NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Yes, I stole the name from one of my/Leistung's earlier RPs. Nobody laugh at the cliche.

This is closed to everyone but those pre-approved by me in the OOC (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=585072)thread and to international responses and statements. Yadda yadda, making my post look better because of this ridiculous advertisement bar. Bloody capitalism.



“Freidlichen will never go to war. It is with this in mind that the original Military Spending Act was passed, and it is with this in mind that this revision shall too be passed into law, creating a more harmonious society for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children.”
-Prime Minister Hansel Bonn, on the Military Spending Act of 1987


The soft voice of the radio host came over the airwaves as he always did at seven thirty, speaking in a barely audible whisper which to an outsider would have sounded like the absolutely most pretentious, falsely reverential tone a human being could ever assume. “Good morning Freidlichen; it’s seven thirty and we’ll be coming at you all day with the best in Mozart, Beethoven, and of course, our very own Johann Kuester. Listen in to this cool tune and remember, Freidlichers—live every day like it was your last.” Sophie physically smacked her forehead at the clichéd line, the likes of which were becoming all too common on these so-called ‘cool tunes’ radio stations in Altenberg.

Signing off on yet another generic piece of civil rights legislation passed unanimously through parliament, she rubbed her eyes, ink from her pen smearing on her eyebrows. Damn it, she thought, wetting a tissue and pulling a makeup kit out from the top desk drawer. Peering in the mirror, she rubbed her eyebrows clean and stopped for a moment to look at her reflection. While foreign politicians she had met during her tenure as Prime Minister of Freidlichen had droopy eyes, prematurely graying hair, and a host of other issues which seemed to transform them into ancient replicas of their former selves, Sophie looked exactly the same as she had the day she assumed office some two years ago.

She had been complimented on it numerous times at galas and conferences, parties and summits, but in truth, it frightened her more than any other issue in Freidlichen. Was it really that Freidlichen was so benign that her job was that calm? Over the past two years she had watched helplessly as more and more power was turned over from the elected assembly and herself to the Crown Prince, who, for the past two hundred years, had been a figurehead more than anything else. It had reached the point, in fact, where her day-to-day duties were centered more around catering to the whims of the various activist groups which bombarded her office with pleas to save the whales, save the chimps, save the children, and she swore, once, save the Neo-Nazi movement (it was not an altogether far-fetched idea, in fact—Freidlichen’s free speech ideals had given rise to groups so far left and right wing that they ceased to even exist on the normal political spectrum), than the actual duties a head of government would normally assume.

“Miss Metzger?” The voice of Sophie’s secretary broke her rather dismal train of thought, a line of thinking she was only too happy to be rid of for a while. “The Crown Prince is here to see you.” Oh Lord. Perhaps the only thing worse than lamenting what should have been her administration’s role in government was actually meeting the man responsible for power being taken away from parliament and her on a daily basis.

She grimaced and pressed the intercom button to her secretary’s desk. “Send him in,” she replied, running her hands through her hair and standing from her chair. Crown Prince Erich Krause von Freidlichen XXI was an imposing man by any standards, but the manner in which he entered Sophie’s office that morning both infuriated (for the man had neither knocked nor greeted her upon entering) and frightened her. With an enraged look on his face he sat in the chair opposite her desk, bidding her sit.

Sophie cleared her throat and folded her legs. “What brings you here this morning, your Highness? Have I been deposed?” Krause ignored the barely concealed contempt in the Prime Minister’s comment and coughed to clear his own throat.

“The National Defense Committee tells me that our neighbor to the north has been mobilizing forces on our border,” the Crown Prince said, picking up Sophie’s mug of coffee and taking a sip, completely ignorant to the fact that she had, only moments ago, taken a drink herself from the same cup. “I suppose you are completely uninformed, so shall I go over the specifics?”

“It would be easier to be informed if the Committee answered to the leader elected by the people rather than yourself alone, your Highness,” Sophie snapped back. “Besides, Zakrapat has mobilized before—they may simply be saber-rattling, as they tend to do every twelve minutes or so.” The Holy Empire of Zakrapat (an ironic name if there ever was one; Zakrapat’s government ruled over a mere one hundred million souls, and it was the farthest thing from religiously-minded) had indeed saber-rattled in the past, but even without the details of the move, Sophie knew that it was cause for concern. Mere months ago Zakrapat’s entire supply of oil had dried up, wells shutting down throughout the nation. They had turned to the infamous Griffencrest Corporation for assistance, and since that time, no aggressive moves had been made, though the Zakrapatian army was reported to have been vastly expanded for, to the government of Freidlichen’s knowledge, no particular reason.

The absence of saber-rattling over the past four or five months was initially met with relief, but the general feeling in parliament soon turned to suspicion. This sudden aggressive move would certainly unnerve the politicians, though the people would likely just shake their heads at the Zakrapatian embassy and sing hymns to whichever New Age thinker they had decided to embrace this week.

“You and I both know that any move of this sort must be met by calmness and dignity,” Krause said, raising his chin and causing Sophie to flick her eyes upward at the melodramatically noble gesture. “We mustn’t seem weak by appealing to larger nations for assistance, and we mustn’t seem antagonistic by mobilizing our own forces on the border.”

“And if I should think differently?”

“Then I will be speaking to a different Prime Minister by next week,” the Crown Prince replied calmly. “You know that the people will demand your resignation if you call up the reserves—they have not been summoned since the Eighteenth Century; and if you have yet to notice, our people would not be overly happy at the idea of leaving their lives to march through the mountains and confront a non-existent foe.” The Crown Prince was right, of course, and both he and Sophie knew it. There was a feeling she couldn’t shake about this turn of events, though—the Zakrapatian Czar was no fool, and the buildup of the Zakrapatian military was certainly not an issue that should have been tiptoed around. Regardless of her personal feelings though, she would undoubtedly be deposed should she call up the reserves without the Zakrapatians literally breaking down the gates of Altenberg, and the title of Commander-in-Chief would pass to the Crown Prince, leaving Freidlichen in the same position as if she were to do nothing.

“Send any further reports to my office directly, if you please, your Highness,” she said, catching herself halfway through the line and adding a pleasantry at the end so as not to seem too informal with the Crown Prince of Freidlichen. “If there are any further reports, of course.”

“I doubt there will be, Prime Minister,” Krause replied nonchalantly. “Zakrapat is of no concern to us.”

OOC: Foreshadowing for future mercenary involvement; further, character introduction (Lee Jets). The bank in question is just a local credit union, not an FBG branch.

"First off, I want to apologize that I'm here instead of David. He's had a complex contract to work out, and it's kept him in the office the last few nights," Ming Law said, leaving out the nature of the contract. No reason to give the fool early warning.

"That's quite alright. I understand you're here to talk about mercenaries?" Mondo Advertising replied. He wore his perpetually goofy smile like a shield, Ming thought.

"I'm here to discuss our proposal to set up a private security firm. There is a clear market for such a firm, considering the level of instability in the world -"

"And we'll break into the market how?" Mondo cut in. Ming glared. Let me finish, you idiot, she thought.

"Considering the level of instability in the world, we could definitely find a niche. We'd focus on providing security to facilities and installations, VIP protection, and similar roles. We envision detachments of about 100 to 300 men being deployed, with primarily infantry equipment, though light ships and some aircraft would also potentially be of use -"

"So how do we break in?"

"The security firm would allow us to give our security forces experience. It would raise our profile, and the profile of our weapons. It would allow us to showcase them -"

"You're ignoring the one question of importance -"

"Of course there's a market! Do you know how damn big this planet is?" Damn, that was off-script.

"Nonresponsive. You should be ashamed; your law professors would be. Rejected!" Mondo said, then hummed a little ditty.

"But -"

Mondo stood up, then said, "Seriously, is that your big idea? Mercenaries, but not even on a strong enough level to be worth a damn in battle? Go tell your boss to try something...bigger." Ugh, was that a pelvic thrust?
---
Lee Jets grimaced as he walked over to the little command post the cops had set up. Some morons had tried to rob a bank, and were now holding hostages. Among those hostages was the director of research for the propfan division of Eichi Jets, so her personal platoon got called up. Which was all well and good, except he had to deal with the dumbass local cops on the scene. Half of them were probably Triad members anyway.

"So, what's the situation?" he asked the cop in charge.

"Five suspects, armed with carbines, took over the bank an hour ago. They want a flight out of the country and 5 million in USD. They say they'll shoot a hostage every fifteen minutes, starting in ten minutes, if their demands aren't met." The cop was shaking a bit. Ooh, something harder than your typical shakedowns of tourists? Lee laughed.

"Just let us professionals handle this."

Probably disgruntled factory workers. They probably bribed the supervisor to let them take a few samples from the production line.

The first texts from the snipers' observations came in - one, two, three, four targets identified. Two were easy shots, three weren't. Lee then talked with the other squad leaders in his platoon. A few minutes later, everything was set.

The snipers' shots took down the clear targets. A millisecond after they fired, a missile blew a hole in the side wall of the bank, distracting everyone. Tear gas grenades were fired into the bank through the jimmied-open front door, and Lee's squad moved in, even as Two and Three squads moved in from the side. Everyone shouted "Stay down! Stay down!", and the suspects who weren't shot were swiftly detained. They were on the floor, coughing and vomiting. Hadn't they ever heard of tear gas before? Had they never been in - or even near - a riot? No matter.

So, three dead (including one hostage - just a bank teller, nothing too serious), and the rest vomiting and coughing. No casualties on his side, and just two bullets, a missile, and a few tear gas grenades used. All in all, a successful outing.

For some time now, the Griffincrest Corporation had been pumping oil into the cold, corrupt, miserable nation of Zakrapat, just as it had done for dozens of other nations around the world. That was, however, until Claudius Griffincrest realized that he had a bit more to gain from his arrangement with the ex-Soviet puppet.

Just to the south of Zakrapat lay the nation of Freidlichen, a nearly defenseless nation in terms of military size today, and a nation of vast wealth within its borders. This stood in stark contrast to Zakrapat, nearly Friedlichen's exact opposite, with a large military and a near destitute populace. Claudius sought to capture the wealth of Freidlichen, and in doing so also to broaden oil sales into that nation, and he was going to use the military of Zakrapat to do his dirty work.

Military advisors had started flying into the country months ago, along with weapons and supplies. In just a short time, the poor quality Warsaw Pact military of Zakrapat was beginning to look more and more as if it could compete on the modern world stage, and this competition was likely, given the interventionalist nature of the world today. These advisors did not bring only weapons, they also brought money, and lots of it, to ensure that they had the loyalty of the Zakrapatian generals and politicians. Those that did not seem loyal had a tendency to have "accidents", or would dissappear in rather mysterious ways.

Finally, now, after months of training and re-arming, the Corporation decided it was the right time to strike. The Zakrapatian Army had massed all along the border, and as soon as the order was given, they began to surge over it, smashing through guard posts and seizing small towns and other assets close to the border. Overhead, Mi-28 gunships and MiG-25's provided air cover, firing off munitions indiscriminately into anything that seemed to be evn of remote military value in the area now being invaded. These strike were supported by the simultaneous launch of over five hundred TOS-1 Boratino's, raining down absolute hell upon those within Freidlichen. The armoured fist of Zakrapat, mostly Griffincrest supplied Mercury APC's and Soviet made T-72's, made a dash to cut as far inland as possible.

The surprise attack was a low move, and Claudius knew that. It was opted for, however, because it would hopefully allow the Zakrapatian forces to seize the nation quickly, before international forces could come to Freidlichen's aid. Griffincrest had set a timetable. They wanted to be in the capital within two weeks. Time would tell if the table would be met.

OOC: Altenberg is very close to the northern border—all you have to do is pass through an undefended mountain range and you’re in the heart of Freidlichen. The push towards the capital shouldn’t take more than two or three days.

Altenberg, Freidlichen

Sophie awoke from her slumber with a jolt, the encounter of the previous day weighing heavily on her conscience. She rubbed her eyes and pushed back the covers, flicking the light switch next to her bed and pushing the hair out of her eyes. She walked over to the windows of her private residence and pulled back the curtains, revealing downtown Altenberg in early morning. It was a beautiful city certainly, the crystal blue waters of the city’s central canal snaking through the buildings and reflecting the morning sun into her eyes as the first people emerged from their apartments into the cold air.

A sound foreign to her broke the sereneness as a siren louder than any she had ever heard before reverberated through the apartment, raising and falling in volume until it took on the properties of a single clear note. A blinding flash of light accompanied a deafening blast and three objects which she identified as fighter planes zoomed at high speed over her apartment, the engines shaking a glass of water off her mantle to smash on the wood floor below.

Her eyes widened as smoke began to billow out of numerous buildings and the siren continued to blare. The peaceful lines of pedestrians on the streets below scattered, running with briefcases over their heads to cover as another three airplanes whizzed overhead, dropping another series of explosives in quick succession. Sophie reached for her cellular phone on the table next to the window in a daze, grasping at air until she felt the plastic cover under her fingers. She began to dial a number hastily, but her phone began to ring as she hit the number seven button and she quickly hit the green talk button, putting the speaker up to her ear. “H-hello?”

“Miss Metzger, we’re ascending the stairwell to your apartment now. Stay calm and remain in your room until we arrive,” the voice on the other side of the receiver demanded, his tone fluctuating between resolve and fear. “Do not, under any circumstances, leave your room, Prime Minister.”

“Alright…who is this?” she asked, still in a daze.

“Lieutenant Bayer of the Freidlicher Guard—we’re ten seconds away; all your questions can be answered when you’re safe, Miss Metzger.” The phone cut out to silence and Sophie retreated to the window again, gazing outward as smoke began to obscure her view of the street below. A knock on the door was followed by the sounds of smashing wood as the door frame crumpled and collapsed inward.

Four men in grey and black flecktarn uniforms burst through the gap in the wall, three fanning out with weapons and one sprinting to where Sophie was standing at the window. “Prime Minister, we need to move now,” he yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the blasts outside. Without waiting for a response, the uniformed man grabbed Sophie’s arm and dragged her out into the hall before turning to the remaining three men.

“I’m going to clear the rest of these floors—you three escort the Prime Minister to the safe zone,” he said, grabbing the shoulder of one of the three armed soldiers. The man nodded in response and beckoned for Sophie to follow, but the lieutenant extended a hand to stop him. “Corporal—if anyone tries to stop you…don’t hesitate to do your duty. Shoot to kill.” The corporal, identified as Hans Koenig by his name tag, swallowed and nodded again before taking off at a run towards the end of the hall, Sophie and the other two men following close behind as smoke began to billow into the hall.

Ten Miles South of the Zakrapatian-Freidlicher border

Alois held his newborn son tightly in his arms in a futile attempt to stop his crying. T-72 tanks emblazoned with the Zakrapatian coat of arms had begun rumbling into his village only a few hours ago, and the procession did not appear to be stopping. The tanks shook the very floor he slept on, awaking him much in the same fashion hundreds of thousands of other Freidlichers would be awoken that very morning. Standing with his wife and child in the freezing cold mountain pass which housed his village and his home, he watched as men in green camouflage jackets and dark grey ushankas paraded through the barely-paved street leading away from the border further inland.

Resistance collapsed literally within seconds as the lead Zakrapatian soldiers simply shot anyone outside their houses when the column began its trek through the tiny, insignificant village. Their bodies were being piled up near a group of soldiers who were drinking heavily from vodka bottles from the village’s liquor store (the owner had been shot as well when he tried to protest), and more and more bodies seemed to be piling up as droves of civilians asleep and at peace mere hours ago were accused of various crimes against Zakrapat and summarily shot.

Three of the marching soldiers approached him and his family, balaclavas covering their mouths and noses and Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. The lead man spoke in a heavy Russian accent. “Shut up the baby,” he said plainly, pointing towards Alois’ son, the other two nodding and pointing also at the small child who was still wailing. Alois nodded quickly and placed a pacifier in his son’s mouth, the child mercifully quieting as if he knew the alternative. The soldier turned his attention to Alois’ wife next, gesturing for her to come closer.

Alois’ eyes darted from her to the soldier and back to her as she tentatively moved forwards. The soldier grabbed her and pulled her towards him, whispering something in Russian in her ear and throwing her to one of his fellows. Alois moved forwards towards the soldiers and contorted his face in rage but was quickly bludgeoned with the butt of an AK-74 and collapsed onto the snow, his son falling next to him and starting to cry yet again. The lead soldier put a boot on his chest and pressed down, causing him to howl in pain while the other two led the young woman forcefully towards a makeshift encampment near the ruins of city hall (fires still burned in the building itself from the onslaught of thermobaric rockets launched in the early moments of the attack).

Snow began to fall again, starkly contrasting with the black smoke rising from most of the now flaming houses and the streaks of scarlet red blood which seemed to be everywhere, all leading towards the ever-growing pile of bodies. The soldier released Alois and walked briskly back towards the encampment, where sounds of a struggle between a woman’s voice and a group of men’s could be heard vividly. A scream preceded a single gunshot and another body was added to the pile.

E-91 Connector to Altenberg

The road leading to Altenberg was one of the widest in the nation, though it only really consisted of six lanes, three going north, three going south. It was on this road, twenty miles south of the border and only ten miles north of Altenberg herself, that the sole Freidlicher Guard armored division was making its stand. With only two hundred-odd Leopard 2 tanks able to be mustered to defend the vital road, the sight of the division was somewhat underwhelming to the suburbanites surrounding Altenberg.

“Here they come,” Karl muttered with dread, peering through the viewfinder on his Leopard 2A6 tank. He turned to his crew, whose expressions were just as worrisome to the beleaguered civilians as his own. “Maybe if we just explain our neutrality they’ll call the whole thing off…” he said, in a half-hearted attempt at a joke. No one laughed.

“Helicopter coming over the horizon,” Karl’s tank commander said, keeping his eyes on his own viewfinder and motioning towards him to make ready to fire. “Elevate gun to ten degrees and load M830A1 rounds.” The loader placed a round in the main gun of the behemoth and gave a thumbs up to Karl. “Fire main gun!” he exclaimed. The helicopter literally vaporized, shards of metal shooting out on all sides as a ball of flame engulfed the spot where the aircraft had been hovering.

“Nice shot, Karl!” the commander yelled as the loader and driver let out a cheer. “Recalibrate for anti-tank fire and advance with the division.” The line of Freidlicher tanks advanced slowly towards the approaching mass of hostiles, firing indiscriminately as they moved, the sounds of 120mm guns exploding mixing in with the screams of the wounded and the rumbling of the armor on the autobahn.

~ Citadel, Frederickstown. Central Briefing Room. ~

"...and if you gentlemen agree, we project that we'll be able to complete the Arcangelo Project well ahead of schedule with additional costs of only ten to eleven billion dollars," said Varáinn, stepping over to turn off the projector. "Are there any questions?"

A hand went up, visible in the half-light provided by the candelabrae and gas lamps. On the far side of the room a tired voice said: "The Council recognizes the honourable Sir Anicid."

"Sir Varáinn," said Elgon Anicid, patriarch of his eponymous noble House, "I believe you have explained your position satisfactorily. However, I once again wish to call into question whether the Arcangelo Project is worth attempting in the first place. It is quite costly already, and is it really worth attempting to maintain such a military edge when any advantages Saevitia gains technologically are far outweighed by the size and scope of the militaries of --"

Iapetus Varáinn sighed: Anicid made this argument practically every time he campaigned for more funding for his department. As the Crown Secretary of Defense, Varáinn naturally believed that a sufficient budget could outweigh any numerical or technological disadvantages. He was preparing a time-tested rebuttal when the door opened and Sir Gerard Karajan entered, doffing his hat as he did.

"-- Ah, good morning, Sir Karajan."

"Good morning, gentlemen," said Karajan, not turning to look at the other. "And Sir Anicid. Pray continue."

"Where was I? Ah yes, any minor technological advances the Saevitian Royal Navy maintains will be rendered irrelevant due to the vastly larger and more combat-oriented navies fielded by nations in the five-to-fifteen billion range, of which, needless to say, there are many."

Varáinn said: "On its own home turf, SARN is the most powerful and advanced navy there is. An invasion force of thrice its number of ships would be hard pressed to take even part of the Saevitian Archipelago without paying dearly for it in blood. Every advancement we make further strengthens the safety of Saevitia itself. Any other questions?"

No hands went up. Varáinn nodded decisively. "Good. Make a note of it for the ballots. I now yield the floor to Sir Karajan."

Sir Gerard Karajan came forward now into the light. Brushing a few silver hairs back from his face he said: "I present today new intelligence, brought to us by Eastern Command. The illegitimate state of Zakrapat is currently launching an invasion of the nation of Friedlichen. This is a disturbing development, as previously we had assumed its mobilization to be a military exercise or a similar matter of internal consequence only."

Karajan turned to the laptop computer, pressed a few keys and turned on the projector. It displayed satellite images from the Friedlichen-Zakrapat border. "Sources have indicated that Zakrapat is being propped up primarily by foreign money at this point. As it is not considered a legitimate state by the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, we cannot enact diplomatic sanctions against it of any kind, nor issue a declaration of war. Thus, the only recourse available to us is economic action, which, coincidentally, would also damage Zakrapat the most."

A hand went up. The recorder said: "The Council recognizes Sir Anselm von Browning."

von Browning stood. "Could you remind the Council once again why Saevitia should seek to support this... Friedlichen?"

"Certainly," Sir Karajan beamed. "First of all, we have an embassy in Altenberg. Mister Jourdan and his family may not be noblemen, but they are certainly wealthy and influential, and if they were to die it would spark outrage in the streets and canals of Frederickstown....."

~ Altenberg. The same day, 0645 hours Friedlichen time. ~

Andreas Jourdan awoke with a start. Perhaps it was the sirens; perhaps it was the sound of aircraft passing overhead; perhaps it was the shouts and noises from without, muffled by the walls of the complex, but not deadened completely. Or perhaps it was the sound of his bedroom door opening. It took him a few seconds to absorb all of that, and when he was done, he couldn't remember what had caused it.

"Good morning, Sir," said the Marine, whose nametag indicated that he was Corporal Thomas Paine.

"'Morning, Corporal," said Jourdan, untangling himself from the bedsheets and sitting up. "What's going on?"

"The city is under attack, sir," said Paine, moving to the window to look out, before fastening it shut with steel shutters. "I'd recommend you shower and dress before the water pipelines are destroyed. We'll help the staff move your belongings and valuables to the bunker below."

Jourdan mumbled something unintelligible and probably unprintable, then stooped to retrieve his fuzzy slippers. "Have you awoken my wife and children?"

"Yes, sir, by your orders; they should be awake already."

Then Jourdan heard a new noise added to the mix: The gates of the Saevitian Embassy were slamming shut. The Marine detachment accompanying him and his family was preparing to turn the Embassy into a small fortress, with practiced ease, but simultaneously, dread. On the flat roof of the two-story ambassadorial residence, below the flagpole from which Friedlicher and Saevitian flags fluttered, a quartet of Marines were setting up machine guns and mortars, already encased in their lightweight body armour, and waiting. One of them had brought a radio and was trying to tune into the local news station to find out what was going on, but all he could get was classical music, sports, and people chattering away in Russian.

"Fucking Altenberg," grumbled Lt. Loki Brenner (not at all a morning person, and on his third cup of coffee).

"... Second of all, estimates hold that at least twenty percent of our imports come from Friedlichen and companies based there. If they fall, will the new government be so willing to sell to Saevitia? It seems unlikely. Finally, there are numerous Saevitian citizens living in that nation. Combine this with public opinion, and yes -- if we don't do something about Friedlichen fairly soon, it'll come back to haunt us."

Karajan paused and looked around. "So, economic embargo?"

He smiled. "Excellent."


Official CSSA Communication

To the International Community,

It has come to our attention that the non-recognized state of Zakrapat has launched an invasion of Friedlichen, its southern neighbor.

While Friedlichen is a friendly nation to the Saevitian Archipelago, it is not an ally, and we are not proposing to defend it with military force. However, we have become aware that Zakrapat is being backed up with foreign money, and, as it is not considered a legitimate state by the Saevitian Government, this gives us cause for concern, for similar situations could affect the CSSA itself if whatever national or private organizations are propagating this violence do not cease.

Therefore, the CSSA hereby announces that it is instituting an economic embargo against Zakrapat. We urge all organizations, national or private, to cease any trade with Zakrapat that they may maintain, as its profits are only going towards regional instability and violence; those organizations who choose not to listen will be considered to be aiding and abetting a rogue state, and will be added to Saevitia's watchlists.

We advise sea traffic control organizations in the region to prepare for an increase in regional traffic, as portions of the Saevitian Archipelago Royal Navy (SARN) may be arriving to enforce the embargo.

In addition, we have issued internal travel advisories for all Saevitian nationals residing in Friedlichen, Zakrapat, and the contested region. The situation is to be considered a Class Two threat to civilian life and industry. More information is available with messages distributed by your local Saevitian Embassy or Consulate.

Gerard Karajan
Sir Gerard Karajan
Crown Secretary for Foreign Affairs
9th Earl of Saint Thomas Island, etc., etc.

OOC: The Confederacy's intelligence assets are poor, and mostly focus on corporate intelligence. Thus, our assessment of the invaders is pretty poor.

"Mein gott," Eva Klaus, a manager of a local branch of the Freidlicher Banking Group, muttered. The television blared on as she watched her homeland under assault; she turned the volume down, then called home - to no response. She checked the news online, looking for how far inland the invaders had pushed. She suddenly cried out in horror, seeing the bombed-out wreck of her parents' home.

"What is it?" her flatmate asked. He was a refugee; unlike most of the expats in the area, he had no family to fall back on.

Eva just sobbed. They were probably dead. Her parents. Dead. Gott, why? What had Friedlichen ever done to anyone? It was the senselessness of the war that got to her. Didn't they know that war only hurts?
---
"Sorry for calling everyone in so late, but this is potentially huge," Boris said once the assorted representatives had filed into the conference room. "Friedlichen is under attack."

"What's that again?" Hideki Armory, who had taken over the daily operations of Smith Armory from its namesake, asked. "Why does this matter?"

"We bank with them. I've got $3 trillion, and MACHI|SAEDS - you remember, our partners with M.A.C. - has a big account there, too."

"Surely they can transfer the money?" Jacques Tanks asked. "What makes this war any different from the others we've watched?"

"It looks horrible if we do nothing. Keep in mind we've got Friedlichers working here, in the branch banks and elsewhere. They make up a good chunk of the expat community. Besides, it's an opportunity - Friedlichen may have been neutral before, but they won't be able to be so neutral in the future. They'll need to buy our stuff," Mondo Advertising said.

"Aren't you jumping ahead a bit? How do we make sure they win the war?" David Law asked.

Can't he just agree with me once?, Mondo thought, then said, "Well, I wouldn't recommend outright war - we're nowhere near capable enough for that. But we could send in mercenaries." He smiled, seeing the looks of interest among the Board. Imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery; outright theft is.

"Mercenaries? What size force are you thinking? Where do we get the manpower? I like the idea, I'm just not sure it's practical," Hideki asked.

"The invaders are the kind of enemy we can beat. They're using aging equipment en masse, using numbers to their advantage. We can beat numbers with our own stuff. Unless what you've been telling me is wrong?" Mondo said, looking in Boris's direction for a moment.

"Nope. Our new technology is far superior to what the invaders apparently use. We can leverage improved networking technology, superior armor, and advanced aviation to secure victory, even if our opponent has greater numbers," Boris replied. "The Ground Combat Network we've developed will allow us -"

"Let's be serious here," Luis Aviation interjected. "That technology is of use for trained soldiers. We've only got well-armed police. Any mercenary force we raise won't be able to win on our own."

"Nor would it work politically. We need to back someone else, giving them some mercenary support. Let someone else be the main proponent of defending Friedlichen," David said.

"How about Saint Claire Island? They're already embargoing Zakrapat, and they might be willing to help, especially if we offer support," Mondo replied, quickly. Hey David, I did do the research, he thought.

"Okay, let's put this to a vote," Boris said. "All those in favor of raising a mercenary force to support a Santheres-led campaign to defeat the invasion of Friedlichen?" He raised his hand, then Jacques raised his, then Hideki, then Michael Shipyards (who had been surprisingly quiet this time around, for some reason), then Luis. Once the last of the Big Five raised his hand, everyone else did, in unison, as it always went. "Motion carried."

Some office somewhere in the bowels of the Military Intelligence Directorate

"...and so at this time it does not seem appropriate to recommend any action regarding the Friedlichen-Zakrapat war."

Mohammed Zakir took the brief pause after delivering his briefing, glancing around the roomful of military men.

"Thank you.... One question. It says here..." a man towards the back shuffled slightly through his papers, "...that the government of Zakrapat may have been receiving support from outside its borders. Can you tell us any more about that?"

"Not at this time, sir. As you know the area has not been an intelligence priority," - the understatement of the month, Manthian "intelligence" in Freidlichen and Zakrapat was limited to reading international news headlines - "what with other more pressing demands relating to the Delian League and the situation in Nova. I can however have someone look into it...?"

"Yes I think that would be best. Where does that information come from?"

Ah... Mohammed turned slightly red as he answered. "Associated Press report."

Aware of a certain silence entering the room he felt the need to keep talking.

"The press picked up a statement by the government of a third-party nation, uh, the Saevitian Archipelago, alleging foreign money behind the war and branding Zakrapat a rogue state. The latter is debatable, some recognize it, some don't. It's possible... Zakrapat certainly does not seem to have been this aggressive before, so it is something to look into..."

Mohammed glanced around the room and saw a wall of very blank faces.

"...so I'll have someone look into it, then." he finished lamely.

To: Sir Gerard Karajan, Crown Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Earl of Saint Clair Island, etc., etc., on behalf of the government of the Saevitian Archipelago
From: David Law, on behalf of the Board of the Confederacy of Defense Corporations
Re: Friedlichen crisis

Given the deteriorating situation in Friedlichen, and our shared commerce with the imperiled country, we would like to know what your intentions are, and to make an offer of concrete support in the event you choose to intervene on the side of Friedlichen. At what point do you go beyond an embargo? What is the trip line for you?
In terms of support, not only are we prepared to offer logistical support for whatever operations you intend to undertake through Universal Air Freight and through the naval components of our security forces, but we are also preparing a military force for combat duties against the invaders from Zakrapat. Two weeks from now, we would like to send over Yang Halbi, commander of the Sultan Oil security force, and his staff for discussions about any future operations, whether in support of an embargo in force, an outright blockade, or an armed intervention against Zakrapat.
---
"Your highness, in light of the situation in Friedlichen, I ask permission now to commit the entirety of your armed forces to battle some time in the near future," Yang Halbi said into the telephone. It was a formality - the Sultan, in his capacity as CEO of Sultan Oil, had already approved the proposed intervention. Still, formalities like these were important. They were a sign that the Sultan hadn't fully submitted, that he still held power independent of the Confederacy. They were certainly not silly.

"We approve. Tell the men that they will soon be going to war. That their cause is that most just of causes, that of preserving the independence of a free state against the depredations of barbarians. That, if it be the will of Allah, they will do Us proud. And that they have Our best wishes and Our fullest support," the Sultan replied. "That will do. We appreciate your service."

And so we go to war, Yang thought. He looked over the list he had compiled of assets he'd be getting. Every company would be sending a contribution, for a total of about 20000 troops. The largest single force was the Sultan's contribution of the entire Armed Forces of Brunei - usable assets: one light infantry brigade, three corvettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhoda_Ragam_class_corvette), two landing craft, a light transport plane (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=5466&view=findpost&p=3467330), and 28 medium-lift helicopters (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=5603&view=findpost&p=3479257). It was meager, but it was the only asset of its size to have trained together. It would certainly have been forming the core of his force, if it weren't such a weak unit. But what else could be the core?

