's also the overshoes and gloves, both of which go under the smock and overtrousers. Finally, we're all given a small paper instruction guide as to NBC warfare situations, and three gas detection strips for detecting eight different chemical agents.

I'm no expert, but I know that decontamination of an area is done by L-NBC support trucks with large steam generators, for sterilising biological agents and washing off other nasties. They also come with large amounts of neutralisation agent for neutralising agents. Each medic in our squads also carries enough atropine to deal with any nasties in the injection kit, with extra carried in field ambulances.

Anyhow, I think we should go out and see how much damage has been done, and get ready to move out to your barrack area."

He rolled the equipment back up, returning it to his bergan side pouch.

OOC: Because the world needs short posts

IC:

"I suppose so. Axel, wake the Lieutenant up and we'll get moving"

The Lance-Corporal did so and the Lieutenant came out from the sleeping area and yawned. He bent down and put his arm through one strap of his bergen, then the other arm through the other strap. Bending at the knees, he stood up, picked up his submachine-gun and started up the stairs, followed by a Private while the others packed up their kit into their bergens and picked their rifles up.

The group of Alfegans quickly packed up their kit into bergans and the metal chests, before heaving them up the stairs ahead of the Antigrans. Flicking their scarves around their heads and pulling on goggles, they moved to the door and opened it. Outside, sheets of dust moved past close to the ground, the sky a strange yellow-orange colour. Around the front of the shelter entrance, a few large rocks the size of footballs had built up in a drift along with smaller pebbles that lay scattered around the area. Around the back, the two buggies lay covered in orange-brown dust, that came off in sheets as the aerofibre sheets were removed carefully and shaken off. The engine beneath was almost completely clear of dust, a stark contrast to the surrounding frame. The eight men put down the chests to quickly lift the buggies, shaking them hard to move as much of the dust as possible before dropping them back down to bolt on the metal chests and tie on their bergans with paracord. The two gunners took the machineguns and fitted them into the rooftop slots, quickly blown clear of dust.

"The storm's now calmed down, but don't bet on it not coming back. Let's get going as quickly as possible, and try to get to your barracks. Once we're there, we can stick the vehicles in one of the subterranean garages where they'll be clear of dust. I'm sure our vehicle engineers will be able to give them a quick cleanup once they've arrived, just to keep them going. You know, a lick of paint where it's been blasted off and a good run over with a pneumatic gun to blast all your dust away.

You've got a half-hour drive. We'll go at the lead and escort you there. Make sure you're careful on the roads: they're all prefabbed ones made from rolled sheets sprayed with a bit of concrete and sand for metalling. The traction you'll get on them isn't excellent, so try not to do any handbrake turns!"

The first buggy started up, a loud roar coming from the surprisingly small engine along with a blast of sand from the exhaust pipe. The second one followed suit, both shaking remaining dust off as they vibrated away towards the main road.

The Jeeps would be working, but as the group took the tarpaulins off it was clear that the sand had got through. The metalwork was blasted with sand and some flecks of paint were amiss, although it wasn't too bad. The General wandered what it would be like if he hadn't put the tarpaulin on; either the car would've been dissected with a large boulder or the steering wheel and a couple of the seats would be missing. Thankfully not.

The Lieutenant rested the KGM GPMG on the bonnet as Sandrez leaped into the Jeep in front. He'd decided not to drive, and a Private was at the wheel as the engine turned over briefly and then roared into life, a gush of gases and sand pluming out from the exhaust pipe. He dabbed the accelerator and they pulled away, followed by the second Jeep, behind the buggies.

Sandrez could see the sand still blowing, albeit quite a lot slower than when he had been in the shelter, and so put his goggles on and leant back.

At the head of the convoy, the corporal was driving the dune buggy along the road. Sand ripped past his face as he pulled up the shemagh protecting it, checking his goggles were in place. Since the windshield had been removed to protect it from the sand blasting, the impact of the desert at sixty miles an hour was stunning. Showing off, he hit the accelerator hard after switching the power setting to two-wheel drive at the rear, the front of the vehicle almost raising off the ground as he shot forward in a cloud of dust. Over the radio, he began speaking to the Antigran group.
"Lovely weather, isn't it? Don't worry, I heard they've got you all some beer when we get arrive. Sadly, it's non-alcoholic, but does that matter? From the groan of my crewmates, it does, so looks like it's cocoa for them."

Overhead, a large airship cut through the sandstorm on its passage to the northern border. Around its sides, massive sheets of sand rolled past before falling down to the ground below in a heavy cloud.
"They're pretty snug up there since the winds aren't as strong. Of course, they aren't using their engines as it would turn 'em to glass, so they have to rely entirely on the wind. So not so snug eh?"

"Not so snug. You can tell your countrymen that in our army we're allowed alcohol, though not too much. In our tank's wet-storage for ammunition they always have some beer. We'll share some of ours, if you like.

If I knew this road, I'd overtake you doing a wheelie, and probably die"

"Best not to have any of your beer, mates. Alfegan military punishments for drinking without permission should put anyone off drinking for a while. Try not to do too many stunts on these roads without something like the Gecko - this is the only thing that will stick to the roads hard enough.
Anyway, let's see about local radio stations. Station one is..."

A loud blast of static came over the system.

"Yep. I won't do stations two to nine since all of us value our ears. Once it's subsided, you should be able to receive something. If you can find us a satellite dish, you can get TV and internet as well. The colander we 'borrowed' from the kitchen doesn't give us the best reception, and the internet we receive is diabolical."

"In Antigr, we love BBC World Service. All of us listen to Radio 2, it's the only sane radio station without the endless sound of cats being mangled, or 'classical music' as they call it. We aren't allowed to drink too much, just a touch. Although in a tank, nobody bothers to check and the less senior officers don't really care. Anyhow, we've got our trusty radios. The old ones were terrible, they couldn't even pick up Terry Wogan, so we used to use mobile phones instead. Our radios now are much better"

"Good to hear it: we get just a random mix of local stations, mainly automated music shows of some sort with the occasional talk show and hourly news bulletin. If we need satellite radio stations from mainland Alfegos apart from AR1, we use the colander and hope the engineer wired it up properly."

"Our communications men set up some big sattelite dishes for us and we get the reception good enough. Say, you think it'll still be blowing like this when we get to the barracks?

It's been awhile since I've seen something like this, I must say. Makes me wonder why we brought skis, I bet we can't wait 'til we get to the mountains and what these guys are trained for"

"I think two things can happen: either it will have subsided by the time we get there, or it'll flare up again. Whatever ... stop!"
The buggies came to a very sudden halt, skidding in front of what had blocked the road. In the poor visibility, they hadn't seen an L-SV logistics truck lying toppled in the middle of the road. Around it, a large wall of rocks had been built, in order to try and provide some sort of shielding to the crew trying to clean up large wooden crates that had fallen onto the ground. All were wearing full NBC warfare kit, and one of them had set up a large sign.

"Danger! Chemical Spill! Do Not Proceed!"

The two crews quickly donned their NBC warfare kit, fully ready within thirty seconds. Behind the gas masks, the men looked on as they saw an open crate filled with back-pack cylinders. The corperal radioed the men following.

"Stay back guys - a lorry carrying gas cylinders has overturned. I think it's... wait, you're not in any danger. They're all yellow-band cylinders. A mix of CN and CR gas, with a load of gasmasks. I think the road will be clear in half an hour, but until then there are two burst cylinders and a load more in an iffy state. I'd recommend you lot put on gas masks if you want to come and help, or you can go continue along to the barracks up the road. You'll have to skirt around the area, but once you're back on it's a straight run up there. You can't miss them."

"Agh, shit. You all got gasmasks?"

Sandrez looked back at the six men he had with him.

"We've got nothing better to do"

They put their gasmasks, but he noticed the Lance-Corporal hadn't.

"Corporal?"

"Sorry, sir. I left mine with me main kit"

"Stay with the Jeeps, then"

Sandrez and the other six walked towards the sign and buggies ahead.

"Want a hand?"

Over by the spill, the vehicle crew were busy preparing to lift the truck back over onto its front. Seeing the newcomers, they smiled.
"Come give us a hand righting this. It shouldn't be too hard with twenty men, should it? That gives it as each man lifting 400 kilos..."
The men positioned themselves to the side, attaching heavy cables from the vehicle's side boxes onto the top of the underside. A few minutes later, and they were ready to pull.
"On the count of three, let's get this baby back on her feet... 1, 2 ... wait for it!"
The head of the truck group smiled at the newcomers behind his respirator.
"Three!"
The entire vehicle shook as the cables became taught, the Alfegans heaving on the ropes alongside the helping Antigrans. With a massive cloud of dust and a loud crash, the vehicle soon landed back on its wheels, shaking as the men cheered.
"Right, we've got the broken ones sorted. What I need you lot to do is look for the cylinders and carry them back here. I've only counted twenty-two of the thirty six on here, and I need to sign them back in before we continue on. Once, of course, the NBC Decontamination unit arrive here. About ten minutes ago, so we'll be waiting a bit."

"Right then"

He turned round, and spoke in Antigran.

"Spread out, find the cylinders"

His men began looking for them, and soon they began to return, rolling the cylinders along the ground. Sandrez spotted one and turned it round, before pushing it with his hands and rolling it towards the rightened truck.

The Alfegan truck head ticked each cylinder back in as the Antigrans and Alfegans took them back, noticing how the Antigrans were unused to such devices.
"You can carry them on your back: they only weigh about 26kg when full. That's how they're deployed by the NBC attack groups on the battlefield. Dig a hole or stick them in a recess, and the section 2IC runs along with detonation wire. When high command are happy, they detonate an entire lot at once, producing a massive gas cloud. Of course, when the wind isn't blowing in the right direction, they're used in flanking manoeuvres to gas out the front line enemy positions or clear areas of cover."
The man lifted each cylinder up, revealing on the battered base a small serial number which he made sure was on the manifest. After ten minutes, he had finished the list, and signed a few pieces of paper on the back.
"We've got about five minutes until decontam come and cleanup the two broken cylinders."
He gestured to the two cylinders, small stakes with lengths of mine tape marking boxes around them. On the ground, no liquid was now visible.
"Tops snapped off when they were thrown off. These two ended up right over there, but rocketed over here when they lost pressure. Thank god these were only training CN gas ones, and not something like red band, eh?"

The Alfegan truck head ticked each cylinder back in as the Antigrans and Alfegans took them back, noticing how the Antigrans were unused to such devices.
"You can carry them on your back: they only weigh about 26kg when full. That's how they're deployed by the NBC attack groups on the battlefield. Dig a hole or stick them in a recess, and the section 2IC runs along with detonation wire. When high command are happy, they detonate an entire lot at once, producing a massive gas cloud. Of course, when the wind isn't blowing in the right direction, they're used in flanking manoeuvres to gas out the front line enemy positions or clear areas of cover."
The man lifted each cylinder up, revealing on the battered base a small serial number which he made sure was on the manifest. After ten minutes, he had finished the list, and signed a few pieces of paper on the back.
"We've got about five minutes until decontam come and cleanup the two broken cylinders."
He gestured to the two cylinders, small stakes with lengths of mine tape marking boxes around them. On the ground, no liquid was now visible.
"Tops snapped off when they were thrown off. These two ended up right over there, but rocketed over here when they lost pressure. Thank god these were only training CN gas ones, and not something like red band, eh?"

"What do you use for red band? I imagine the driver wouldn't be happy if it was. Your truck still going to work after being smashed like that? I see a few bits of trim have come off. We don't have 'red band' or 'yellow band' - the deadly ones just have a red stamp marked 'Dangerous'"

"Red band on a gas cylinder denotes it to be a blister gas. The number of bands depends on the mix. For example, two red bands is winter use, so has a large amount of mustard gas mixed in. Green denotes choking gases, Blue haematological, white herbicides, black insecticides and purple "special". Any of the nerve agents will come under a star rating, though I can't say I've handled any cylinders holding nerve agents. All I know is that colour denotes gas, and the number of stars denotes it's mix number and whether it's binary or not."

The cylinder man gave the truck a kick, before smiling.
"You'll have to hit her a lot more before she fails. The only way she can break is if something happens to the engine or the axles. Neither of which has happened luckily, so we should be able to drive her to your barracks with the rest of the cylinders. I don't think I told you: the war scenario involves CN gas to replicate the effects of a gas attack. If you're fighting with the Alfegans, good luck: rather work alongside it than against it."

"I'll remember to use more gas, although being Antigran, I expect we'll overdo it and render yet another twenty-mile square patch of land totally dead. Well then - We'll go and sit in the Jeeps. If you don't have any bureaucracies to go through with the cleanup guys, I guess you can join the convoy. Got any good trucking songs?"

"I'll be staying with the truck. As you can guess, I need a lot of paperwork doing. But don't worry about the tear gas - you'll get a crash course in using it if you're working with the Alfegans. Like controlled release of it. Anyhow, see you lot later."

The logistics man waved as the group left, followed by the Alfegan patrol a minute later.

"The gas should've gone by now, so you don't need to replace the filters or decontaminate anything. Let's go then."

The two buggies started up again, as a pair of heavy trucks pulled up. One disgorged a group of decontamination men, whilst the other revealed itself to house a very large steam generator for a pressure washer.

"Let's get going before they decide to decontaminate us."

"Speaking of which, I hope there's showers at your place"

Sandrez jumped in the Jeep and regretted it immediately as the hard seat dug into his back. He started it and accelerated off down the road behind the buggies.

After a few minutes up the road, the buggy riders finally found a sign.
"Right, it's ten minutes up ahead. They stick all the sign distances here in time, so you get thinking. Once we get there, as I said, beer, cocoa and a debrief for all of us in the shelter. The showers in the base are platoon-based communal ones, save for the officers. So enjoy."

[OOC: I'm out of ideas. Unless you have an exciting event in those ten minutes, shall we timeskip a little?]

(OOC - Timeskipping commenced! Flux capacitors energised! Speed... 88mph)

The storm had almost completely subsided as they rolled into the barracks area. After stopping at a small checkpoint at the edge of the 6m fence, the men soon rolled through to an underground garage deep in the compound. Here, the Antigran vehicles shipped in were already parked up in their different platoons, along with many large crates of wax ammunition. As he had said, a group of officers were waiting, a few large crates of bottles on the side of the bay with a hot water vat mounted on a table in the centre.
"Good evening! Glad you got here eventually. I'm the Colonel in charge of these barracks, and would like to talk to all platoon commanders in relevance to the allocation of your barrack blocks. Remember, whilst here, you will be inspected by the Alfegan owners of these barracks: my junior officers or me, depending on my mood. Keep them tidy, and I'll be happy."

The head of the patrol grabbed a bottle of the teetotal beer, using a knife to flick the lid off before taking a deep swig. Some of the engineer/maintenance staff stationed here had already started on quickly cleaning the vehicles, hosing them down with an air cannon to move all the dust towards the now-closed main doors before inspecting any damage to any of the vehicles.

Sandrez approached him and saluted.

"Good evening, Colonel. I'm sure my men will by tidy enough. Now, I've noticed your many crates of wax ammunition over there. I do hope you have them for our rifles as well, wax isn't included in our standard field kit"

"The wax ammunition is the only ammunition you'll need for this exercise. The vehicles will be fitted with LASER units to simulate attacks, with the beams being tracked and training command calling in whenever they hit something and knock it out. Knocked out units come back in, or get redeployed from their lines. Artillery works the same, with computers working out where rounds hit and informing squads if they've been wiped out or not. Infantry based assaults are worked out by the wax rounds hitting you. Of course, goggles are necessary so that you don't end up having an eye taken out, but any shots to the head will result in elimination, and anyway else will end up as you being classified as wounded. Remember the co-ordination.

But, you will have as many wax rounds as you want. They'll be issued the night before the exercise starts. You'll first have three days acclimatising here at your barracks, and resting from the trip. Then you'll move up to the mountain deployment station, where the final details and ammunition will be handed out. Here, we'll be fixing up the vehicles with the LASER training aids, and getting gun crew familiarised with them. The rest of the time will be determined by your requirements. You can do with your soldiers what you want: physical exercise, drill, range practise, whatever. Just make sure your rifles and weapons are stored in each platoon's armoury, equipment in the platoon stores, and that the place is kept tidy and secure. Remember each platoon has their own building, with its own armoury, stores, bunk room and recreation area. The site as a whole has a gymnasium, swimming pool, shooting range, athletics track, football pitch and company canteens. If you want, you can organise visits to the special training zones - the big gun ranges, the killing house, the death town, the rivers... I'd recommend that you visit the airship combat simulator.

Anyhow, drink up!"

[OOC: Updated ORBAT, to coincide with my new Marauder writeup on the NSD. You know, my posts seem to be suffering from dwarfism]

IC:

"Well, Colonel - I believe you say, 'Bottoms Up'!"

Sandrez took a swig of some of the non-alcoholic beer.

"That's quite refreshing, actually. Now - the killing house and the death town sound like horror films. I presume it's what we'd call...well, it translates as FISH, Fighting In Someone's House. I'll see if these fellows are up to scratch, they haven't seen proper action in a while"

"I think you'll enjoy those two places. We translate it from Fegosian as CHIPS: Causing Havoc In People's Streets. You'll enjoy, especially as we'll be bringing in a few Xha'noa tanks for a test drive before the main exercise.

All commisioned officers have their own quarters to the north of the camp. It's four-man rooms I'm afraid, but the whole area is much more spacious and in the centre of the Green Area: the irrigated zone."

The Colonel smiled, gulping down more alcohol.

"I know a few of the Lieutenants will be reluctant to leave their men. The Mountain Infantry is somewhat of an elite. Not wholly a special force as such, but they don't get many green men and those that come tend to stay for a while. As a result, the men get quite friendly with each other, more so than usual, especially because what they do requires mandatory teamwork. Though I'm not taking part in the exercise, I've brought my rifle. I'll take a ride up to the 'range and see if I can hit anything. I've been a bit more careful ever since I saw a comic strip in a newspaper. Conscription was at full force and the more minor medical problems were ignored, so they let in a man with a twitching disorder. At the shooting range it played up again, so the drill sergeant stood to the side of him and told him he'd be fine. He took aim at the target and at the same time he pulled the trigger, he had a big twitch and shot the drill sergeant.
Anything wierd like that with you Alfegans?"

My military forces joining the group consist of: Six Battalions of 696 Heavy Dominion assault tanks, 2 Dominion Honour Guards, My Private WarCopter, 9 Battalions of slave Infantry and 16 Dominion Attack Plane Squadrons

[OOC: You obviously have not read the stickies or any of the posts within this thread. At the top of the forum page there are a few threads with the prefix 'sticky'. They are essentially a guide on how to everything. As for now, this thread is closed to new entrants]

(G9w82, please read the title. You haven't been accepted to RP in here. Please delete your post. Thanks.)

"As I'm sure you are aware, background radiation levels in Alfegos are rather high. Add to that the genetic instability of the Alfegan race, and you get some strange results. The three major ones are quite frequent in pure race Feogsians, so be careful around anyone with eyes of two different colours, the main trait of the race. You've got the weird diseases, such as Langley's Syndrome, when you're in Alfegos. You've got the guys with extra fingers and toes, or lack of them. And, there's the rage. If you see any man with a black stripe underneath their regimental insignia, they've been diagnosed with the problem. We've luckily got a supressant vaccine for it, though it only lasts for 72 hours.
I think you've already met one man, even if you didn't see his eyes."

He gestured to the corperal, who walked over.

"Take your goggles off, corperal."
"Yes sir."
The man pulled off his goggles, revealing one eye to be blue whilst the other was a dull grey. On his left shoulder, a small black band was sewn in underneath the rank insignia.
"This man is of pure Fegosian descent. Had Langley's Syndrome once, didn't you?"
"Yes sir. When I was at Station Luna IV. Lost all my feeling in my left side because of it."
"That's our army's strangeness. Thank god you don't hear about it too much."

Sandrez looked with interest.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you, Corporal"

He turned to the Colonel.

"I can't say I've heard of Langley's Syndrome much. I know a bit, but what exactly is it? Does it affect the nervous system? What's Station Luna IV? In Antigr, things are a bit...simpler, if you know what I mean"

"Don't you worry. There's a lot of things different in Alfegos than the rest of the world.

Langley's syndrome is a progressive viral disease attacking the nervous system. The first stage is absolute agony as it attacks the sensory nerves, followed by loss of body control and then paralysis or death if it continues. The cure for it is commonly available, and can easily prevent the latter stages from occurring. It only occurs in those with some Fegosian background, and is confined to Alfegos.

As for the stations... each military base in Alfegos is referred to as a Station. Luna IV is located in the mountains of the moon, and is a deserted airship hanger which is now used for underground warfare simulation. The place is also used for mountain warfare and survival courses."

"Sounds quite spooky, Colonel. One thing has occured to me, though.
Why would you have an airship hangar on the moon? For underground warfare training, we use the vast tunnel networks last used in the Civil War. Some are absolutely massive, some are tiny. I'm suprised how hard it is to aim a weapon in confined spaces"

"We must be confusing you: the mountains of the moon are in Alfegos. It's the name of one of the ranges! Our lunar programme gave up years ago, ever since government money went to reusable space planes.

You'd enjoy underground warfare: it's just like FIBUA, except even more close and unexpected."

[OOC: Regarding the TG - I have no ideas for a third participant, Sorry. May want to invite someone you know, I won't have any problems with it]

IC:

Sandrez laughed.

"Well, I need to catch up on my geography! Well, are we doing any underground warfare here? I'm sure some of my men have done caving. I remember doing it when I was a kid; I had to jump across a hole 7 feet in diameter. I jumped two feet, and broke my hand"

"At the moment, there isn't anything on the plate in terms of underground warfare. There might be a few caves up in the mountain if you need to hole up, but apart from that it should be alright."
The colonel took another bottle from the crates, motioning towards the door.
"Would you like to see your quarters? I think you will quite enjoy where you will be staying, if you want to stay in the officer's quarters."

"Yes, I'd much like that. Lieutenant"

He beckoned to the Lieutenant, while he directed the enlisted to find their quarters.
Sandrez stood up.

"After you, Colonel"

The colonel swung open the door, quickly passing through a wide area towards a staircase at the end. This area was the repair bay, with one of the L-SV lorries suspended in mid air as a team got to work on the axles.
"They're quite sturdy lorries, your L-SVs. You could probably drive one off the top of a multi-story car park, then at the bottom just put it the right way up and drive home. This one here took a few too many knocks, and the front differential went. Luckily, since they're six-wheel drive, all they needed to do was disable the drive to those wheels to get back here. You'll see a few other variants whilst you're here: especially if you get completely scuppered on the training courses."

He received a few salutes from the maintenance staff as he reached the stairs, walking up until he was in the surface structure: more storage and maintenance. Outside, the wind was still blowing as the colonel walked to the heavy door. Opening it, he revealed outside another of the "Gecko" buggies, this one without any armament on the top. The other difference was that sheets of oxynitride glass had been fixed around the driver and passenger area.
"More shelter in there, plus it doesn't scratch like perspex. I'll drive, so one of you needs to go sit on the back seat."
He pointed to a small seat mounted right on the rear of the vehicle, a small footplate separating their feet from the ground.

Soon, he was driving, following concrete roads past the tens of identical long structures into the wind. As an area of trees came into view inside a large C-shaped structure, he pointed to a squat building right at the edge of the area.
"That's the entrance to the main camp armoury. If your weapons break or need a bit of a fix, they're the ones who'll do it. They also have a large reserve armoury, mainly with support weapons, and a few shelves of captured assault rifles they like to test out on the outdoor ranges. The indoor range is underground, next to the ammunition dump which is much further across the camp."