Yang reread the list. 'Military' police from the smaller companies and subsidiaries - mostly beat cops, it appeared. The subsidiaries shouldn't have done much better, yet there's Eichi Jets sending one-third of their managers' platoons, 34 in all. Fairly well-equipped, too! No vehicles, though. Looks like we'll be relying on a lot of friendly logistical support, he thought.

As he expected, the Big Five would be contributing the majority of his forces, providing a well-equipped, but ill-trained force. To be fair, he would be getting 50 good fighter pilots - Luis Aviation had contributed half their test pilot corps.

The biggest problem remained organizing this ugly mess into a coherent fighting force. The second-biggest problem, however, was logistics. Sure, he had lots of air freight assets to work with, but it would still be a mess dealing with all sorts of different equipment.

It didn't help that they said he'd be shipping out to the Saevitian Archipelago soon.

The rapid Zakrapatian advance through Friedlichen was progressing well ahead of the Corporation's timetable, something which made Claudius very happy. In a show of gratitude, he ordered some of the finest vodka in the world, straight out of TWSP, to be sent to the Zakrapatian President, Yuri Pantoniev. Along with it, Claudius sent a letter of thanks and congratulations, and promises of more things to come if the Zakrapatian military could keep up the good work.

In Yalat, the capital of Zakrapat, Yuri and his advisors stood in a shitty concrete bunker, gathered around an ugly brown table in a room lit only by a single, bare bulb hanging in the center, reviewing several maps displaying the positions of Friedlichen and Zakrapatian forces. This was the War Room of Zakrapat, but soon, Yuri promised, they would have a palace for these meeting, and it would all be paid for by Griffincrest, just as long as the military of Friedlichen didn't somehow rally and repulse his brave soldiers. Outside the bunker, television sets in homes shops and restaurants all around the nation showed brave Zakrapatian soldiers marching in formation, clutching tightly their Griffincrest supplied G36E assault rifles while just behind them, T-72's and Mercury APC's rumbled along, their commanders waving and smiling to the onlookers from the hatches on the turret.

Meanwhile, in Friedlich, Octavius Whiteleather, a Griffincrest advisor to the Zakrapatian military, looked through his binoculars as his Mercury cruised down the Friedlicher autobahn. There were no roads like this in the Confederacy, and it was a shame the people who built it wold have to have it turned against them, he thought to himself, but such is life. Nothing was in sight yet, and so Octavius decided to relax. He shouted in Russian down to his driver for a lighter, and pulled out a cigarette. No sooner had he lit it, however, had the call came through of the lost chopper not far from his columns position. "Fuck...fuck just my luck" he thought, throwing the full cigarette onto the road before ducking into the vehicle and shutting the hatch.

Not all of the advisors had the easy ride that Octavius had. Colonel Lucius Greenbeard and a small team of about twenty other Griffincrest mercenaries were stuck with a Zakrapatian rifle division that had just seized a small town. A pair of Zakrapatian soldiers were killed by local resistance, and despite the efforts of Lucius and his men, the Zakraptians slaughtered indiscriminately. To make it worse, one by one, the mercenaries, so drawn by the loot, were beginning to participate in what the Zakrapatians were doing. By the end of the night, even Lucius himself was converted, and began playing cards and drinking vodka with a group of other officers in the house of a family, currently layind dead on the street just outside.

Now came the next stage. SCUD missiles were beginning to be prepared, and were being launched against several major population centers (although they really weren't all that large) without mercy. Hundreds of missiles were cracking down, but none were ordered fired upon the capital. That would be taken by the sheer power of the Zakrapatian armoured fist, and none other. This was not the only thing that the Zakrapatian/Griffincrest officers had decided upon to break the spirit of the civilians of Friedlichen. Lewisite gas was also going to be deployed, and Griffincrest was supplying it to the Zakrapatian military by the shipload. The horrible blistering effects of the gas would, as the officers hoped, caused such horrific suffering that the people of Friedlichen would beg the government to surrender, no matter the cost.

~ Overcliff, Frederickstown, Saevitian Archipelago. 1530 hours SA time. ~

The young man in the faded blue greatcoat watched dispassionately from the edge of the promenade, taking in the scene below from behind the sturdy railing. Two hundred feet below him he could see the main buildings of the Portside neighborhood of Waterfall City, where the Caledonia River had once plunged into the sea (now it was mostly dammed for use in the waterways of Frederickstown and diverted for agriculture and industry). And he reflected on how much the island had changed since he was a boy.

Once Saint Clair Island, the largest of the many islands making up the Archipelago, had been mostly farmland and empty space, with high snowcapped mountains always looming in the distance (and being exploited by weekend vacationers). Frederickstown had still been its largest city, but back then it had fewer than five million inhabitants, compared to more than thirty million today. There had once been marked separation between Frederickstown and Waterfall City, a stretch of the Caledonia along which no houses or buildings stood; now the capital was nearly on top of the port, sometimes literally, as here. And leading into the heart of the island from Frederickstown there was a new canal under construction, only half completed and already a major artery of commerce and industry.

Over the noises of the city and the distant sounds of the sea and the river, the young man heard footsteps, and turned around to face Frederickstown itself. He saw the distant skyscrapers, arranged in clusters around key neighbourhoods; he saw Lock #1 on the main Caledonia opening to allow a dozen boats access to the Waterfall City run; he saw the older buildings of Overcliff neighborhood, some of them dating back four or five hundred years, to the days when it had been a separate village an hour on horseback from Frederickstown itself. But he didn't really take those in the way he took in the man wearing a colonel's uniform, walking briskly across the promenade towards him with a newspaper in his hand.

"Still watching the press, Uncle?" asked the young man, the ghost of a smile hovering on his face.

The older man shook the newspaper at the younger one. "You'd do well to remember the power of the press, boy," he said. "It served your father well."

"Ah yes, my father, who did very little of consequence as I recall, because he was too worried about what people would think?" The young man leaned back against the railing, watching his boot tap against the brickwork. "Regardless. Let's have this paper, then."

"You're missing the point, Matthew -- as usual," said the older man. "Under your father's rule, Saevitia worked. It prospered. True, most of this was due to plans set in motion by your grandfather, but even if Robert did not take stands on major political issues, he accomplished things of importance for the nation as a whole -- rather than for any political faction."

King Matthew I frowned. "Mother was right. They only ever call you 'Your Majesty' when the cameras are rolling." He reached for the newspaper. "What did you wish to show me, Uncle?"

His father's brother, who was technically Prince Konrad, the Duke of Grandon, the Count of Frederickstown, and numerous other historically significant but ultimately meaningless titles, stabbed a finger meaningfully at the headline below the fold on page one.

IS WAR INEVITABLE?
The SARN mobilization is ostensibly a military exercise and blockade of a rogue state. But is it definitely going to lead to full-scale war, or only possibly?

Matthew scanned it, his frown deepening. "They do know that if we consider it a rogue state, diplomatic measures such as declarations of war can't be levied against it, right?"

"A formality," said Konrad smoothly. "We can still shoot at them. And it is the opinion of many that we will, whether we say so or not."

"So... what? I am to initial a declaration of war just because people want it?"

"You misunderstand, Matthew. People do not necessarily want it. But they expect it. It is likely that if it happens, they will accept it. Not wildly patriotic, but not openly disapproving."

"I see."

"Good."

"But what is the point of any measure other than warfare? Even the embargo has been ineffective. There are still foreign ships docking in Zakrapat, ignoring our statements."

"On the contrary. The embargo has been quite effective indeed. We maintain a small but active satellite network and regular long air patrols -- we know who is trading with Zakrapat despite our embargo. It's a corporation, one dealing mainly in oil, armaments, and mercenaries. Griffincrest. You probably wouldn't recognize the name anyway. Now that we know, we're going to bring them to court."

Matthew paused for a moment. "We can sue a corporation that is not a Saevitian national, over a violation of international law?"

Konrad twinkled at him. "Watch and see, boy."


~ Some six hundred nautical miles from Zakrapatian waters. ~

The initial taskforce deployed by the Saevitians was not large. It was one of the anti-piracy squadrons, usually sent to clean up troubled areas where merchant ships had disappeared or suffered damage, comprising no more than a dozen vessels. Its mission had been made very clear: prevent any international shipping from entering Zakrapatian waters, apart from humanitarian missions.

Commodore Valen Seria was leading the operation from the Athens-class ACL, Chennai. It was expected to be a relatively simple, if potentially long and rather boring, operation. Yes, they would experience resistance -- naturally -- but short of the actual Zakrapatian military attacking them, it seemed unlikely that anything could seriously shake the strike force. Nonetheless, Seria was rather apprehensive, as he stared across the endless sea from the carrier's deck. The contested region was full of violence, which could easily spill over onto his taskforce, and somehow the knowledge that SARN would show up in force were his squadron to be destroyed didn't help much. Seria was fine with dying for his country, but he'd much rather live to a ripe old age for it if that was a possible alternative.

Noises from behind him alerted him; he turned to see four K-39s rolling out of the elevator, evidently preparing for a flight switch. He decided he wanted to keep his hearing for a few more years and turned to go inside.


Official CSSA Communication
Encryption: Standard (key provided)

Dear Mr. Law:

Despite the apparent mobilization of the SARN, we do not intend, at present, to launch a military incursion into the Friedlichen-Zakrapat region, unless Saevitian nationals or shipping are threatened. Moreover, should our intervention be required at a later date, the Saevitian forces deployed would most likely be sufficient in numbers and training to deal with any enemy forces they encounter. In the unlikely event that the Confederacy's assistance would be required, however, we would be glad to contact you. In the meanwhile, we would welcome Mr. Halbi and his staff, if they are indeed interested in assisting us to maintain our embargo in force against Zakrapat.

Gerard Karajan
Sir Gerard Karajan
Crown Secretary for Foreign Affairs
9th Earl of Saint Thomas Island, etc., etc.

[OOC: I'll get to the embassy later.]

Flashback

"That is a lot of money."

"It is, Jarl. And as you know it is only the advance payment - if you accept."

Viktor Viktorsson glanced up from the suitcases to the black-suited Griffencrest man behind them.

"It's not common in this land not to give your name."

"Business decision, Jarl. I work for the Corporation and that is what is important." the other answered smoothly, as he had the last three times the question had been brought up. "And speaking of business, you've seen the offer, so let me ask you straight: do we have a deal?"

Viktorsson glanced at the contents of the suitcase again.

"My men get rights of spoil and this. No Hirdsmen will fight for simple pay, without battle-trophies."

For the first time in a while, the Griffencrest man allowed himself a smile.

"Plunder, my friend, is not going to be a problem... It is a very rich country, you see."

The man was holding out his hand. Viktorsson looked at it blankly.

"Do we have a deal?" the Griffencrest man tried again.

There was a short pause before Viktorsson reached for the suitcase, and nodded.

"For this and what you promised, I will send Hirdsmen to your war."

Nearer, My God, to Thee (http://www.imeem.com/xcrunner1104/music/31bLhM7h/titanic-soundtrack-nearer-my-god-to-thee/)

Hans' Shack
Somewhere in Freidlichen

The window pane swung inward, smacking against the inside of the wooden shack with a resounding thud, and Alois shut it again hurriedly, his son still cradled in his arms. It had been fairly easy to escape the village under cover of darkness and make for the mountains, though Alois honestly could not believe his luck in finding a warm bed, and even a television, with one of the mountain men who often roamed the north of Freidlichen. He returned to the hard wooden chair in front of the screen, which flickered to darkness intermittently and watched.

“We are broadcasting on all networks,” the news anchor began, his toupee lopsided and his suit torn. “If anyone is still watching, we will be on the air with you as long as possible.” He took a deep breath and continued. “We here in Altenberg and the northern expanses have been completely cut off, and Zakrapatian forces have been reported moving south rapidly. We urge any and all citizens with the means to do so to leave Freidlichen immediately and head as far south as possible into neutral territory.”

“Not bloody likely,” a voice muttered from the corner, accompanied by the sound of metal on wood. Hans, the owner of the shack, had undoubtedly saved Alois and his son from certain death, but there was no shaking the feeling that he was not a man to be crossed. As he whittled a wooden knife (with another knife, Alois noticed), Alois turned his attention back to the television, and the broadcast.

“Forces along the E-91 connecter have reportedly retreated further into the city, and Zakrapatian infantrymen have been seen as far in as Marxallee,” he said, his voice as beaten as his body appeared to be. “No word has yet reached us of possible foreign interventions, and—” A booming interrupted the anchor and the camera shook violently, followed by voices in the background. “No, I certainly won’t turn this camera off,” he said, rising from his chair. Three uniformed men with weapons advanced towards him as he turned once more to the camera.

“God save us all,” he whispered, before three flashes of light cut the camera off.

Marxallee, Altenberg

Johann attempted to cross himself, though his hands were shaking so much that they barely reached “the son” before he was forced to shake them out and start again. He poked his head over the pile of rubble he and his squad were huddled behind as two Zakrapatian T-72s rumbled unmolested down Marxallee, causing the pebbles to bounce up and down even as far down the street as Johann was. He turned to the other members of his team of Freidlicher Guardsmen; men who had trained with each other for some twenty years now—the best of the best of the best, facing odds so insurmountable that any hope of victory had faded the moment the first bomb fell.

“We’re all out of ammunition, Lieutenant,” the private next to Johann whispered, motioning towards his empty SG-550 assault rifle and grimacing. “The rest of Second Platoon reports a similar situation on the opposite side of the street.” Johann removed his helmet and ran his hands through his hair, flexing his neck and gazing upwards at the sky.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it out of this one, boys,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the sky. The popping of gunfire was wholly one-sided now, as Zakrapatian infantrymen advanced warily forward, firing at nothing in particular. “Anyone feel like surrendering?” Not one man budged. “Right. Didn’t think so,” Johann murmured, though his eyes had still not left the sky.

“One hundred meters, sir,” the private said, peering through his binoculars at the advancing mass of men.

“Thank you, Nicklas,” Johann replied flatly. His eyes finally left the clouds, and when they met his men’s, they were bloodshot. “Fix bayonets, men.” The squad nodded slowly, removing the knives from their back pockets and affixing them to the barrels of their rifles, the clicking barely audible, even to him. “Men…” he began, trailing off and swallowing quickly. “It’s been an honor serving with you.” He grabbed hold of the pile of debris in front of him and hoisted himself up.

“Second Platoon!” he bellowed, his men already rising from cover. “For your families, and for Freidlichen—charge!”


…and with this in mind, I hereby offer my unconditional surrender. May God forgive me.
-Last words of Crown Prince Erich Krause von Freidlichen XXI

"David, I have an idea," Mondo said. He was always full of ideas. "See, it looks really bad for a nation like the Saevitians to hire mercs. But what if it's not the government who does the hiring?"

"Elaborate," David said. There was a kernel of an idea there, but it wasn't necessarily any good. Still, he didn't have much to do, and at least this kept Mondo busy while the other lawyers worked on gathering allies among the Big Five.

"Perhaps there's some sort of organization that could hire us? Some lobbyists?"

"Uh...no. Lobbyists hiring armies would cause people to throw fits." Mondo frowned, sighed, and thought a bit. David was considering getting up and leaving when Mondo smiled broadly. Aha, he's got an idea after all.

"Okay, so the government hires them. But not the top-level guys. Let me put it this way - do you actually write out every message your name appears on? Of course not! That's why we have secretaries and assistant secretaries and people like that. They do the work we're too busy to do. Well, why not contact one of those? Figure out who's particularly hawkish, ambitious, and foolhardy enough to risk being a fall guy among this Gerard guy's staff, get in touch with them, and see how that works!"

"It would require some time. But it could be done."

The surrender was accepted by General Ivan Coroniev, the man in charge of the Zakrapatian 1st Shock Army, the group tasked with making the spearhead into Altenberg. From him, the message was relayed to Yuri, and from Yuri, it made its way all the way around the world, to Paradise City, where it was read by Claudius Griffincrest to a jubilant boardroom full of sixty somewhat year old men, all cheering and breaking out the whiskey.

In the Zakrapatian war room, the generals all cheered and hugged as they also began to pour themselves drinks, though it was vodka in their case. Above them, outside of the Presidential residence, Yuri was giving a speech to the hug crowd of proud Zakrapatians that had assembled in the square below him. Fireworks lit up the sky as row after row of men and vehicles drove by in a grand military parade, unseen since the times of Stalin. Overhead, MiG's were performing all sorts of aerial acrobatics, and in the small port, the few vessels of the Zakrapatian navy were offering up a twenty one gun salute to those who had fallen during the fight.

No time was wasted in putting the massive Griffincrest reward to use, and several new public buildings were being planned, and statues of their great leader were being planned for placement all around the country, and also in the newly annexed Friedlichen. In Altenberg, Zakrapatian soldiers were tearing down any statues of the old government, and architects were drawing up their replacements within minutes of the word of the surrender.

All over the countryside, helicopters buzzed overhead, announcing in a variety of different languages that the Friedlicher government was no more, and that the citizens should lay down their arms. Not all of these helicopters were the bulky ex-Soviet ones that were used in the initial invasion, however. Now, a number of sleek black Griffincrest AV-18 VTOL gunships had joined in the mission, sweeping the ground with their searchlights hoping to catch any possible saboteurs or would-be rebels planning an ambush.

Mercenaries and their Zakrapatian comrades were all by now going on a spree, smashing windows and taking valuables and women for their use. Just like almost every other Griffincrest operation, scores of drunk and high mercs and soldiers stumbled along the streets, randomly shooting people and objects that presented themselves, singing drinking songs from back home as they went.

Octavius was looking out from the hatch on his Mercury once again as it slowly made its way through a street in downtown Altenberg, Not far ahead of him was the burned out wreck of a T-72, taken out apparently by an M-47 rocket. He casually smoked his cigarette as he looked at the rubble all around him, bodies being crushed under the wheels of the APC. Several of the Zakrapatians he passed by were drinking heavily, as were his own mercenaries, and he listened, when he was able, to their stories. Many of them had impressed him, and in a way he felt pity for the Friedlichers. He quickly pushed this thought away, but it would keep popping back into his head when he heard stories of just how bravely many of them died defending their beloved homeland.

In the sea just outside of the frozen port of Yalat, beyond the celebrating ships of the Zakrapatian Navy, the Griffincrest tankers began to grow concerned with the ships threatening sanctions. Just in case of a possible situation, the hidden missile systems aboard each ship was but on stand by, and the men on the Zakrapatian coastline were put on alert to provide support, if need be.

In Paradise City, nobody outside of the boardroom would ever know what was really going on. The situation was a mere flash in the Confederate newspaper, something which nobody really took notice to. Nations were at war all the time, it had seemed, and there were more important things, like the ongoing civil war, for the people to be concerned about. That night, the members of the board of directors all entered the limosines, and made their way back to their penthouses and mansions where they slept easily, not giving a second thought to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives they had destroyed for the sole purpose of procuring a new market and additional untapped resources.

Viktor Viktorsson's Hirdsmen began entering Freidlichen about a day after the main assault had begun, since they were hired to be a garrison for conquered territory, not on the front line of battle. Nevertheless, news that the enemy had surrendered already, and that there might not even be any fighting caused surprise throughout the Hird and some disappointment.

Near Altenberg

Geirr Telfsen leaned back on the wheel well, and winced as the 4x4 bounced over ruts and the occasional large crack. He looked back over the convoy of trucks behind him, proceeding south near the remains of the main autobahn to Altenberg. A sharp contrast to its condition a few days ago, now the highway was littered with debris and dotted with the occasional burning Freidlichen or Zakrapat tank. News of the surrender had just been shouted back by the men in the cab, where the radio was, and now the Sortmarkers were discussing the news.

"These people are cowards." Varg, across from Geirr spat out into the road as he spoke. "They are already crying like a girl on her first night and I heard that people will not fight even to defend their houses."

The others nodded. They had heard the same, that there had been very little fighting overall and that the civilians were showing not much spine.

"And look at this. This is way to their capital city, and this is all they gave to defend it?"

Varg motioned to a lone Leopard lying half-smashed beside the road. Smoke still rose where the top had been mangled by some projectile or other.

"You know if this was Kiev or Novgorod no man would let the enemy into his city except over his dead body! By my arm, I don't know if I would carry a battle-trophy from men like these if I found one!"

Geirr shifted as he listened to the burly warrior rant on, then sat up straight and pointed ahead.

"Here, we can put them to the test Varg!"

The convoy was coming up on a small town, a village really, which looked relatively undamaged. The convoy was still very close to the border, and perhaps when the Zakrapat attack had overtaken this area there had still been fighitng going on, and no time yet for looting. Either way it was the first encounter with Freidlichen citizens for the Sortmarkers.

"See if these people have any guts in them after all. It is a little town and our friends in Zakrapat won't miss it even if it's gone, hey? Besides, it is our job to set examples and make sure nobody gets ideas of resisting the new bosses!"

"I don't know, looks kind of small. Not enough to go around maybe."

This was Adolph speaking, and his voice sounded doubtful. Nevertheless he was already reaching for his gun, which was leaning up in the corner of the truck bed.

"Oh shut up Adolph. If we run out of girls you'll have to take a boy, but you probably like that."

"That's what he's hoping for!" Varg cut in.

Raucous laughter filled the air as the truck ground to a halt and the Hirdsmen spilled out. There was a brief conversation with the following trucks, whose Hirdsmen quickly joined the growing crowd. Soon over a hundred Sortmarkers were advancing on the village, which probably held no more than 500 souls. Marching down the main, and only street and watching windows and doors carefully from behind their rifles, the Sortmarkers began to bang on doors and bring out the local population to stand shivering under watch in the center of town. They wondered whether any of the inhabitants would resist, not knowing that Freidlichen was so peaceful a country that the inhabitants did not even own guns.

~ Saevitian Embassy, Altenberg. 01830 hours. ~

The Marines had been set up all day. Waiting. Lt. Brenner's radio had tuned in to a somewhat official station, and despite the relative quiet -- after the initial bombing attacks things had calmed down somewhat -- the news was only grim and grimmer. The enemy was bombing the countryside and the villages. Tanks were beginning to roll into the capital. The death toll mounted as civilians tried, with only moderate success, to defend themselves.

Every now and then he turned to his NCO, the squad's Sergeant, a lanky, laconic man with dirty blonde hair; Markuri Kaudás had sent out a Class Two threat warning in the early morning, and had received only a brief official response: "We're putting together a taskforce to retrieve you. More information will be sent as it comes." Each time Sgt. Kaudás had the same answer: No, nothing yet.

In the morning things had been somewhat more interesting. People were evacuating. The streets were choked with cars and buses as they panicked, trying to flee the city; flights at the airport had apparently been commandeered to leave the country -- Brenner only knew what he'd heard, and he hadn't heard many of the details. Now those who remained had stayed to fight, and from here he could hear the fighting. Loud booms and explosions; the screams of the dying; the rumbling of tank treads. It was sunset and the electric lamps had come on (he much preferred the gas lamps of Saevitia, but.... well, you make do with what you have), pools of light illuminating the long embassy row as it stretched away from his line of sight in both directions.

Their position was good. They had brought up an ATGM and a mortar along with their guns; they were concealed by the flagpole and the wall around the embassy complex, invisible to a man standing below. Yet Brenner was worried.

He'd tried to pair the experienced marines with the rookies on a fairly even ratio. At the gate were three men; two young privates, one of whom had never seen combat before, and the blank, unshaven, stoic face of Corporal Paine. Inside the building, set up in the rooms facing the street, were two more; the last three were in or near the bunker, guarding the Ambassador and his family. But he could see from the looks on the Marines' faces that they weren't happy either way. No backup would or could be forthcoming, and they were in a nation without a large professional military. If the enemy chose not to honour diplomatic immunity, there was nobody who could save them. (Except a Saevitian detachment, and who knew how long that would take to arrive.)

"The newbies are pretty scared, Sarge," Brenner observed, speaking in almost a whisper. There were two rookies with him as well -- Privates Beck and Miller -- and they were talking almost inaudibly to one another, and facing the other way, so he felt somewhat better talking about them behind their backs.

"Scared, yeah," Kaudás said, not turning towards Brenner. "We're all scared. When that plane passed overhead I nearly crapped myself."

"We can handle it, though. We've done it before."

Kaudás cocked his head. "Maybe," he acknowledged. "I'll allow that we've done it before. Doesn't mean we can take it any better."

Brenner paused, considering this.

"Anyhow, you're the officer here. Making a Saint Crispin's is your call," Kaudás continued.

"We few, we happy few," Brenner sang. "Or maybe a Winston Churchill. For if the Saevitian Sovereignty were to last a thousand years, men would still say, this was their finest hour."

Kaudás said nothing.

"Although Saevitia's finest hour this ain't. We're not even in Saevitia. We're in bloody Altenberg, where it's always nice and sunny until someone pulls out a gun."

Kaudás said nothing.

"Why'd you bring it up, anyway?"

Kaudás jerked his head in the direction of the street to the left. Brenner turned to look.

There was a tank rolling down the street towards them, and towards the wall of the embassy compound. Even from here Brenner recognized it as a T-72.

"Want me to alert the crew? Battle stations, and all that?" Kaudás asked.

"Yell it as loud as you like," Brenner whispered, grim determination taking over his face. "They haven't fired on us yet. The walls can withstand a shell or two anyway. But if they do, we can shoot them back."

"Yeah, I know the drill." Kaudás half turned and whispered to Beck and Miller: "Hey! I hate to break up your happy shiny little love fest, but we've got a teeny little problem waltzin' down Marxallee. Get in position now, or you're all gonna die."

From the noises behind him -- swish of cloth, sudden whispers, brief clanks of metal on concrete -- Brenner determined that they were following suit, grabbing their weapons and preparing for action. As they finished loading their weapons Brenner noticed how silent it was -- oddly silent, considering that there was a tank just down the street. The silence was not one that is filled by noises, but one that noises drop into, like a stone dropping into a bottomless pit, without ever occupying.

The tank had stopped. Apparently it had decided that there was nothing else particularly interesting here. Perhaps it had been receiving orders to stop. Brenner wondered about that.

Then he became aware of other noises on the edge of hearing. Cheering and yelling. They grew in intensity until they were definitely there. The hatch of the tank he was watching so intently popped open and out climbed its crew, apparently having just been relieved and heading for the now-abandoned shops and buildings. Even before Brenner turned on the radio and held it to his ear (to be able to hear it over the noises of the crowds now become overwhelming) he knew what he'd hear.

"Surprise!" he said to Kaudás. "Friedlichen has fallen."

"Yay," said Kaudás, with no enthusiasm whatsoever. "Party hats and ice cream all around."

"And vodka. Don't forget the vodka." Brenner sighed. "It looks like all we'll have to defend ourselves against now is drunken soldiers celebrating an easy win."

"An equally dangerous foe, of course."

"Of course. Don't let your guard down, naturally."

Night fell. The marines remained vigilant. Anyone who attempted to gain access to the Saevitian Embassy complex was rebuffed, either by being told they couldn't come in, or (if they tried to enter over the walls or the gate) being bodily thrown out by the marines on ground level, guarding the walls. It remained to be seen whether the disrespect of their diplomatic immunity would remain in place once the soldiers sobered up, of course.


~ Citadel, Frederickstown. ~

"... Yes .... Of course. ... Well, what would be the damage? ......... Ok .... I'm at my computer now, I can have my bank wire the first installment now. ... Yes .... That sounds fine. Thank you .... Thank you. Goodbye."

Ibram V. Karajan was a member of the Noble House of Karajan, cousin of Gerard, and a Viscount of something-or-other. But as he hung up the phone he was especially pleased to be Assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense. It was not a high-ranking position, and he was often incensed at having to take orders from someone with not even a knighthood to his name, but it afforded him one thing that is sometimes quite useful -- anonymity. When he wanted to do something, he could always just credit it to the Crown Secretariat of Defense; nobody would connect it with House Karajan, let alone him specifically, without digging fairly deep.

In this case he was pleased that he had solved two problems. First of all, the retrieval of Ambassador Jourdan and his entourage, which Iapetus Varáinn himself had tasked Ibram with. Second of all, the inability of Saevitia to intervene directly in the regional conflict, partly because one of the participants (currently the victorious one) had never been actually recognized as a nation, as it had never met the criteria after gaining independence, and partly because it had no real business there. Ibram knew as well as anyone in the SoD that Saevitia was going to find some reason to help out Friedlichen, even if only in months or years, but right now, its hands (diplomatically speaking) were tied.

So, on behalf of the Secretariat of Defense, he'd hired a mercenary company to extract the Ambassador and commence counter-invasion operations in Friedlichen. And paid them from SoD accounts. Yes, if they tracked it back to him he'd probably be forced to resign on account of having committed some crime or other, but if Saevitia went ahead and intervened anyway, he'd have just given them allies already with a foothold in the region, and would merit praise and reinstatement. (Not as though he really needed this job -- House Karajan was one of the wealthiest of the noble families, and owned several companies.)

Now all that remained was to call his boss. The stupid oaf was out of his office, of course -- those "nouveau riche" wankers spent all their time out pretending to be high and mighty and buying really expensive clothes so as to appear as though they had been aristocrats for years, even though the man's grandfather had probably made his living shoveling dirt -- so Ibram left a message:

"I've taken care of the Ambassador like you ordered. If you have any questions, drop me an e-mail."

Then he stood up, carefully disconnected the network cable, and went out to lunch.

God Save Freidlichen
(http://users.atw.hu/szbszig/liechtenstein.mp3)

Auferstanden, Freidlichen

Suburbanites often went their entire lives without worrying about anything more than the status of their lawns and timing of their children’s theater productions. As a convoy of burly foreign mercenaries with unkempt manes of hair and what must have been an entire oil tanker’s worth of vodka came rolling into Auferstanden, however, somehow the quality of one’s lawn became ancillary. Though the surrender had just been finalized (it was unconditional as well, much to the horror of the citizens who had not fled), no one much expected life to improve much from the first hour of the invasion—at least now, though, there would be no more artillery.

Auferstanden was of minimal importance to Freidlichen, and other than being the smallest suburb of Altenberg, nothing much in particular was attributable to its name. The civilians living there had been spared the brunt of the initial onslaught, the town being located south, rather than north, of Altenberg, and therefore not in the path of the invaders. Auferstanden represented a rather poor cross-section of Freidlichen, as it was almost entirely made up of businessmen and their families working in Altenberg’s financial district—one thing Freidlichen certainly had an abundance of was bankers.

Quietly and without argument, the citizens shuffled out of their homes and into the town square, a cobblestone covered clearing dotted with the remains of flea market stands and fruits and vegetables from the farmer’s market from the week prior. No one was armed, of course, the meager police force having been called out to fight, and presumably die, in the street fighting around Altenberg proper. A soft wind blew through the town, accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes, and many of the civilians shivered in their street clothes, having been hurried out of their homes too fast to grab coats and mittens.

The townspeople spoke in hushed whispers, conferring with each other and murmuring their own ideas about why they had been brought out and what would happen next.

Schanze 02, Northern Freidlichen

Though the group of individuals was far underground, somehow the wind still seemed to reach them, whether real or imagined, and as they huddled around the fire burning in the hollowed-out trash receptacle, their stories were told. Lieutenant Bayer and his men were there, having escaped Altenberg with the Prime Minister in tow, as was Karl Blau, a gunner who reportedly escaped his burning hulk of a tank to be picked up by a military convoy headed south.