He pulled in a sheltered porch outside the pre-fabbed building, quickly disembarking and taking off his scarf and goggles as he entered the building. A small reception room with framed photographs and portraits led to two long passageways, stretching off along both sides of the building. Walking quickly up a flight of steps, he walked along the carpeted corridors until he reached a room, 31.
"Here's your room major. If you have any more officers, they are assigned rooms 32 to 38."
He entered the room, revealing four beds in the main bedroom area. A television was mounted on the wall, above a few chests of drawers and a small wardrobe. To the side, a door led to the bathroom, holding a bath, shower and large washbasin in addition to a small toilet lurking in the corner. The entire room was decorated as one might expect in a three-star hotel.
"Enjoy your stay here. Dinner is served at seven o'clock in the officer's mess. Just follow the signs, and you won't get lost. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"We'll be very happy here, thanks. Lieutenant, you want to bunk in here?"

Sandrez explored the room a little, without a word. He chose a bed and began to take all his webbing off, then his belt and holster. Finally, he took his hat off and put his holster and revolver next to the bed. Without a word, he fell face-first onto the bed and tested it. Not bad. The Lieutenant made himself at home and switched the telly on.

The TV channels were mostly satellite: a mix of Alfegan afternoon/evening television, with a few news channels and the Military TV network. The current programme was footage from the latest military exercise out in the training zone, filmed from the back of a Xha'noa assault tank in the Dead City.

After an hour, the call for dinner came with the sound of a gong being struck downstairs, signalling all to come to the mess.

The Lieutenant woke Sandrez up.

"General? Sorry, sir, food's up"

"Ugh. Did I fall asleep?"

"I'm guessing so, sir"

The Lieutenant pulled the general to his feet.

"Thanks, Krister. I'm too old for this"

"Last year you were jumping about shooting at anything that moved, on the frontline, with a light machine gun. I was driving for you, remember?"

"Don't remind me, please"

They exited the room and began to walk down the stairs. The Captain in command of the 2nd Tank company greeted them and they walked down the stairs, talking. Very soon, they were at the mess. Sandrez knew this battalion well. There was a reason why he'd chosen them for this exercise. Not only were they well-trained and well-suited to it, they'd quite happily been his bodyguards through five campaigns and they knew him very well, though he left the commanding to the Major, usually. There were already a small group of officers from the 1st infantry company waiting for them.

In the mess, the Alfegan officers in charge of the facility were busy dining on the long wooden tables, made from a mix of pine and aluminium pieces from airship building. Aerofibre curtains died blue hung over the windows, which cut out the sound of the wind outside. Through the few gaps, it was possible to see the central garden area, shaded by the trees from the dust. Through a small set of double doors, a queue of men stood waiting for food from the large counters, Alfegan soldiers wearing aprons on top of their combats serving, allowing for the queue to die down quickly. The colonel was waiting at the end of the queue for the Antigrans, smiling as he saw the general.
"Hello again. I hope your facilities are exactly how you like them. The menus today are sausage and chips or beef lasagne, with pudding being either Alfegan fruit salad or chocolate custard with shortbread."

Along with the colonel, another officer stood watching the Antigrans. He was wearing his desert camouflage uniform, a rank slider on his shoulder showing him to be a Lieutenant-colonel. A small black tab was sewn onto his slider, what it conveyed confirmed by an odd set of eyes and six fingers on his left hand. He smiled, a small twinkle starting up in his purple eye.
"This is my deputy, Lieutenant-Colonel Uijp'la Ka'soi. That's pronounced O, W, I, G, spit, La. I hope you aren't being overly confused by names here. But whenever I'm not available, this is the man to talk to. My office is in the Camp HQ building, which is just off this building, to the right as you approach from the fence. I've told him to be on his best behaviour, so he won't show any of his party tricks."

Uijp'la smiled again, his left hand slowly contorting itself as it bent backwards, until it touched his elbow. He flicked it back before the Colonel noticed anything from the Antigrans, taking plates from the side to pass to the Antigrans and the Colonel.
"Don't worry about him. He's a very good leader, though sadly he chose to go towards administration instead of going to the front line. He's only twenty-eight, so only been in the forces for ten years to get to this rank. Did some amazing things during the last civil war, including and not limited to taking out an M1A4 Warhound with a crowbar and a molotov."
The servers dealt out food onto the plates. Once they'd collected cutlery and a cup of cocoa from the large vat on a side, he led them over to one of the tables in the centre of the mess.

El Fortaleza del Desierto, Mokastana

Generalissimo Antonio Martinez was doing inspections of his Division when orders came in, being the primary commander for international military exercises, he was in Charge of El Fortaleza. He had met with commanders from Lyras, Alfegos, Zaheran, Greal, Ok-La-Ho-Ma and Rithian, if not many more. Amazing what one botched up exercise with TAP could cause to happen. He was to organize a unit to go to Alfegos, Neo'Los to be exact. Something smaller then a battalion, a few good companies. He could send some Jaguar units, but nearly every jaguar in the Country was to remain on call in the event of war.

Politics got in the way a lot around here.

"Well, let's see, Generalissimo Yuri's boys are heading to Greal, and the 18th Army is here, wasting time in Mejico. We can't deploy anything but we are suppose to send some forces to Alfegos for a war game. Sometimes I wished the politicos would think these orders through..."

"Well Generalissimo, what would you suggest we do?"

"Search the 18th for any good rising commanders, preferably from a People's Battle Division, the jaguars have to remain on call, and the Ironheart Division are to...cut and paste....I want to send something that shows them a good round about view of Mokan warfare."

"yes sir"

One hour later....


"Greetings Generalissimo, I am Captain Jason Santiago, you sent an aide to bring me here."

"Yes Captain, I have looked over your record, you did well the Mejican revolution, you seem to have a lot of potential."

"Thank you sir," the captain was not sure how to respond to this, he sweated lightly in the air conditioned building in the hot desert. He had faced bullets and battle, been promoted when his captain was shot, and lead his men to victory when outnumbered, but now his Generalissimo was looking over his file and hand picking him out for something what could be big....

"You will assemble a team to go to Neo'Los in Alfegos to participate in war games with Antigr, Alfegos, and we believe Lyras. Keep tabs on tactics, i want a full report when you get back."

"umm, yes sir, do you have any further information?"

"take this file, relax son, it wont be to bad. You and your men will be sent tomorrow morning."



ORBAT:

(Two) Armor Company: 45 Crew

10 LY4A1 Wolfhound MBT
5 LY6 Werewolf Assault Guns

Infantry Company: 200 soldiers

Assault Platoon: 5
28 Soldiers
Two Ironheart IFVs
one Ironheart APCs

Support Platoon: 2
24 Soldiers
Two Ironheart APCs

Medical platoon: 1
12 soldiers
one Ironheart APC
One Iron Heart Ambulances

Support Company: 100 support staff

Supply Support Platoon: 2
20 Support Staff
10 transport trucks

Fuel Support Platoon: 2
10 Support Staff
5 Fuel Trucks

AVR Support Platoon: 1
20 Support staff
10 M1A3 AVREs

Clearing Support Platoon: 1
20 Support Staff
5 M1A3 Bridge Deployers,
5 M1A3 Minesweepers


Artillery Company: 45 Crew, 30 Support staff

205mm Platoon: 3
15 Soldiers(crew)
5 205mm Self Propelled Guns

Supply Platoon:
20 Support staff
10 transport Trucks

Fuel truck Platoon:
10 Support Staff
5 Fuel trucks


Command attachment:
2 Iron Heart Command Post


Anti-Air attachment:
20 Support staff
5 Ironheart Sheppard

Brigadier Miller nodded again, before addressing Colonel Sorrowthorn.

"Colonel, if you will see to your battalion, I will move to address the senior officers of the exercise. If you need me..."

Sorrowthorn nodded, somewhat brusquely. He had nothing against the idea. Sorrowthorn was simply a man of few words.

"Sir."

Miller continued, addressing the Alfegan.

"Lead on..."

Sorrowthorn pondered the situation, drinking in the surroundings. It had been too long...

A loud whistle blew as an ekranoplan roared away along one of the trackways, the dust flying in the vague direction of the senior officer party as they were escorted to a waiting LY219 Command vehicle.
"Recognise these? Lyras has been an invaluable supplier of military vehicles, not least the LY219s that most divisions use as standard. You might see a few Basalt or Driftwood IFVs on the roads here, since we have some of the Whiteshield battalions on border patrol here, but apart from that it's mostly Lyran equipment."
He boarded the vehicle with his entourage, leaving the brigadier a free seat by the computer units. The vehicle started up, before roaring off towards the Zone Command Centre.

"When the idea of a training ground like this was suggested, I almost laughed. But now we have it, I can say we have one of the largest training areas in the world, encompassing almost all forms of warfare. It's ideal for waging regiment-sized combined arms operations, especially now most battlefield systems use LASER technology already to aim weapons. A few tweaks, and we can see exactly where they are "shooting", and designate casualties as is necessary. And the whole lot read by supercomputers plugged into the battlefield network. Right, we're here."

After a surprisingly short drive, the vehicle pulled up in front of the large tower. Quickly moving through the wind now picking up, he led the group into the lobby of the building, before entering a lift.
"The command room is on the top floor."

__________________________________________

Meanwhile, the Alfegan logistics staff were busy with the Lyran equipment. A convoy of Ekranoplans had been brought around to take heavy equipment, whilst other staff gave directions to those driving to the barracks.

Sandrez took his steaming plate of Lasagne and followed the Colonel. He sat down, taking a sip from his steaming mug of cocoa. Same rich taste. He had a bowl of fruit salad.

"The food is very good here, it reminds me of back home, although things were slightly different. I think I'll have a lazy night in, it's like a nice hotel. Except paid for by the Ministry of Defence"

"I don't blame you. It's very tiring, all this travelling, especially in the heat. Luckily, all buildings here are air-conditioned, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about getting too hot in the night. It is amazing though what the War Ministry fork out for all this. Still, I guess it is worth it when you have one of the best armies in the world."

He glared at his second-in-command, who was bending his arm unnaturally again, before turning back.

"One thing he taught me I never knew was how weak tank tracks are. If you manage to get a crowbar in between the track and the sprockets, you can easily lever it off and leave the tank almost immobilised. Once you've done that, they're sitting ducks if you have anything flammable on you. Dousing any gaps you find with burning petrol often makes the crew pop out like rabbits, giving you a tank crew and a load of ammo. And, if you fix the track, your own tank."

"And fixing tracks or attaching some reserve links will take time. If christie suspension didn't take up so much space, we'd use it. It's faster, nicer ride, and can run on only the roadwheels. Although it's not suited to a 63-ton main battle tank"

Sandrez ate a forkful of lasagne.

"Problem is, armour thickness is mad now, so an immobilised tank can hold out okay if it has a machine-gun. I bet the industries missed the days when you could take a turret off with a 15mm Anti-Tank rifle. Our Anti-material sniper rifle is just an updated weapon from the thirties"

OOC: I should be back sunday or monday...


IC:

The Captain got off the plane at the Alfgan training center. Looking around it was rather impressive, after all it could easily allow the landing of a few IL-57s and C-10s with ease. The one thing he noticed was that it seemed the entire world was using Lyran goods, judging by the Ironhearts off in the distance. He couldn't make out the markings on the side, but it could always be assumed to be Alfgan. He looked over his folder of information, compared to the rest of the world Mokan military ranking was probably backwards, of course it was spawned from farmers and rebels deep in the jungle, not by military scientist or even any decent observers from the Political wars. Mokan military scientist had reviewed the current command structure and were currently hammering out the flaws.

What the Mokans would call captain, the file said, would be often referred to as a Lieutenant Colonel in other armies. While a Mokan Lieutenant Colonel would probably be a normal Colonel to most other armies. The Mokan Duel Ranking system was unique to Mokastana and therefore explaining the rank trade off may or may not be difficult, depending on how well the explination of the Jaguar ranking system is explained. The file wished Captain Jason Santiago good luck with the others.