As far as soldiers went, however, Schanze Two, perhaps the best-guarded secret of the Freidlicher government fell short. Blau, Bayer, and Bayer’s three squadmates were the only Freidlicher Guardsmen so far to have escaped the slaughter in Altenberg, and though Prime Minister Metzger had managed to escape as well, the only other Freidlichers in the redoubt under the mountains were civilian refugees, picked up by the convoy as they moved southeast under cover of darkness to the point where Altenberg was no more than a speck in the valley overlooked by mountains.

No one had much to do, and though there were more than enough supplies to feed everyone ten times over, no one ate. Most everyone simply stood, forgoing the cots lying along the wall and for whatever reason ignoring the fact that the room was adequately heated, preferring to stand around makeshift fires and wonder aloud what went wrong, and fearing for the lives of their families still in the valley below. Sophie, too, was fearful, but for another reason—no one in the single-roomed redoubt had dared speak of overcoming the invaders, having been resigned to their fate from the beginning. For five years, Sophie had lived in Zakrapat as the ambassador, and she would be damned if the country she had sworn to place first in heart, first in mind, was going to go the road of the sort corruption and violence seen every day on the streets of Zakrapat’s cities.

She arose from the hard concrete bulwarks of the redoubt and cleared her throat, ending the side conversations amongst the refugees and Guardsmen and catching their attention. “A moment of silence, I feel, would be proper for those lost,” she started, bowing her head as the refugees did the same and lifting it several seconds later. “Gentlemen, we sleep tonight in safety. Only a few kilometers away, however, the story is much different. Our countrymen in Altenberg and throughout Freidlichen will have neither the pleasure of safety—” She paused for a moment. “Nor their God-given right to freedom. The odds are against us; no one will deny that, and I have no wish to see more of our people die, tonight, or any other night. But, gentlemen, the line must be drawn, and it must be drawn here, and now. We have a duty, not only to ourselves, but to our countrymen and our families, to resist. And when our children and theirs, from our great nation and from others, emerge into this world free of tyranny, free of the chains of oppression, they will look upon this moment and remember that this was their moment of glory. This was their finest hour.”

Auferstanden

"This is pathetic."

Varg sneered at the shivering townsfolk huddled together in the center of the village, surrounded by armed Sortmarkers. Not a single family had so far tried to fight, and the Hirdsmen, who had roughly searched the villagers as they were brought out had not even found any guns, just a few valuables which they had taken.

"What a bunch of piss cowards."

Varg raised his voice and rounded on the villagers.

"You, all piece of dog and no fight!" he yelled in broken German, mixed with half random words whenever he did not know the right German. "Where his mother is of coward! Dick not going for far! Stomach-walker!"

Varg gave up quickly on the German seeing a bunch of confused faces, and lapsed into a long rant in mixed Russian and Norwegian, full of obscene commentary on the Freidlicher's parentage, impotence and lack of manliness. After about a minute and a half he turned away and stomped into a house. The clear sound of breaking glass soon came out.

As if this was some sort of signal about half the Hirdsmen left the villagers under guard and began looting houses on the left-hand side of the street. While this was happening another large Sortmarker, who seemed in charge of the remaining Hirdsmen stepped up and shouted, in slightly better German,

"Order in families! Order up!"

When this had been done, he stood back and barked orders to the Sortmarkers in Norwegian, then returned to German as the Hirdsmen began separating out fit men and women from the families, and took at least one person from every family when a young man was taken. While this was happening the other Hirdsmen were staggering out of the houses, arms full of loot, and after dumping this they returned to replace their comrades, who in turn began to loot the houses and shops on the left side of the street. One man came running up to the seeming officer, a carved hunting knife taken from some woodsman's home in his hand.

"Rittmester, look, a trophy after all!"

The other man laughed.

"Hah, you have disarmed the country now Skolem!"

He turned back to the villagers who had now been separated into three groups, about 125 fit men, another group of about 175, mostly young women but containing someone from every family a man had been taken from, and then the much smaller main huddle. With a few more orders in Norwegian, the Hirdsmen began to lead off the young men and pack them into the backs of several five-ton trucks, while the second separated group were taken by individual Hirdsmen

"You are all cowards we think!" he called. "But maybe you are sneaks to pretend and then stab to the back? So men to go to Altenberg for fixing the roads, and others to stay with us for they obey! You make trouble then they get trouble!"

With this threat to the departing men the Rittmester turned away and back to the main group. Only the elderly or unfit were left.

"You others into the houses. We take this, this, that, that house and those." he pointed to a line of houses. "People there stay with others. You go outside at night and get shot. You make the trouble not keeping orders and get shot. You do as surrender say or get shot. "

He watched as a few Hirdsmen shoved the elderly back indoors, while the rest began to set up camp in the houses that he had pointed out and dragged the group of women hostages along.

The large amount of broken windows and the general unconcern of the Hirdsmen for quietness meant that the elderly Freidlichers could hear the party going on well into the morning. Sentries were left out, since after years of raiding and counter-raiding Hirdsmen not cautious enough to keep a tight guard even after victory were usually dead, but even they were rotated often enough that nobody had any reasons to grumble much at missing the fun. The elderly Freidlichers were otherwise left to themselves to enjoy their first night of occupation, except for one confused and drunk Sortmarker who barged into a house at five in the morning, waved a gun in the Friedlichers' faces and demanded to know why nobody had come and taken their money before, if the country was so rich.

Lee Jets grimaced. He hated the waiting. He had done this sort of thing before, back when some military types attempted a coup a year back. Most of the companies had gotten wind of the impending coup early, due to a conspirator who backed out, but his didn't. Which meant that his platoon had to go in, by helicopter - since the streets were blocked by those damned tanks shelling the building - and extract over a hundred terrified executives. They hadn't been alone, then, but they still suffered horrendous losses. That was when it became his platoon, after all.

This - this was at once better and worse. Better, in that intel still wasn't sure the Zakrapatis would even attack, plus he was in a gunship, not some ancient Huey. The fighter support they were promised was also good. But there was a lot to make it worse. Not only was it going to be just his 51 men and the 12 embassy guards, but they were also bluffing their way in and hoping the air support would be able to breach and take out hostile AD.

At least it was night-time. Night raids had always turned out well. Even with night vision gear proliferating, people still need their sleep; it's hard to turn off your own biology. So, he figured half the potential hostiles would be asleep. As for the other half, if intel was right, they'd be drunk, and in little condition for a proper fight.

Say what you will about Islam, Lee mused, but it's got the right idea about alcohol. It brings too much chaos. People are bad enough sober; get them drunk, and it just gets worse.

"Ten," the pilot whispered over the intercom. Lee slipped on his gas mask, in case they went with tear gas, then his NVGs. Altenberg was visible on the horizon.

~ Five nautical miles from Zakrapatian waters ~

It takes a ship a long time to decelerate. Even a small group of ships such as Commodore Seria's required ten or fifteen minutes to be brought down to zero. They were holding position now, far enough from Zakrapat that it was impossible to see land; combat air patrols were altered so as to avoid Zakrapatian airspace while still covering the whole area a ship could be passing through in wide sweeps. Assisting them was one of the spy satellites of Saevitia's small but advanced (and expensive) space program.

Seria'd deployed a full squadron of K-39Ns on another mission, escorting some helicopters to extract the Saevitian Ambassador and his staff from Altenberg, but now, all he had to do was wait. Yes, there were some people who really hated waiting. But Seria actually rather liked it: it beat the short periods of violence and chaos that the waiting usually led up to. He could get some work done on his memoirs, keep an eye on the international situation, watch old movies; and all he had to do was turn people away from entering Zakrapat. It couldn't be that much worse than huge chaotic naval battles where it was hard to tell what was going on and missiles and shells full of liquid death were flying everywhere.

Meanwhile, something akin to economic warfare was targeting Griffincrest, on a fairly small scale. How it worked was fairly simple: Saevitian news media began calling Griffincrest's support of Zakrapat a "controversy", and suggesting in their marketplace specials that this might be its last week of high share prices. People started to sell. Slowly at first, but the news spread through various financial organizations (helped by Friedlicher Bank and its patrons) and more news outlets began reporting a slight downwards trend. Within a week, they could say that the Griffincrest Corporation was experiencing a backlash from selling to rogue states, and government analysts could show up and project an increasingly steep drop in revenue, stock prices, and shareholders. The corporation had not actually lost very much money at all, but it was enough to make its executives a little bit worried, the way a person becomes worried when their elderly mother starts repeating herself.

~ Recovery Mission. Over Friedlichen. ~

The twelve K-39Ns were flying fairly high and spread out. Operating under EMCON, traveling at subsonic speeds and with most of their stealth technologies activated, they were invisible even to the helicopter gunships they were escorting, and remained difficult to detect even if the gunships had had their radars active. What targeting data they would be fed came from a single Firefly-N AEW/ELINT aircraft, which itself was only listening hard at the moment, hoping to be able to detect enemy planes passively. Only on occasions did it activate its radar, usually for short, random sweeps lasting only a few seconds, like a flash every few minutes.

Commanding the squadron was a Lieutenant Alessandro "Yugo" Toscani, who, despite being of Italian ancestry, spoke mostly French and Saevitic with only a smattering of English. He was fairly tall for a pilot, laconic and shaven-headed, and he'd barely acknowledged Jets or the other mercenaries, greeting them with only a few words. The Saevitians carried mostly AtA armament, and had made this clear to the mercenaries with a sparsity of language that indicated they were none too pleased with their mission; nonetheless, they (especially Third Flight) had been packed with enough AtG armament to count as air support, and would stick around for as long as possible to allow the mercenaries a chance to extract.

[OOC: Ehhh. That sucked. Oh well.]

OFFICIAL CORPORATE RESPONSE

The Griffincrest Corporation can not and will not be held responsible for any of the actions taken by the nation of Zakrapat. The claim that Zakrapat is a rogue nation is also false, as said nation is recognized, at least by our home country of the Blackhelm Confederacy, to be a sovereign state. Furthermore, the illegal blockade of the Northern Adriatic waterways to Zakrapat's ports can not be allowed to stand. The Griffincrest Corporation is prepared to send a battlefleet into the region to ensure the safe passage of any and all vessels to and from Zakrapat. Free trade will not be hampered to any nation, anywhere on Earth, and this statement shall be supported by the might of the Griffincrest Security forces. I hereby demand that Saevitia recall the blockade, lest further complications arise in an already troubled region.

As the statement from the Griffincrest Headquarters was being made, Col. Greenbeard was overseeing a group of Friedlichers as they worked in the snow to repair a mountain roadway that had been heavily damaged by a Zakrapatian bombing run. Every day, the mercenaries from Sortmark were doing their job well, bringing in more and more workers to repair the roads and other utilities that had been damaged during the brief conflict.

Greenbeard stood on the side of the road munching the end of a cigar as the Friedlichers worked tirelessly, sixteen hours a day, on whatever food the Zakrapatian military could spare. Next to him were two Zakrapatian men in the grey ushankas, with G36E's tucked under their amrs. Men just tlike these two stood all along the road, ensuring that the Friedlichers worked to maximum efficiency.

In Altenberg, Captain Whiteleather stood in what was once the residence of the Prime Minister of Friedlichen. As he wandered through the rooms which were still intact, he stuffed several small items into the various pockets on his vest, and occasionally stopped to look at the paintings along the wall or the books that had now fallen off the shelves and landed on the floor. Some of these were, no doubt, priceless items that would likely fetch a hefty sum back home. It didn't take him long before deciding his next course of action. Within minutes, his Mercury was backing its way through a section of the wall, and with the help of his Zakrapatian comrades, paintings, sculptures, and other pieces of artwork were being loaded into the APC's crew compartment.

Official CSSA Communication

To whom it may concern,

In your official statement representing the Griffincrest Corporation, you made several comments that we in the CSSA feel to be inaccurate or worth responding to.

First of all, you claimed that Griffincrest was not in any way responsible for the actions taken by Zakrapat. This is strictly correct; however, Griffincrest is responsible for the private military contractors in its employ, and who we have on good intelligence have been deployed alongside Zakrapatian forces. In addition, the various sales made by Griffincrest to Zakrapat are highly suggestive and indicate that, whether knowingly or unknowingly, Griffincrest has contributed to the unstable political situation in the area itself, thus any injuctions it offers regarding the same -- especially to a national government -- are particularly hypocritical.

Second of all, you claimed that Saevitian Archipelago Royal Navy forces were maintaining a blockade in the Adriatic region. This is patently false. Our embargo upon Zakrapat is solely a diplomatic tool and involves no military force; the naval units currently deployed to the Adriatic have been deployed on Overseas Realistic Combat Training (OSRCT) exercises to practice blue-water operations and maneuvers in a setting similar to that in which a real combat situation -- such as a blockade, an amphibious invasion, or a naval battle -- might occur. Ships that have been turned away from the OSRCT site were requested to depart both as part of the exercise and to prevent their interference, whether knowing or unknowing, therein. For more information, contact Commodore Valen Seria, commanding officer of the exercise.

Third of all, you have claimed that, I quote, "Free trade will not be hampered to any nation", with which Saevitia in its official policy agrees wholeheartedly. It is also our belief that as part of the inherent right to free maritime trade, ships in international waters may not be harassed or attacked by other ships, for piracy (as such harassment is known) is a deterrent to free trade. I'm sure you will agree with our assessment of the situation, and thus refrain from making ridiculous claims about deploying "battlefleets" to "enforce" free trade. After all, trade that is enforced, or taxed, or otherwise regulated, is not truly free, is it not? We must emphasize, however, that Griffincrest Corporation will be answerable in a Saevitian civil court to any loss of Saevitian life or property caused by its security forces or other employees.

Thank you and have a pleasant day.

Iapetus Varáinn
Sir Iapetus Varáinn
Crown Secretary of Defence, CSSA
1st Viscount of Lothris Island, Knight of the Lily, etc., etc.

The choppers flew at what seemed to Lee to be at once too slow and yet too fast. Too slow, in that the longer they flew, the more time they'd be wasting, and too fast, in that they were beginning to look really suspicious. Still, the pilot was right. Ten minutes of flight and they were over the embassy.

One chopper, empty, landed immediately at the helipad. Fortunately, the ambassador, his family, and four staff were where they should be. "Good evening, Ambassador," the loadmaster said. "We're here to take your people to the Chennai; from there, you'll be home."

It looked a bit like a castle, in some ways, Lee thought, waiting for the first chopper to lift off. Partly, it was the Gothic decor, partly, it was the sense of presence the embassy seemed to have. The barbed wire lining the walls, didn't fit the decor; the green light of the NVGs made the scene even more surreal. So, too, did the tank that appeared up on Marxallee - and the missiles that streaked out from the nearby choppers at it.

Damn, Lee thought. So much for a quiet evening. Now, they know somebody's here; now, they know why we're really here. And now, they're going to actually be alert. Hopefully, the boys upstairs know what they're doing.

~ Saevitian Embassy, Altenberg. ~

Lieutenant Brenner had surrendered the watch in order to catch a couple hours of sleep. The partying in Altenberg seemed to be showing no sign of stopping, although it had slowed down somewhat, so that Brenner could now hear two different bands playing two different songs, both about equally distant from the Embassy. It was curiously disconcerting, and rather cacophonous, but Marines are used to war, which is much noisier. So Brenner had been able to sleep through the noise, napping on the roof itself near the helipad beside his sergeant. They had left the tireless Corporal Paine in command, who in turn in the traditions of corporals everywhere ordered the privates to maintain extra vigilance, sleeping in shifts.

Private Ignace Beck woke Brenner around what he judged to be two in the morning. It could have been earlier or later. Brenner didn't bother to check his watch. "Ehhh, what is it?"

"'Morning, Sir," said Beck. "A few copters coming to pick us up. They're taking us to Chennai."

"Chennai? Oh, the swan," Brenner said, rubbing his eyes. "Get mister civvie upstairs then. And find someone to turn on the landing lights."

"Yessir." Beck scampered away and Brenner stood up and reached for his gun. He wouldn't need it now, most likely, but he knew from long experience the probability of something going wrong increased proportionally to the amount of time you'd spent on the mission. Things were fine and dandy when the instructions from Command were still ringing in your ears, but about sixty percent of all accidents happened in the last five minutes when you were about to extract.

By the time the chopper came down everything was in order. The helipad was lit in the darkness, much like an arcane symbol of power; Brenner and a pair of marines stood at one side, Brenner wearing a faded leather greatcoat over his uniform in the chill night air. The Ambassador, his family, and a few staff had also assembled, bearing suitcases containing all their worldly belongings (or at least all the belongings they had brought from Saevitia). Everything sensitive had been locked away or brought with them; everything valuable that they couldn't take with them had been left in the bunker, which the marines were sealing under thick steel and concrete doors, under the assumption that they'd return someday when a friendly government had been restored.

They signaled the helicopter down with flags they'd dragged up from the Ambassador's old room, and when it landed and its rotors came to a stop, allowing the Saevitians to hear themselves think once again, a few men got out. One of them spoke to the Ambassador, who picked up his suitcases and responded -- but something wasn't right.

A hand on the loadmaster's shoulder compelled him to turn around. The man he faced was about six feet four, over two hundred pounds, almost casually leaning on a large custom-modified assault rifle with laser sights. More intimidating was the glint in the man's eye. Brenner said: "You ain't Saevitians, are you." It wasn't a question. "Care to tell us who you work for? Take your time."

~ in the air ~

The Saevitian Command Network is an extensive battlenet, theoretically linking together every equipped vehicle and building in the Sovereignty. In this case, the complete sensor images the twelve fighters were currently obtaining came from a satellite, the Firefly attached to their group, and a radar dish attached to the Saevitian Embassy (located right near its cable receiver -- people just tended to assume that they had two televisions). It was information they could gain access to even while under EMCON, as now; they were roughly circling the embassy's position, keeping watch for enemy fighters and paying attention to activity at known airbases.

Then, from the embassy node, they gained the knowledge that a tank had just been destroyed by some choppers. This knowledge also passed to most of the rest of the Saevitian military, although only those units currently attached to SCONE's Friedlichen Command unit had immediate access to it. Furthermore, most of them would disregard it as it didn't directly concern them. But the units that did notice paid attention, and responded.

The fighters came a little bit lower. The K-39 is a stealthy aircraft: it makes very little noise that is visible from the ground or using any kind of sonar detection, it leaves no contrails, and these fighters have no lights on; unless one is actively looking for a K-39 it's nearly impossible to see, and even when actively looking you need a very-low-frequency radar to avoid mistaking them for birds or insects. Nonetheless, they were now in range to more accurately target enemy vehicles if necessary, and destroy them with a wide variety of bombs, rockets, and missiles. Of course, they wouldn't bother to do that unless the enemy actually threatened the embassy, but still.

Some office somewhere in the bowels of the Military Intelligence Directorate

After the last meeting Freidlichen had finally got a few more dedicated people to sort through local intelligence, but there was quite a bit to go through. Mounds of paperwork, everything from unread news stories, to unexamined random satellite photographs, to maps, or to years-old military intelligence still buried most useful information about this distant and, to the Union, previously unimportant corner of the world.

However that was about to change, and ironically enough it was not even one of the still-overwhelmed new staffers who started the chain of action. Certain words were flagged by MID computer parsing programs to be forwarded for further analysis; normally, nobody in MID but the computers read the news out of Saevitia, but the name Griffencrest had popped up not once but repeatedly, in news articles also flagged for the name Zakrapat...

The loadmaster gulped. "True, I'm no Saevitian. I'm - we're - here on behalf of your government. Hell, a squadron of your fighters, off the Chennai herself, are flying top cover for us. Look, can we just get this done fast?" he stammered out; his last words got covered up by the roar of the detonating missiles.

"What was that last bit you said?" Brenner asked.

"The more time we spend talking, the more time it gives them to figure out what's going on. I'll get the pilot; he should have the frequency for your fighters," the loadmaster said. He started to leave; a glare forced him back.

"You didn't answer the question. Who are you guys?"

When in doubt, go with instinct, the loadmaster thought, and said, "GPI - Global Protection, Incorporated. We're contractors, hired to get you out of here safely. Now, do you want me to get the pilot for you, or do you trust me?"
---
"Sir, we've got our navy group organized. It'll serve as the initial naval component of GPI; once the boffins get their new designs worked up, we'll start incorporating them in," Ken Lau said in his best Received pronunciation. Halbi, at least, could appreciate that. None of this 'Panglish' or 'Business English' - here, real English was spoken.

"Excellent. May I take a look?" Halbi asked. 6000 personnel, not including logistics. One AC-12 carrier, with 3400 crew (including the airgroup, a helpful footnote explained). Three DDH-30 helicopter destroyers, each fitted out with 10 SH-4 maritime patrol choppers. One LPD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_class_landing_platform_dock_ship), which had been refitted to handle three of the hydrofoil landing craft Michael Shipyards built, with room for two CH-4 transport choppers. Four AS-709 fast attack subs - uprated Alfas, which meant they'd get to the area of operations fast, at least. Five corvettes - four from Brunei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhoda_Ragam_class_corvette), with the last being the prototype they had built for the HS-12 - with two SH-4 and 4 S-70 maritime patrol choppers between them. And three LC-1 hydrofoil landing craft, two from Brunei and one from Michael Shipyards.

"It seems light on AD," Halbi noted.

"Well, we're not the main naval elements, after all," Ken replied. "That's what the Saevitians are doing."

Brenner smiled, slowly. It wasn't a particularly pleasant smile. "What do you think, Sergeant? Do I trust him?"

Sergeant Kaudás, lankier and more impassive, appeared at his shoulder. In Saevitic he said, "<You're making the man uncomfortable, sir. And we don't have much time. I suggest we move.>"

"<Right,>" Brenner said. "All right, Global Protection Incorporated. We'll follow your lead."

He slung the rifle across his back and spoke into his radio. "<Private Miller. Are you checking the SCONE readouts? Over.>"

"<Affirmative sir. Over.>"

"<Any Saevitian fighters around here?>"

"<Affirmative sir. Twelve sir. The 38th Naval, 'Yugo's Yeomen'-->"

"<Fine. Now get on up. We don't have much time.>"

From the far end of the Marxallee, perhaps half a mile from the embassy, came the sounds of tracked vehicles slowing for a turn. The two tanks became visible as Brenner, another Private, and the loadmaster between them nearly dragged the Ambassador aboard the chopper. They raised their main guns to fire, and exploded. Not one of the choppers had had time to fire anything.

Brenner raised his eyebrows. "Hey, you were right. There is Saevitian cover." If he hadn't just been Mr. Serious Business Marine just a few seconds before, one could have sworn that he winked.

[OOC: Eh. I guess they were also talking in Saevitic in all the previous posts. For the unfamiliar, it sounds a bit like the bastard child of Estonian and Italian, with an inexplicably Dutch-ish accent when speaking English. I'll get around to actually designing it someday.]

Near Saevitian Embassy

A few Sortmarker mercenaries marched alongside the Zakrapat tank passing the embassy. The Hirdsmen who had been assigned here were impatient for the last few embassies to be evacuated, so that they could be released from the duty of watching them to make sure nothing funny happened, and get back to real work. Plus though Altenberg was already heavily looted, in a city of such size there was still much more to be gained, so every minute spent circling around an embassy on boring guard duty was a missed opportunity.

A few of the Sortmarkers were riding on the back of the tank, leaning over rifles and talking quietly. The commander had just popped the turret for a smoke, and a few of the Hirdsmen were comparing "souvenirs" with him when the missiles screamed down and hit the tank with a massive and ear-splittingly loud explosion. The three Hirdsmen on the tank were killed instantly.

"Treachery! Attack!" one of the remaining six yelled as the Hirdsmen scattered for cover. They quickly realized that the tank radio and the Hirdsmen's own radioman, who had been riding on the tank, were both gone, cutting them off from communications, but the explosion itself should have alerted many of the troops in the city. Hopefully Zakrapat air defense troops had enough time to get over their hangovers since Altenberg was captured.

The Hirdsmen meanwhile started firing at the distinct shape of the helicopter on the embassy roof. Half a mile was a long shot but for the AK-74, the most common of the many different firearms used by the Hirdsmen, but still well within lethal range.

One Hirdsman began to laugh as the shock of attack wore off.

"We'll get a story worth telling here after all!" he yelled as he peered through his sights at a figure on the roof and squeezed the trigger. "Tear them to pieces!"

The others needed no encouragement. While this was happening, in the distance behind them another 4x4 truck pulled up and Hirdsmen leaped from the truck bed, scattering quickly to find cover for themselves. One Hirdsman was carrying a Stinger, which meant that these troops had probably been men who were supposed to be securing the airport, but had instead been looting until the sound of the explosion drew them. He ducked behind an abandoned house and, while the two groups filled each other in by shouting, raised the missile to the sky and searched for a target. He had heard helicopter rotors and an aircraft would be a kill worth boasting about.

The stealth fighters escaped detection, but the helicopters were a big and juicy target and one of the gunships quickly attracted his attention. In a moment the missile was shooting upwards and the Hirdsman was sprinting away from the telltale smoke plume towards new cover.

Meanwhile the helipad, well-lit as it was while the rest of the street was dark, made such a good target that the other five Hirdsmen quickly joined their companions in sending bullets downrange at both the helicopter and the staffers and Marines standing in the circle of light.

All over Altenberg, ZSU's began firing into the sky, aiming at nothing at all but still pumping tremendous amounts of firepower into the night air. Anti-air troops, equipped with RPG's, were also rushing to the area around the embassy and taking up positions in rooftops, hoping to catch the intruders as they passed overhead. Almost all of the Zakrapatian forces were caught off guard by the attack, and many began to take out their frustration upon Friedlicher civilians. They had supposedly now been at peace and the unwarranted attack was going to bring about terrible things for the poor, peace loving people of Altenberg.

Aside from the ZSU's lighting up the night, dozens of SA-6 launchers were now on full alert, scanning the skies for any sight of the enemy planes. Aside from these, eight MiG's were also scrambled. Zakrapatian generals were enraged by the assault, and vowed not to let the new enemy aircraft escape. They were prepared to send whatever they had to destroy the threat, and if necessary, move to strike the vessels in the Adriatic.

At sea, the situation was becoming tense as a convoy of five Griffincrest tankers began to approach the Saevitian vessels. Each of the tankers contained several anti-shipping batteries on board, but these were all well hidden, and it was doubtful that the opposing fleet would suspect the innocent looking group to be packing the heat they had within. Each captain was on strict orders. The convoy would not be turned away, no matter what.

On land, in Zakrapat, several MiG's and Sukhoi's were preparing for take-off. They would fly out to the edge of Zakrapatian airspace, and were ready to engage Saevitian vessels if the need arose.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! Rifle rounds roared out, followed by the 'whoosh' of a SAM. On the embassy roof, the ambassador's family were rushing towards the chopper, accompanied by four staffers, when they stopped. "Get on the chopper! GO! GO!" Brenner shouted. The door gunner spun the minigun out towards where he thought the shooters were, and opened up. Another chopper spotted the smoke plume and opened fire. The loadmaster urged the Saevitians onto the chopper, then suddenly staggered back - one, two three shots!

The missile rocketed into the sky, its seeker searching for its target. A nicely warm target presented itself above the cold metal rooftop - even better than the original target! UV checked out, IR checked out. Then, suddenly, neither checked out. Jamming! Where was the target now? Weird pulses of IR and UV energy confused the seeker. Where was the target? The missile had effectively turned into an unguided rocket.

Thunder seemed to have struck the city. Cannons throughout the city streamed shells up into the night. Meanwhile, two choppers traded places, and the new chopper's loadmaster urged the remaining staffers and five of the troops to get on.

"What about him?" Brenner shouted, pointing to the shot GPI man.

"He's probably dead. Hurry up!"

A third time, choppers traded places, and the remaining troops rushed onto the chopper. Meanwhile, the other helicopters were already starting to fly out. Only, how would they do it? The faster and higher they went, the bigger a target they were on radar. The lower they went, the more likely they'd be hit by the missiles and cannons being fired. And the slower they went, the longer they'd be in danger.

"Hey, you guys up there have any suggestions?" a pilot radioed over to the Saevitians.

The twelve fighters climbed up and away from the melée on the ground, saving their heavy ordnance for tanks and units that could pose an actual threat, whether to the embassy or to themselves. (Radio silence was maintained as much as possible, of course.) The air defense network was crackling into life, having been alerted by the helicopter's missile launch, and guns were coming online, filling the night sky with bullets. Sort of. They were filling the areas around the gun with bullets; avoid those areas, and one should be okay. At present all the Zakrapatians were doing was wasting ammo and alerting the Saevitians to their positions; presumably this was because someone had activated an alert and the AD personnel had been asleep at the time, or hung over, or drunk, or attempting to get drunk, so they'd just weighed down the trigger with a brick while they panicked. Meanwhile, the Gryphons were listening.

They heard increasing numbers of ground-based radars, scanning the skies. Presumably these were radars attached to surface-to-air missile launchers or something; due to their high frequency, however, they couldn't resolve a lock on a target presenting as small a profile as the K-39s, rendering them useful only against the helicopters. Unfortunately (to the Saevitians' minds, at least), the helicopters were the targets they were supposed to protect, so several of the fighters deployed their small diameter bombs against SAM sites they could identify. There were too many ZSU sites for them to destroy without running out of ammunition they'd need against tanks or heavy vehicles, so they decided to leave those to the choppers, with the AEW/ELINT Firefly pinpointing the sites on a satellite map of the area and sending it to the helicopter crews.

Radio contact was made with a lead helicopter. It would undoubtedly be a little eerie to get radio contact from an airplane the choppers couldn't actually see on radar, but too late for that: "Go over the lake and towards the mountains, it's the fastest way out of the city and they have fewer cannons that way. Three Flight's with you. Good luck."

As Three Flight broke off from the main formation, starting off by fairly accurately bringing about 1,000 kg of ordnance down upon several ZSUs between the embassy and the lake and tailing the choppers like upper shadows, dark shapes against a darker sky, the Saevitians heard something else. Fighters, sweeping the sky with radar. They were quickly painted as MiGs: an aerial threat to the choppers, and therefore, requiring neutralization.

A whoosh of gas and streak of flame indicated that One Flight's four planes had each launched four of their S70 Scorpion medium-range air-to-air missiles. Sixteen, two to a MiG. The Scorpions had no active radar signature, using inertial and infrared guidance to cover the approximately 55km between the Zakrapatians and the Saevitians, which meant that RWRs would not detect missile locks; estimated reaction time was about five seconds.

The K-39s meanwhile had broken formation. No longer being where they had been when they launched the missiles, they were now following the air formation, which was heading for France (it would make the turn south once over the mountains, presumably). If any MiGs survived and followed them, they'd deal with them there. After all, it seemed likely the Zakrapatians would not head towards an unknown and difficult-to-shoot enemy -- in fact, the K-39 was theoretically stealthy enough that a MiG's radar wouldn't be able to obtain a targeting lock on it because its signature was too small -- but rather towards the apparently undefended group of choppers.

It looked even more undefended because Third Flight had already used most of the armament on its external hardpoints, minimizing its own RCS further. Each of its four fighters still had about 3,500 kg of weapons stored internally -- one had been reduced to 3,000 kg -- but were expecting a good deal more resistance now that the capital was on alert.

In one of the choppers, Brenner cursed under his breath as he felt the rising winds on his face. He hated situations like this, where his survival depended on someone else not shooting at them, and there was nothing he could do about it if they did. For some reason he felt unreasonably angry at Saevitian Command, for apparently not caring enough to mount a rescue operation with its own units. Then for a while he felt unreasonably angry at GPI, for firing on the tank, when he was sure he could have bluffed his way out of it. After a while he wasn't really sure who to feel angry at, but he was still angry, so he decided to be angry at the Zakrapatians. The whole mess was kind of their fault in the first place.

"Fucking Zakrapat," he muttered, grabbing onto something solid as the chopper attempted another dive to avoid a passing missile.

"WHAT?" someone asked.

"NOTHING," Brenner responded. (Helicopters are loud.)

The Great Escape (http://www.imeem.com/people/83Ag3k/music/-7E89yUC/movie-soundtracks-the-great-escape/)

Alois wiped the sweat from his brow, his thoughts wandering once more to his newborn son and his wife’s body being piled onto the mound when only hours before they had been sleeping peacefully. His sweat mixed with tears and Hans patted him on the back, though with his garbage can hands, the pat transformed into a smack and Alois jolted forward, somehow comforted by the man’s gesture. He reached for his boot and pulled out a folded picture, pausing briefly from his work to gaze into his wife’s eyes.

A gloved hand appeared from nowhere, snatching the picture from Alois’ hands, and as he turned to face the man, his gaze met with the eyes of a Zakrapatian infantryman. He removed a lighter from his pocket and lit the picture ablaze, dropping it to the ground as the corners folded inwards and crumpled from the heat. Hans, watching the scene from a few feet away, nonchalantly hoisted his pickaxe onto his shoulder and turned his head to face the man next to him as he turned to face the man next to him, and so on and so forth until the Freidlichers all down the line were poking their heads out of line to look upon Alois, who was staring dully into space, looking in the same direction as the soldiers in front of him, but staring fully past them.

“Right,” Hans said simply. “Well that about does it, I think.” With a single fluid motion he grabbed hold of the pickaxe handle resting on his shoulder and swung it backwards, picking up momentum as it swung around and paused momentarily over his shoulder before falling back to Earth. Close to Earth, anyways. The point of the iron tool buried itself deep in the soldier’s skull as Alois swung his shovel upwards and crushed the second man’s chin. As if it were one motion, the two men grabbed the soldier’s rifles and shot the nearest guards before they could react, prisoners all down the line darting their heads side to side, looking for some hint as to what to do.

The two soldiers nearest Alois and Hans immediately raised their rifles and took aim, recoiling in pain as the young man sent to fetch coffee for the two men splashed it in their eyes. An alarm sounded somewhere in the distance as the prisoners reacted, removing the sidearms from their holsters and putting a number of holes in vital organs. The popping of gunfire as guards executed their prisoners was met by the screams of the soldiers in the command tent as the driver of a dump truck elevated his load, pouring tons of burning asphalt onto the canvas.

Alois shoveled a heap of burning asphalt and swung his shovel like a catapult, showering the nearby unarmed guards, to be finished off by Hans and his pickaxe. Within moments, the sounds of gunfire and screaming had subsided and Alois and Hans shot each other a disbelieving look. Of course, it was entirely possible that most of the Zakrapatians were simply hiding or on break, but no one intended to stick around long enough to find out. “Take their weapons!” Hans bellowed, grabbing a hard plastic G36 magazine from a nearly dead Zakrapatian and bashing him over the head with it. The chopping of rotors immediately became evident, and the prisoners looked to the sky, diving into now abandoned tents and trucks in a vain attempt to find cover.

The two men poked their heads out of a 4x4 in time to see a line of bluish-grey helicopters making their way north to Altenberg pass. They were a far cry from the Mi-28 attack helicopters and Hinds of the Zakrapatian Army and two men waved, slightly confused, at the passing airborne convoy before taking what provisions they could and piling back into the troop transports that had taken them to the forced labor camp, this time, bound back for the village they had departed some weeks ago.

Schanze 02, Northern Freidlichen

The news traveled quickly through Freidlichen of a prisoner revolt near Altenberg, and tellings and retellings passed from man to man, growing in absurdness and pride as they traveled the breadth of the countryside. Families who still had homes huddled around the fireplaces, exchanging their versions of the stories, and perhaps for the first time since the initial Zakrapatian invasion several weeks prior, a flicker of hope, or at least pride, was reignited.

Though the government-in-self-exile (the half-joking name the refugees used to describe the heavily fortified redoubt’s inhabitants) was unable to get the version of the story in which a battalion of tanks was turned away with pitchforks, they did manage to receive some word of the revolt, and the refugees all received double rations that night, while still more fragments of the Freidlicher Guard and Reserve Military trickled in from hiding.

OOC: My stories seem somewhat removed from everyone else’s, so you’ll just have to trust me that everything will tie together in the end.

Lee laid his head back against the door. In spite of the cannon fire, the explosions, the noise of the battle outside, his heart wasn't racing at all. No, he was relaxed. If they were hit, they were hit. If not, then they'd make it out. There wasn't anything he could do, so he might as well get some rest.

The helicopters raced towards the lake, apparently going for speed. Barrages of chaff shot out to jam enemy radars, while jamming pods quickly went to work. The helicopters did attack some of the designated targets, but there were too many to track, too many for the gunners to process. Still, decoys and fancy flying weren't perfect, and the heavy weapons section's chopper got caught by a long burst of cannon fire and a pair of RPGs. The missiles stored aboard the chopper cooked off, and it exploded in a fireball.

The flash and roar of the explosion woke Lee up from his stupor. He yelled over the intercom, "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?"

"We lost #7," the gunner replied in a clipped tone, then cut off the intercom. He had more targets to fire at, more missiles to jam. Lee's platoon had just lost six men, but that wasn't the issue right now - getting out of here was.
---
"So, how is the airgroup coming along?" Halbi asked. Suddenly, his phone vibrated. He took a look, read the message, then blanched.

"Sir, what is it?" a logistics specialist from Luis Aviation asked.

"Not your concern," Halbi replied. It wasn't her concern at all; she wasn't committing troops to battle. No, that was his job - to send people off to die. Of course, she could've done that easily; for her, they were just assets. For some reason, however, the deaths of the six troops and four aircrew on chopper 7 hit him particularly hard. It's not like he knew them; still, they died because of his plan.

Dammit, what went wrong? The Zakrapatis must've been alerted, must've realized what was up. Maybe someone was too trigger-happy? Should've sent in our own fighters, he thought. They wouldn't be so quick to shoot.

Near Saevitian Embassy

The Sortmarker with the Stinger watched from his new cover, which he shared with another Hirdsman, as automatic fire from the gunships raked his old position.

"Help reload." he barked to his companion, and the two slotted a new missile into the launcher. The Hirdsman stood to fire just as a gunship swept overhead and towards the lake.

He muttered "better luck," and pulled the trigger. He was just sliding into a third hiding-spot when the boom of hundreds of guns opening fire made him duck and cover his ears.

"God's teeth!" he yelled to the other Hirdsman, pointing out over the city where thousands of rounds were being pumped into the sky. At least one or two guns were nearby and the noise of automatic cannon fire was ear-shattering.

Close by, a few other scattered bands of Hirdsmen had joined random small-arms fire and one or two RPGs to the assault on the low-flying gunships. The first group to be attacked had already burned through several rifle magazines for each man, and they had shifted their aim towards the gunships as the transport helicopter lifted off from the embassy roof.

Auferstanden (some time during the first night)

Geirr half sat, half lay on a soft bed in one of the villagers' homes, the girl he had picked as his share of war-spoils in one arm as he twirled a gold necklace lazily in his other hand. He shook it a little, then held it up on his companion's neck and squinted critically in the flickering candlelight.

"What do you think, Varg? Is it good enough to bring back for Anna?"

The black-haired Russian was sprawled on a chair near the foot of the bed, his own girl on his lap. He pushed himself up a little to look.

"It's pretty enough."

"What about you, Adolph?"

"Don't gloat." Adolph snapped back, and turned his face away from Geirr and the girl. He had, as it turned out, gotten a bonder-woman of his own, although she hadn't been anyone's first pick. Almost all the Hirdsmen got to choose before Adolph, who was only on his first expedition and was untested in combat. But Adolph's woman had put up too much of a struggle, and he, inexperienced, had hit her too hard with the butt of his gun. Spending the night alone after all had done little for the boy's mood, and neither had derision from the other Hirdsmen. It was considered embarrassing to have to kill one's bonder-woman, and the joke that even an ugly prisoner would rather die than sleep with Adolph had been heard often.

Because of this, Geirr shot back with "It's your own fault," but without much fire. He returned to idly toying with the necklace, admiring the sound of the gold links sliding off one another, and the way they glinted in the candlelight.

Varg too seemed unaccustomedly passive after a night of enjoyment. "Another song." he murmured lazily, seemingly fascinated with twirling his girl's hair around one finger.

"I know one good for this country, it's part of the Rome-song." Geirr swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up fully, pushing his bonder-woman away. "The god is punishing the Romans for losing their courage. Listen."

His voice took on a slightly more formal tone as he began to half-sing, half chant in Norwegian.

[Where men despise
their own arms-strength
they cannot bear
the weight of wealth

From every side
the glut of gold
and heavy fate
brings rushing doom

The god flew up
to broad-armed earth
too long at peace.
Ill-pleased he spoke

'They build in gold
raise towers thick
with wild fumes
blot out the stars

My kingdom too
they hammer at.
for quarry-stones
the caverns groan

Can they unroof
my hallow halls
bring heaven's air
to those in hell?

Then Fate do this
change peace to war,
stir up mens hearts
to slay the soft

Too long it is
since human blood
watered the fields
and man fought man

Since my house thronged
with shades of men
sent down to dark
by Borvar's blade'

Then standing strong
he shook his spear
with mighty sound
he rent the earth...]

OOC: All my choppers are gunships. They're Hind-style choppers, combining gunship and troop transport roles.

The Italian military itself will not cross north - just GPI (my troops). Further, I'll need to seize an airfield in Friedlichen proper before the Saevitians or New Manth would be able to deploy troops; the Italians wouldn't let them in. If people don't like this idea, however, feel free to reject it outright, and I'll delete it.

Over the lake, the choppers flew. Cannon fire was just starting to slacken off, as ammunition ran low throughout the city. SAMs continued to streak towards the fleeing choppers, but many were spoofed; still, chopper #2 and chopper #5 were hit and crashed into the lake. Lee, on chopper #1, grimaced. They couldn't stop to try to pick up any survivors. The wrecks' crews and passengers would just have to fend for themselves. And with their poor knowledge of German, they certainly couldn't pass as Friedlichers. So, any survivors, if they managed to somehow elude their captors, would have to flee south towards Italy, on foot, with no way of getting help from the locals, or somehow brazen the Zakrapatis into believing they had hired them for mercenary work.

Choppers 8, 9 and 10, carrying the Saevitians, raced ahead of the group, their gunners focusing on jamming enemy sensors rather than shooting at designated targets. Behind them, the other choppers fired off their last missiles; as each finished up, the gunner switched to jamming. Soon, the choppers would begin their flight over the mountains.
---
The Italian government had a problem. See, mobilization would not be politically acceptable - the isolationist, pacifist mood that had taken hold in Italy wouldn't allow such a drastic step. But something had to be done to keep Zakrapat from invading further south.

Here, GPI smelled an opportunity. See, the Saevitians were already paying for GPI to help liberate Friedlichen, but GPI had no bases in the region. Halbi had been considering a joint invasion along the Zakrapati coast, along with a bombing campaign, in hopes of somehow pressuring the government to leave Friedlichen, but the odds didn't look good.

Here, though, the full strength of the force Halbi had assembled could start on the border with Friedlichen - fighters could stage from Italian airbases, tanks could drive north from Italian army bases, ships could unload munitions in Italian ports. Once the right palms were greased, GPI was hired to help with Alpine defenses. A very aggressive defense was planned.

General Coroniev was furious upon hearing of this treachery now taking place in Altenberg, and even more so when he found out that now, the MiG's sent to intercept the fleeing foreigners had been destroyed. This could not stand in his mind, and he immediately called for the Griffincrest piloted FA-15 Cardinal Advanced Strike Fighters, built by GEM Aerospace out of the Candrian Empire. These were top notch aircraft flown by top notch pilots, and Coroniev knew that the Saevitians would be hard pressed to escape these men. Within minutes of his call, a half dozen of these bird were taking off, setting a course from the old Zakrapatian border to intercept the enemy before they could make it to safety.

In Altenberg itself, the gunfire was beginning to subside, but the missile sites continued to scan the skies, hoping to catch yet another glimpse of the elusive enemy aircraft. For the men who had landed in the lake, they would soon be in for a miserable time. Trucks surrounded the lake on all sides, and soldiers began pouring out and setting up a perimeter. Spotlights on each truck swept back and forth over the lake, hoping to find the enemy mercenaries who had gone down.

A Mercury APC soon rolled up to the lake, and Octavius popped out of the hatch on top, lit a cigarette, and climbed down to speak with the Zakrapatian major in charge of the search effort here.

"What the fuck was that Igor?"

"They surprised us, sir"

"You can't be surprised Igor...when these intruders are caught, I want to be the first to speak with them, you got that major?"

"Yes sir Captain Whiteleather"

And with that, the major moved back to his men and began screaming in Russian and pushing his men in different directions. Octavius, meanwhile, watched calmly over the lake, calmly smoking his cigarette.

This, however, was all petty business compared to the situation building just over the Italian border. A large force was beginning to assemble down there, and the Zakrapatian military was beginning to feel a bit on edge over the whole matter. Several tank and rifle divisions were diverted from their duties to move down to the area, and a formal request was presented to the Italian government, demanding that the military forces posing a threat to the Zakrapatian occupation area be disbanded.

At sea, the Zakrapatian Navy was beginning to move out, just outside of the Italian maritime border, just in case the Italians decided to allow this new opposition to Zakrapatian rule in Friedlichen to use its bases. This was not the only move by the navy, however. Several missile boats left the Zakrapatian territory on a mission to meet up with the Griffincrest tankers, and lead them safely back to Yalat.

OOC: I'm assuming the Italian military is the Italian military of today. I don't think it'll be a factor, unless you actually invade.
Also included: a bit of detail about the first set of reinforcements.

To whom it may concern,

We are quite frankly offended that you would think of us - Italy, a nation that has maintained a staunch neutrality since the end of the Risorgimiento, that prides itself on the diplomatic caution of Cavour - as a threat. We have hired the services of a foreign company to assess and bolster our Alpine defenses, and can assure you that they pose no threat, unless you make them one. As the Italian defense force shall never unjustly invade a foreign state, nor shall we permit any contractors to violate our long-cherished neutrality without just cause. As such, your demand is moot.

As it happens, it is your invasion of Friedlichen, and your subsequent advance to the border with our fair nation, that has us on edge. Surely, you do not wish to incur the wrath of the heirs of Garibaldi? Our defense fleet in Venice sits poised to cut your maritime trade entirely; our elite air corps is ready and waiting to throw back any invading aircraft; our army will soon be in top shape to resist any attack you throw at us. We urge you to reduce the tensions between us, at minimum by reducing the size of your forces in the border region to a more reasonable level.

Sincerely,
Benedetto Mori, Foreign Minister, Republic of Italy
---
On the lake, a few tired passengers and aircrew were struggling to find life jackets and swim to shore when the spotlights lit up, blinding them. Confused, they gave up fast.
---
Halbi's Bruneian brigade was the first unit sent over. It was the easiest to transport, and the only fully-assembled unit of its size. While it had little experience in mountain warfare, the troops themselves would help shore up the defenses, and could teach what they knew. Plus, they'd make for good opponents in exercises.

Three battalions of motorized infantry and one light infantry battalion, along with an artillery battery, a reconnaissance squadron, an engineer company, 3 helicopter squadrons and a light transport for logistics, a base defense squadron (with two light AD batteries and an MP company), were deployed; attached to this force were the 50 F-21s of the Test Pilot Wing, along with MP platoons to help cover the Wing's airbases.

Several hundred miles away, a man sat at a desk, watching a large-screen television. News of the Zakrapatian invasion of a neutral country had produced a general fuming indignation amongst Stabistan, the president included.

As the beams of light from the large (but heavily reinforced) windows of his office caught motes of dust, he scowled.

Recently, a Stabistani diplomatic attache had been in Friedlichen along with those of several other countries on a tour and to possibly form an embassy for Stabistan when the war had flared up. He had managed to scoot out of there on a fishing trawler, but on the way managed to discreetly take a few digital photos of the Freidlichen civilians being abused by their occupiers.

Naturally, they were to be released to the Stabistani press any moment now, and if popular support was gathered, then Stabistan would send in a peacekeeping force after contacting and coordinating with the Saevitian Archipelago.

Of course, they wouldn't actually touch Freidlichen soil until they had Saevitian support, not wanting to upset the delicate balance.

However, at the rate things were going, that balance would be shattered soon.

"Get the third infantry division and the seventeenth through twenty-first armored regiments mobilized, there may be some intervention ahead. Tell the thirty-fifth and fortieth airborne transport regiments to keep their planes on combat alert, and get the twelfth CAS, sixteenth fighter, and eighth strategic bombing squadrons on their toes as well."

He steepled his fingers and laid down his phone, deep in thought as his advisors scurried about outside his office, attempting to open channels with the Archipelago.

Schanze 02, Northern Freidlichen

The Friedlicher officer was almost certainly not prepared for what he found on his desk when he started his next shift.

He saw a tape, with a note next to it reading "From a friend you did not look to have."

Near Schanze 02, Northern Freidlichen

Anna Hedussania reflected on a job well done. A tape delivered, the cleaner unhurt in the process (although scared out of her wits, no doubt), and hopefully, the makeup she had worn would even prevent her being recongised. Additionally, she possessed a Southern Friedlicher assumed name to go with her very real (and expensive) Southern Friedlicher appearance, and could masquerade as a refugee virtually with impunity - provided she didn't overplay her hand. Still, she knew that she would eventually have to revela herself to her unwitting hosts, if only to establish a viable channel of communication. She only hoped that they didn't kill her out of hand, with their nerves on edge - she really liked them, and was prepared to take any risks to carry out her orders to help these people.

And that's really the point, isn't it? Oh well, you don't take a job with the Fifth Bureau if you expect to live to retirement age.....

(OOC: Yes, she shanghaied the cleaner, then pretended to be her, to get into the office, where she left the tape. No doubt, the cleaner will have an earful to give the guard officer about it, and may even have seen through the agent's disguise. Maybe.)

The mercenaries were pulled from the water by the Zakrapatian soldiers, and soon they were presented to Captain Whiteleather. He looked over the group assembled before him, flicked his cigarette aside, and told a nearby soldier to have them loaded up into the trucks, and to follow him to a military base just outside of Altenberg, where the Griffincrest advisors had set up their main camp. These poor souls were about to be in one of the worst situations of their lives.

The camp was alerted to the new arrivals, and the advisors and their Zakrapatian allies began to make the base ready for their new arrivals. The base displayed no signs at all of Griffincrest involvement, so that there was no way to tie them in directly to the operations going on, but Griffincrest mercenaries were ready and waiting to extract whatever information the mercenaries and Saevitian staff aboard the downed helicopters knew, by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, the Zakrapatian marked Griffincrest fighters closed in on the Saevitian and remaining mercenary helicopters. The pilots were making the final preparations before engaging, readying themselves for the first Griffincrest air battle in quite some time.

In Yalat, the response from the Italian government was simply thrown away. The mighty Zakrapatian military was not about to be threatened by the nation of Italy. Tanks and soldiers continued to make their way towards the Italian border, and several AA batteries of ZSU's and SA-6's were being erected in the mountains. T-72's began lining up in the mountain passes, and hundreds of machine gun nests and RPG positions were being set up all over the Alps as well. An invasion through these mountains would prove a costly affair indeed.

Coroniev, in the meantime, had realized the weaknesses in his defenses now exposed by the Saevitian incursion. He order round the clock sky patrols from bases all over the newly occupied Friedlichen, and called in more SA-8's and SA-6's to be positioned around all major cities. Within the cities, ZSU's began taking up positions in major intersections, and SA-18 teams began moving into buildings all over Altenberg and other major Friedlicher cities, turning them into virtual SAM sites. Another attack like the one that had just occured, Coroniev vowed, would never happen again.

OOC: Just so you know, I'm assuming the GPI contract with Italy came a week after the embassy incident.

"No questions?" one captured mercenary asked quietly, speaking in Chinese.

"Not a one - not yet, anyway," another replied, in the same language, then unrolled his sleeve. "Just - these."

"Well, I can't blame them. It must've been embarrassing for them - here they've captured this city, and we waltzed right into the middle of it," a third GPI merc noted.

"Then got shot down," the first merc said.

"Well, yeah."

"Can't blame them for being mad, either. Can't really blame us for giving up, for that matter - we were outnumbered severely."

"And blinded by those damn spotlights."

"True."

"Well, at least we'll get some hazard pay if we make it out of here."

"We, ourselves, didn't really do anything. Hell, I never fired a shot!" the third merc said, speaking a bit too loudly.

"ALL OF YOU BE QUIET!" the Zakrapati guard shouted. It was a long, and now silent, truck ride to the base...
---
"YOU - YOU'RE FIRST!" a guard said, pointing to one of the seven living mercenaries they had fished out of the lake. The mercenary started forward, then was shoved by another guard into a small, dim room.

"Who are you?" the interrogator asked, with a touch of menace.

"Wang Jingwei. I'm - I was - a loadmaster aboard one of the ten assault helicopters we brought in. My job is - was - to direct, if necessary, the loading and unloading of the chopper; if we had needed to engage in a street fight, we would've landed, and I would've unloaded the eight troops aboard my chopper. I'll tell you all I know, but unfortunately that's not much," the mercenary replied. Why not cooperate? There wasn't anything to lose - it's not like he even knew enough to endanger anyone. Besides, by now he'd either be seeing the rest of the platoon be dragged in, or they'd have escaped, ideally ending GPI's involvement in Friedlichen.
---
In the Italian government, tensions continued to flare. Some called for the removal of GPI from the country, as a provocative presence; others called for joining the Saevitian quarantine effort, to back up their threat. Mobilization, and even a draft, was discussed - things unheard of in Italy prior to the invasion. Yet, in the end, the government decided to simply wait and see - and to monitor GPI's presence closely.

The Griffincrest interrogator was clearly not a Zakrapatian. They were in different uniforms, and they spoke with a different accent. The Griffincrest man was also far more clean looking than the average Zakrapatian. A few minutes into the interrogation, Captain Whiteleather walked in. He wore a normal Griffincrest uniform, black kevlar vest over a black shirt, black gloves, black pants and black boots. He was missing his balaclava and helmet however. This contrasted starkly with the Zakrapatian uniform, either olive green or plain brown.

He pulled up a chair across from Wang and sat down, dismissing the previous man. A dim white light dangled above the two as they sat looking at each other in the dirty little concrete room.

"So, evacuating the Saevitian embassy? You work with the Saevitian military I assume?"

"Well, uh, sorta. This was our very first contract. Sorry - I'm a bit used to these situations, but I'm normally on the other side of the room. But yeah, we were working with the Saevitians. They sent us a squadron of fighters as escorts.

The idea was that we'd go to the embassy, land the empty choppers, pick up the Saevitians, then leave. Ideally, we'd sneak in and out without firing a shot, relying on the fact that our choppers look like Hinds and on flying under your radar. Risky plan, but it was what we had to work with. We're very, very new to the business, you see.

Apparently, one of your tanks pulled up near the embassy. We should've just let 'em be, but some idiot decided to fire, letting everyone know what was up," Wang said.

"So you are a mercenary...interesting. Would you know anything about the PMC presence building up in Italy? Are these the same company as you?"

For now, Octavius was pleased with the ease of which he was receiving information. In the hallway, the other mercenaries were being seperated by the Zakrapatian guards, and they too would soon be interrogated by other Griffincrest advisors.

OOC: Just so you know, I'm assuming the GPI contract with Italy came a week after the embassy evacuation incident. Not that GPI would've been the only PMC hired by the Italians...

"Nope. Wouldn't be shocked - the Italians are probably pretty scared of an invasion. Maybe you should try offering your services to them. I mean, you're clearly not Zakrapati - they're supposed to have Russian accents, and yours is nothing like that.

But yeah, we had no contact with the Italians. We were flown in disguised as an ordinary freight shipment, and we probably bribed people at the airport to look the other way. We weren't going to be landing there, anyways - we were going to be landing on some Saevitian carrier. I don't remember its name, sorry.

Oh, could you guys write to GPI and let them know what happened to us? I'm sure they'll pay for our release. I wouldn't want folks back home to be worried about us."

The other mercenaries - all soldiers, rather than aircrew - were similarly easygoing and carefree with the bits of information they knew. They had the confidence of knowing too little to endanger anyone, and too little respect for GPI to care about secrecy.

"Yes, we shall send a letter. Thank you for the information. That's all for now."

With that, Octavius stood up and left, and a pair of Zakrapatian soldiers came into the room.

Similar things took place in the other rooms, and before long, the mercenaries were being led back to the courtyard, where they were placed in a large metal cage. Griffincrest was not very happy about keeping the mercenaries together, but it was all they had while the Zakrapatians were working on the detention center.

OOC: Feel free to interfere, or just watch the proceedings from your side of the border.

"Two weeks ago, GPI suffered its first casualties at the hands of Zakrapat. We were sent here one week ago to make sure the Italians suffer as few casualties as possible if the Zakrapatis invade. Today, we're conducting our first air combat exercise with the Italians, not far from the border. Zakrapat knows this - the Italians, maintaining their benevolent isolationism, told them that. So, ladies and gentlemen, let's put on a show, for the benefit of our hosts and the people across the border!" Maria Aviation, head of the test pilot corps, said, opening the briefing. The exercise would take place in a cylinder, thirty thousand meters in height and twenty thousand meters in radius, centered around the city of Bolzano. The fifty F-21s of the Test Pilot Wing would engage in mock battles against formations of Italian aircraft - Eurofighters, aging F-16s and Tornadoes, and even F-35s. A variety of engagement types were planned for the day's events, ranging from one-on-one duels to all-out melees. Air traffic in the area was prohibited for the duration of the exercise - any aircraft passing through were likely to be shot down if they didn't turn away.

~ Earlier. ~

The Saevitian fighters had observed an approaching flight of aircraft for some time now. It was obviously Zakrapatian, and somewhat more advanced than the MiG's they had confronted earlier; evidently they were starting to realize that the escorts were a genuine aerial threat, and that they would have to deal with severe aerial resistance if they sought to prevent the convoy from leaving Friedlicher airspace.

The convoy had turned into the mountains and was heading south along the range, where few defenses had been set up, local resistance still prevailed, and clouds and fog made detection from the ground more difficult. Their course would take them west to France, south across the Alps and Provence, then back east across Italy where they would reach Chennai at just about the end of their combat range. Most of their journey in Friedlichen would cover highly mountainous, rugged terrain, where local resistance prevailed and little anti-air defenses were in place (at least according to Saevitian intelligence -- officials suspected that new defenses would be set up over those very same regions within the next few days though).

Officially this wasn't considered a Saevitian mission, as such. It was an extraction, paid for by a private individual, hiring a mercenary company to retrieve a few people from a troubled region. It was true, there could be fragments of missiles or debris left by the destruction of eight MiGs, or among the eighteen medium-range air-to-air missiles that had been launched at the six FA-15s, with the "Made in Saevitia" stamp; but those armaments were available for export, and anyone could have bought one. You couldn't possibly be implying that the Saevitian government would be so foolish or heavy-handed as to intervene in such a region itself, and with such secrecy, no? A nation such as Saevitia would use diplomacy first to recover its nationals, and only later resort to military action -- and certainly they would never shoot first.

In fact, if you asked a sizeable majority of government officials their opinion of the incident, they would announce that it was the first they'd heard of it.

~ Now. ~

Commodore Seria watched the tankers approach from a distance. They were still only dots on the horizon, and unless you were actively looking for them it was hard to tell they were there. They hadn't yet responded to his first message, which was uncharacteristic, so he decided that maybe they hadn't gotten it; he ordered his crew to send another one.

Salutations. You are currently entering an exclusion zone wherein military forces attached to the Saevitian Archipelago Royal Navy are conducting realistic combat exercises. Due to potential security risks, no vessels may pass through the zone at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience. SARN aircraft will be dispatched presently to guide you to nearby ports if you have a preference regarding where you would like to land.

Seria'd been told to watch out for ships attached to some corporation or other, as they had expressed their intention to send a battlefleet of some kind, but he seriously doubted their battlefleet would consist of a few tankers. Sonar scans had revealed a very low likelihood of submarines, although ASW crews remained on alert. At any rate, he had more important things to worry about. There were Zakrapatian Navy ships approaching their position. He supposed it was best to keep up the charade of combat exercises, and sent a message to them as well.

Attached please find your assigned coordinates. These are intended to correspond roughly to the weak points in our combat air patrols and also to provide you with the best firing solutions against Chennai itself, with the lowest probability of AA/ASu intercept. If you think different positions would work better, you can move and spread out to reflect your choices, although we do not recommend coming too close together, as it would ruin the point of the exercise.

I'm sure you're aware of your further instructions, as I have transmitted them to your superior officers and you should have received such orders upon deployment. Please confirm.

Cdre. Valen Seria, RSS Chennai

The assigned coordinates spread them out somewhat along the general path they were already moving towards. Otherwise there was no real change. Seria had planned for this in advance.

[OOC: More coming maybe later.]

The Griffincrest tankers did not acknowledge the Saevitian message, and continued on course for Zakrapat, as they were ordered to do. Meanwhile, inside the ship, crews prepared for a possible conflict, and preparations were carried out to ensure that the systems would work as designed.

Meanwhile, the Zakrapatian ships sent back their response.

"Negative Chennai, we are under orders to escorts cargo back to port. We will proceed as intended."

Neuther of the two groups of ships had any intentions of backing down.

[OOC: More coming maybe later.]

The Stabistani advisors scrambled to and fro, calling and faxing and emailing for all they were worth, desperately trying to get in contact with the Saevitian government. Harder than it sounds when it's a country with which you have no embassies as of yet...

This left the flustered pencil-pushers with two options: hope that Saevitia would actually somehow get to them or tell the president that he'd have to fly to their capital in person (and he despised meet-and-greets).

Either way, things were not looking good for pay raises.

__________________________________________

Slowly but surely the ST-25 transport trundled down the runway, drizzling rain pittering off the fuselage and wings, a grey sky above looming ominously. The counter-rotating turboprop blades whirred just as menacingly. Aboard were 100 Stabistani infantry, in full gear and some supplies. It was a simple test to see how fast the plane and its cargo could get fully ready and up in the air, and so far it had been a very respectable time. The cargo plane lifted up, carrying somewhere between eighteen and nineteen thousand kilos, about its limit, the engines put to good use.

On the ground, a Stabistani Special Forces Lieutenant clicked a stopwatch. Forty-five minutes from cold engines and nothing on board for the plane, and just their fatigues to full combat rigs with supplies, on nearly zero notice. Respectable. Of course, the time would be magnified the more planes were involved, but still. He flicked it shut, turned on his heel, and trotted off to an awaiting staff car.

Now they wait, and plan.

((An ST-25 (http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3818/st25.gif) for those so inclined, it's a modified descendant of the C-160.

Another soldier who was not in Zakrapat's uniforms walked up to the iron cage and rapped on the bars. He wore faded military fatigues, except that the original rank and nationality markers had been torn off and replaced with a patch showing a crowned golden lion against a green background.

"Who was in the first fall in the water?" he asked in badly pronounced German.

The mercenaries looked at each other, confused. That sounded like German; they didn't speak German. Wang decided to reply with the little bit of German he remembered from the brief lesson they had been given - "Danke, bitte."