"Good afternoon sir!"
The Mokan delegation was greeted by a senior officer, nodding to the other as he recognised the Mokan custom of not saluting.
"The Major-General is currently with the Lyran delegation in the Zone Command Centre. I am his second-in-command, Colonel Ya'skal, and I welcome you to the Neo'los training area. You will be staying in the Eastern barracks, which are about an hour's drive away. If you have any equipment you do not wish to drive up there, we will happily provide ekranoplans for your transportation needs. If you wish, you can come with me to meet the Lyran officers in the Command Centre, as well as familiarise yourself with the training zone procedures as to how this exercise will work."

On one of the large concrete landing circles by the landed military aircraft, one of the ekranoplans gracefully slowed to a halt, engines angling vertically to suspend it in mid-air, before it slowly dropped to the ground. The large rear ramp opened, eight loading crew hopping out to help with any goods movement.


_______________________________________________


"I agree with your comment about armour thickness. If you want to go on the Heavy Weapon range, they've got a Xha'noa assault tank shell that's been used as target practice for a few months. The armour on that can survive being shot at by almost anything. The top armour is as thick as the side armour, yet its profile is actually lower than a normal MBT. That's why we use it as an assault tank in cities: it can survive pretty much anything shoots at it. The Blizzard tank is similar, though we don't have any of them here because they're not used as much, save for breakthrough operations. If you ever encountered a Xha'noa tank in a city, the only thing you could do is run. Run as fast as you can. Even hiding on the other side of a building is no defence: they often drive straight through buildings without any harm. The Xha'noa tank used on the range was only taken out because it had the misfortune of running through an anti-vehicle minefield. The base can take the blast of most IEDs and land mines, but this one managed to hit a large enough charge to blow the bottom out, killing all the crew. We had it shipped back, and use it now for firing practice.

As for MBTs, yeah, you've got the LY4. We still use the M1A4 warhound, since it has similar capabilities and allows for different aspects. The LY4 has the armour and defence, whilst the M1A4 has more mobility and a higher average off-road speed. Mix in a few light tanks, and you have a perfect flank.

Which reminds me: do you use Lyran products?"

"Not that much, although we've got several thousand Lyran tanks among athe armed forces. However, the Marauder MBT which is standard-issue has lots of Lyran-based components. It's like a slightly heavier LY7, to be honest. We like it that way, the Lyrans are brilliant engineers. We'll take one of our towed fourteen-centimetre guns down to the range and try it out on the Xha'noa; failing that, we've got MT-79 heavies.
Even a Xha'noa shouldn't survive a hit from a long-barrelled 155mm anti-armour shot. Unless you're going for ludicrous armour, but that'd be plainly stupid"

"We've tried that already my friend. The armour plating on the sides as the equivalent of about two metres of steel, I think. If it's a kinetic round, it'll likely yaw off madly and end up stuck in one of the deep cavities hidden inside there. If it's HEAT, the blast probably won't get through. If it's HESH, you can forget about it. But, as I said, it can survive quite a bit. We'll see what your gun can do."

"Maybe full-bore armour piercing. Depleted uranium stuff, we brought a hundred and fifty rounds. If that doesn't work, I suspect the Lyrans will have ideas. I think they'll have brought an LY6. I wonder about high explosive, if fired at a high enough velocity"

"We shall see. On another subject, what are training grounds like in Antigr? Do you have large training areas like this, or just small training zones?"

"Training grounds are large and small, all sizes. There's the small concrete complexes with a firing range and little else, then massive places like this. A lot of where we train isn't strictly training grounds at all. Just the kind of mountainous places where normal people are too clever to go"

"I doubt you'll ever find a training area as diverse as this. We start with scrubland on the coast, move into desert, then rainforest on the mountain foothills, followed by pine forests and mountain terrain itself. Rivers are plentiful, and the NBC warfare training simulation area is pretty realistic: I mean, they test out the weapons there.

But away from that. Is there anything this evening you would like to do? The entire camp is open to you, save for any areas with clearance above Charlie level needed. Even the armoury and ammo dump are open, if you want to try shooting some Alfegan weapons on the range. You won't be able to leave the camp this evening since there's a training exercise outside the camp currently underway with the Aeromarine 7th Reserve Battalion and a team of sharpshooters aspiring to be snipers. You see, you only become a sniper once you pass the course. Otherwise, you're only a sharpshooter. But those lot are very strange. Lying silent watching someone for a week does strange things to your mind."

"Well, I'll finish my fruit salad and we'll go. I'd like to try firing some Fegosian standard-issue, and see how it compares, if you don't mind. This fruit is distinctly different, but I quite like it. What's in here? Er...you said 'Charlie Clearance'. How does the clearance system work here? There's a lot different here, but at the same time it reminds me of home"

"The fruit salad contains mostly fegosian fruits: Xha'la, Pu'jla, that sort of thing. Quite nice aren't they? Try not to eat any seeds in the purple one: they have rather an unpleasant taste.

The basic clearance system here is four stage. Delta clearance is for anyone. Charlie covers restricted items, Beta classifed and Alpha top secret. You have Charlie clearance as a commanding officer, so can get access to a few bits and bobs. Not including the gas stores."

He finished eating his salad before placing his dishes to the side.

"Once you're done, we'll go to the armoury."

[OOC: Remember those SeG-60s you bought? I've scrapped it and replaced it with the SeG-3, may want to sneak in a new pic for the SeG-08s you bought. Linky (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=3980)]

IC:

Sandrez finished the last piece of fruit. It was orange, with a slightly bittersweet taste.

"Well, I'm done. I'l try out my revolver on the firing range, and then maybe I'll grab an SeG-3 and see how it handles on fully-automatic"

He grabbed his coat and started walking towards the exit.

Outside, the officer quickly paced over to a waiting dune buggy, allowing the Antigran to board before driving off quickly. By now, the wind was now only a quiet breeze, trees rustling quietly as he drove to the side of a large brick structure. Opening the door, he walked over to a large mesh grille in the wall just inside, tapping on the mesh before taking out a magnetic key card. He soon was able to open the door, quickly walking in with the Antigran. Inside, a large open repair area was fileld with white tables, each holding weapons in varying states of repair. Loud D&b music played as staff rushed around, bottles of oil and extra parts flying around the area. Soon, he had passed through into a strangely quite room, filled with shelves.

"Welcome to the armoury. It's a nice place isn't it?"

He looked at the shelf numbers, then at a note on the back of his hand, before walking down to the end. Here, an entire shelf on the rack was covered in weapons, a large note reminding all they were private.
"Since I live out here, I took my personal weapons with me. A couple of target rifles, my service pistols, and some assault rifles. I'll take out some for you to have fun with."
He unlocked the rack, taking out three assault rifles, a pair of pistols and three black cases, before locking it. He passed two to the Antigran, along with one of the cases.

"These'll give you an idea of Alfegan weapons. There won't be any machineguns or heavy weapons on the range we'll be using, but tomorrow you should have some fun."
As he left, he passed a pair of racks labelled "Captured Weapons, Live". He opened the rack, taking out a rifle which he slung over his back with the other.
"Recognise this? The SeG-60. I hear it's out of date here."

He left the building, nodding to the man now on duty before loading up the weapons in the back steel box. Pretty soon, they were off again to another small building, where he stood at the hatch leaving the Antigran in the buggy. He soon returned back with a large metal crate, which he tied onto the spare space.
"Right, that's us sorted. Let's go to the range now."

The range was a long concrete structure located near the camp edge, buttresses re-enforcing the whole thing. At a small entrance at one end, he disembarked before signalling to one of the range officers to help him into the range with the ammunition and weapons. The Colonel had a quick word with one of the range officers, before finally entering the main range. A 100m long cavity lit with daylight bulbs revealed tracks every ten metres, with the end of the range holding two wooden targets in place. He offered a mat already set out to the Antigran, before opening the ammunition chest.
"The first gun I'd like you to try out is the AF-67 assault rifle. Very tempramental, with quite a bit of recoil, but a lot of power from the 6.76mm intermediate cartridge. This one's got the standard iron sights, so easy to operate. Here's a magazine of thirty ball rounds. I've got some special ammunition if you want to try it after this first shoot. We're using some standard No.2 sihlouettes, so shots are aimed at the heart and head area. I'll watch you shoot this, and shoot next round."

Miller's small smile was the only indication of acknowledgement. The LY219 had been developed by the design teams under his good friend, Field Marshal Jacob Wallington, and its widespread export success was well known.

"We use a similar LASER-based system when we conduct our operations, although ours are usually divisional or corps-sized manoeuvers. Unfortunately, most manoeuvers of that size are restricted to our deserts... do have mixed terrain, but most of it is well built up. It will be a pleasant change to engage in different terrain, to be sure."

"Well, I think you'll like the training zone extremely well. As it goes right up into the mountains, there will be quite a bit of extensive training. There is a large desert area, yes, which will make training all the more familiar to your men.
Once I get you your map, I really need to stress to you that the areas marked on the map outside the red lines are out of bounds. That is, outside in the civlian areas, in the city itself, and in the old NBC testing/training zone. They are all, as you can see, for common sensical purposes.

We'll be using a mix of systems in training. Whilst the infantry and anti-infantry weapons will use wax rounds, the vehicles and anti-vehicle devices will mount LASERs, and artillery strikes will be dealt with using a computer simulation with a shell-based programme, with us radioing in to the affected squads when they're hit. Grenades will be flash-bangs only. Any quiries?"

Sandrez took a look at the sights. They were easy enough to use, so he took aim and checked the weapon was on fully-automatic. His finger squeezed the trigger and let off a four-round burst.

"Recoil's not unmanageable.A bit heavier than our HK Bolt stuff with 6mm cartridges. I'll give you a go on my SeG-3, if you like. SeG-60 competitor, it's replaced it now"

He fired again, once at the head and once at the chest. He loved the feel of the rifle against his shoulder.

"I'll see how it handles in long bursts"

Calculating about 20 rounds left, he squeezed the trigger again and held the gun in aim as it kicked.

"It's a good rifle isn't it? Thing is, the accuracy was deemed by the government to be too poor, which is where the AF-87 comes in. Thing is, the AF-67 is a very reliable firearm, which is why you'll see the Whiteshields on the border using this instead of the AF-87 when there aren't any AF-07s. In trained hands, it's accurate enough at a hundred metres, and will pretty easily take down someone making a charge at you."

He took out the next rifle, loading a different magazine into it.
"This is the AF-87, the replacement. Much less reliable, but with a higher fire rate and accuracy than the AF-67. It also uses a different calibre: the 5.56mm NATO. We use a slightly higher larger load in our rifles, so the recoil is larger than normal 5.56mm rounds. However, I doubt you'll even feel it firing."

He flicked up the iron sights on the rear of the rifle, adjusting them to 100m before checking the fire level was on semi-automatic.
"This uses a different mechanism entirely. The safety is seperate from the fire lever, so you can pre-select fire with the safety on. The magazine is also smaller and has a more powerful spring, so there aren't ever any loading issues. The final thing is the trigger: it's a target rifle trigger, so you don't have a primary pull before it goes: as soon as you touch it, it'll roar off. The thing's quite heavy, so as I said, accuracy should be very good. It's just that after a couple minutes in the desert, the whole thing ends up full of dust."

He took out the SeG-60, loading a magazine of the Antigran rounds before aiming down the range to his target. The Antigran's target had already been replaced automatically, the shot one appearing in a small tray for his lane, with loose groupings around the head and chest area.

"I'll see how accurate I am with small small arms. Mind if I get a closer target and see how my aim is?"

He produced a Wiklander VII revolver from his holster.

"Nine point six-five millimetre, six shots. The cylinder-barrel gap is closed like on a Nagant, but it doesn't use special cartridges and so doesn't work so well. Revolvers are immensely reliable, though. We must be the only army that still uses 'em"

(Bloody forum's been eating my posts lately...)

The colonel had a few words with the range officer, before watching as a target was slotted onto the position at 20m automatically. He opened the ammunition crate, taking out some for the two pistols he had produced.