Der Krieg ist Aus (http://www.imeem.com/people/QL8Puu4/music/KaiZ3ppf/soundtrack-der-krieg-ist-aus/)

Schanze 02, Northern Freidlichen

During the long years of peace and prosperity, the Freidlicher government tried as hard as possible to remain out of the lives of the people—if asked, the average Freidlicher citizen probably could name four impressionist artists without coming close to naming the Minister of Defense or Foreign Affairs, and the government essentially shrugged and allowed the ignorance to go on. There was, however, one thing drilled into the minds of young Freidlicher schoolchildren and adults alike, should the nation ever come under attack. This was not a plan of defense, nor was it instructions on how to evacuate the country. An attack had never seemed realistic, and as a result, the one instruction which was ingrained in the minds of the people was this—listen to the radio.

Televisions were of course more common in Freidlichen, but this age-old rule, to turn the radio on from seven to nine o’clock in the evening to await news (even in times of peace), had stuck better than any attempt to move it to the modern age had. On that Wednesday evening, as those with homes crowded around their home radios in hopeless desperation, and as laborers set down their picks for supper but moved instead to the camp radio in vain hope that some news would come, things were being set into motion deep underground, on the last piece of free soil in Freidlichen. Rifles were cleaned for the umpteenth time, ammunition was passed about, and the few soldiers whose uniforms had remained at least somewhat intact used their last pieces of string to sew their holes and rips. Those who could hold a weapon did so, and those who couldn’t tried nonetheless.

Upon the cold concrete floor lay a stand, and on that stand, a microphone. Placed in the redoubt some forty years ago, it appeared to have materialized out of a history book rather than out of the redoubt’s armory, but to the Prime Minister-in-exile, its dusty, rusted shaft was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Stepping up to the microphone with practiced poise and determination, she motioned towards one of the now-uniformed soldiers taking refuge in the bunker, and he flicked a switch, giving the thumbs up to Sophie.

“Citizens of Freidlichen,” she began. Around the nation, conversation, however grim, stopped instantly. The rumors that the country was leaderless had been dispelled in an instant. “This is the Prime Minister.”

Auferstanden

In the hamlet’s history, stretching back to the late fifteen century, there had likely never been such a noise than that which filled the air that evening. With those five words, men and women ages five to ninety-five were filled with a momentary happiness, and however fleeting, there were few there who wouldn’t agree that it was the most exultant moment of their lives.

Of course, no one had bothered to look out the windows to see the convoy of dusty, mud-splattered 4x4s and flatbed trucks unload forced laborers with G36s slung over their backs. The moment they realized that those men had arrived was probably the happiest moment of their lives for the people of the village without the luxury of friends with radios, or radios themselves. Singing, presumably from one of the villager’s shacks, caught the attentions of the debarking men.

“What a pretty song,” Hans whispered dryly, keeping his voice low and waving towards two of former prisoners to accompany him. “It would be better with some background noise, though, wouldn’t you agree?” He removed the bowie knife from his boot and proceeded quietly into the hut.

General Coroniev sat with his feet up on his desk, smoking a cigar when a young soldier entered the room with urgent news.

"Sir, the Prime Minister is attempting to rally the people through the radio."

Coroniev looked interested. Perhaps he could trace the signals, and capture this last vestige of a fallen government. Taking out the Prime Minister would further cement the Zakrapatian hold on the country. He calmly made a few phone calls to bases around occupied Friedlichen, and in a short while, his plan was underway.

The radio signal was being traced back to its hidden location, and the coordinates were being sent to a half-dozen Mi-24 Hind's, each fully loaded with men, as well as being sent to the 321st Motorized Rifle division, making their way by truck to their destination.

"Prepare a welcoming party for the lady" Coroniev said to the soldier.

The soldier scowled, and tried roughly the same sentence in better Russian (["Who was on the helicopter that crashed first in the lake?"]), then Norwegian, then, in even worse English,

"Who first plane he fall water?"

Auferstanden

There were more than a hundred Hirdsmen in Auferstanden, but most of those were inside for the night. But the noise of trucks pulling up alerted the sentries, who, unlike the Freidlichers, had come from the violent, uncertain borderlands of raid and counter-raid in Western Russia and the Ukraine. In those lands anyone who was too careless in enemy territory rarely lived long enough to make it into a lord's Hird.

It was obvious these were not Zakrapat's soldiers or other Hirdsmen, and then one of the sentries recognized a man who he'd stuffed in a truck the previous night. Rapid shouts in Norwegian and Russian rang out as the foreigners piled out of their trucks. Gunfire quickly followed as the men were seen to have weapons.

------

Electricity had gone a while ago, so the ground floor of the house was pitch black. Hans could hear voices coming from the top floor, but whoever had been singing/chanting the epic had abruptly stopped.

In the room, Varg had gone from sprawling and indolent to alert remarkably quickly. He wrapped one steely arm around his woman, hauling her up to stand with him, and almost unconsciously retrieved his long knife from a pile of discarded clothes while he tried to figure out what was going on from the half-audible shouting. Geirr reached for his AK-74 and hissed at his own bonder-woman in the Hirdsmen's characteristically broken German, "There can be shots, to stay down and safe for protection," he gestured to indicate she should lie on the floor.

Adolph, who had already been holding his own gun, had gone to the window and was poking his nose out just enough to see the truck convoy in the rosy pre-dawn light.

"What is it?" Varg hissed.

"Those stupid drunks must have let them escape!" Adolph shot back. "The men from last night are back and-" the rest of the sentence was drowned out by a sudden burst of gunfire from a house down the street.

"Enough." Varg growled in a raised voice. "Give me your gun. You take the knife and guard here."

"Fuck that!" Adolph's denial shot out of his mouth almost before he remembered who he was talking to, and he blanched. Varg had been in the Hird for twenty years, had once killed seven Tatars singlehandedly during a raid into the Crimea. The man shot a look at Adolph that suggested, Hirdsman or no, he was thinking about knocking out teeth, and Adolph knew Varg could do it without thinking about it.

"This is a fight, I will come!" he tried again, but his voice quavered this time.

"I'm not asking." Varg growled. "You'll get to fight later on, but these two need watching. Try not to kill mine. And give me that damn horse-dick gun!"

The three Hirdsmen were still unaware of the intruders on the bottom floor, and neither were the four in the other room or the lone sentry in the attic, who had just opened fire from a window at the trucks outside. They had abandoned the bottom floor after a looter had broken the bottom-floor windows and let the cold in, and retreated to the upper floors after closing the doors in between.

Ivan Mishkin, one of the mercs, spoke up - "I speak Russian - no need to wear your English out. We don't know which chopper crashed first. Wang, Kim, and I were on chopper 2; the rest were on chopper 5."
---
The first engagements had been easy - aging F-16s, even if piloted by cagey veterans, couldn't stand a chance against the F-21s, especially given the longer range of Maria's fighter's radar. Now, though, it would be a fairer fight. Plus, now, wingmen would be involved.

"Exercise lead, this is Red 1. Permission to begin the engagement?" Maria called in over the radio to the E-3 running the exercise.

"Permission granted. Let's see how you do in pairs," the Italian air combat controller radioed in.

"Red 2, up," Maria radioed over the secure channel. Not that 'up' really meant up; after all, even 'secure' channels get broken. Her wingman broke left, she broke right; their planes' computers compared radar data. Aha - there they were. Two planes, with radar profiles matching that of bog-standard Eurofighters, showing up clearly on both planes' radars. Shouldn't be too hard to take them down.

"Skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet," Maria radioed in, using the Test Pilot Wing's own brevity codes. Four AAM-100 long-range AAMs were 'launched,' two at each target - in reality, no missiles were fired; on the computer screens on the E-3 (and thus on the fighters' radars), however, the missile launches were modeled.

Suddenly, the two radar silhouettes split into four. Oh, right, 2 v. 4, not 2 v. 2. Damn. Fortunately, Red 2 radioed in "skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet" herself, so at least each had a pair of missiles going downrange. Still, not ideal - especially because, at this range, they'd still have time to fire back before the missiles hit.

"Red 1, split?" her wing radioed in. She wanted to dive now to try to gain distance, or at least get closer to ground clutter. Maria replied, "Yes," then radioed "Fast, please; foxes coming in." The Eurofighters had found them, and were 'firing' off their missiles.

"Roger that. Snipe," Red 2 radioed back. 'Snipe' meant that she was going to try to jam enemy radars using her own.

Maria dove, fast. A 'missile' was in hot pursuit, and the jamming wasn't proving effective. She launched chaff, then radioed "Loss," signaling that she was dropping her external fuel tanks to try to reduce RCS and gain maneuverability.

"Skeet, skeet," Red 2 shouted. Oh, right - there could still be survivors. No time to think about that now, though - time to maneuver, and fast!

A minute later, the planes moved into holding position for refueling. "Round concluded. Rossi flight eliminated; Red flight eliminated," the controller reported. "Italians win. Next round, 'furball.' Confederates, you're represented by Gold Squadron; Italians, you're represented by Testudo Squadron. Best of luck to both sides, and begin."

Maria idly flipped through radio channels. Suddenly, she heard something in German. She didn't understand much, but she had picked up a bit of German - it seemed to be more useful than she had previously thought. "Citizens of Freidlichen, this is the Prime Minister," she translated. Oh. Oh wow!

"Then who was it on the one hit by my RPG and not by the missile?" the Hirdsman tried. "Names too."

A dozen K-35 Sealion naval strike fighters had been deployed from Chennai's main decks. They were visible from the decks of the tankers, and so were the missiles and bombs in their various hardpoints; they were flying low, moving well below the speed of sound; and as the tankers showed no sign of even slowing, they spread out and dropped several projectiles, one a short distance in front of each tanker. There was enough room to let the tankers come to a complete stop just before reaching the mines, which were powerful enough at least to disable a tanker (if not actually ignite its supplies of oil and cause it to explode), but if they continued on their current course and didn't attempt to stop or turn out of the way, they'd hit them.

The message was reiterated.

Meanwhile Commodore Seria nodded with some satisfaction. He'd gotten the Zakrapatians to disclose their orders to him, so now he knew what to expect. The tankers were evidently also part of this little exercise, so he decided to retroactively include them, even though he'd initially considered them of no consequence.

Excellent, you have received our orders after all. Continue along current course. As a warning, this exercise is live fire; liability concerns should have been covered in the instructions, but if you did not receive them, we can e-mail over another copy for you to initial and send back.

Cdre. Valen Seria, RSS Chennai

He figured that ought to at very least confuse them for a little while. In the meantime he'd wait for them to fire the first shot. Against a force including a light carrier, two missile cruisers, several destroyers and destroyer-escorts, and other ships, missile boats were not a particular threat.



It was possible to obtain contact information for the Saevitian Government in several places; notably the official website, at saevitianarchipelago.gov.saa, also the #3 result in a Google search (despite the best efforts of government officials to get it past the two commercial/tourism sites above it). The contact number listed there was for the Secretary of Public Relations, Spokesman for the Crown Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, who handled hundreds of calls each day and was well known for putting people on hold for a long time. Regardless, the repeated attempts by Stabistani officials to reach the SoPR did not go unnoticed by his direct superiors, who, after a suitably impressive delay to indicate the obviously immense volume of work the CSoFA had to deal with (and not, say, that some junior undersecretary had sent along a file to him with a sticky-note on top saying "Call back Stabistan at XXX-XX-XXXX-XXXX" which had been placed in the middle of a large pile of similar files while the Crown Secretary himself was out to lunch), called the number back.

The caller was not Sir Gerard Karajan himself, of course, but one of numerous underlings, who greeted the person on the other end with rather bored formality: "This is Third Senior Undersecretary Malin Kordova at the Crown Secretariat of Foreign Affairs for Saevitian Archipelago, returning your call of the 18th."

"How am I supposed to know? All I know is that our choppers got hit. Oh - they're Ichiro, Hussein and Kim. What's your name?" Ivan replied. It would be nice to know who this guy was. Always easier to talk to people with names, with identities beyond 'anonymous interrogator' or, back home, 'random street thug.'

The caller was not Sir Gerard Karajan himself, of course, but one of numerous underlings, who greeted the person on the other end with rather bored formality: "This is Third Senior Undersecretary Malin Kordova at the Crown Secretariat of Foreign Affairs for Saevitian Archipelago, returning your call of the 18th."

((OOC: fucking jolt kept logging me out just as I was posting, so I lost this bloody thing twice. :I

"It's about bloody time, we've been trying to reach you for days. This is the Undersecretary to the President. We've heard of the "issues" in Freidlichen and off Zakrapat, and we'd be willing to send some ships and aircraft for "Joint training exercises." Get your defense ministry in contact with ours."

______________________

Gray, brutal waves smashed against the rocks as the flotilla of ships rounded the cape, the ships being the Stabistani equivalent of DDGs, CGs, and CGNs of the US Navy. They were an anomaly of the day, being equal parts missiles and traditional guns, yet just as modern as any other ships. The Colichemarde, Crossguard, Scythe, Sickle, and Spear were an impressive sight. The support ships Harpe and Hilt followed close behind.

... And then the massive Broadsword came around, trailed by the carrier Arit.

The Big B, as it was affectionately called, was based off the Iowa-class, with a good deal of modernizations. Armored box launchers, cruise missiles, Phalanx guns, and the Stabistani purpose-built Scabbard countermissile launchers provided it with a good anti-air and anti-missile defense.

The Arit was a medium carrier, holding several squadrons of Falchion interceptors and Bardiche multirole ground support/bomber craft, along with a few ASW and AEW craft as well.

Together they represented a significant chunk of the Stabistani Navy, known for being small but tenacious.

______________________

A similar scene played out at several depots and airbases around the country, planes, men, tanks, and vehicles being put through final checkups, ready to load up and go as soon as they were needed.

Stabistan was ready.

Some office in the bowels of the MID... you get the trend...

"You might want to look at these right away, sir."

Mohammed Zakir looked over his desk at the newly inaugurated Freidlichen-Zakrapat section: one twenty-something woman who had less than a year in MID. He grunted, and picked up the papers she had placed on his desk.

"Freidlichen surrendered... no surprise there... okay, naval maneuvers... Blockades? Aren't those generally considered an act of war?"

"The Saevitians don't recognize Zakrapat. It says in the report." the staffer replied. Mohammed scowled. Damn, I knew that. He couldn't remember the staffer's name, and it was distracting him. It kept bobbing under the surface of his memory, and every time it rose up to his tongue... He shook his head, and looked down at the report again. A phrase jumped out at him.

"But it says here this is in international waters. So what about everybody else's ships? This can't be legal without a war..."

"Er... well look at the next report first."

Mohammed did.

"Oh. Why didn't we hear about this? Well, nevermind, you're right, I don't think we'll be making any trouble about what the Saevitians are doing if this is true..."

"It is, that's only the first report. I've found dozens of references to Griffencrest and it makes sense too..."

"Dozens?" Mohammed glanced from the report he was reading to the thick stack of papers underneath. "Oh, so I see." He thought for a moment, glanced back down at the reports. "Send a copy of these up to the Director's office, and tell them I'll be up in half an hour. They'll want to respond to this."

The Zakrapatian navy was now really rather angry with the Saevitian mines, and issued an arrest warrant for the admiral, on the charge of illegally mining an international waterway. The flagship of the Zakrapatian fleet, the Slava class cruiser КАРАУЛЬНЫЙ left its port, along with several more missile boats, to enforce the arrest. Two helicopters were also sent out, to land aboard the carrier.

The following message was sent to the admiral.

For the illegal act of mining an international waterway, the government of Zakrapat hereby orders the arrest of Admiral Valen Seria. Two helicopters have been dispatched to enact the warrant. Any attacks to our personnel in the area will be viewed as an act of war with Zakrapat, and we will retaliate in due force.

Meanwhile, the Griffincrest ships came to a halt, waiting for further orders from the headquarters.

ooc: sry for generic quikpost


MID

It was a threshold effect; intelligence suddenly seemed to move much quicker once a certain level of relevance had been passed. Within a few hours of the meetings three spy satellites and intelligence staff in the low hundreds had been allocated to Freidlichen and Zakrapat, and a carrier battle group had been asked to re-route to the Adriatic and begin conducting long-range reconnaisance and information gathering in the area, although even the closest Manthian group was still days away by sea. An official request from the Government was dispatched to the Saevitian government, asking that any non-public information that the Saevitians possessed which pointed to Griffencrest involvement in the invasion be forwarded to MID so that the Union might more fully evaluate the situation. The Manthians trusted that a reputation of unfriendliness to the Corporate Alliance would precede them.

Planning was also begun on how best to begin an intervention, as it suddenly looked as though one might be required after all. Naval operations were curtailed by the fact that Freidlichen was landlocked, but air support from carriers might still be utilized. More pressing would be the need to get actual ground troops into the country; several possible scenarios were discussed.

"I'm going to connect you to the Secretary of Defense, as this isn't exactly my area of expertise. Hold on a moment, please," said Kordova, evidently with some relief that she could transfer them to Defense. After a short hold the Undersecretary was talking to a man named Ibram Karajan, who listened and, although invisible to the man on the other end, smiled.

"Ah, excellent. The combat exercises they're currently conducting are largely simulations to test SARN's blue-water capabilities -- anti-surface warfare, blockades, escort missions and the like. Another national organization joining in would not be a problem; it would allow the simulation of, say, a naval battle. Simply have your group's commanding officer contact Commodore Valen Seria, on board the RSS Chennai, currently about five nautical miles from Italian waters in the Mediterranean Sea."

He paused. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

Meanwhile the request from the Manthian government had been forwarded on to Combined Intelligence. CI was a small but very technological branch of the Department of Justice, although it more often behaved like its very own independent department, often working with Defense and Foreign Affairs and Media to fulfill its aims. CI kept tabs on many countries, especially those in which Saevitians lived and worked; among several thousand Saevitians living in Friedlichen at the time of the attack it had had several agents, at least two of whom were still in the country (most of them had left on flights out of the country with the rest of the Saevitian civilians). It had received a request for classified information from a foreign government. Ordinarily it would reply with the diplomatic equivalent of "No, now piss off", and pass the information on to Foreign Affairs as a possible future ally (as an enemy wouldn't have gone to the trouble of making a request, now would it?). However, this was a special case. SA had a vested interest in removing the Zakrapatian government's capability to influence world events, among other things. As a result, while holding a council of war was out of the question (it entailed admitting that war was going on), the information the Manthians sought could be referred to, if obliquely.

The response from CI ran as follows:

"Unfortunately, information pertaining to Griffincrest's involvement in the so-called Zakrapati state is classified at this time, and not available to foreign governments. Moreover, we can state with certainty that Ambassador Jourdan (reachable at 11-861-736-4409) and his staff have no information whatsoever confirming or denying the presence of Griffincrest mercenary troops and equipment in the assault on Altenberg; and that CI's agents in the region were unable to obtain proof of any Griffincrest involvement whatsoever, as shown in the attached photographs. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us."

The photographs showed completely innocuous and rather irrelevant things: trees, mountains, cities, one that appeared to be an image of the middle of a lake. Attached to each one was a set of GPS coordinates and a word -- "Satellite", "Handheld", et cetera. The words didn't appear to correspond with the photographs -- one of the "handheld" photos was clearly a satellite shot, for instance -- and if one investigated, the GPS coordinates didn't exactly match up with the locations where the photographs were taken, either. Some of them showed clear satellite images of mercenary camps, cargo ships, et cetera. Some of them showed clear satellite images of cities, forests, et cetera, where more extensive involvement (such as deploying an agent with a camera) would be required to gain proof. CI wasn't about to do MID's work for it, even with the lives of millions in the balance.


~ Combat Exercises ~

Having stopped the tankers, the fighters began moving off, attempting to lead them away from the area. They circled, occasionally buzzing the tankers very closely, waiting for them to acquiesce. (Ordinarily, when going up against a military unit, a merchant prefers to deal with them as little as possible. He tends to value profit over ideological defiance, and the Saevitians imagined whoever was in charge of the group of tankers was even now looking for someplace else he could sell his cargo and make just about as much money.) They noted that the tankers appeared to originate from the Griffincrest Corporation, which also served as private military contractors, currently providing and servicing most of the military of the Blackhelm Confederacy; they wondered why the corporation hadn't bothered to deploy an escort along with the tankers. Moreover, they wondered why they had ignored the statements from the naval ships, when a corporation (as a subnational entity) was legally considered a person, and thus could be tried under Saevitian law for attempting to interfere. At this point the crews of those tankers could already be put in jail for disrupting a military operation, and it was only their usefulness to the exercise that had prevented Seria from suggesting that to them.

A message was sent back to the Zakrapatian official who had contacted the Chennai.

"We must note, first of all, that the vessels we are attempting to stop have ignored numerous warnings that they were entering a military exclusion zone, and numerous requests to turn around. For the crime of disrupting military operations and of entering a defined exclusion zone the crews of those tankers could face up to fifteen years in prison, and whatever corporation owns them proportional fines. These crimes could be enforced on much more solid ground than the so-called Zakrapati government's claim. Moreover, we would never do something so dangerous and irresponsible as to mine international waters; the mines we have deployed are inactive and lack an explosive charge, and have been deployed as a cautionary measure, not as attempted violence.

"Second, the authority of the so-called Zakrapati government to enforce such a law is questionable at best. Even if the Zakrapati government were considered legitimate under Saevitian law, the alleged crime did not occur on Zakrapati soil, nor were Zakrapati nationals affected; we must conclude, therefore, that the Zakrapati military elements that have been deployed intend to assault a vessel traveling in international waters and abduct a Saevitian national, and thus would be committing the crime of piracy in addition to the crime of interfering in a designated military exclusion zone. Prison sentences could be much more extreme, up to sixty-five years for those crimes, and if convicted, Zakrapat could face the confiscation of some or all of its seafaring vessels and aircraft as a preventative measure. We suggest that Zakrapat stand down or face the consequences.

"Finally, if you intend to arrest Admiral Valen Seria, please have the helicopters bring over a new uniform and pay chit. Otherwise, you will have to make do with Commodore Valen Seria."

"Ah, excellent. The combat exercises they're currently conducting are largely simulations to test SARN's blue-water capabilities -- anti-surface warfare, blockades, escort missions and the like. Another national organization joining in would not be a problem; it would allow the simulation of, say, a naval battle. Simply have your group's commanding officer contact Commodore Valen Seria, on board the RSS Chennai, currently about five nautical miles from Italian waters in the Mediterranean Sea."

He paused. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

There was a click as the call was transferred to Stabistan's own defense ministry.

"Quite simple, really. It has to do with our little grabby friends in Freidlichen who think they can invade whoever they want. To put it simply, we took note of your "exercises" and decided to make it a joint one, if you understand? As of right now, one of our flotillas is leaving Stabistani waters. One battleship, two cruisers, three destroyers, and a medium carrier, with possibly a few others on the way. We'd be glad to render... assistance?" A soft chuckle. "I do hope our forces can work well together."

______________________

A seagull wheeled through the sky, having transformed from a stormy gray to a pleasant - if slightly washed-out - blue. It shot past the bridge of the Broadsword, twirling once around it before fluttering downwards and landing on a railing.

Behind the glass, Commodore Peter Huxley regarded his command, looking out at the 8 other ships. A Falchion whizzed past and did a circuit around the small fleet before landing upon the Arit.

Captain James Chandler stood next to him, idly twirling a pen in one hand.

Into the breach once again.

______________________

Below the waters, from whence the flotilla had came, two sleek, black things piqued the interest of a whale before it became bored and decided to go dive for krill with one last sonar check to see what they were.

The two SS-47 attack subs cut through the blue at a respectable pace, catching up with their above-water brethren. Everyone on the ships and the submarines below were abuzz, wondering what high command had gotten them into THIS time.

______________________

"It was commodore you idiots!" an angry Zakrapatian shouted at the rest of the men around him. "Now respond with this!"

In a short time, another message was sent.

The cargo aboard the tankers contains oil, valuable to sustain the industry and commerce of our nation. We will recall the arrest warrant, all we ask is that we are allowed to safely escort the vessels to port.

A minesweeper also left the port at Yalat, just in case.

OOC: Bad intel is bad...

Ten days ago, the message Ken Lau now reread had been sent to ensure Ibram Karajan discreetly authorized his ships' deployment - to assist in running the 'naval exercises' - to support the Chennai's task force. Now, his own small task force was just a day out from the operating area, and GPI staff attached to the Italian navy were already radioing in the (sketchy) details of the confrontation in the Adriatic.

Bit of a sticky situation, Ken thought. He had no minesweepers, no way to easily clear the mines that apparently had been laid - by the Zakrapatis, the Italians claimed, but that made little sense. He did have the SH-4s, which would at least allow him to find the mines, but they would need escorts, if the claims about Zakrapati and Saevitian fighter planes clashing were true. That would require most of his airgroup - 8 ex-Malaysian F-18s, 24 F-7Ns, and 12 A-4ARs brought out of mothballs. Not really something he wanted to do - especially since he had to cover that damn landing ship.

"What was I thinking?" Ken asked aloud. "I've got barely a battalion of naval infantry, without even any tanks! Plus, Friedlichen's inland anyway. Well, at least the troops are sufficiently lightly-equipped to be airliftable - if we could get the Italians to cooperate."

MID

The latest from Freidlichen now went to the Director's office itself. Behind his polished oak desk, Georgios Karakolos glanced over the reply from the Saevitians, and comparisons where Manthian satellites had already taken side-by-side pictures of the "same" areas listed in the coordinates.

"Great." he muttered, looking up at the man who had delivered them. "It's not enough to be sure of anything, though. Confirmation on the rest is ready to going ahead?"

"With your authorization," a form was presented, glanced over, and signed, "we are ready to send agents. They'll cross the French border, we would expect results to start coming in within two days after that.

"Okay, brilliant, wonderful," Georgios began scribbling another signature onto a different form, "and here's one to copy these to CCX. They'll take care of forwarding it to the Navy."

------

While this was happening in another office, a phone call was being made a few doors across and a floor down on a secure line.

"Hello," a woman's voice with a hint of Mideastern accent greeted whoever answered, "I am looking for Andreas Jourdan."

Ken was beginning to regret his choice of flagship. The carrier Shokaku, like other ships of its class, had a rather finicky communications suite - it was cheap, but also cheaply installed and not really up to military standard, so he had to resort to using his cell phone to tell the communications staff on the LPD Endeavour what to say when they radioed Commodore Seria, then wait for them to call him back. Still, he preferred the Shokaku, lousy communications or not; at least it was fairly well-protected. The Endeavour had just four short-range SAMs, a naval gun, and a couple light cannon to protect itself - not nearly enough if enemy missiles came.

After discussion, the Endeavour's crew radioed the following message, in the clear: "To RSS Chennai - This is GPI task force, deploying as requested by Saevitia to help with exercises and to deliver General Halbi and staff. Are one day's sail out from you. What is your situation?"

"How am I supposed to know? All I know is that our choppers got hit. Oh - they're Ichiro, Hussein and Kim. What's your name?" Ivan replied. It would be nice to know who this guy was. Always easier to talk to people with names, with identities beyond 'anonymous interrogator' or, back home, 'random street thug.'

"Hussein." the Sortmarker repeated the name slowly, as though he was trying it out. "Ichiro? Kim?"

He scowled as if finding something in the names he didn't like, but seemed to brighten up when they asked his name.

"My name is Eirik Thormodsson."

"Nice to meet you, Eirik. So, what got you into this line of work?" Ivan said. Ichiro tensed slightly, and whispered, "Is this really the right thing to do, ask our new interrogator questions?"

Wang gave him a glance and replied, in an equally-soft whisper, "Sure. Worst that happens is he gets angry; best-case, we've got a friend on the other side of the bars."
---
The Support Wing, consisting of squadrons of tankers, airborne early warning planes, maritime patrol planes, and even psychological warfare planes, was the next major GPI asset to arrive in Italy. It was officially intended to help broaden the range of exercises being conducted with the Italian military; unofficially, of course, other plans were kept in mind. Already, a team of psychologists and journalists was combing Kleine Altenbergs in Singapore, Hong Kong, and elsewhere in the Confederacy, talking with Friedlichers about how best to communicate with their comrades under the Zakrapati boot...

"My family has sent men to the Hird since the time of my grandfather, Thormod, who marched
with Viktor Haraldsson to the sack of Kiev."

That might have been enough to answer the question, but the Sortmarker went on,

"My father Thormod was a Hirdsman of Viktor Viktorsson. I have fought on five raids in the Crimea and in the defenses of Kiev against Sahin and Geirr of Novgorod. This is the man who has defeated you. And what is your own ancestry and the record of your fathers?"

"I, too, have a long family history of service, for many peoples. My mother and father, Sasha Ivanova and Nikolay Sergeyevich, fought in the Long Crisis, defending their adopted home of Shanghai against the chaos outside. My grandfather, Sergei Ivanovich, defended the International Settlement in Shanghai from the warlords and the Japanese. His father, Ivan Ivanovich, was felled in battle with revolutionaries in Odessa; his grandfather, Ivan Nikolayevich, fought in Hungary and the Crimea," Ivan said, calling on his memories of his family history.

"You remember all that?" the female Kim from chopper #5 asked in English.

"Sure. My family is proud of our history," Ivan replied, first in Russian, then English.

"I don't know mine. I don't even know my own birth-father," she said. She was the youngest of the prisoners, just 16 years old.

Eirik nodded. "I see it is no inconsiderable warrior that I have defeated. Ivan Mishkin, your name will be remembered in my house."

He turned to the woman when she spoke, paying closer attention to her for the first time. He squinted, and wrinkled his brow under the shock of blond hair.

"She is... family? No... but why is she with you? Was she in the fighting?" he asked Ivan.

Ivan translated to the group. "So, how should I reply?" he whispered.

"Something like 'she is a comrade, a fighter-in-arms?'" Wang suggested. "Match his tone, in other words."

"Just tell him I'm part of Three Squad," Kim replied. "That's what my job was, after all..."

After a moment, Ivan smiled and gave his reply. "Kim here is part of our family of soldiers. She was the sharpshooter for the Third Squad of our platoon, before circumstances turned out the way they did. She says she wishes she could have been involved in a more honorable fight than the brief encounter between us, but the mission required a fast escape, rather than a stand-up battle."

He translated this into English for the benefit of the prisoners, who broke out into smiles. No laughing, though - it wouldn't be appropriate.

Eirik digested this and his eyebrows rose.

"Fighters indeed. A woman can hold a gun as easily as any little Devil's son, and I've seen that happen in defending homes and towns, but fighting as a last resort is different from one who gives up the family life to become a soldier. Of course there are the old stories, and I've heard of this among the Tatars east of the Volga, but that is far off."

He hesitated over the next words for a few moments before speaking,

"Since she is a warrior of your company I will regard her as I regard you. "

What Eirik meant by this was, not as war-booty, although the mercenaries might not get this meaning.

"You have had food already? I want to hear the stories of your wars and your fathers' wars, Ivan Mishkin, and you must speak for your friends also. But telling tales is better over food."

"She is woman! She is not equal!" yelled out a drunken Zakrapatian guard, leaning against a wall nearby.

"We should take her for our own! You like what you see lady?" the man continued, all in Russian.

Eirik looked back at the Zakrapatian soldier, and took in the stagger and flushed face along with the loud shouting.

"If you tried to fuck right now you'd probably fall over yourself," he said, slipping almost instantly from the half-formal Russian he had been using to casual soldier's obscenity. "And they're mine. Go screw some other woman," he looked the man up and down, and because an insult to his prisoner was also an insult to him, continued, "no, you look more like a boy-lover to me."

"We last had food 6 hours ago. We could use a good meal. Oh, and call me Ivan Ivan'ch - it's what my friends call me," Ivan replied. Odd that nobody noticed his using his 'Western' name, rather than his patronymic, until now.
---
Even as tensions flared over the Adriatic, Zakrapat had been scrupulous about Italian neutrality. Sure, it flaunted its strength near the border regions, and shadowed Italian naval assets, but the troops were content to fortify on both sides of the border. It was time for something new.