"These two pistols are opposites to each other. The one here s the AP-89, the standard Alfegan service pistol. It uses the 10.8x25mm AF round, so has a large enough power to stop most aggressor. The pistol itself weighes in at about 1280g, so heavy enough to take that power. This one has the standard iron sights, painted with phosphurous so they can be used in night-time operations with ease. This comes with three picatinny rails, so can take some useful attachments depending on what you can afford, since you have to pay for non-issued extras. I've got a small laser targeter and tactical torch for mine, both of which are very useful when not target shooting.

The other one here is the AF-99, now designated the AMP-18. It was an attempt to get a sidearm as a fully automatic weapon, which failed. It's light at 810g, and runs on the 6.8x18mm AF round. The recoil from the tiny rounds still gives you a spray everywhere, whilst the rounds lack any stopping power. It can fire off its magazine of 21 rounds in under two seconds, but that is its only good point really. Plus it looks ugly, and doesn't even come with a picatinny rail.

The revolver's nice though. I personally prefer 15 rounds in the gun to 6 when I'm in action, but I can settle for six if it were a target shooting competition or I wasn't intending to use it that much."

"Revolvers jamming are almost unheard of, though. You can just cycle it to the next round most of the time, and with moon-clips they are very fast to reload"

Sandrez took free aim with the pistol held in front of him and squeezed the trigger. Like all Antigran miltary firearms, it had a pressure-point trigger which allowed for some free-play before the shot. The bullet was louder fired from a revolver, and whizzed into the target.

"My aim isn't too bad, then"

He fired the last five rounds in quick succession and 'broke open' the revolver. It was a top-break type, allowing for use of a full moon clip, one of which he produced from a pouch and slotted it in after tipping the revolver so as to make the spent cases fall out.

"Do you want a go? Quite heavy, but very powerful. Recoil ain't bad, compared to the .417 rounds we used to use"

"Good afternoon sir!"
The Mokan delegation was greeted by a senior officer, nodding to the other as he recognised the Mokan custom of not saluting.
"The Major-General is currently with the Lyran delegation in the Zone Command Centre. I am his second-in-command, Colonel Ya'skal, and I welcome you to the Neo'los training area. You will be staying in the Eastern barracks, which are about an hour's drive away. If you have any equipment you do not wish to drive up there, we will happily provide ekranoplans for your transportation needs. If you wish, you can come with me to meet the Lyran officers in the Command Centre, as well as familiarise yourself with the training zone procedures as to how this exercise will work."

On one of the large concrete landing circles by the landed military aircraft, one of the ekranoplans gracefully slowed to a halt, engines angling vertically to suspend it in mid-air, before it slowly dropped to the ground. The large rear ramp opened, eight loading crew hopping out to help with any goods movement.



Jason nodded back to the commander, trying to be formal enough as to not seem disrespectful.

"Thank you Colonel Ya'skal, I am Captain Jason Santiago," one of the required courses at El Fortaleza was Alfgan Pronunciation and Culture, a class he passed with relative ease.

"It would be an honor to meet the Lyran officers, as you can see hardly anything we use anymore does not come from Lyras. As for the equipment, the crew need to do checks and ensure everything is running smoothly on their vehicles, so I will make them drive over, give them a chance to check handling, odd noises, etc. but thank you for the planes. i will use them to haul over the supplies while we wait on the trucks to arrive."

Captain Santiago was only slightly nervous, this was his first international training exercise he was in charge of on foreign soil. He turned to see the tanks being unloaded and quickly moved to a temporary "depot." he pulled over a Sargent from the support company and gave him the orders to start loading supplies into the ekranoplanes.

"Let's have a go then. I'll see how this works out."
He took the loaded pistol, peering through the sights. Adjusting himself to them, he held the weapon in a standard pistol firing position, before letting rip with three shots at his target: two to the chest, and one to the head. He took the other three shots around the heart of the target, before flicking the drum open to let the empty rounds drop.
"I like the feel of that. It's quite a heavy pistol, but the lack of recoil was surprising. You see what I did there?"
He let the target replace itself, taking the shot target out of the tray. A tight group when he had shot at the heart, with shots placed well on the chest.
"You ever learn the Mozambique drill? The best to do with a low-powered pistol, though with this it has enough stopping power for just chest shots."
He weighed the revolver for a moment, before handing it back.
"A very nice weapon indeed. You care to try the AP-89?"

___________________________________


The officer watched the Mokan go about proceedings, surprised at the man's grasp of Fegosian. Then again, he could speak a bit of Mokan if he cared, after his time in Mokastana. Behind him, a Basalt Rough Terrain Command Vehicle pulled up, doors opening up to unload a group of quartermaster officers. Inside, the Alfegan screens lit up a dark interior, seats waiting in the corner for the Mokan officer and the Alfegan. He took out a small piece of paper, looking at a list of pictograms with translations into English and Mokan phonetics, before slipping it away as the man returned.

"Thanks"

He looked over the AP-89 briefly. A short weapon, shorter than the Beretta 92 he'd seen. Quite heavy, too - he estimated over a kilogram, with Antigran-pattern V-notch sights, although lacking a ramped system like on the Wiklander and KKS. The weapon was bulkier than a KKS, and about 4cm wide at the grip.
He used the sights this time and got a tight group of two chest shots and one head-shot, like the Alfegan.

He tried another three-round body shot, managing a more centralised head-shot as the gun became more familar. He then took to free-aiming again, and fired off the last ten rounds, the recoil felt but quite controllable in the heavy body. He noticed the magazine protruded more than he was used to, but as was to be expected with a sixteen-round magazine full of 10.8mm rounds. Finding the magazine release, he flicked it and pulled the magazine out.

"I quite like it, actually. Does it reload in the normal way?"

"Yep, the magazine will reload normally."
He flicked out another magazine from the large ammunition crate, from the small tin labelled 'Pistol, 10.8mm', passing it over.
"This magazine's loaded with hollowpoint rounds. You'll notice they have a better accuracy, though these technically are not legal in a proper conflict. They'll rip the target card much more than a normal round, but I normally use them if hunting with a pistol since they guarentee a kill. Most of the time, I use my rifle, but this is ideal as well."

He loaded up the AP-99, a long 35-round magazine of 6.8mm rounds protruding from under the unit, before unfolding the skeletal stock.

"I'll leave this for you to play with once you're done with the '89. Be careful when you fire it: the safety mechanism on this one's a bit dodgy since it came from an early batch. If you don't completely move the fire select lever down to safety and hear it click, it isn't safe, just on single-shot."

He left it pointed down the range as he took out the AF-07 Assault rifle, adjusting the 4x scope for the 100m target on the range.

The officer watched the Mokan go about proceedings, surprised at the man's grasp of Fegosian. Then again, he could speak a bit of Mokan if he cared, after his time in Mokastana. Behind him, a Basalt Rough Terrain Command Vehicle pulled up, doors opening up to unload a group of quartermaster officers. Inside, the Alfegan screens lit up a dark interior, seats waiting in the corner for the Mokan officer and the Alfegan. He took out a small piece of paper, looking at a list of pictograms with translations into English and Mokan phonetics, before slipping it away as the man returned.

Captain Santiago noticed how quickly the vehicle arrived, and how it appeared to be a command vehicle with all the lit up screens and officers getting out, usually a nice target. He waved over his second in command, Lieutenant Veracruz, Infantry Company, and told him to get the equipment to the eastern barracks, handing him the map and a few of the files. Verazruz was hand picked by Santiago for this mission simply because the man preffered Guerilla warfare and was in the Alfgan class with Santiago. While they had not grown up with eachother they both had been serving under Generalissimo Martinez together since boot camp.

Adjusting his beret and checking the safety on his pistol he turned to follow the Alfgan into the command vehicle.

"Right. Here is a map of the training area for you to behold. The rest will be getting it very shortly, but since we're in the command vehicle..."
The interface was in Fegosian, unlike other Alfegan vehicles, with pictograms labelling different areas of the map. A quick flick of controls moved it to english, icons flickering all over it.
"It's a very big training zone. Hopefully, you'll be able to familiarise yourself with the terrain at least before the exercise: the map has no marked forests on it, so problems may be found in that respect."

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn279/Tomahawk911/Training.png

"Well no doubt this map will help a lot, I will have to call Veracruz and tell him to get the UAVs in the air to map out these forests. So what kind of war games shall we prepare for, or will all that be covered in the meeting room?"

Pulling out his radio he tried to contact the Lieutenant before they got out of range, luckily these new radios were designed for airport use and had a nice long range on them, even if it did make them a little bigger then the average one.

"veracruz, get some shadows in the trees."

"Shadows on trees, anything else?"

"Should be it for now"

After he put back the radio Santiago continued to read the map as well as the screens still in Fegosian trying to get a feel for this place.

"We do have the forest mapped: it's just that the map we have here does not include it. I'll get onto one with forest, but you can assume that along the river and the gap between the desert and the mountains on the first contour area is almost all rainforest, and the next contour up has large amounts of coniferous forest.

As for the mission type, you will be given that on the night before the exercise, so as to give all an equal oppertunity to plan. The two teams will be set up as your force and Lyras versus our force and Antigr. The days leading up to the exercise will have your men acclimitise to the area, with vehicles and artillery being fitted up for the training exercise with LASER firing devices."

Sandrez slotted the magazine into the grip and released the slide, then checked the safety was still in fire. He handed it back and took the machine-pistol. The sights appeared to be the same, and so he tried a burst. The automatic fire in a weapon this small was less controllable in his eyes, mostly due to size, but it handled fairly well, the steady chatter of the weapon spraying bullets all over the target in a fairly loose group around the chest area. He stopped firing briefly.

"So I can map this out for tommorow, where about is the snowy mountainous area? I'm sure the men are itching to get skiing and climbing again"

"Thank you, I would love to have a map of the forest as well, if anything it will give my Shadow boys something to check themselves with. I figure if they start prepping the equipment and testing it out now to make sure that they are in top shape. That I think that the other teams around here would prefer me buzzing forest then their camps. For the moment at least. Now as for these LASER systems, how much modification can we expect do have to do to our weapons?"

"The heavy weapons are the only ones taking LASER modification, such as the tank cannons and autocannons. We'll attach a LASER to the side of the cannon, offset slightly but still aimable, powered from the engine and linked up to the standard fire control systems via cables. All vehicles will be fitted with sensors, which can easily pick up the LASER signatures and tell which weapon it is. Using a generator based on vehicle gun, ammunition, range and target armour, the computer here will calculate whether the tank has been taken out or not. If it's been hit, the crew will be alerted via radio. If destroyed, red smoke grenades will deploy from it, and the LASER system will shut down. We will inform you by radio what to do next, and whether to proceed.

With infantry weapons, we'll be using wax rounds. As such, everyone will be issued with goggles to protect their eyes, which they must wear at all times. If you get hit by a wax round, you're a casualty. If there is a real command, the order will be followed by "Delta Delta Delta". In the event of someone being injured, the standard medivac prinicples still apply. Serious injuries will result in the exercise being paused or stopped altogether.

The airships above the exercise ground will be watching you all. Each man will be issued with a tracking chip, enabling us to see troop locations in the command centre and track how the operation is going. They are not to be shot at, or the perpatrators will be ejected from the exercise and put on labour duty in Neo'vi until they are called back. That will involve quite a bit of work, 18 hours a day."

The vehicle stopped, the man leaving with the Mokan to escort him into the command centre. He took the lift to the top floor, where the others were waiting.

"Excellent. The Antigrans are all at their barracks already. This is the command centre, where all exercises are co-ordinated. At the moment, there's a platoon of men undergoing NBC Attack examination in the Death Zone, and a section of sharpshooters hoping to become snipers being searched for by a company of men. So far, they've picked up two in the last five days, and by 0600 tomorrow morning will finish their searches. There's also a load of small company training groups up in the mountains, in the forests, on the river and in the desert. There's a few vehicles on the ranges as well. A lot going on, all of which will be postponed whilst we do this large exercise."