On various radio frequencies, including the one Maria had stumbled on, the following message began to be broadcast from a squadron of aircraft flying over international waters: "To the people of Friedlichen - freedom is coming. Be ready to do your part."

"I show you boy lover!" shouted the now angry Zakrapatian, as he threw his weapon to the ground and stumbled forward towards the large mercenary.

Eirik had left his gun leaning against a wall before coming over to talk, and wore only a long knife, but seeing how drunk the soldier was he didn't bother to draw it. Instead he stepped backwards from the first clumsy rush and then reversed direction suddenly. A complicated moment followed, containing a kick at the opponent's legs and an elbow rammed towards the stomach almost simultaneously, followed by a hard uppercut aimed at the other man's face.

A few other Hirdsmen lounging around the courtyard watched with interest, but made no move to intervene either to stop the fight or to help their companion.

The Zakrapatian fell to the floor a bloody mess, but his friends witnessed the seen and they began to rush at the mercenary.

Octavius was inside, filling out some paperwork when he heard the sounds of a scuffle. He cursed under his breath, set the papers down, and loaded his Kraven made .50 hand gun.

It would have been a textbook blow, if Eirik had ever seen a textbook. The man was in the midst of doubling down from the elbow to the stomach when his face met the fist coming up. Things crunched in a satisfying way, and the man collapsed like a puppet with the strings cut.

Eirik stepped back, rubbing his fist and ignoring the sound of bubbly gurgling coming from the ground. More shouts drew his attention, and he quickly counted five or six men rushing him all together. They were still only conscripts, not a Hirdsman's equal among them, but one or two looked less drunk and there were a lot of them.

He made a quick decision and reached for the long knife. Maybe the sight of a foot and a half of cold steel in his hand would give the sober ones second thoughts.

"He started a fight and got what he deserved. I'll give you worse." he stated, not shouting but loud enough to carry.

One of the Hirdsmen on the far side of the courtyard straightened up, watching with a little more interest and shooting a meaningful look at his companions. A fistfight between two men was one thing, but six against one was something else. And even if the odds against Eirik weren't really that bad, knives in the ribs tended to cause more trouble than a broken nose or losing a mouthful of teeth.

Hands casually but meaningfully on the hilts of their knives, two Hirdsmen began strolling over.

The Zakrapatian soldiers drew their knives as well, and the two groups began staring each other down by the time captain Whiteleather appeared. He fired off a shot from his tremendously loud hand gun into the air, and once he was sure he had all of the mens attention, he spoke.

"What the hell is going on here? You men are all on the same side are you not? I demand to know the meaning of this"

Eirik had backed up slowly to put the cage with prisoners behind him. He nodded to the downed man who was now between him and the group of knife-wielding men, without taking his eyes off the soldiers or putting away his knife.

"That one wanted to start a fight. He was drunk, so I didn't kill him. Who are you?"

The mercs watched quietly.

"So, do we try to leave?" Ichiro whispered in Chinese.

"And go where? Do you know where we are, where we'd need to go, anything like that?" Kim of chopper #2 replied in the same tone.

"Fair enough. Think he'll win?"

"With those two coming over to help out, sure," he whispered back, eying the approaching Hirdsmen.

A bit later, Ichiro whispered, "No fight, maybe?"

"Eh, maybe not," Kim replied.
---
OOC: A bit of pathos, of an odd sort.
The young student of German paused, thought over her words again, and then put up her hand.

"Yes, Fraulein Wang?" the professor said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Friedlichen needs your help. It is under attack by bad - uh - cruel invaders. We are selling chocolates all next week in Raffles Hall, with the proceeds - uh - to the Friedlichen Freedom Fund," Wang said, in German, then sat back down, almost too annoyed with her mistakes to notice that the professor had started to cry.

"Let's talk about this inside Hirdsman. I will deal with that one in the morning" Octavius said.

Meanwhile, the other Zakrapatians picked up their friend and hauled him to the medical tent.

Eirik shrugged, and seeing that the soldiers were retreating he put away the knife and spat on the ground in their general direction.

"What a waste of air... Watch those for me." he said, gesturing to the caged prisoners as he passed one of the other Hirdsmen.

As Eirik went inside the other Hirdsman leaned against the wall a little distance from the bars.

"So you are Eirik's war-prisoners? What did you come for? Money or fighting?"

As Eirik and Octavius entered the building, the Griffincrest mercenary closed the door behind them and put his gun back in his shouldr holster.

"Care to tell me why you just beat the balls of off one of my men Hirdsman?"

"Bit of both, I suppose," Ivan said. "I'm Ivan Ivanovich Mishkin. And you?"

"Care to tell me why one of your men attacked me Captain? He's lucky I left him able to pick up a spoon."

Eirik scowled.

"That and he's a dirty peasant and needed to learn some respect. Now he has to eat soup for the rest of his life, and maybe when he does he'll remember that and thank me for leaving him the damn spoon."

------

"Einar."

The Hirdsman nodded, as if this was the answer he expected and approved of.

"The same. But you should warn your people that this place is taken."

He shrugged and glanced back at the captain's building.

"You'll get your share of fighting if you come back, not from the people here that is. Might seem there's enough gold for everybody here, and the people are peasants and can't stop you from taking it. But those ones," he jerked a thumb at the Zakrapat soldiers now huddled on the other side of the courtyard, "are here to take over the place. New leadership, and they won't like someone showing up late and wanting a share."

"Fair enough. You mind giving me a phone? They took mine at the gate," Ivan replied.

Einar shook his head.

"Ask Eirik for things. You're his prisoners."

Octavius ran his hand over his close cropped silver hair and took a deep breath.

"Now I'm sure he won't be eating soup for the rest of his life....but what started that fight? It's my job to make sure this shit hole runs smoothly, and I can't have big guys like you knockin' around my Zakrapatian."

Eirik frowned.

"If I said it was the other man who attacked, it was him. He's a half-trained conscript, not worth my time otherwise."

Octavius sighed and looked to the ground for a moment before looking back at Eirik.

"Ok listen, I'm gunna give you a warning for now, just try and stay out of trouble, ok? Dismissed"

Eirik raised an eyebrow at the man, although the effect might have been lost amid all the other facial hair.

"I am a Hirdsman, my commander is my Jarl and his Rittmester. But we are on the same side, like you said. I hold nothing against your men if they respect me and mine."

He turned to leave, and added "If your soldiers spent less time too drunk to think straight they might start fewer fights, and lose fewer too. When a man has drunk too much to fight, he crosses the line from celebration to embarrassment, and even one of these hopeless peasants," he waved towards the door, meaning to indicate the city outside, "could beat him."

With a shrug he was out the door.

------

Eirik was some time returning, but when he did he was followed by a pair of ragged Friedlicher men, one carrying plates and a sack, the other bottles and cups. He nodded towards Einar, who was still standing guard, and the second Hirdsman unlocked the cage before waving the Friedlichers off.

"It's rough, but good food is hard to get right now." he said as he sat and opened the sack, revealing black bread and cheese. "At least the bread is fresh. Now come, Ivan Ivanovich, we have food, and enough wine for a late night. Tell me your tale and your fathers' tales, and your companions too."

Said Ivan: "So. Six years ago, when I had first joined the service, the Confederacy I serve was still weak and poorly-respected. It had money, but money is not power - it merely buys power. And so, when it had taken one step too blatant, a plot was hatched. Generals of Singapore's army had decided that they had had enough of the Confederacy. So, one muggy summer morning, tanks and troops marched through the streets, aiming for the Confederacy's various headquarters throughout the city, along with the Duma, the port, the airport, and other key points.

My force was called in to evacuate some Confederacy officials by helicopter. We landed on the roof, four helicopters spilling out their troops. Then, the tanks opened fire, destroying the choppers' rotors and blocking our only way out. Well, almost.

I realized quickly that they weren't shooting with the main guns, just with the machine guns. They could not stand to see their Singapore scarred by shells. Curious, since they were happy to leave it pock-marked and bullet-strewn. Still, it gave us time.

The platoon let loose with our rifles, firing at the tanks' commanders, their machine guns, their periscopes, their radios, every little unarmored bit. I was not among them, however. I went with the evacuees, combing the building for supplies. We found some wine bottles, but none had any liquid. Still, we made do. I removed my uniform's shirt, and had the evacuees take off their suits. We tied them around the bottles.

I took three from my squad, gave each a pair of bottles and a lighter, and walked down and opened the door. The firing had gotten quiet - we were running low on ammo, and they were stunned into silence by our fusillade, frantically calling for the infantry that had fallen behind. Still, my men feared the tanks. They could start shooting any second. Unlike them, I still had the bravery - or perhaps foolhardiness - of youth. I rushed over to one of the tanks and rapped on the roof.

'Open up, or we'll blow you up!' I shouted. A minute passed - it seemed far longer than that - then the little door on the roof popped open. Not just on my tank, but on all ten of the tanks. And so, with nothing but rifles and empty wine bottles, we beat a company of tanks.

It wasn't an honorable battle for them - it was just a political spat turned into a coup. For us, though, it was our honor at stake. And so we won."

He then sipped on his wine.

Eirik listened carefully, occasionally taking a gulp of wine as he broke the loaves and passed bread and cheese around, and handed each prisoner his or her own cupful of the wine - a sweet red which he had mixed with spices and warmed, after taking it from some Freidlicher's cellar.

"The bravery of youth, truly!" he said with a laugh, when the tale was over. "It is a good thing to have, Ivan Ivanovich, and if it lets us live into older years - well then, combine it with experience and what in the world can stop you? That was a great victory for a young man that you just described. I can see why you were chosen to man such a valuable vehicle as that helicopter. But now let me repay you with a story of my own, of the Sack of Kiev in my grandfather's time, as he told it to my father and me.

With another sip of wine (although he started tempering it with hot water after the first few rounds), Eirik sat back and began to speak.


"My grandfather Thormod had a brother, Torstein by name, and when Viktor Haraldsson marched to the Sack of Kiev they both were taken with the leidang. Now in those days Viktor Haraldsson was not wealthy, and a man in his leidang was lucky if the Hirdsmen gave him a rifle to fight with. Torstein had one, but Thormod did not - for Torstein was the bigger and stronger of the two, and so Thormod made do with an old cavalry pistol and a few rounds.

"Ingvar the Old was Jarl in Kiev in those days, and had kept the rule of it for forty years, and held the city itself through many setbacks and a long series of raids; but Viktor had brought many men, and not just his own soldiers but adventurers from all around recruited with promise of plunder, and so the battle went on for many days, and the corn-fields of Kiev were trampled under soldiers' feet. Ingvar had artillery guns, and Viktor had nothing better than mortars, and many of his men had not even those; so after a time it seemed that Ingvar would keep the rule of Kiev and add another banner to the trophies in his hall.

"During the fighting Thormod and Torstein were separated for a time, and Torstein came upon a small house hidden in the forest north of the city, where trees grow close along the river-banks; and he saw that this house was still occupied despite the fighting. He hid himself, and by and by he saw men going out, a large group armed well; and so he guessed that wealthy peasants lived here, and that they were going out to guard the forest paths against anyone stumbling in. For though the fighting was to the south, confusion was everywhere, and warriors of both sides often encountered each other far distant from the main forces. Meanwhile scavengers and bandits preyed on both sides, and the poor peasants in the country would band together to rob and kill the rich, while fighting men were elsewhere.

"Now Torstein watched these men leave to take up their posts, and after waiting a long time he crept out of hiding and towards the house. He found it empty; and so quickly taking what he could carry of the stores there, meat and bread, and a few valuables as well, he praised his luck and ran back through the woods, careful to avoid the guards. It was almost evening when he found his friends again and reunited with his brother.

"Torstein told Thormod the whole tale, and soon the whole leidang was crowding around, trying to grab a bit of the food for themselves - for food was hard to come by then, when Ingvar still held them outside the city and the crops were burned. But Thormod liked this little, and would take no food; and as night fell he determined to repair the actions of his brother. He stole off from the camp, taking his pistol; and following his brother's description, soon found the place. And since it was night, he could see the men had returned by the glow of light from the windows; and a sentry stood outside with an old oil lantern.

"Thormod lost no time; he pulled out the old pistol and shot the man outside, then grabbed the lantern and tossed it in the window. The floor was covered in straw and the walls padded with oiled sacks to keep out the cold; the fire spread quickly, and the men inside had to rush out into the darkness blinking and rubbing their eyes. As they did Thormod shot each in turn, and killed them all as they looked around for their attacker; then he went around to the cellar and took his pick of the goods and the guns.

"The next day he returned to camp bowed down under the weight of his spoils, and the men who had admired his brother's haul now were shocked to hear him declare that he had wiped out the stain of thievery on his family, and gained more to boot. Now men of the Hird had come to this camp, hearing that there was food; but when they heard Thormod's story they brought him to their commander. This is how my grandfather came to serve in the Hird himself, instead of in the leidang; and he joined just in time to participate in Viktor Haraldsson's famous surprise attack, when he finally broke Ingvar's forces and gained Kiev."

Ingvar sat back, and took another sip of wine to indicate that this part of the story was over.

"My grandfather hung the pistol in his house later on, and it is still there today, though it stopped working soon after the story I told you. I used to take it and act out the story, when I was a boy too young to hold up my own rifle. That was before I made stories of my own... But tell me of your companions too, Ivan Ivanovich!"

Octavius came out of his office once again, and saw the big Viking looking man sharing food and talking with the prisoners. The story seemed interesting and all, but it was still against the rules to mingle with the captives.

"Eirik! Here! Now!"

Eirik glanced over when he heard his name, and took in the barked orders with a dark scowl. He set down the cup of mulled wine and replied softly in Russian while rising to his full height.

"Captain. Did you forget what I told you an hour ago? I will repeat it: my commander is my Jarl and his Rittmester. You are my ally, not my officer, and these are my prisoners. I thank you for guarding them for me, but I do not grant you control over them."

He stepped out of the cage, closing it behind him, and walked close enough that Octavius and he could speak without the whole courtyard listening in.

"Let's start with the basics here. My company hired you, you are working for me, not with me. Got it? Octavius said, visibly unhappy with the things Eirik had just said to him.

"And not only that, Hirdsman, but what are you doing sitting in there, giving captives alcohol? You are asking to get killed. Where did you learn to be a soldier? These are basic principles that you are violating right now....and they are not your prisoners, they are the prisoners of the nation of Zakrapat. You and me, we don't exist here."

"I follow my Rittmester's orders. If you want to ask my Rittmester for the Hird to help you in any way, you are free to, and I am sure he will order men to help you, according to the agreement. But we did not agree to replace our own officers with yours. So you are not my commanding officer."

The good humor of the last hour had vanished as if it were no more than a momentary breeze, and Eirik was quickly and visibly growing angry.

"As for them, I am an armed man compared to six unarmed prisoners. And they are locked in a cage in the middle of a courtyard full of soldiers, in the middle of a prison full of soldiers, in the middle of a city full of soldiers, and none of them even speak the local language. How would they run away even if they were mad enough to try to kill me?"

When he heard the last thing the Griffencrest man said, Eirik visibly restrained himself from going for the knife. Nevertheless he leaned in within close arms reach over the shorter man and practically hissed the next words.

"Part of our payment is that we have free right to spoils of war. I shot down their helicopter, I defeated them. So they are my prisoners, my property according to the rule of war-spoils. Do not attempt to rob me, Captain!"

A small knot of Hirdsmen had gathered to listen to the pair of stories from outside the cage. Although they were not close enough to hear the words being spoken, it was clear from both men's faces that it was an argument. Einar, who was still present, was whispering a steady stream of Norwegian to the others as they watched with interest.

Few things could capture a Hirdsman's attention better than a potential fight.

OOC: Finally got a pic for Octavius!

Octavius (http://s.bebo.com/app-image/7926709204/5411656627/PROFILE/i.quizzaz.com/img/q/u/08/04/01/17037763-jack.jpg) was growing quite angry with the Hirdsman by the time.

"They don't have to kill you, they take you hostage, that ties down the whole camp for who knows how long. Do you want to be the asshole who has to go back to your litte tribe over there and explain that you got taken as a hostage by these people?" he said motioning towards the other Hirdsmen.

"And these are not your prisoners, if anything, they belong to Boris over there, he fised them out of the water. If not for him they might be did. They belong to Zakrapat." he was now motioning towards an innocent looking soldier, half sleeping not too far away.

"Any idea where your 'Ritttmester' is? I might have a few words to tell him about the discipline of his troops."

"It would make no difference even if they could. If I were so careless that I let them take me and threaten to kill me, so it would be. That is a matter for blood-vengeance, not for releasing them."

Einar waved a hand angrily at the sleeping Zakrapatian soldier.

"They were swimming, and a rat of a fisherman has no right to steal from a warrior's table. This Boris has no claim to them just because he dragged them out of a lake. What counts is that I defeated them in battle."

Eirik stepped back slightly, taking his hand off the knife-hilt and blowing out a large breath of air in what seemed a calming action. He paused in thought for a moment.

"You seem to be a confused man, Captain, and maybe this is not your fault. My Rittmester is Hjalmar Yngling, and if you want to see him I'll bring you to him. I'm sure he'll hear your complaint and straighten you out. Maybe you should wait until your troops are sober enough to stand up straight, though."

"Is he in this camp? If so, lead the way" Octavius said.

(I edited the previous post, I'm not sure if that came through before you saw it)

"This way."

Eirik turned briefly back to the group of prisoners.

"Save your tales, Ivan Ivanovich!"

He led Octavius through the prison, for approximately fifteen minutes, past a few temporary concrete blockhouses for Freidlicher prisoners, until they arrived at a more luxurious white house that was still standing and relatively intact: apparently it had been a rich woman's house before the invasion. A pair of Hirdsmen stood at the entrance, and after a quick conversation in Norwegian one of them vanished inside, returning shortly with an older, shorter, but still muscular and dark-haired Hirdsman who wore the same golden lion on green patch, but with a small crown above it.

"Rittmester," Eirik nodded rather than saluting, as was the practice in the Hird, "this Captain Octavius wanted to speak with you."

Auferstanden

The men already out of the trucks scrambled back behind them, a thin layer of dust rising as bullets impacted on the dirt and those with weapons fired blindly at flashes in the houses, watching as Hans, with the town’s doctor and minister entered a house. Hans’ eyes were wide open and bloodshot, a mad gleam showing quite clearly as he smashed the wooden frame of the door inwards. The first floor was deserted as far as the three could see, and Doctor Ziegler sighed in relief.

“Looks like there’s no one here,” he whispered in German, shrugging. “We ought to go on to the next house.” Hans shook his head without speaking and motioned towards the door, where a shadow was moving under the frame. He knelt and aimed his assault rifle at the light wood door; squinting through the iron sights at where one’s head would be should the door have been open. Four more men crept into the cabin and fanned out, moving with a dexterity honed over decades of primitive hunting in the deadly mountain forests around Auferstanden, but holding their weapons with a noticeable uncertainty.

The feet, still shadows, grew closer and closer to the door, and the brass handle began to turn in a slow, deliberate manner. Hans squinted through the sights again and lowered his rifle to aim at the exact center of the frame, squeezing the trigger gently to send a burst of gunfire through the wood. Ziegler followed up, firing randomly through the door once Hans had stopped, but a hand was raised and he was stopped as Hans motioned for him to take cover behind the wooden columns of the house. The sunlight had just begun to creep in through the smashed windows and red light had refracted off the morning snow to form a picturesque scene on the walls of the cabin, broken only by a woman screaming somewhere in the distance and gunfire popping intermittently.

Northern Freidlichen
Several Miles North of Zwickau

“Our contact in Zwickau is waiting, ma’am—we really must leave,” Lieutenant Bayer urged, exasperation heavy in his voice. “The charges are already set, and we need to be far enough away when they go off!” Bayer and the remaining Freidlicher Guardsmen and reserve soldiers had again donned their grey-white winter fatigues and had thoroughly looted Schanze Two for every weapon imaginable in its emergency arsenal. The radio broadcast had been a risk, and even the Prime Minister knew that the redoubt would have to be abandoned once the transmission had been sent, but the damage to the occupiers had been done. In one fell swoop, resistance fighters had been unified, and foreign governments now knew that Freidlichen was still a legitimate state.

“Yes,” Sophie replied, taking a last glance at the barren concrete room before stepping into the lift. “I suppose we ought to be.” The steel grating closed in front of the two Freidlichers and the lift rose with a jolt, ascending to the surface quickly. A group of twenty or so soldiers met them at the top, a light snow and heavy fog obscuring the skies and the ground around them—the forecast, had it been known by anyone in the bunker, was for an unusually intense winter storm period over the next few weeks. The refugees had been evacuated some time prior, but the Prime Minister and her unofficial guard had stayed behind to secure the last of the food reserves and make final preparations with resistance workers in Zwickau, a moderate-sized town a short three hour walk (in good weather, of course) away.

Though Freidlichen’s trains had been offline since the invasion, the tunnels they normally would be running had not been snowed in or collapsed by the invading forces, likely either out of a desire to leave them intact or because they had not yet found each and every tunnel in Freidlichen’s extensive web of railroads. The twenty men and one woman in a very thick parka descended the mountain trails until they reached a strangely out of place bush, a metal grating barely showing underneath. Bayer removed a key from his pocket and unlocked the grate, hopping down into the pitch-black tunnel and removing a flashlight from his pack, flicking it on and illuminating a narrow, seemingly endless passage. The others followed, jumping onto the gravel with a series of crunches.

Bayer shined his flashlight at one of the walls and read the faint red lettering. “Altenberg-Zwickau connector. This is the place—just three hours south.” The group groaned and began their trek, assault rifles and RPGs slung over their shoulders and backs in a manner haphazard enough to have the former Commandant of the Freidlicher Guard rolling in his hastily-dug grave.

"Well, at least we have the food," Ivan said. Nobody wanted to take a bite; finally, one worked up the courage to try the bread.

"Not bad at all," Kim said, then took a sip of her wine. "I don't usually have bread, so take that into account, but this seems pretty good. A bit hard, a bit crunchy."

"So we get to try out worms and bread, is what you're saying?" the other Kim said, smiling as he mimed dodging a punch.
---
A helicopter flew over the Adriatic, accompanied by a flight of interceptors. Aboard the helicopter, Halbi was busy writing on his PDA. What he needed to know was the following:
1) What forces do we have...
-a- here?
-b- available?
-c- possibly available?
2) What forces do our enemies have...
-a- at sea?
-b- in the air?
-c- in terms of their air defense grid?
-d- on the ground in Friedlichen?
3) What support can we get...
-a- from home?
-b- from Saevitia?
-c- from Friedlichen proper?
-d- from Italy?
-e- from other powers?

As for possible approaches, he saw the following:
1) advance from Italy
+ easier logistics
- potential diplomatic issues
- terrain isn't great
2) bombing campaign - requires us to take out enemy air force and AD, then bomb until they pull out.
+ fewest lives lost
- may be unsuccessful
- need airbases; lots of carriers probably wouldn't be sufficient
3) airborne operations
+ may be useful in conjunction with 1 and/or 2
- expensive in lives lost
- need to take out enemy AD
4) Nat'l uprising
+ little effort needed, beyond support of resistance
- resistance has been minimal
- our intelligence assets in-country are nil, and will remain nil
- background intelligence suggests resistance will be minimally effective at best
5) Naval blockade
+ assets in place
- unsuccessful so far; unlikely to succeed

There had to be something better. Maybe the Saevitians had an idea? He'd find out soon enough...

"Quite simple, really. <...> I do hope our forces can work well together."

"Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. I'm sure the Commodore would appreciate some assistance on his little ... exercise ... which, by the bye, is proving to be most interesting indeed. It should be quite informative for future maneuvers." Ibram Karajan allowed himself a smile. "As long as he's informed in advance, of course." Pause, carefully calculated. "Anything else we can help you with?"


The cargo aboard the tankers contains oil, <...> all we ask is that we are allowed to safely escort the vessels to port.


Negative, Zakrapatian. The tankers will have to wait until our exercises are concluded to dock at Zakrapatian ports. Naturally we apologize for any difficulties this causes, but the shape of the inlet here does not lend itself well to bypassing our exercises, which are currently too far along to break off just to allow a few ships through. I'm sure you'll understand.

Valen Seria stamped his thumb on a designated button to authorize the message and watched it transmit. The battlegroup's minesweeper was busy collecting the mines; their purpose had been served and leaving them in the water would be a grave irresponsibility.

And he frowned. He had a sense he wouldn't be waiting much longer. Pity, that.

Indeed, there was a new message, from someone called the GPI. They were apparently here on Saevitia's request, although why exactly SA was hiring a mercenary company to do its work for it Seria didn't know. They'd even done the extraction, which they'd botched -- a solely Saevitian unit extracting the Ambassador would have done a much better job of it, presumably, but there seemed to have been political reasons why the Saevitians couldn't. Seria shook his head. He had no idea what was going on anymore.

To GPI task force, this is RSS Chennai. Exercises are currently in progress; we are running live-fire blockade simulations, combat air patrols, and naval intercept simulations. The situation is normal, although some passive resistance has occurred with tankers refusing to acknowledge exclusion orders. Our squadron is the 11th Anti-Piracy, and in addition to the flagship, it consists of RSS Saarti, missile cruiser; RSS Redstone, light cruiser; RSS Lai and Morsava, destroyers; RSS Faenixi and Isaak Martola, destroyer escorts; RSS Venaísa, resupply and arsenal ship; RSS Mano Varaínn's Spirit, hospital ship; RSS Icthys Three, minesweeper and patrol boat. In addition, elements of the 8th Submergible Squadron comprise RSS Novik and Sareva, both attack submarines.

This and any other information reaching the GPI is to be kept in the strictest confidence, with maximum encryption used at all occasions.

Cmdr. Valen Seria

He carefully fed it through the maximum encryption level and authorized transmission.

Several decks above him, seated on the deck and watching the sea, Ambassador Jourdan activated his satellite phone, receiving an incoming call. He'd been warned about this, and said in his most unemotional tone: "Jourdan here."

[OOC: I think I covered everyone. If I missed you, prod me repeatedly.]

"Rittmeister, I am Captain Whiteleather, in charge of the camp nearby. This guy here has so far caused a fight with a guard, and fed and fraternized with our prisoners. He says I got to talk to you to get hm out of the camp. I request disciplinary action be taken."

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

The situation off the coast was growing tense. The Zakrapatian ships were not going to wait much longer. The admiral sent over a final response.

"How long will these war games last?"

OOC: just land my chopper so that Halbi and his staff can talk with your people about the situation.
The radiomen aboard the Endeavour finished relaying the Saevitians' report. "So, do you want us to radio them back anything special?" one asked.

"Nah - just generic confirmation. Halbi's got all the info on our forces; he'll fill the Chennai group in on that, and on our intentions," Ken replied.

"Which are?"

"Assist the Saevitians - help defend them against attacks, help them conduct their blockade exercises, and help them learn how to coordinate actions with an allied, weaker force."

"Fair enough. I'll radio back acknowledged. Good?"

"Good."

Not in MID, woo!

The bridge of an aircraft carrier is practically a dream come true for anyone who loves information; there are few places in the world which can offer the same amount of awareness as a carrier's bridge can to its commanding officer. The bridge of the Tripolitania, one of 127 Questarian Ark Royal class vessels built under license in Manth was no different - the airspeed of a bogey tracked by some destroyer 10,000 miles away, or the number of aircraft on CAP around a battlegroup off Hamilay, indeed military information of almost any kind, irrelevant, critical and every shade in between was always arriving, being updated and compared with other reports, and constantly at the fingertips of naval command.

CVBG Tripolitania was only now passing through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, and so was still a ways out from the Adriatic, and the other four battle groups which had been rerouted in order towards the area - as more intelligence had sifted in and the mission had been upgraded gradually from 'provide a military presence just in case,' through 'observation and reconnaisance against the Zakrapatian military,' up to 'interdiction of any Griffencrest shipping traveling to and from Zakrapat' - were further out still. But despite sitting on the bridge of a vessel that was twelve hundred kilometers away from the action as the bird flies and more by sea, Captain Vikelides was currently glancing over satellite data from the coast of Zakrapat which ranged from ten or twenty minutes to less than a minute old. Among other things there were pictures of empty berths where what passed for the Zakrapatian navy had once been tied up; the ships had put to sea sometime before that. There was only one isolated picture of the Slava-class cruiser underway, ten minutes old - it was difficult to track warships at sea via a satellite, and doubly so in an area such as the Adriatic, crowded with merchant shipping. CVBG Tripolitania had played a few shell games of its own with merchant shipping and weather on its way towards the Med; it was often good if one's arrival was a partial surprise. But now what Vikelides was looking for - and what Rear-Admiral Stakis would also probably like to know, when he arrived back at the bridge - was what was happening at the moment around the blockaded area. In Captain Vikelides' experience such situations - large numbers of hostile warships staring at each other over a small area of water - rarely ended peacefully.

Vikelides had access to a hundred thousand bits of information every second, but they only poured in from where the Union's eyes reached, and satellites were unwieldy for his purposes, and easily blinded in any case. The pair of Supermarine Sportsman AWACs that had just lifted off the Tripolitania's flight deck would provide the eyes for watching this affair play out, and could be watching the whole thing in a few hours - far sooner than his own ships could come appreciably close to the area. When his ships did arrive, he had orders that would almost certainly turn things interesting in the area - assuming they hadn't already gotten to that point by then - and so in the intervening time CVBG Tripolitania, and by extension the Union Navy in its entirety would be keeping a very close eye on developments.

"Anything else we can help you with?"

"That should be it, thank you. If you'd be so kind as to provide the correct contact data for the commodore - say a satellite phone or long-range radio - we'll have our own fleet get in contact with yours. It's currently rounding the Iberian peninsula, and should be through the straight of Gibraltar soon. We've also taken the liberty of dispatching two attack subs behind the fleet, just in case our Zakrapatian friends decide to pull an underwater trick of their own."

"How long will these war games last?" ran the sole message from the Zakrapatian commander. It seemed as though they were running out of ideas for getting the so-called tankers to Yalat and were becoming resigned to the idea of waiting the situation out. Seria allowed himself an amused smile. He wondered what the tankers were really carrying, that required them to go in by sea -- after all, oil could be carried in a train or a truck or an airplane, and a sensible merchant would have no reason to insist upon getting mixed up in "military stuff" when he could turn around and sell his cargo elsewhere, maybe at slightly lowered prices, but with far less trouble or sitting around waiting for exercises to finish.

He gave the order for two of his K-39s to pick up a reconnaissance loadout and give the tankers a pass, scanning them for other things they could be carrying -- such as weapons or even concealed boats. It was probably nothing; and even if they were carrying weapons, it wasn't actionable -- the arms trade is fully legal, after all -- but he wanted to know if the Zakrapatians had been lying. And, if so, why. He didn't particularly trust them, and it had almost nothing to do with the fact that they'd gotten his rank wrong.

Difficult to say. Several other vessels are en route to participate in stage II of the exercise. When the exercise has concluded, or when the exclusion zone has been redefined to allow vessels passage through this corridor, you will be the first we inform.

Having dealt with the Zakrapatian, Seria turned his attention to an officer who'd been attempting to capture his attention for several seconds. "Yes, ensign, what is it?"

"A chopper's arrived, sir; it's requesting permission to land."

"A chopper, eh? The Zakrapatians, here to 'arrest' me?"

"No sir... it's from someone called GPI, there's a Mr. Halbi or something onboard."

"A who?..... oh, yes, him. They're clear. Send some of the Marines to escort him down."