The general began speaking to the gathered foreign officers.

"Welcome then to Neo'los. I hope you enjoy your time here, especially since you have free time for the next two days to do what you want with all the training facilities here. Now, as you are all aware, there are zones out of bounds. These are labelled on the main maps, but also in the buildings: any building or room with security clearance of Alpha or Bravo are off-limits to all. Officers will receive Charlie-clearance security cards this evening, once all are at their barracks. I have briefed all on safety issues, as I hope you have to the Mokans. But remember that there is to be no silliness from any of your men. Punishments here are strict, and will be carried out in addition to your disciplining of your men. Areas of this exercise zone are contaminated with CBR agents, which are no laughing matter. There are, in all the camp ammo dumps, cylinders containing not just CR and CN gas but also Mustard gas and Chlorine. The dangers of live rounds are obvious to you, as I am sure you are aware, but rememebr that all personnel are restricted from entering the armouries and ammunition dumps proper unless escorted by an Alfegan officer.

Any questions?"

"Its a couple hundred kilometres north along dirt roads to get to the mountains. After passing through the forest areas. Unless you're going to set out early in the morning, I can see you taking at least three hours to get there on the best roads. A big problem, as you can see."

He took the AP-89, controlling his breathing as he aimed for the target's chest. A few seconds later, and he let out a rapid burst of shots, seven in total. They formed a tight line up the target's chest, large holes ripped in the paper. He smiled, flicking the safety to safe before leaving the pistol pointing down range.

"Once you've done with the machine-pistol, can I interest you with anything more high-powered apart from the assault rifles?"

He opened the three small plastic cases, revealing the broken-down weapons. A submachine gun, and two large sniper rifles. He started assembling one of the rifles, screwing the barrel into the assembled firing assembly, before sliding in the large bolt. He gave it a quick functions test, before taking out a five-round magazine from the chest.
"This is only just within the range limits if I use ball rounds instead of the standard sniper rounds. The ASF-04, firing 17.5mmx85mm AF rounds. Anything bigger than this is officially classed as a light cannon. This is used to take out armoured cars, though we often use it against ultra-long range targets. I heard one person once managed to get a lethal shot against someone with these at about 2km range, which is amazing.
When you shoot the target with this one, make sure you know what you want to aim at. The impact will literally destroy the target card, which is why I'll get you a wooden target for this."

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn279/Tomahawk911/Training-1.png

(Forests and snow cover included!)

"Our anti-material is fifteen-millimetre, and they're quite often found with shock-absorbing attachments right up to heavy machine-gun tripods. You'd be surprised how weak main battle tank armour is in some places. I'll see how this handles, and whether it will break my shoulder, which was happened before. Our catrtridge is somewhat longer - 137 millimetres, which makes for a hell of a lot of recoil.
Tank units have been held up with AT rifles in Danteri, a few years ago. The tanks themselves weren't damaged much, but the engine decking, sensors, communication equipment, was destroyed or inoperable.
Anyway, how much do these weigh?"

"This rifle weighs in at about 8.2kg, so enough to cut down at least some fo the shock. What the snipers have because it's quite heavy is a small bag, which they attach to their leg and drag behind them. Of course, they have to rely on their AP-89 or whatever gun their spotter has if they get rumbled, but once this is in position it can be very useful. This one is only used to hold up lightly armoured vehicles, since the other three Sniper rifles we have for anti-infantry purposes are adequate enough. There's the ASF-1, which you might've heard of as the AWSM. It fires the .338 Lapua Super Magnum, which has more than enough power for this purpose.

The idea of using a large calibre is for stability's sake: the rifling in the rifle, which is traditional cut, means that the round spins, of course. The accuracy is provided by the Gyroscopic effect of the spinning round. The wider the bullet, the greater the effect, and therefore the greater the stability. There's still enough powder in the cartridge to give your shoulder a work-out, even if this is only one-third full to comply with range safety."

The general began speaking to the gathered foreign officers.

"Welcome then to Neo'los. I hope you enjoy your time here, especially since you have free time for the next two days to do what you want with all the training facilities here. Now, as you are all aware, there are zones out of bounds. These are labelled on the main maps, but also in the buildings: any building or room with security clearance of Alpha or Bravo are off-limits to all. Officers will receive Charlie-clearance security cards this evening, once all are at their barracks. I have briefed all on safety issues, as I hope you have to the Mokans. But remember that there is to be no silliness from any of your men. Punishments here are strict, and will be carried out in addition to your disciplining of your men. Areas of this exercise zone are contaminated with CBR agents, which are no laughing matter. There are, in all the camp ammo dumps, cylinders containing not just CR and CN gas but also Mustard gas and Chlorine. The dangers of live rounds are obvious to you, as I am sure you are aware, but rememebr that all personnel are restricted from entering the armouries and ammunition dumps proper unless escorted by an Alfegan officer.

Any questions?"

Captain Santiago listened carefully to the Alfgan about the training grounds, they would need to bring in more Humvees if the men were going to travel the base and get a feel for the place. Much less if they were going to use the equipment around here. One thing Santaigo never quite understood in the "Alfgan class" was the Fegosian love of chemical warfare. Sure he could see the beinifit of it, the many uses of it, but why they picked that to be the staple of the military....hmm, maybe it was like Mokans and napalm. Either way he was glad they had gas masks.

"Sir, If i may, We have trasported live rounds with us to the training ground due to the fact that Mokastana is currently at war and Mokan doctrine requires all deployed units to be armed. Where would you prefer us to store these munitions?"

Meanwhile back at the barracks the Mokan Forces were now setting up camp and unpacking items from the Ekroplanes and trucks brought in. Lieutenant Veracruz was in the middle of forming a tank depot, and getting on the support teams to get the Shadows in the air. So far nothing interesting had happened. Hopefully he could get the boys packed up and ready for the training exercise earlier then planned, and Santaigo was getting good notes on this place.

"You'll be able to store live ammunition in the main ammunition dumps. Before any confusion starts, I have remembered a point about armouries here: there are three seperate types you will find here. There are small weapons cages in each barrack block for platoon assault rifles and pistols. The privalege carrying of sidearms at all times is restricted to those of commisioned rank of Captain equivalent or higher, or non-comissioned rank of Seregant Major. The small weapons cages can be accessed by each platoon's superior officer, with codes being distributed to them. Weapons are only to be carried outside the cage for the purpose of the exercise, modification if a heavy weapon, or for use on practice ranges. Any repairs will be dealt with by the camp armourers.
There are also Main Camp Armouries, holding weapons for the Alfegans stationed at the camps and reparing damaged weapons. They also will be where any special weapons wil be held during modifications.
The final type of armouries you may encounter are Special Armouries, located across the training ground near roads. These are not to be entered under any circumstance, due to the weaponry they contain.

Your munitions, my friend, can be stored in the Camp Ammunition Dumps. We will make sure the ammunition is sufficiently labelled so it is not used by our men.

Any more questions?"

Sandrez smiled. He hadn't handled such a large rifle in a long time.

"A third full...so, about twenty-eight millimetre's worth of propellant"

He rested the big weapon against his shoulder. It was heavy, and he looked down the telescopic sight at the wooden target. Such a large weapon reminded him of the joint project between the Royal Antigran Navy and various Leafanistani companies to produce the UHG-9 'Big Stick' (http://www.forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13598700&postcount=155), an infantry weapon of modestly large calibre. That aside, he took aim at the middle of the wooden target and squeezed the heavy trigger.

The shot was deafening, even with ear plugs in. The suppressor had not been attached, meaning the full power of the shot could be appreciated as the rifle leapt back into the Antigran's shoulder. Down the range, a massive hole blew through the target, splinters showering everywhere as it passed through. Far at the back, there was a loud crash as it hit the angled steel plate, the pieces rebounding into a large foam collecting trough underneath. The target stopped shaking as the Colonel smiled.
"You like it? I guess this rifle is much, much more sane than some weapons I've seen such as the UHG-9, but it still is a powerful gun. I hope your shoulder is alright!"

Sandrez moved his arm around a bit.

"I'd hate to see it fully loaded with all the propellant"

He looked downrange. The bullet had passed through at fairly modest velocity and had left a hole much bigger than itself, by the looks of it, leaving a gaping, splintered hole with a nice view of dull steel behind.

"I see we're both on the same side in the exercise. How many of these will you be fielding? I wonder if you've got any automatic grenade launchers"

"We won't be fielding any of these rifles. We were considering modifying our contingent in light of seeing the foreign groups being much larger than ourselves, but shall not be. We will instead be using the place to our advantage, seeing as many of the men know the terrain.

There will be at least one AGL in the Battalion, attached to one of the Heavy platoons. The heavy platoons will mainly be armed with mortars and missile launchers. The thing is, the AGL complicates things in how it will work. We will be using paint grenades in it, spraying dye out on impact all around. The new system we use means they should be particularly effect."

By now, he'd finished assembling the other rifle.

"The ASF-2, the anti-infantry one we use. It fires 7.62mm NATO rounds from a 10-round box magazine. 7.62mm is more than enough for most ranges that snipers will work at, which is why this is a commonly-used one. It's much lighter, so can buck about a bit if you're not in complete control. Try it on the same target."

[OOC: The SeG-3 was kind of silently morphed from the SeG-60, which never existed...]

IC:

"Rifle-calibre, we use the SeG-3M Sniper Rifle, an SeG-3 with telescopic sight. We find a longer barrel doesn't really make a difference due to the range dictated by doctrine. Anyway, I recall the exercise would start in a few days. How many days will it be? I'd quite like to go out and get used to the land. May as well copy your style since we're on foreign turf. Well, when I say 'turf'"

"You can go on a little trip around the place if you want, to get to know some areas. Thing is, the place is so large it'll take you absolute ages to get an idea of the place. We'll introduce you to rainforest fighting, which I doubt your boys have ever done before, and show you how it's done. But you'll have two days to have a little explore. If you want, I can see about getting you a light aircraft."

Santiago couldn't think of any more questions at the moment, but no doubt something would come up down the road. By the sound of it he was going to be on the side with the Lyran commanders. Personally he thought of it as an honor to be fighting with them, even if it was just a training exercise. Once this meeting was over he would have to find the Lyran officer in charge and introduce himself, and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are for their combined forces. Already he was noticing serious flaws in the Mokan army simply by comparing it to other forces. Surely flaws that so far had been overcome, but still something he would need to have fixed soon. As the meeting was ending he got a call on his radio, it was Veracruz, apperently the Generalissimo was flying in to take command of the operation, but he would leave the fighting to Santiago.


Meanwhile at the airfield another Mokan plane landed, not a large cargo plane but a smaller plane often used for international flights with passangers on it. On the side it had the Red Star insignia, showing that it was a Mokan Military plane. As it taxied to the proper spot two Mokan Humvees raced over to it. Inside was Generalissimo Antonio Martinez, after all, how could he allow such an exciting exercise go without being there in person.

The Generalissimo exited the plan dressed in the typical uniform that all his men were in, camouflage jacket and pants with an olive green hat. The only difference was that he had a pistol on him and on his collar was two black stars instead of any other rank symbol. He quickly jumped inside the Humvees and drove off to the Mokan camp ground.

"That'd be much appreciated. You say three hours on the best roads, I presume it would take longer than that. I'd, at the very least, like to go up in the air with a camera and familiarise ourselves with our own speciality. We haven't done rainforests before, but we've done deserts. hard to believe when half the cargo the men have brought are skis.
I don't want to cause you too much trouble - we have our own non-combat helicopter"

"Don't you worry about difficulties: whatever you wish for, you'll get. A helicopter though would be excellent because we'd be able to land in the forest more easily, and get you a chance to see what it's really like.
If you're in the forest though, my advice is to bring insect repellent and mosquito nets. Anything you don't have you can sign out of stores, under my name, so don't worry about equipment."