"Yes, sir."

When the helicopter landed, several uniformed men were awaiting Halbi, all of them with the same impassive stare. As the only unit of the Saevitian Armed Forces that regularly sees military action, the Marines have a fairly high percentage of shell shock; but those who make it through have a different kind of thousand-yard stare, one which suggests that they can really see you at that distance, and they don't particularly approve of what you're doing and dear god who picked that outfit anyway? Only one of them had also been at the embassy, a Private Ignace Beck (he'd been sent up because he was the lowest-ranking soldier to which the order had the chance to get passed down to); the others we have not yet met.

They escorted him down to the CIC with only perfunctory conversation, commenting (typically for a seafaring nation) on how peaceful the seas had been, and on the storm that was expected to pass through in two days' time. Where Halbi met Seria, he noted a man of moderate height with a receding hairline, hair silvering; build on the portly side; a face bearing a slight resemblance to an owl's.

"Welcome aboard Chennai," Seria said. "This is our C-in-C. I hope your flight over was uneventful. Anything to drink?"

"That should be it, thank you. If you'd be so kind as to provide the correct contact data for the commodore - say a satellite phone or long-range radio - we'll have our own fleet get in contact with yours. It's currently rounding the Iberian peninsula, and should be through the straight of Gibraltar soon. We've also taken the liberty of dispatching two attack subs behind the fleet, just in case our Zakrapatian friends decide to pull an underwater trick of their own."

"Ah yes. The RSS Chennai can be contacted on this frequency." Karajan read the frequency off another document he had open. "It's encrypted, of course, and Commodore Seria should be easy to reach."

Pause. "We have two of our own attack submarines in the area, and they may be running quite deep. I'll inform the Commodore as well, so he can assign them friendly codes so you avoid mistaking them for Zakrapatian ships. Not that I imagine there will be any actual warfare or violence going on in the region, anyway." It's a pity you can't hear winks over the phone. "Thank you for your call, Mr. ... er .... Don't hesitate to call again if anything else comes up. Goodbye."

Click.

"Green tea, please. It's good to meet you all in person. I am Yang Halbi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Brunei and director of military operations for Global Protection, Incorporated. Let me get to the point: we have been hired by your government to help liberate Friedlichen from Zakrapat. Currently, one brigade, two wings, and our naval task force are in the region; our task force is attached to yours, while the aircraft and ground forces are deployed in Northern Italy, helping train the Italian Army Group Alps (and its attached aircraft)," the Bruneian said. He wore an olive-green uniform, with assorted medals (most awarded by the Sultan) and the epaulets of a field marshal - a rank awarded to him not by the Sultan, but by the Confederacy. It looked impressive; he looked a bit nervous.

A staffer passed out documents listing current and projected deployments by GPI to the Adriatic. The second brigade, a heavier force than the first, was projected to arrive in Venice in two days, while two more wings - one of air superiority fighters, like the first, and one of strike planes (a mix of fighter-bombers and gunships) would be arriving in just 18 hours.

"Of course, I don't intend to start aggressive campaigning until we're ready. Ideally, we should be able to push the invaders out with the careful application of economic, political and military pressure. Your blockade is putting economic stress on Zakrapat, which could be exacerbated (if necessary) by air strikes on airports and bridges throughout the invaders' state. We are beginning to promote a resistance movement in Friedlichen through psychological warfare - primarily, broadcasts by emigres to the people of Friedlichen, reminding them that there is still hope and urging them to prepare for resistance. We are also preparing to conduct similar operations against the Zakrapati government, once more aggressive campaigning occurs, tying the invaders' presence in Friedlichen to our actions against their country. This would put political pressure for a withdrawal from Friedlichen. Finally, we are developing plans to put military pressure on the invaders, which will depend on the forces being committed to the region, but will generally involve winning and exploiting air superiority.

What I would like to know, then, is what we will have to work with. What assets are coming to the Adriatic, what actions can they take, what trip-lines do they have on more aggressive action?

In the mean-time, our task force, consisting of a medium carrier, three helicopter destroyers, five corvettes, four attack subs, and a landing platform/dock, along with logistical support provided by five supply ships, will support your exercises and offer you the opportunity to practice coordination with foreign military assets."

Seria smiled. "Excellent." Mr. Halbi was the sort of man who could enunciate a parenthesis, but that hadn't appeared to stop him from nearly talking Seria's ears off. Nonetheless, it was important information, and if Seria didn't retain it all the dictaphone sitting innocuously amongst the other clutter and equipment would. "I do like your idea about airstrikes. However, gaining air superiority is going to be quite difficult without an airbase in this region -- Saevitian aerial assets are somewhat limited, although our deficiency in that area may well be complemented by Global Protection's units." Seria frowned for a moment, a pause punctuated by an orderly arriving with the tea.

"You see, Saevitia does not intend to deploy any additional units to this region at present. What we have available right now is likely all we will have even if conflict with Zakrapat does occur, simply because politics prevent this incident from being labeled anything but a 'military exercise' and the Zakrapatian military is not widely considered to be strong enough to merit a larger force. At any rate, the conflict is primarily in Friedlichen, not Zakrapat; our naval expertise is meaningless there, and only our aerial assets will be useful, as the ground forces currently available to us consist of no more than three hundred marines -- many of whom are admittedly seasoned, experienced veterans, but who would be useless against an enemy with tanks and missile launchers, short of attempting to stir up rebellion in the hills.

"On the other hand -- at the opposite end of the spectrum -- if a real naval threat materializes, or if the Zakrapatians are found to be nuclear armed, or any other reason is presented for the total neutralization of Zakrapat, it is possible that a full blue water fleet will be deployed -- maybe even two. These are units of seventy or eighty ships, with aircraft carriers and battleships and missile submarines. And with such a fleet, maybe up to a hundred thousand Marines, although that's even more unlikely. It's not an either-or scenario though -- either they do nothing, or they send a hugely overkill force -- it's more of a sliding scale based on what happens in the next few days or weeks, and on whether the legitimate government of Friedlichen still exists or can be contacted. For now, I'd only rely on the forces we currently have here continuing this operation.

"Anyway, we do appreciate your support of our exercises. In particular we could provide valuable simulations of battles against other carrier battle groups; combat testbeds for our latest uncrewed aerial vehicles, the Pavua series; plus coordination, of course. We have been conducting the exercises as live-fire so far, although we'd only actually shoot at the Zakrapatians. And then only if they entered the exclusion zone." Seria smiled and took a break to sip from a glass of water, allowing Halbi a chance to say something. Who was getting their ears talked off now, eh?

Halbi smiled and sipped his tea. "First, we do have news about the status of the government of Friedlichen. One of our pilots discovered the emergency radio frequency of Friedlichen when the Prime Minister sent off a broadcast revealing that she had survived the invasion. We have no clue what happened since, but have been using that frequency for our occasional psychological warfare broadcasts. Zakrapat hasn't announced the capture or death of the Prime Minister, so they apparently didn't find anything they could show off as proof they had got her. Presumably, she and elements of her government have escaped, though we don't know where.

Are there any other nations potentially involved? We heard vague rumors about Blackhelm being behind the Zakrapatis; might that lead to involvement by other powers?" Halbi paused, sipped his tea again. Needs more sugar, he decided.

"We would be happy to help conduct exercises. Our ships are, as shown, about 22 hours out. Perhaps we could conduct a simulation of an attack by our task force on yours, with the exercise starting in twelve hours?"

"That's quite interesting indeed," Seria said, a little too unemotionally for the rhythm of the conversation. "Were you able to trace the broadcast? Because if so we'll have a good idea where not to look for the Prime Minister. Regardless, however.... Other nations? Aye. Stabistan has expressed its support for our exercises, and there is a fleet on the way as we speak. There is also a New Manthian fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. I don't know about the Blackhelm Confederacy, but there is a corporation based there -- Griffincrest, I believe -- which has been selling oil and materiel to Zakrapat, as far as we can tell. We're still working on learning more about it, but apparently mercenaries utilized by the Griffincrest Corporation have incited many conflicts in the past, so those who would hire them tend to be looked at askance by nations who've dealt with them before.

"That sounds fine. We don't have anything scheduled for the next twenty-four hours except for standard CAP, and a resupply arriving tomorrow around four AM. A simulated attack would prove useful, although we'd need some time to set up the main computers so that the response doesn't involve the launch of any real missiles by, er, accident." He twinkled. "I don't think I'll tell the sailors, you see. It's a *realistic* exercise."

"We weren't able to trace the original broadcast, unfortunately. However, we did intercept some radio chatter about troop movements in Friedlichen, suggesting that the Zakrapatis had some guess as to the location of the broadcast.

What assets do the Stabistani and New Manthian task forces add? I'd appreciate it if you could put me in touch with their commanders and their staffs, so that we can begin developing plans for action against Zakrapat.

As for the exercise itself, I wish you luck. Hopefully, we'll both be able to learn from this."

Halbi paused, and quickly texted Ken Lau to let him know the exercise was on as planned.
---
"So, what are AQUA's assets? Do we know?" Lau asked, opening the meeting he had called an hour after Halbi's text. AQUA referred to Saevitia. They couldn't use Saevitian, or enemy, or hostile, or even RED or BLACK - the first was too specific, while the rest would piss off the Saevitians when they heard the record. As this was a military exercise, all meetings in the CIC would be recorded.

"Not much, sir. They have a carrier, which, according to intel, was accompanied by 9 other ships, including a possible supply ship and a hospital ship. Intel also observed at least two fighter squadrons on the carrier," one staffer replied. Intel, she didn't add (because it would've marred the tone), consisted of interviews of the platoon that had done the embassy op.

"Hmm. We might have a slight edge on aircraft, but we've probably got the same number of surface escorts. No idea on AQUA's subs, I take it?"

"None whatsoever, sir," another staffer replied.

"Go ahead and put our AEW planes on patrol, with four F-18s as escort; I want to be able to intercept any incoming aircraft beyond visual range. Also, load our A-4ARs for naval strike missions. Also, have the subs move from flank to quiet at the next radio check - when's that?"

"Three hours, sir," a third staffer replied.

"Good. Make sure they hold at that point until they've launched all their missiles - we'll need them more than their torpedoes." The AS-709s had five TCM-39 cruise missiles for each sub's 1000mm torpedo tube, rather than the more typical large-bore torpedoes; the naval threat had always been expected to be minimal.

"What's our overall strike plan?" Ken's second-in-command asked.

"Find AQUA's force - probably from the skies, rather than the seas. Attack AQUA's CAP at range, so they can't interfere with our attack, then launch a semi-coordinated missile strike, pulling back our air assets to defend against AQUA's attacks. Hopefully, the variety of different missile types will overwhelm AQUA's escorts; failing that, we'll be relying on strike planes and Harpoons." That would get ugly, he didn't add.

"Sounds reasonable. You sure we shouldn't close to Harpoon range?" the second staffer asked.

"Gosh no. The further out we can attack, the better," Lau replied. With that, the staffers moved out, leaving the CIC a bit less crowded than before. But not much.

Click.

Immediately a message was relayed to Commodore Huxley and Captain Chandler, who shortly got in contact with their counterpart(s) on board the Saevitian ships, relaying contact data, transponder codes, names, organizational charts, and other such things which allow a navy to tick.

They had sailed through Gibraltar with no hassle from whoever was owning it at this moment (thing changed hands so bloody much it wasn't worth it to remember any more) and were currently steaming for the Adriatic and the Saevitians.

They rang up the bridge of the Chennai, hearing Jourdan's dour reply.

"This is Captain Chandler of the SNS Broadsword, our high command told us that we were to come into contact with your, Commodore Seria. We'll be... pleased to work alongside you, we're currently steaming past about... 100 miles southwest of Caligari, nearing Malta. We're transmitting you some data as we speak to coordinate our forces, encrypted as well, of course."

They sailed on.

"Time?" Lau asked. He was getting nervous. The exercise had just started, and already, he had finished his first glass of water.

"T+12 minutes, sir," Mei Wang replied, checking her watch. She was the captain of the Shokaku proper, and had previously worked for Japan through Michael Shipyards. It was a complex arrangement - the Japanese paid for Michael Shipyards to operate the carrier, but also to train their crews. Fortunately, the Japanese trainees weren't aboard ship any more; it was frustrating having your every move watched, studied, analyzed. Unfortunately, GPI's 'trainees' were now aboard; worse, they were officers, and even a few in charge of her!

"Any sign?"

"Sir, you know the next radio check is two minutes from now."

A pause, then, "That's 60 seconds, now."

"True, sir." Mei nearly laughed at the grim look on Ken's face. Ken Lau had been named head of the naval component not for any significant military experience, but because he had run a few joint exercises for the countries the Confederacy operated in. Apparently, he knew that, and knew it well.

"Scout 1, this is Shokaku Actual. Report?" the communications officer radioed. He had spent the last several hours fixing the radios, which had been a bitch. Especially without the friendly Japanese trainees he had been used to using. So it goes.

"Shokaku, this is Scout 1. We have possible contacts, 400km out; looks like nine or ten surface contacts on our radars," an air combat controller aboard one of the C-62NAs reported.

"Any air contacts?"

"Doesn't look like it."

Ken looked puzzled. What carrier group wouldn't put up a CAP? That didn't make sense. It's not like they could hide from the powerful radars of his AEW planes, could they? "When's the radio check with the subs?"

"Five minutes, sir," a staffer replied.

"Good. We'll send them the coordinates then, and then launch half an hour later. Got that, captain?"

"Yes sir. You want me to launch so that our missiles arrive with the subs' missiles."

"Right. Carry on, captain. Oh, and maintain EMCON; we will transmit the coordinates to the rest of the task force when we radio the subs."

"Of course, sir."

"Good, carry on, carry on." Does she see? Ken wondered. His hand was shaking slightly. Damn nerves.

ooc: Totally forgot about Jourdan in the other IC post... here is a quick correction

"Ambassador Jourdan, good day to you. My name is Fatima. I was told you couldn't answer a few questions - is this a secure line?"

Five minutes passed. Cups of coffee were brought in, glasses of water refilled, soups quietly sipped. Two aircraft strained to figure out more clearly where AQUA's task force was. Then, suddenly, radios flipped on. The planes' best estimates for the location of AQUA's ships were relayed throughout the fleet, and to the subs. Each sub loaded the coordinates into their missiles at the press of a button on the control computers. Over the next fifteen minutes, twenty sea-skimming cruise missiles were 'launched.' The real missiles were not launched, of course; however, their profiles had been programmed into the exercise computer on the Chennai, and the computer now recorded their 'launch.'

Fifteen minutes later, twelve P-700 hypersonic cruise missiles were 'launched' from the carrier; nine would just skim the surface at Mach 4.5, while three would conduct pop-up maneuvers, briefly climbing to higher altitudes once they neared the targets in order to designate and prioritize them. Thirty-two missiles, in all, were launched; hopefully, the combination of high-speed and stealthy missiles would be sufficient to confuse AQUA's AD. Hopefully.
OOC: Saevitia, your move. P-700 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-700); TCM-39 (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=5463).

[OOC: Shipwrecks, gotta love 'em. :D]

~ The Exercise. In the air. ~

"Please confirm, ATC. All CAPs to be operated under EMCON?"

"Roger, Epsilon Leader. Command's orders."

"Confirmed. EMCON will be maintained." The fighter pilot closed the radio link, then hit the button that would automatically maintain the EMCON profile. While he could still receive information via SCONE uplinks from the nearest hub -- in this case, Chennai itself -- he wondered about this. For combat air patrols, supplementing the fleet's sensors with a fighter unit's was more or less the whole point. The only other reason EMCON would be called for was if they were expecting attacks.

And indeed, after perhaps half an hour of routine flying, a new message came in, briefing the pilot and his three companions on CAP at the moment on the new situation. Simultaneously the fiber-optic SCONE datalink started feeding out information: The minesweeper and patrol boat Icthys Three had observed something in the air. One of the Fireflies had been deployed and was circling at a fairly low altitude, listening hard for radar echoes. The signatures they returned matched those of air-based, low-frequency radars: other AEW aircraft. And where there are AEW planes, it's a good bet that there's something else, too. Fighters, bombers, helicopters.

The Firefly activated its radar for a two-second sweep; it would expose itself to any enemy group that hadn't yet detected it, but it was within the fleet's air defense net, so that shouldn't be a problem. Two contacts revealed themselves. It was nothing definite, so the Firefly pulsed again, this time a five-second sweep, passing the information to the four K-39Ns on patrol. Contacts.

The leader of Epsilon Flight closed to within only meters of his wingman, seeking to confuse the enemy by presenting one single target rather than two to the low frequency radars that would be most likely to pick up a K-39N. Then he launched four missiles. Or, at least, he pressed the appropriate buttons on his touchscreen, and radioed, "Four away." If he hadn't switched his system to "training mode", four real missiles would have dropped out of the weapons bay in which they were now nestled, instead of the simulated ones that would nonetheless show up on the exercise computer (and, eventually, as missile locks on the other planes' infrared sensors).

The S70 Scorpion medium-range air-to-air missile didn't set off radar warning receivers, primarily because its guidance systems were inertial and infrared. Traveling at approximately Mach 4, the four simulated missiles had approximately 100 km to go before reaching their targets, or a minute and a half of travel time. During this period they received two mid-course corrections, both from the Firefly, which had gained revised estimates of the positions of the two aircraft. They activated their infrared stage at about 14 km out from the two "scout" aircraft, leaving about 13 seconds for detection and countermeasures -- there wasn't really enough time to evade effectively, as the missiles' range was closer to 140 km and they could still pull turns.

The Firefly, however, was not done. It was picking up fainter contacts on radar, near sea level; they were fuzzy, due to electrons bouncing off the water or something (or maybe due to the contacts actually being fed into the aircraft's systems from the carrier), but moving fast. Missiles, presumably. They were clearer on thermal and infrared imaging, and from their relative positions and shapes, the analysts concluded that at least some of them were P-700 Granit missiles. Or "Shipwrecks", as the more descriptive name went. Some of them were moving too slowly and too low down for that, so it was probably a mix, but the Shipwrecks were the more dangerous by far -- being extremely fast, very well guided, long ranged, and potentially nuclear. The path was clear.

Now was the time to wake the grunts.

~ The Exercise. At Sea. ~

"... ALL HANDS ON DECK, WE ARE UNDER ATTACK. REPEAT, ALL HANDS ON DECK, WE ARE UNDER ATTACK, SAY YOUR PRAYERS, WE'RE GONNA DIE. ALL HANDS ON DECK...."

Sailors scrambled into position on board the ships of the fleet, which had suddenly come alive with activity usually unseen at five o'clock in the morning. Klaxons blared, red lights flashed, the sea lit up with the reflections of lights coming on; close-in weapons systems pivoted and, with the hiss of pressurized air, hatches for surface-to-air missile launchers sprang open.

"....WE ARE UNDER ATTACK. THIS IS A DRILL. REPEAT, THIS IS ONLY A DRILL. IF THIS HAD BEEN A REAL EMERGENCY, YOU WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW. ALL HANDS ON DECK...."

Then, to a casual observer, it would seem that nothing happened. It appeared that everything had paused, that all the preparations had been for naught. In fact, the first of the simulated countermeasures had been launched already, a set of surface-to-air missiles targeting the incoming missiles at 30 km, and the swiveling sensor arrays were even now targeting the simulated missiles with active cancellation or launching simulated chaff. Simulated close-in weapons systems came alive, although the men manning those systems were pressing buttons without anything actually firing.

"... WE HAVE BEEN HIT BY A P-700 GRANIT MISSILE. THIS MISSILE CARRIES A SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY KILOGRAM ARMOR PIERCING HIGH EXPLOSIVE CHARGE. IT'S GONE RIGHT THROUGH OUR SIDE AND BLOWN A HUGE HOLE FORWARDS. ALL YOU SAILORS FORE, YOU'RE DEAD, OR DYING. OH LORDY, WE'RE SINKING, WE ARE. HALP."

The destroyer-escort Isaak Martola sailed out of formation, away towards the edges of the exclusion zone, while its crew engaged in various ribaldry and banter about their supposedly deceased state which I really don't feel like writing right now. Across other ships, damage was calculated and reported; few of them had suffered any major losses thanks to the quick response. Now was time for the equally simulated counterstrike.

The missile cruiser Saarti carried the brunt of this, being the most missile-specialized warship in the fleet. It had a hundred and twenty-eight angled vertical launch cells, and had two hundred and fifty-six additional missiles in its magazine, with a comparatively rapid system of conveyors and such for reloading them. Of these, it fired thirty-two, all of them T86 missile-launched torpedoes: the 80cm missile, really a delivery drone, supercruised about ten meters above the sea for up to four hundred kilometers, then dropped a 65.5cm supercavitating torpedo which proceeded to deliver several hundred kilos of high explosive to the keel of the target ship. This assault was supplemented by forty more sea-skimmers from Redstone, using all of its forward vertical launch cells (it had eighty in all): T9A Apollyon anti-ship missiles, which did admittedly use the Granit's guidance system but were otherwise different, being smaller and shorter-ranged, lacking the Granit's distinctive shape and turbojet engine, and with a delayed fuze to allow the penetrator to bring the missile into the interior of the target before it detonated. Targeting solutions were obtained by a combination of satellite, aerial radar, naval sensors, and clever guesswork -- they need not be entirely accurate, since the missiles themselves were fire-and-forget.

Seventy-two missiles. Meanwhile, planes began taking off from Chennai as it emptied its entire contingent into the skies. This itself could take twenty minutes, but when it was done, air superiority would be within Saevitia's grasp.

[OOC: I haven't designed those missiles yet for some reason. Also, I suck at writing today.]

"Foxes coming in," Scout 1 reported. There wasn't much he could do. It was overkill - two missiles per plane, each missile traveling at near-hypersonic speeds. On the other hand, there was that...

Scout 1 dived towards the sea, hoping to close towards its own task force and their anti-air defenses. Its countermeasures clicked online as the missiles closed in, attempting to spoof the IR guidance they used. A minute passed, and then the aircrew relaxed. Suddenly, Scout 2 radioed in: "Just what the hell was that? You're as dead as we; you've just wasted more fuel."

"Eh, just thought I'd try something."

"What are you, a fighter pilot or something? This plane is slow, and absurdly vulnerable. Don't treat it like something even close to maneuverable. You could've gotten Green Flight killed - the missiles might've retargeted, you know."

"And what were you guys doing?"

"Tracing the missiles back to their likely firing point and relaying the coordinates. You know, doing our job..." The two pilots continued their arguments.

Five minutes later, Green 1 cut in. "Yeah, we lost, too. So, what's it like being dead?"

"Eh, nothing special. You had a nice go of it; I didn't catch if you got any hits, though. Too busy rooting for you to evade their missiles."

"We'll find out soon enough." The 4 F-18s of Green Flight thus joined the C-62NAs as early casualties for GPI.
---
Aboard the Shokaku, the deck was being cleared as planes lifted off. The loss of the AEW planes meant that the AQUA air threat was graver than previously thought; apparently, AQUA did have AEW planes of its own. Now, the F-7N interceptors lifted off, along with Red Flight's four F-18s. The F-7N was an unusual design, stealthy almost by accident. It was meant to be a low-cost interceptor, but then the F-21N project failed and its engineers got involved, bringing in the internal weapons bays they had wanted for the F-21, along with other RCS-reducing features. Its weapons were short-ranged, and its radar nowhere near as powerful as competitors' radars, but it still was an effective design, with support. The F-18s' upgraded radars, along with the radars on the task force, would have to bring that support.
---
"What makes me uncomfortable is that we have no clue what happened with our strike. I think we need to press forward, figure out what happened, then launch our remaining missiles," Ken said.

"After dealing with theirs?" Mei replied, then hastily tacked on, "Sir."

"Oh? Oh, right, those. Great," Ken replied. Seaskimmers, probably around 80 if they went with 8-missile groups for course-corrections. Granit-like, according to the ships' radars. Well, here we go, he thought, as the destroyers began firing off their medium-range SM-2 SAMs. Digitally, of course. This was an exercise of computers, not of explosives, after all.

Ninety-six SM-2 missiles launched in roughly three seconds. It was an awe-inspiring sight on the CIC's screens, but the duel with the AShMs wore on, and AAM-97s from the fighters started being deployed. Some missiles went down, and when an enterprising fighter pilot dove towards where he thought the missiles might be headed, his weapons took out more.

The Granit knockoffs moved into the range of the task force's point-defense SAMs, which were a mix of laser-guided and radar-guided missiles. An F-7N, taking off, managed to get a gunnery kill, 'shooting' at the target on his IR sight. CIWS mounts let loose their 'missiles' and 'shells'. Still, it wasn't entirely enough - two got through, and struck the crown jewels. The Shokaku itself was taken down due to its Kashtans failing to cooperate - apparently, the complex electronics had failed again; the Endeavour, with its weak AD, took damage from a missile impact, but managed to survive. Still, the remainder of the task force survived, unhurt, shifting away from the 'stricken' ships and retaining their Exocets and Spearguns for when they closed in range.

Then the next wave of missiles emerged. Thirty-two similar-sized missiles, apparently slower than the Granit-knockoffs the task force had just endured, approached. Without long-range SAMs, the only weapons available were the missiles of the interceptors and F-18s. Red Flight was loath to give up its main striking power against AQUA's aircraft, but fired away anyway, letting loose with their AMRAAMs. After all, if the ships were sunk, the exercise would've been lost anyway.

Fewer missiles this time, but fewer were knocked out, so it evened out. The ships' computers readied to release their remaining short-range SAMs. Then the delivery drones released their cargoes - torpedoes! Decoys were hastily launched as the task force shifted direction away from the threat. The supply ships, meanwhile, dropped decoy and depth-charge rockets from their UDAV-1 systems, hoping to blast or spoof the torpedoes.

Fortunately, guiding a supercavitating torpedo is difficult, so if you can evade it, you're probably safe. Unfortunately, supercavitating torpedoes travel at over 200 knots. Thus, despite their best efforts, the task force got hit hard. Four supply ships and two destroyers were taken down. The final supply ship and destroyer split away from the other ships to provide spotting data and serve as bait, while the corvettes shifted to flank speed to close on the task force and let loose their shorter-ranged cruise missiles.
---
Under the seas, the submariners considered their options. On their last radio check, they only got the Nakhoda Ragam, which reported the devastation of the missile strikes. The Opalfish decided on a high-speed run. The other subs were inclined to stay quiet, but the Opalfish, it was realized, gave them some cover, so the Fleshfish sped up a bit, hoping to close to within range of at least its torpedoes, if not its supercavitators.

Above the sea, meanwhile, the aircraft had a choice to make. Option 1: head for Italy and be interned. Option 2: Escort the corvettes on their run in, 'ditching' when necessary. Option 3: Escort the bait, making it even more tempting. Or, option 4: escort the A-4ARs, which had taken off to clear space for the other planes, on a naval strike. While the first option proposed was tempting - Italian girls! Italian food! - cooler heads prevailed. Though not that much cooler; they went for the naval strike option, after all. Fortunately, they were just outside the range at which the A-4ARs could launch their Harpoons. After that launch, however, the other weapons were all laser-guided bombs; they'd have to go right into the thick of AQUA's task force. Not ideal at all. But if they pulled it off...!

Fifteen F-7Ns, four F-18s and four A-4ARs dove, becoming sea-skimmers and going EMCON. It was tricky, but it would help hide them. They couldn't afford to encounter AQUA aircraft; they wouldn't be able to manage, especially without long-range missiles.
---
Aboard the intact, surviving ships, twelve SH-4s and four S-70s were available for anti-sub operations - or anti-ship operations, it was realized. Only six of those helicopters were aboard the corvettes, but they were nonetheless instructed to fly as low as possible, lifting off with the missiles.
---
Four Harpoons, 32 Block III Exocets and 24 CM-8 Spearguns were up against the remaining air defenses of AQUA's task force. They probably wouldn't be enough. But hopefully, they might soften things up enough for the A-4s to get through and manage a bombing run, or distract things enough for the subs to slip in and attack, or for the helicopters to get through and fire their own torpedoes. Unlikely? Sure. But unlikely was all GPI had.

OOC: We're not that great at this. We mix missiles, radars, etc. fairly absurdly, and it makes things more inefficient. Plus, technology has moved on in the NS world.

words words words words

Just as things were starting to slow down on the missile front, multiple contacts appeared, seemingly melting out from the middle of the sea as the Stabistani-designed "Fishhook" AS-17 missiles - or at least their signatures, seeing as this was just an exercise, after all - finally appeared on the radar of both the Saevitian and GPI screens. Commonly known as "those sneaky little buggers," the Fishhook was angular and coated in radar-absorbing compounds, looking somewhat like the cruise-missile little cousin of the F-117. Of course, they weren't supposed to be undetectable, that would just be too hard to pull off, but their design allowed them to get quite close before appearing on the enemy's readouts.

They rocketed between the two forces, getting unnervingly close before veering towards the Saevitian fleet and tearing just feet above the water, several being obliterated by their defenses outright long before they could get to their target. A few others were confused by the defensive fire and countermeasures, and whirled off or smashed into the sea. Whether the remaining cluster would make it was up in the air, depending on how lucky the Saevitians got.

Shortly after the missiles first appeared, the Falchions and Bardiches could be detected a ways out from the battle, and dived out from above the clouds, engaging with their missiles from long range as soon as they could get locks on the Saevitians, the "projectiles" streaking across the sky.The majority missed, but there were a few lucky hits. Of course, several fighters were "killed" due to the deft work of the Saevitian defenders, an impressive reaction time, but a good chunk remained, the Bardiches closing to attack range, readying their torpedoes, missiles, and bombs. Several were "shot down" by fighters and AA defenses along the way, but some evasive action by the remainder kept them from "dying" horrible deaths.

Of course, the fleet itself had now finally entered detection range as well, and they prepared for an equally intense assault, AA systems activating. Unfortunately for the Scythe, several of its CIWS guns immediately began to detect targets that weren't there, requiring an immediate shutdown lest it "fire" on friendlies. The techies and maintainance crews jumped on the problem, attempting to find its source. Knowing it would be a sitting duck, its sister destroyers rushed to move to protect it.

A simple morse transmission - for this wasn't exactly a top-secret, vitally important message -from the [i]Broadsword reached the Chennai.

"Sorry we're late to the party. Enjoy your surprise?"

Shortly after the Fishhooks had appeared, the Shokaku had gotten a brief, but informative burst of information from the Arit, helpfully telling the GPI forces what the bloody hell was going on and that since they seemed to be quote unquote losing, had decided to enter the mock-battle on their side.

[i]((Haven't had the chance to exercise-RP for ages. Hell, any large-scale combat at all. Hope this is halfway decent. Sort of forced into a corner here, showing up in the middle of the exercise, but eh. I hate godmoding, and I'm quite bloody rusty at this, so I purposely gave the decision of how much damage my forces do to SCI. And this should *probably* go in the OOC thread, but I'm much too lazy at the moment.))