"I'm sure we brought some of it. Thanks, Colonel - I think the expedition can begin tommorow. I'll see that the helicopter is fuelled and the pilots readied. Is there anything scheduled for these few days or are they free for everyone to do what they like? Well, within reason, I suppose"

The Humvee radioed into Alfegos HQ that Generalissimo Martinez of Mokastana had flown in to observe his commanders in the training exercise and meet with other leaders to discuss doctrine and tactics. He was currently going to check on his men at the barracks but afterward would like to meet with the men in charge.

As Santiago left the meeting room he walked outside and called his second in command via radio...

"Veracruz, how's the campsite?"

"Pretty good sir, soldiers are checking gear, some want to take the newer FXJ-05s and FX-05s to the range to get a feel for them. Also Martinez is coming to the camp."

"Ok then, I'll find a ride back to camp, you take the boys to the rifle range. I will try and get a hold of the range to figure out how many they can hold at once."

Santiago put up the radio and pulled out the map, looking for the rifle ranges or live fire exercise grounds. Turning around he decided that since he was already at the command center he would go back in and find the Alfgan commander and ask him for a ride back, as well as about the rifle ranges.

The General nodded to acknowledge the Mokan's re-entrance, and noted from the man's body language he wanted to leave. He had a quick word with one of his sub-ordinates, who promptly left escorting Santiago. After leaving the building, it was a quick walk down the dusty street to an awaiting Gecko Dune Buggy. He started it up, allowing the Mokan man to sit in as he radioed ahead to the Eastern Barracks. Further down the street, a line of eight men were busy sweeping the dust up and shovelling it into a dustcart, slowly rolling along the road.

"I'm Colonel Tia'lo. Pleased to meet you, sir. So, you're staying in the Eastern Barracks?"
The buggy roared off, dust shaking from it as it moved up the now-cleaned street towards a main road, past the many squat barrack buildings.
"I hear that you wish to use the camp ranges. You have three in your nearby area that you should be able to use if you get prior permission from the Barracks Head. There's the inside range, which has sixteen lanes, with a maximum of 100 metres. There, you're limited to 18mm cartridges as a maximum, with a muzzle energy limit as well. Also, that range will not allow the use of Machine guns.
If that's a problem, you can go on the nearby Infantry Training Range. That goes up to 1000m, with firing positions at every 100m, and with the limit being ball, hollowpoint and tracer ammunition only. The other range near you, the Heavy Weapon range, has firing positions every 100m up to 1800m, and has no limits on ammunition. Those last two ranges have fifty lanes each for weapons up to 20mm Autocannon, and 25 lanes for weapons over that."

-------------------------------------------

The general, whilst he had been busy in the meeting, had not been unaware of the Generalissimo's arrival. Knowing one of his Colonels would sort something out, he'd been confident in them sorting out something.

As the Mokan Humvees joined the main highway, they soon found themselves as part of a large motorcade organised by Alfegans. A pair of LY219 IFVs straddled the two lanes of the highway at the forefront, each bearing the insignia of the Alfegan Military Police. Two more joined at the rear, making sure all knew that this was an official motorcade and that no obstructions would get in the way.

"This is Welcoming Party 1 to the Generalissimo. On behalf of the Major-General, I wish to welcome you to the Neo'los training area, and hope that you enjoy your stay here. If you have anything you wish to know about or wish to have, I'm Captain Ol'as, and will be glad to help you whenever you need it."

------------------------------------

"The only thing you have scheduled is on the last of these two days, to your entire contingent. It's the standard safety briefing of all procedures during an exercise, with special attention being paid to the Gas Warfare Simulations. The same applies to anyone who wishes to use it. Oh, and there's the room inspections of the Platoon Barracks by me or my sub-ordinates, which will be every morning at 0800 hours.

Apart from that, you can get your men to do whatever you wish, provided you stay within the rules given and ask me before you go to any places, just so the staff can expect you."

"Well, I think I've had fun with all the weapons. It makes me quite happy, the feel of one against my shoulder. I think I'll turn in for the night, and go through some maps and paperwork. Well, before I've found my helicopter pilot. It's really very nice here, and makes a change from the Antigran barracks we get sometimes. We'll report for the briefings and such in the next two days"

"Excellent. Since I'm here, I'll shoot off a few rounds."
He opened the third case, revealing a P90. Quickly slotting in the top-feeding magazine, he let rip on the close targets, using a red dot sight to aim. Within a few seconds, the target had been obliterated, riddled with holes. He packed away the weapon quickly, before firing off the remaining rounds in the unfired weapons, checked they were safe before putting them away. The final thing he did was to slot his AP-89 into the leg holster, before leaving with the two big crates between them.
"Remember you can call me if you ever need anything. I live in the Camp Headquarters building, right next to the officer's lodgings that you are staying in. Your rooms won't be inspected, but try to keep them tidy please. The raising of the flag is at 0600 hours, so you'll hear a loud call on a trumpet then. The canteen is open from 0700 hours onwards, and the showers will have hot water between 0530 hours and 0730 hours. Inspection is at 0800 hours, and after that the day is yours for what your men want to do. You will not have to participate in the raising of the flag, but you can watch if you want. Dress code for watching the flag being raised is Number Twos SSO, so parade dress for warm climates."

He hefted the crates onto the back of the buggy, soon driving again through the camp to drop the weapons off, finally arriving back at where the Antigran was staying. The sun had almost set now, a beautiful red band across the extremely distant mountains just visible above the horizon. Blue lights had started turning on around the camp, a green one attracting many moths in the centre of the gardens in the Officer's block.

"Enjoy your nights sleep."

[OOC: I seem to be the OOC spammer here...I won't RP anything for me until morning, unless we'll come under attack at three 'o clock, because I'm out of ideas. I think I'm getting writer's block]

(OOC: Don't you worry mate. I don't have the problem at the moment, so I should be able to steer the RP to your liking. Thing is, I really need Lyras to engage a bit more in this, and get everyone up to speed since I don't like fluid time. In the meantime, here's a complimentary cookie (courtesy of jolt forums), and CSA-9.)

The General nodded to acknowledge the Mokan's re-entrance, and noted from the man's body language he wanted to leave. He had a quick word with one of his sub-ordinates, who promptly left escorting Santiago. After leaving the building, it was a quick walk down the dusty street to an awaiting Gecko Dune Buggy. He started it up, allowing the Mokan man to sit in as he radioed ahead to the Eastern Barracks. Further down the street, a line of eight men were busy sweeping the dust up and shovelling it into a dustcart, slowly rolling along the road.

"I'm Colonel Tia'lo. Pleased to meet you, sir. So, you're staying in the Eastern Barracks?"
The buggy roared off, dust shaking from it as it moved up the now-cleaned street towards a main road, past the many squat barrack buildings.
"I hear that you wish to use the camp ranges. You have three in your nearby area that you should be able to use if you get prior permission from the Barracks Head. There's the inside range, which has sixteen lanes, with a maximum of 100 metres. There, you're limited to 18mm cartridges as a maximum, with a muzzle energy limit as well. Also, that range will not allow the use of Machine guns.
If that's a problem, you can go on the nearby Infantry Training Range. That goes up to 1000m, with firing positions at every 100m, and with the limit being ball, hollowpoint and tracer ammunition only. The other range near you, the Heavy Weapon range, has firing positions every 100m up to 1800m, and has no limits on ammunition. Those last two ranges have fifty lanes each for weapons up to 20mm Autocannon, and 25 lanes for weapons over that."

-------------------------------------------

The general, whilst he had been busy in the meeting, had not been unaware of the Generalissimo's arrival. Knowing one of his Colonels would sort something out, he'd been confident in them sorting out something.

As the Mokan Humvees joined the main highway, they soon found themselves as part of a large motorcade organised by Alfegans. A pair of LY219 IFVs straddled the two lanes of the highway at the forefront, each bearing the insignia of the Alfegan Military Police. Two more joined at the rear, making sure all knew that this was an official motorcade and that no obstructions would get in the way.

"This is Welcoming Party 1 to the Generalissimo. On behalf of the Major-General, I wish to welcome you to the Neo'los training area, and hope that you enjoy your stay here. If you have anything you wish to know about or wish to have, I'm Captain Ol'as, and will be glad to help you whenever you need it."

------------------------------------


"Please to meet you Colonel Tia'lo, Captain Santiago, and yes I am staying in the eastern barracks with the Mokan forces. As for the ranges, we have been given a new rifle that some of the men want to see how good it is. 5.56x45mm rather then the usual 7.62x54mm most soldiers carry. Higher ups are beginning to think about quantity rather then stopping power. After all the 7.62 was adapted by a growing army that feared war with Kroando and those heavily armored ground soldiers. Command wanted something that could either get though the armor or mess them up enough to stop them. That is basically how we got the large standard round. So if I can get permission, I will have some of the ranks go to the Infantry training Range and fire off some ball ammo with both variants we have. The FX-05 and the FXJ-05, also called the FX5 and FX7 respectively."

_________________________________________________________________

"Welcome Party 1, this is Escort, nice to meet you guys here. I will now give the radio over to the Generalissimo."

"Generalissimo Martinez here, I was hoping to make a quiet entrance, but thank you for the Welcome. I think first I will check out the Mokan camps and make sure the men are not acting up. Then hopefully find a place I can watch the games from. I will not be commanding this one, I will leave that to my subordinates. Thank you Captain Ol'as."

"Excellent. We've used the 5.56mm calibre for years, though the paratroopers and aeromarines use an intermediate round for some reason. If you ask the Barracks Head once you arrive, that'll be just fine. Remember to follow all the camp rules with regards to weaponry."
He drove on, foot near the floor as they moved at high speed towards the camp.

________________________________________

"Welcome sir. It's an honour to have you here. If you follow us, we'll have you at the camp in no time. I'm sure that you will like the accommodation, and I think that the General will have something planned for you in regards to observation already. Captain Ol'as, over and out."

Generalissimo Martinez rode on in the back of the humvee until they made it to the Mokan camps, pratically at the same time his captain pulled in. In front where the vehicles were coming a bunch of soldiers were playing football in the "parking lot." With two makeshift goals made out by parking Ironhearts at either side it was considered a score if you hit the Ironheart. Guns didn't count. As they kicked the ball back and forth a few men watching turned to see the convoy with the Fegosian Military police escorting it, followed closely by another vehicle, also Fegosian.

"Pienso que the captain is loving Alfgan hospitality a little to much."

"Si, look at that escort."

Only when the cars slowed down they saw another man get out, the Generalissimo himself.

"Chingale, what is he doing here?"

Not many soldiers like Generalissimo Martinez, mainly because he was trying to modernize the Mokan Army, not in terms of firepower or logistics, but in terms of tactics, and more importantly to him, discipline and culture. His biggest hurtle was getting his men to believe in the salute again. It was easy to get a salute out of them, after all it was considered a death wish, and if he wanted them to point him out as an officer, so be it. However simpler things like "drop everything and salute when an officer walks into the room" was not going well over for him. Upon seeing him the soldiers not in the game stood in salute, while those in the game were still to focused on that to notice or care who was in the car.

Behind them the Captain just looked out the window and saw the Generalissimo walking out of the Humvee and thought outloud.

"Surprise inspection, this will go over well."

The convoy rolled to a stop, the four sections of men quickly leaving and running to form a guard of honour behind the generalissimo and his staff. The military police were dressed in standard 2-colour desert DPMs, the differing features being a pair of handcuffs on their belts, a large pair of mudguards on shoulders proclaiming them to be Police, and a mix of submachine-gun weapons prevalent as armament. All came to a halt, stiffly saluting as they stamped a halt. Behind, the dune buggy pulled to a standstill, the colonel leaving with his Mokan charge as he saluted the Generalissimo.

Between the long, large platoon barrack buildings, another pair of dune buggies pulled up. From them disembarked the Barrack Head Staff: the Colonel, his Lieutenant-Colonel, the Armourer Head and the Garrison Lieutenant, all in their No. 2 parade dress uniforms. The Colonel advanced from the staff group, saluting the Generalissimo as a Colour Sergeant roared across the car park.
"Parade! Parade... 'shun!"
The Alfegans not standing to attention quickly snapped to, a loud crash of boots hitting the tarmac and reverberating between the buildings. The Camp Colonel began speaking.
"Welcome to the Eastern Barracks. I hope the facilities here are adequate to your needs, and wish you a warm welcome to my camp. If you would like to follow me, I will escort you around the camp."

Dismounting form the buggy, the other Colonel smiled at his charge.
"Well, here we are. I hope you like it here. I will escort you around here for as long as you need."
Behind him, an ekranoplan roared in past the car parking zone, landing at one of the nearby concrete circles that could double as helipads. Whilst the engines idled, the on-board crew removed large wooden crates from the side, loading them into waiting lorries before roaring off.
"Well, here's your training ammunition. Each of those boxes contains 40 000 rounds in your wanted calibres, so enough I think to last you this exercise."

Lieutenant Veracruz looked over the ammunition being brought in by the plane. 7.62x54mm rounds, 5.56X45mm rounds, 9x60mm rounds, and of course, .45 Caliber rounds. Why pistol rounds were in English and rifle in metric was another trait left over from the Mokan's army beginning. However it did make it easier to order and ship munitions. Anything Caliber went here, anything metric there. Popping open one of the crates he pulled out a single 7.62x54mm wax round. He looked it over and wondered how the weapons would handle wax instead of lead/steel. Hopefully they would be just as effective.

"thank you. (to the men around him) I need 1,000 training rounds of each caliber to be brought with the range teams. As well as one crate of each caliber live rounds."

behind him the Generalissimo's parade was coming in. However he was more concerned with getting this taken care of then to waste time standing at attention for his commander. Luckily he was far enough off that he didn't have to.

Meanwhile back at the greeting, the Generalissimo returned the salute and repsonded.

"I would appreciate a tour, hopefully the men have been well behaved, and taking care of their equipment."

Just as he said that the soccer ball bounced off a KWF PAK2 25mm automatic cannon on one of the Ironhearts. Bouncing it into the path that the Generalissimo was about to take. The Generalissimo watched this happen and called over a Sargent who seemed to be the referee in the game. After a few quiet words in Spanish the Sargent walked back to the group and yelled to them that now they had to clean all the Ironhearts in camp.

Behind all of this Santiago watched and saw the Generalissimo turn to him.

"Keep the camp under your thumb, I expect this operation to run perfectly."

"Si, Generalissimo Martinez"

[OOC: Just to let you know, I'll be away Tuesday 'til Friday, quite possibly without internet access]

The crew on the ekranoplan moved over to the large wooden crates, opening them and dropping off large packs of 1000 rounds. Wooden boxes, each stamped with a series of official marks, including some import marks from overseas factories. Taking the clipboard on the side of each crate in succession, the Warrant Officer wrote in the removal of the rounds, followed by his signature, before signalling for the Mokans to collect them or to help move the rest of the ammunition to the Ammunition Dump.

Meanwhile, the Colonel had passed the car park where the offending soldiers were now hard at work, moving past the long buildings.
"Each of these blocks here will hold a platoon, with sleeping quarters, a small social area for eating and entertainment, and a small garage at the rear to hold platoon vehicles and the platoon armoury. The whole lot comes pre-fabricated, and can be erected by a platoon in under 6 hours. It has running water, sewerage collection and electricity. Hot water comes from the ground pipes buried underneath us, which collect heat from the soil and use that to heat water. In total, there are 30 of these blocks here, arranged in groups of six towards the rear end of the camp. Near to the entrance, here we have the specialist buildings."

[OOC: Mok? Lyras?]

OOC: Sorry, I am here, just have trouble getting to all the RPs I am in...

IC:

As Veracruz allowed the Fegosian to sign off for the rounds he took his own inventory. Watching the Mokan soldiers handle the rounds, following the Alfgans to the supply depot, or to the trucks, whichever they were being sent to. Keeping tabs on the supplies was one of his more important duties, since the Generalissimo preferred to keep his nose in everything. Not to say that he usually didn't keep the records in order, just that with the Jefe here, it was all suppose to look very professional.

As the trucks of wax rounds loaded up Veracruz took a separate sheet to keep track of the containers being sent, the totals of rounds, and prepared the paperwork for "review."


Meanwhile the Generalissimo continued on the tour of the Mokan camp looking at the prefabricated wonders of what appeared to be a fully functional camp.

"So you are telling me in 6 hours this camp has hot water, sewage clean up, electricity and underground pipelines? I take it you need some specialized equipment to get the pipes down deep enough to heat water with it. How deep is that exactly?"

"The piping goes down three metres into the ground, with the utility conduits at one metre below the ground. Digging is done using a L-SV Construction unit, fitted with a bucket excavator, with installation done by hand mostly. The utility piping uses a special pipe-laying adaptation that digs a hole ahead, feeds in the pipe, then buries it again. It's used for laying it between junction boxes, which are installed separately by the Engineering Corps. Most work is done using soldiers themselves or convicts, so labour is never much of an issue."

The Colonel continued walking down between the buildings, soon reaching two ramps, covered by large folding doors. Next to them, low concrete structures were marked by large white stencilled labels, proclaiming their purpose.
"These are the repair shops and underground vehicle storage bays, for specialist vehicles, logistics, and those that have no space during a sandstorm. The underground facilities at this camp are much more extensive than it seems, with the ammunition dump and main armouries being located underground as well. Those two buildings are located further up, near to the range, stores and offices. Would you like to look around the repair bays?"

"It seems you have quite a set up out here. I hope our engineers are taking notes to make sure we have an equally effective set up back home. After all with the next international station being put up in Wellovia we need to make sure we have all the modern and post modern wonders."

He looked over his shoulder to see a Mokan Soldier taking notes, and keeping track of what the Generalissimo is thinking, or planning.

Back at the munitions area Veracruz was getting the men ready to go to the ranges. Trucks were being loaded up and soon enough they would be heading out.

"Alfgan Command, this is Party wagon one, heading out to the range."

The Colonel walked over to one of the sliding metal doors, typing in a code on an exterior keypad to allow him in. The door slid up, the rippling showing that, surprisingly, it was a fabric.
"A large quantity of our lightweight construction has shown to be cheaply possible using waste from the airship industry, in particular the AeroFibre used in the construction of the envelopes. At a thickness of 20mm, or five sheets, it is pretty much bullet-proof, yet is able to keep out the draught. And the material's low mass means that the entire thing can be lifted by a single person without too much difficulty. And at a snip of the price of your metal doors.
Before you think that you can have some though, I'll just remind you that the military has dibs on the waste stuff first, and the major airship companies second. Little of this gets through to the civilian sectors at the price we can get for it, so don't get your hopes up here. Maybe in your great factories back home they'll be churning out this stuff."

Inside, a group of dune buggies stood parked in the corner, sheets wrapped around them and numbers indicated the assigned men. In the centre, one of the buggies was in the process of re-assembly, the motor hanging from a winch operated by a pair of engineers. It was slowly moved into position, whilst others attended to checking the tightened mounts and surrounding assortment of machinery. Next to it, an L-SV was being dismantled, the rear chassis unit being replaced with a L-SVC construction module. At the front, a bulldozer blade was sitting waiting to be fitted, once the workers around the moved cabs had finished with the engine adjustments. Across the garage, loud D'n'B music pumped from a hi-fi mounted on top of a tool chest.
"This garage mainly deals with patrol and armoured vehicles. The other one deals with the logistics vehicles, the garage there holding about nine trucks and assorted rear module changes. If you need any repairs at all, just call them from outside and they'll deal with it. Any questions before we move on?"

bump?

[I concur. Where is everyone? Like I said, I won't RP myself until next morning comes]

[I wouldn't let this thread die. Be a man and kick it like a stereotype Spaniard with lazy mule]

OOC: sorry if i dropped the ball here, but hey if you want I was about to start a historical RP of the original Political Wars of Mokastana, some governments would be hiring international Mercs and/or "advisers" no big deployments, just small groups, preferably keep it character based...

since historically it wasn't until the civil war that we became international...

also where is alfegos?

here

[*Resuscitates thread* Mokastana's turn. Post]

OOC: on a side note, Alfegos, i was going to post info on the Fegosian Union Stock Exchange on the Union thread, but it needs a moderator approval....

(OOC: Sorry about the mucked-up system... it should work now. You and Zaheran should notice a few changes about your accounts, and the visible forums... but back to the plot.)

The Generalissimo looked around, engineering was not his strong suit but judging by the equipment around the area it seemed to be very effective at the job of keeping the vehicles working.

"No, I think your forces have this place working perfectly. Now to get the rest of my army to follow suit."


Meanwhile Veracruz was with some of the men firing off live rounds as well as some wax round to get the feel for the difference, and to judge any problems that might occur with any of the weapons. So far some men were placing bets on the two top marksmen in the company. They were shooting with the older AM-07s, the newer FX7s, and even the FX-05s. The game was simple, two targets at 100 yards, no scopes. The one with the three holes closest to the center wins, one shot per gun.

Around them the rest of unit was firing away practicing with live ammo, however each got 30 rounds of each caliber of wax round to practice with.
Once they ran out, it was time to head home and start cleaning.

The party left the garage, to enter up onto the surface. By now, the winds had lessened to a very light breeze, bright blue patches of sky appearing above. The Colonel walked across the road, where a group of men on cleaning duty had swept most of the dust into the gutters, where another team were picking it up and shovelling it into a waste truck.
"We can collect up the dust and use it in the hydroponics plants in Neo'vi as a fertiliser in the algae vats. It's amazing what they can do with the stuff they make there, though they mostly just use it in bread and pastry substitutes where they can't import the real stuff. All your necessary minerals and vitamins, plus they use some of it to break down the sewerage sludge into organics and methane."

By now, they had passed the armoury and stores.
"These two buildings are off limit without permission. If you wish to collect any supplies, you will need to ask the officer of the area first, including any extra non-Mokan food, uniforms, medical supplies and other such stuff. You will have to ask me first to view any of the heavy or special weapons, or take them out for testing."

They continued walking, finally reaching the Officer's Accommodation. It was a winged building, two long low buildings either side of a central garden and main office. The central garden held a large reservoir of water, covered over in plastic to stop loss. Growing around it was lush grass and a few large palm trees.
"The central building holds the camp offices and the camp head lodgings, for me and my senior staff. The west wing holds your accommodation and the canteen. The east wing holds the officer entertainment and fitness facilities, as well as the lodgings on the top floor for the camp ancillary personnel. You will get the chance to look around now if you want, or when you return here to lodge."

[Mokastana, you're pretty much letting this thread die and the resulting frequent rescucitations are turning this roleplaying thread into an OOC playground]

"Actually yes, I would like a quick tour, its been a long flight and I believe some rest is in order. I am sure Santiago and Veracruz are taking care of what needs to be done as well as keeping tabs on the information you give me. Isnt that right Santiago?"

"Yes sir, everything is in order and we got the base set up down."

"Good, now get back to camp and get it cleaned up."

"yes Sir!"

OOC: crappy post, i thought i already responded to this one. Can we just fluid time to the battle?

(OOC: I've been suffering writers block with these last few threads since I decided to post here. I'm not sure exactly where this one's going to go, especially since Lyras has hardly posted. Thus, I'll keep this thread in the freezer, and defrost it should anyone have a sudden urge to continue it. I hope there are no objections, but the only other courses are to go find someone this instant (who won't be clued on how this will work), or continue with the foreplay to the main event that is this escorting around the separate bases. I'll be happy to do a separate thread with either of you two based on this same theme - just PM/TG me.)

[OOC: I have no objections. We could timeskip to the first day and go straight to a massive battle royale or freeze it, like you said. No helpful ideas from me, I'm afraid]

OOC: yeah, just put it on ice until something happens

Im trying to revive Montana Inc as well so maybe we do something with that later

[OOC: Writer's block, did you say? Well, it comes and goes, I just shook it off. You may want to revive this whenever you're enthusiastic to do so, I'm happy either way]