Ken smiled, then radioed the Arit. For a 'dead' ship, the radios were working surprisingly well - better than they had in a week! "Technically, we're dead. Brief summary: we started out with aggressive recon by our AEW planes - too aggressive, it turned out, as we lost them to AQUA's - Saevitia's - fighters. Still, we found them first, launched 20 stealthy cruise missiles and 12 hypersonic missiles, then prepared to deal with their counterattack. They started with a barrage of hypersonic missiles - we got all but two of them, but those two took down my carrier and left my LPD dead in the water. So, if you want to talk with the actual commander, call up Captain Zheng on the Forbearance, our only surviving destroyer. He'll update you on the situation from there."
---
The Stabistani - or, as GPI instantly dubbed them, GOLD - intervention was pretty useful for GPI. After all, AQUA had a new force it would have to handle; suddenly, GPI's chances went from unlikely to plausible. The corvettes pressed on, hoping to close into range. The Corregidor could start firing her guns at 35km, using the extended-range shells, while the other corvettes could start firing their shells at 20km, the same range the Corregidor could fire off the 16 SAM-97S missiles she had left. The aircraft, too, moved in, the A-4s readying for their bombing runs and the fighters waiting to shoot off their remaining cannon shells into AQUA's ships. The pilots relaxed a bit - after all, how could AQUA have launched against them and GOLD? Not that they didn't stare into their radars warily, awaiting the missiles they'd never see anywhere else.
---
Meanwhile, Maria Aviation, for today, was an air combat controller, sitting in a C-15A from the support wing. Her plane was in the hangar for routine maintenance. It had been through a lot over the past month, from the demo in Kargucagstan to the long-distance flight to Italy to six full days of air combat exercises. It needed a bit of rest, Maria thought, sipping on her coffee.

They were flying over the Adriatic, not far from the PC-15s doing propaganda broadcasts. Zakrapat had painted the PC-15s with long-range air search radars the other day, as a little reminder, so GPI decided to give the planes a little back-up for the day. Not that either side would try anything too aggressive, but it was always better to be safe...

Alexandria - several days later

An aged hand leafed through the paperwork, selected one glossy photo, held it up to the light. It was squinted at, the caption was examined - "Altenberg, 4/13/09 21:50, MID (ground)" - then carefully returned to its place. More photographs followed - "Adriatic Sea, 4/13/09 22:12, SCOM," Adriatic Sea, 4/13/09 23:55, UNAR," "Auferstanden, 3/22/09 04:31, MID (recovered)," etc - along with thick sheafs of documentation, financial records and investigations which were skimmed over, a transcript of the conversation with Jourdan, then the concluding report. The President held that for a while, read it through carefully, and then delicately folded it back into the thick file.

"I agree, Director, this is enough evidence to move on. Thank you."

With a nod Georgios Karakolos had been dismissed, and Saad al-Baradei sat back in his chair. He thought for a moment, then reached for a glossy black phone (one of three on the desk) and spoke into the receiver.

"Commander. I will be arriving in the Blue Room in twenty minutes to meet with CCX."

A pause.

"Yes."

He waited while the other man spoke at longer length.

"Authorize him to go ahead. Cite anti-piracy law. Avoid open combat with either Griffencrest or Zakrapat unless there is armed resistance."

Blue Room, 20 mins later

"Gentlemen,"

The President stood to call the attention of the eighteen senior military men seated around the table,

"I have just been shown intelligence on the Freidlichen-Zakrapat conflict which confirms beyond serious doubt our earlier suspicions of the Griffencrest Corporation's involvement in the invasion. I have already directed that the Navy vessels currently in the theater act to seize Griffencrest's shipping in the area and join in the enforcement of the Saevitian blockade. What I want for you all is a plan to mount land operations in the area to remove the Corporation and Zakrapat for good...

Adriatic Sea

A radioman on the bridge of the Tripolitania pulled off his headphones and stood from his station, a slip of paper in hand, and made his way over to Captain Vikelides.

"Sir. New message from CCX."

The paper was accepted, and Vikelides examined the code, waving the man back to his post. He nodded to himself; he'd been told that this would be a fairly likely possibility.

He strode over quickly to another area of the bridge, and handed the ship to a lieutenant at his side.

"Wake the Vice-Admiral and give this to him."

He turned to a larger group of officers.

"Call to action stations. Ready a platoon for boarding and search of potential hostile vessels."

******

It was a curious situation in the Adriatic. First, furthest out since they had been last to arrive, was the Manthian fleet; then, between the Manthians and the others, a Stabistani naval formation, with which contact had been limited to informing them of the Navy's presence in the area; next, the Griffencrest tankers layered in between fleets on both sides; then the Saevitian and DC flotillas carrying out their "exercises" and finally, in the narrow strip of waters close to shore, the Zakrapatian fleet. So far (with the exeption of the exercises), the whole thing had been a delicate mix of warships staring at each other.

It was about to be shaken up.

CVBG Tripolitania had been content to stay out of the naval jockeying and just watch the show - a chance to closely observe foreign naval tactics and exercises was always valuable - but new orders had been received that would probably end up bringing an end to the whole charade, as the Union was less concerned with hiding its motives under (thin) veils than the Saevitian government. When eight helicopters carrying two platoons of the Tripolitania's naval infantry contingent were dispatched to investigate the tankers, they did not waste time with niceties or bluffs about blockades. Instead, the first helicopter to arrive hailed one tanker while hovering a hundred yards off the starboard bow, full of armed men and with snub-nosed machine guns and wing racks thick with rockets not quite pointing directly at the ship. The crew was informed that the Union Navy would board and inspect the ship due to concerns about piracy in the area, and directed to stand by.

The other Griffencrest vessels soon received similar messages.

The K-39Ns were highly advanced fighters, marketed as "sixth generation" for publicity purposes (although the only true sixth generation aircraft were the various UCAVs accompanying them, each one about the size of a standard fighter but with even more advanced extremely-low-observability stealth measures built in -- Saevitia couldn't bring many aircraft into a combat zone, so stealth was the name of the game). Their technological superiority combined with the comprehensive datalink system all of the taskforce tied into meant that a fight against the older and somewhat less organized air units brought to bear by the enemy (which was considered "Yellow" for a friendly but neutral force in private parlance, with the Saevitians being Blue, Friedlicher Green, and Zakrapat Red) would invariably be somewhat one-sided.

With air superiority soon within their grasp, the Saevitian air superiority fighters and drones moved to cover the Sealion strike fighters as they approached the ships of the GPI fleet, simulated bombs and guided missiles dropping from their weapons bays into the ships below, firing off their short-range missiles to intercept SAMs. The fighter strike was also an essential component of doctrine as it left enemy forces with a hard choice between expending their air defense ordnance on the aircraft or on the incoming missiles, of which a second wave of thirty-two sea-skimmers -- T9As again -- was now approaching. The fighters had not yet been able to detect the group of enemy fighters heading to launch a similar strike against the Saevitian taskforce.

This wave passed by a wave of incoming GPI missiles in mid-flight as well; it was a smaller wave, and the Saevitians had barely been scratched so far, with most of their air defense network still intact. A smaller number of SAMs were deployed to deal with the incoming missiles; as usual, most of the missiles were knocked out, but several remained, streaking towards the Saevitian ships. One missile damaged the Lai near its helicopter deck; the pair of helicopters lifted off before simulated fires could sweep across their hangars and, on the orders of command, departed to search for and destroy enemy submarines. If they had any, of course; it was hard to tell, but SARN operated on the assumption that all enemy forces had submarines and if you couldn't detect them it just meant they were being very quiet.

Then a new wave of missiles became visible, to the surprise of almost everyone with the possible exception of Commodore Seria. These were a good deal harder to track on radar, due to being stealthy, and interception was somewhat less successful than would be ideal. A missile struck Redstone in its forward vertical launch block; a block which unfortunately still had twenty missiles in it. Despite damage control's timely response, the VLS blocks were rendered unuseable and the light cruiser took heavy damage, also losing one of its shafts, two CIWS mounts, and claiming the lives of several dozen crewmembers, most of whom retired to watch the others carry out the rest of the exercise. It was also listing slightly. Its only real strike capabilities were now in the two twin five-inch guns forwards. The destroyer Lai was hit again, taking it out of the exercise, and the same with Mano Varaínn's Spirit -- a real evacuation, with some of the Marines simulating injured patients strapped to stretchers, was carried out, the crew and medical personnel descending into lifeboats. The task force's other destroyer, Morsava, withstood damage from the missile strike, most of its weapons remaining intact.

Information from the fighters and the first AEW aircraft had revealed that the GPI fleet had lost much of its anti-surface capabilities. However, they'd as yet been unable to tell the Saevitians much about the Stabistani fleet and its capabilities. The only good solution was overkill, of course: Saarti launched all sixty-four of its missiles that were currently prepared for firing, supplemented by sixteen more missiles from Faenixi and eight from Morsava. These eighty-eight missiles were of four distinct types -- thirty-two T9As, thirty-two T86s, sixteen T10A Ramats (known as hypersonic seaskimmers although they were neither -- it was more like "Mach 4.5" and "50 m"), and eight T10B modified Ramat guidance/EW platforms -- and had been launched at different times to compensate for this so that they would all arrive at about the same time. The interference of the T10Bs was programmed into the exercise computer as a time delay rather than as ECM, due to a software bug in the radar jamming generator which caused the computer to crash every time it tried to simulate jamming -- yet another of the many things the Saevitians had discovered needed to be fixed. The effect would be the same, anyway. Well, almost.

Meanwhile, two distinct groups of aircraft were approaching the Saevitian fleet, from different directions. Two distinct groups of Saevitian aircraft remained to intercept them: the fighters 'attacking' the GPI units broke off, having expended about twenty-three metric tons of simulated ordnance on the ships below, to pursue the air group that had been painted (faintly) skimming towards the fleet. This group was low on anti-air ordnance, with maybe one missile per enemy plane between them, but the group they were tracking wasn't expected to have much anti-air armament, so they could throw stealth to the winds: activating and linking their radars, they descended towards sea level and accelerated to supersonic velocities to catch up with the attackers, seeking to gain targeting locks and fire off their remaining missiles.

The Stabistani fighters were countered by a different group of twelve drone-fighters. Well, eleven drone-fighters, because one had malfunctioned and been unable to take off from Chennai's deck, and the programmers were insisting on it taking a short test flight before they'd agree to let it rejoin the exercise. The Pavua UCAVs were stealthy, capable of supersonic speeds, relatively inexpensive, and carried six medium-range missiles apiece. (They had been tested in combat exercises before, although this could be their first time in actual fighting, if anything ever happened to convince the Saevitians to intervene.) The downside was that they didn't always work the way they were supposed to, and there were occasional coordination issues. Nonetheless, they did assault the Stabistani planes with dozens of missiles, and continued harassing them from afar as they attempted to close in to dogfighting ranges, wings sliding into forward-swept position as they decelerated. They were outnumbered, but not necessarily outgunned, given that their enemies were primarily armed for anti-ship runs.

Which, as it happens, were occurring right now.

Losses continued to accrue as the simulated battle wore on, eventually leaving only the two capital ships (with their strong air defense and CIWS) and Morsava and Icthys Three alive and floating. And, of course, the submarines. Which I'll get to in a later post because I have to leave now.

[To be continued.]

Aboard the Shokaku, Captain Wang had a report to draft, detailing GPI's side of the simulation, so she reviewed the data again. One hour into the exercise, GPI's AEW planes and their escorts went down. Two hours in, GPI's missiles took down an AQUA destroyer; twenty minutes later, GPI had lost the Shokaku and Endeavour. Another twelve minutes, and then the supercavitators took their toll. Forty minutes later, AQUA's strike came in, taking out the 'bait,' which had just a few short-range SAMs left, with ease; unfortunately, it also noticed the corvettes, and, despite their launch of 20 Sea Wolf and 15 SAM-97S missiles, sunk them. Six minutes later, AQUA's fighters moved to intercept GPI's air strike, and a dogfight ensued, with GPI getting the worst of it - all the A-4s and F-18s, particularly easy targets on AQUA's radar, were shot down. Still, the F-7Ns made a go of it, using their acceleration, their mild stealthiness, their maneuverability, and most importantly their numbers as well as they could. Thirty minutes later, the Opalfish, having dived deep to avoid possible air threats as it neared the suspected location of AQUA's task force, rose back up to periscope depth, found targets just inside range, and fired four Mk.48 ADCAP torpedoes - then did a crash dive in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the helicopter-dropped torpedoes fired at it. So, Opalfish went down, and her torpedoes lost their guidance wires, forcing them to switch to their more limited sensors. Fleshfish was still over 100km out; it 'heard' the destruction of Opalfish on its sonar, and went deep, then silent. Uprated Alfa that it was, it could dive very deep, which would have to suffice for its loudness. So, at E+3:48:00, GPI was effectively out of the fight; its few surviving airborne assets - six helicopters loaded with torpedoes and seven F-7Ns, entirely out of ammo, dashed for the limited safety of GOLD's carrier, while its remaining subs went completely silent.

In the meantime, the 'dead' GPI assets returned to formation, and Admiral Lau radioed the New Manth task force, offering assistance (since, he said, "Our role in the exercise is currently concluded") with the inspection of the Griffencrest freighters. Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Chennai, GPI and Saevitian planners began to hash out a possible plan for operations against Zakrapat's navy, if they were necessary.

Altenberg

Eirik waited until the other man was finished to explain the situation.

"Rittmester. This man is mistaken. The prisoners belong to me by plunder rights. But I don't think we need to quarrel over it if you will clear up his confusion on that."

The big man placed a hand firmly on Whiteleather's shoulder and spun the captain around to face him, not over-forcefully, but without much apparent effort.

"Captain Whiteleather. Our disagreement is about the prisoners, basically. I shot them down, so they belong to me. I don't see how you can argue with that. But I understand you probably want information from them. I'll agree to leave them with you for a day, and you can ask them all the questions you want before I take charge of them. I'll leave your camp in the meantime, it's no difference to me whether your men fight with me or with each other. When the time is up I'll take my property and go back to Kiev, and have another sent in my place, and you won't hear from me again. There's little enough glory to be found here anyway, and I've got my fill of loot."

Auferstanden

The crunch of glass downstairs had stopped the conversation dead. Adolph flinched, gun still in hand (Varg's eyes promised murder), then slowly began to reach for the door handle.

Geirr gave up on trying to make his girl understand his broken German, and simply pushed her gently to the floor on the other side of the bed.

"Stay, not moving, dangerous fighting!" he gave a final warning before walking softly across the floor. He reached into a pile of clothes lying in the corner, retrieving a clip of bullets from underneath his shirt.

Varg had meanwhile laced up his boots tightly, when all the sudden gunfire rang out much closer - and Adolph half-stumbled half-fell back from the door, mouth wide. No scream came, just an airless, half-choked whine, but Adolph clutched his side where red was quickly spreading under his shirt.

Varg sprang into action, dragging the boy back from the door and taking the gun from a now unresistant hand. He let go of Adolph to grab a clip of bullets, and the boy slumped onto the floor as Varg slotted it in.

"Cover the door." he hissed to Geirr. "And don't be an idiot like him."

He vanished through the door to the other upstairs room, where four half-dressed Hirdsmen were similarly scrambling for weapons. He motioned for the others to follow and squeezed through a half-open window, dropping heavily into the backyard.

When five men were assembled, Varg kicked in the backdoor, and the three Freidlichers inside were greeted by the sight of a six-foot tall, 220-pound Russian, stark naked save for beard and boots, charging inside and throwing himself at Hans with gun blazing. Two more Hirdsmen bulled in behind him, while the others burst in and spread out to fill the room with covering fire.

Down the street

The chatter of gunfire grew as scattered Hirdsmen joined the fight, firing on the Freidlichers in the street from windows or pouring out of more distant houses to take cover and shoot at the enemy from afar. In one more distant building, the Rittmester in charge of the town had just awoken, blinking sleep from his eyes while a Hirdsmen explained the situation.

Orders were given, and someone was sent down to a basement. The women had been parceled out: the hostages from the families without a daughter or a sister had been locked in here, until they could be sent to the central prison in Altenberg.

Soon a deep-voiced Hirdsman was shouting from some window at the men outside (without showing himself, of course).

"You men! Put down weapons, or sons die!"

Meanwhile in another house

Not all hirdsmen shared Eirik Thormodsson's view on the limits of drinking, particularly the young and untested ones who had not yet found the truth of the poetic maxims, which warned warriors that a fight was unpredictable and could happen at any time. Many of the Hirdsmen in Auferstanden were veterans, but there were a fair share who were not, as well, and as is the case in most organizations, the soldiers generally tended to associate with others similar to them.

One house, as it happened one of the closest to the group of Freidlichers had played host to these more wild Hirdsmen. Five Freidlichers had slipped in in search of enemies to kill.

The first arresting sensation was the powerful stink of spilled vodka, soaking what had once been some suburbanite's Jazzy Jane thick orange carpet. But even that stink filling the nostrils did not entirely mask other smells. Sweat. Vomit. Blood.

And then the first man stepped on something soft in the gloom...

Ten drunken, yelling men and boys in a circle, and inside, a Freidlicher boy no older than twelve. Someone had given him a stick. The Hirdsmen had rifles.

The floor already stained, here and there an empty vodka bottle. Off to the side, the corpse of a large dog slowly staining the carpet. There had been dogfights earlier. They were drunker now.

Frantic barking, and then another Hirdsman, perhaps 17, appeared, with a leash. On the other end, a dog larger than he was. The boy tried to run, and three Hirdsmen pushed him back into the middle of the circle.

The dog straining at the leash. The circle made way, and closed in again after it.

"Better learn how to fight!" the leash-holder yelled, to cheers and laughter from the others, and he let the dog go.

The armed man, a bland suburban banker a month ago, had been blocking the light with his body. As he jerked back, a ray of soft, hazy golden sunlight shone in through a window and made the room a little lighter. Outside the sky was brightening as half the sun peeked over the mountains.

Just on the edge of the faint square of sunlight, where it was creeping towards a dark lump on the floor, it revealed a small hand.


Around the corner, momentarily hidden from view, a blond-haired young Hirdsman lay sprawled on carpeted stairs, where he had apparenly passed out sometime that morning with his head lying on the bottom step and his feet halfway up the stairs. A few feet away, next to two empty bottles, lay a thick leather leash.

Octavius looked up at Eirik, and then back at the Rittmeister. He realized that there was little else he could do to change the mind of the Hirdsmen. He sighed slightly before speaking.

"Alright Eirick, we'll give you back your prisoners by tomorrow. There is no need for you to leave the country before its time. Please, stay."

Meanwhile, a Zakrapatian response force was assembling to retake Auferstanden. Over two hundred soldiers were piling into their trucks, and preparing to help the Hirdsmen to reclaim the town. Ahead of them, a pair of Mi-24 helicopters set out to assist in clearing the open areas to make it easier for the ground troops to do their job.

At sea, the Griffincrest commanders denied the Manthian request to board. Every captain replied with the same message, informing the Manthians that they had no legal right to board the tankers, and any attempt to approach the vessel would be repulsed with force.

[To be continued.]

The fighters closed the distance quickly, twirling about to avoid the UCAV's salvos. Two Falchions 'plummeted' from the air, one being able to simulate an ejection before his plane smashed into the sea below. Fortunately for the rest, their MAAM-28 Multiple-launch missiles filled the air with short-range heatseekers. However, one of the launch systems failed to engage on one Falchion, and on another, although it launched, the missiles within and the casing failed to separate, rendering it a falling, useless cylinder. That left around 40 simulated missiles, each MAAM having four, and one being mounted to each Falchion, with medium-range and BVR missiles on the wings. However, only ten used the pods, the other six saving theirs and chancing missing with a medium-ranger. Of course, a chunk missed, but the UCAVS took a good amount of hits, several streaking down to the sea. However good unmanned vehicles were, the pilots of the Falchions were highly trained and well-honed.

The Bardiches bobbed and weaved like a lightfooted boxer, often switching positions with each other after launching ECM to confused the attacking UCAVs. Once again, two fell to the sea, and one was damaged heavily, causing it to turn back. Another took a hit but survived the strike to continue flying. The Falchions that had already launched their MAAMs dived down to follow, launching their medium-range MAA-17 semi-active missiles to protect their bulkier brethren. Half launched TSU-4 ADCAP torpedoes once in range, and the other launched AShM-23 Trident anti-ship missiles, which seaskimmed until they were within range of the enemy's guns, before climbing nearly straight up and diving back to their target. One more Bardiche was struck down by AA defenses, as was a Falchion.

As all this happened, the Ulu and Palstave lurked beneath the waters, having flooded their tubes and VLS systems before they reached sonar range. They launched some of their own supercavitators, four in total, followed by a wave of eight TSU-4s, finished up by a launch of cruise missiles, 6 in number. They quickly dived deep to avoid any retaliation, switching to running silent.

On the ships, the AA systems activated, 20mm rotaries spraying about depleted uranium kinetic rounds, destroying a respectable chunk of missiles. Their own defensive missiles launched and took down another good-sized group. The mostly-defenseless Scythe was saved from death by its two sisters destroyers, but a single missile snuck through and she took a hit to the stern, knocking out a disabled CIWS mount and the helipad, along with a box launcher and killing 20 or so crew members. The Spear escaped unscathed, while the Sickle took two hits and lost its VLS, two box launchers, and a midship CIWS gun. She developed a simulated list to starboard, burning heavily. Fortunately the damage control crews managed to contain the "fire", but the Sickle wouldn't be attacking anytime soon.

Seeing as the Broadsword was the largest target, a large fraction veered for it, and then the Scabbard system activated. All the ships within a kilometer had their tracking data transmitted to her, and the CIWS, 5-inch leftovers, and missiles all tracked with surprising accuracy, shooting down missiles left and right. Of course, a large amount remained, so how to save the ship?

Simple.

A small cruise missile phoomped out of a tube, coasting through the air for a second or so before the motor engaged, flying towards the largest cluster of missiles before pulling up to about a thousand feet above them before pointing down, and on the targeting screens aboard Big B, they were enveloped by a cone.

Boom.

A wave of EMP rocketed down the cone, sparing the ships because of the angle and their shielding. However, the missiles took a massive dose of electromagnetic radiation, frying their guidance systems. The Broadsword was safe for the moment. She retorted against the fleet by launching a massive salvo of thirty missiles, some skimmers, some high-flying, some medium-altitude, all deadly. The cruisers and a destroyer added their own opinions to the argument by launching an additional thirty-two. Obviously, the loudmouth ships were eager to prove their point.

The Arit was not so lucky, taking a hit near the bow, destroying a Seaknife, CIWIS mount, and missile launcher. The ammo cooking off killed some of the deck crew, and unfortunately a rack of torpedoes being prepared for the Bardiches upon their return was enveloped by the roiling shockwave, 'exploding' in a massive fireball. The bow of the ship was a bit deformed, the catapults rendered inoperable. She could LAND craft, but launching them would be extremely dangerous. They would have to taxi back to the rear of the deck and then gain momentum by traveling its length, and even then it was highly risky. Fortunately for the GPI fighter, the damage control crew put out the fire rather quickly, and the friendly craft could land before its fuel ran out.

The Colichemarde fended off its own attackers, but the Crossguard had its rear turret and one of its VLS systems smashed, a fire enveloping its helipad before the whirlybird could take off.

However, the ships still able to launched their Seaknives to patrol for submarines, knowing that an ambush was highly likely.

Not as good as planned, but the performance of the Stabistani crews was admirable considering the massive amount of ordinance launched against them.

[Hey, what are the ranges we're fighting at now that we've closed slightly? I know the range of my 16-inch guns, but I'm not sure if you're in it yet.]

"Say again, Griffencrest tanker, prepare for boarding and inspection. Action is authorized under anti-piracy law. Request you acknowledge immediately. Refusal may be subject to defensive measures..."

The Griffencrest negative reply came in, and the CO clicked the radio off and glanced back into the helicopter cabin, full of Naval Infantrymen. Final preparations had already been carried out, magazines were slotted into place, ropes were ready.

"OK, you heard it..."

***

The eight helicopters divided into two groups, four helicopters heading for each heading for the two lead tankers. As they passed low over the tankers, a squad of Naval Infantry would fast-rope from each down onto the decks, and then the choppers would pitch around to provide covering fire if necessary.

The Manthians were under orders not to open fire until fired on, but most were expecting a fight of some sorts from the crews.

The Griffincrest tankers, as noted earlier, were all well armed, their armaments concealed below the decks. The captains ordered the guns to be prepared in case the Manthian helicopters continued to attempt to board the tankers.

Final warning helicopter, do not board this vessel. I say again, do not board this vessel. This is not a pirate vessel. We are flying the flag of the Blackhelm Confederacy and are a registered Griffincrest tanker. The unlawful act of boarding this ship will be viewed as a violation of maritime law, and will be dealt with accordingly.

No movement on the decks below, Lt. Avram Malokinis noted as the Griffencrest tanker grew steadily larger in his field of vision. That probably meant the crew were going to make a stand below decks, where helicopter gunfire support couldn't help the Manthians. Either that or there was something else the Corporate crew was planning. Maybe they would give up peacefully, but it didn't look like it.

Either way, nothing to do but go through with it. If things went too belly-up the fleet would probably just sink the tankers from standoff range... not that that was a really comforting thought since he'd be on board by then, alive or dead. Best to make an example of the first two vessels for the other four, then.

He glanced to each side, where the other three choppers were approaching on the same low-over-the-water course to take them over the tankers' deck with a minimum of vulnerable hovering time. Any second and they'd come up on the first tanker...

"Echo, go, go!" the soldier nearest the door shouted, and tossed the long coil of nylon out the open chopper door.

In the next moment Malokinis was out and fast-roping down towards the deck, carbine securely under his arm. The scene was mirrored four times over above each tanker; ten men were in line to jump to the decks from every chopper.

So far, nobody had started shooting...

The Manthians would not back down, and the crews of the Griffincrest tankers were forced to act. A pair of Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-30 six barrel gatling guns popped up off the deck of one of the carriers from their in deck concealment and fired of a warning bust at a helicopter as it came in. It did not hit the chopper, but it got the message across.

We are well armed to repel any attempt to board our ships, be it by a national or a pirate entity. Your authority is not recognized in this region, and you have no right to board our vessels. Last warning, do not continue to attempt to board, this is a violation of maritime law. I say again, this is your last warning.

One of the Manthian radio controllers, slighly behind the evolving situation with the helicopters, transmitted the following message back to the Griffencrest vessel.

Griffencrest tanker, Tripolitania, the Union Navy holds the authority to conduct anti-piracy operations in all international seas. Boarding to conduct anti-piracy operations will continue, you are ordered not to contest...

However, even as that message was going out, the appearance of the deck guns caused a burst of radio chatter on the helicopter's own bands:

...India, Foxtrot five-oh-five concealed deck guns on target, we have received warning shots, more to follow...

...Foxtrot five-oh-five, India, call for fire...

...copy, India, clear this channel, silence, silence, silence...

It was a good enough excuse. The pilots hardly felt comfortable as sitting ducks in the sights of enemy guns, authorization was requested and received, and one helicopter adjusted course slightly to loose a pair of 70mm unguided HE rockets from its wing stubs at each deck gun, while Naval Infantry continued fast-roping down - the pace would have accelerated if they hadn't already been moving dangerously fast.

The news of the concealed gun also caused a sudden worry when it reached command (and the other helicopter pilots). Boarding against resistance with small arms or even RPGs and man-portable rockets was one thing, but if each of these tankers was carrying concealed heavy weaponry the whole thing could get ugly very fast.

Aboard the Shokaku, Lau smiled. "You realize what this means, right?"

"What, that the tankers are armed?" Wang asked.

"Yeah. Tankers shouldn't be armed. They lose their civilian status when they're armed. Griffincrest is violating maritime law, and is about to commit murder."

"Couldn't they argue they're just defending themselves and their property?"

"This is a restricted area. That's the point of the naval exercises and all that. If they refuse inspection, we can act on suspicion that they're blockade runners."

"So, what should we do?"

"Maybe fly in a few of our choppers from the Endeavour. Regardless, record everything. We have the pretext our partners need."

"I'll see what the Manthians think of that..."

OOC: New Manth, you just caused a war my friend.

The captain of the Griffincrest tanker was shocked that the Manthian pilots would choose to open fire on his vessel, and so were the rest of the skippers in the small flotilla. The Manthians were no longer a wannabe international police force, but they were now an actual threat.

You have just unlawfully fired upon a Confederate flagged ship. This is an act of piracy, and will be dealt with accordingly. Your commanders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

From every all of the tankers, gatling guns popped up from the decks, along with a CIWS and a pair of RAM's. Immediately they began spraying bullets towards the helicopters as they let their cargo drop down onto the ships deck. Inside the ship, the crews waited behind unlocked doors, AR-550's in hand, all pointed at towards the entry way preparing for the naval infantrymen about to storm through.

The Zakraptian Admiral, in the meantime, got nervous, and quickly sent a message to the Allied fleets, distancing himself and his fleet from the hostile actions going on. He did not want to give the other fleets in the Adriatic an excuse to declare war on his nation, and was unwilling to lose his ships today.

The popping up of all sorts of weaponry was not entirely unexpected after the first concealed gun had been revealed - which is not to say either its presence, or worse the larger-than-expected volume of fire was at all pleasant for those on the receiving end. Helicopter gunners returned fire with machine guns - not extremely effective against nonmanned guns - and more liberal applications of 70mm HE rockets, hopefully more so. Those soldiers who had made it to the deck similarly moved quickly to disable remote-controlled guns, a grenade going off next to the barrel or the mounting would suffice for most targets but it was not an process anywhere near quick enough to stop all the fire.

One chopper had had the bad luck to be right above a concealed gun; the pilot struggled to pitch his aircraft around quickly enough, but failed as 30mm rounds quite literally chewed the helicopter apart in the space of a few seconds. A third of the Naval Infantry had not yet managed to disembark, and, of course, the crew as well were also in the wreck that quickly lost altitude and plowed into the tanker's deck in a large explosion, killing another Manthian who had been the last to fast-rope down and hadn't had time to get out from under the machine.

Other choppers were maneuvering heavily, several forced to lift away from the deck and either use the vessel's own superstructure for cover or break from above the tanker and drop below deck level to shield themselves from fire. Another was riddled by fire, lost its course, and pitched down into the waves while attempting the hasty maneuver.

Niceties were past; a group of Naval Infantry who had managed to gather on deck didn't bother using door handles. Instead, one blew the door with a C4 charge and then peppered grenades into the smoke-filled entry to the crew quarters.

No-one bothered to waste any more time calling for surrender.

****

Some small communication had been made with the CoDC vessels earlier, just an announcement of the Manthians' presence really; when the CoDC fleet opened contact again, they were quickly offered a patch into the Manthian communications network as soon as bullets started flying. Captain Vikelides had understood the motives behind the CoDC exercises as well as anyone, and didn't waste time in offering them the information he had available.

Altenberg

Eirik blinked, then nodded.

"Well Captain, I'll stay then. You're a fair man."

The Rittmester looked pleased that the whole thing had apparently been solved without him needing to do much. Another of the conflicts he had recently been called on to arbitrate had started with one Hirdsman knifing another during a quarrel - and had ended when the second man retaliated by shooting him.

There were a lot less headaches when there was no blood spilled and no feuding friends or relatives to try to reconcile later.

The heavy guns on the decks swiveled to hit the naval infantry as well as the helicopters as they desperatly tried to maneuver away from the streams of lead flying towards them. Within the tankers, the crews pulled deeper into the ships, preparing ambush points throughout the vessels to catch the Manthians with surprise.


Meanwhile, the captain sent out an SOS message to Griffincrest HQ. The response was swift. The Griffincrest 4th Fleet was about to be sent to the region to prevent any further "pirate" attacks on Griffincrest vessels, and also to bring the Manthian personnel behind the unlawful attack to justice. The situation was just kicked up a notch.

Fluid timed to catch up, Freidlichen

There were perhaps fifteen thousand professional Hirdsmen, and another thirty thousand of the levied leidang men, used mainly for lighter guard work. Then there was the regular Zakrapat army, fine for occupying the lowlands, but little able to move its heavy tanks and vehicles around in the rugged mountain outskirts of the country. Against this were eight and a half million Freidlichers. That meant that when resistance to the Hird in their occupation duties began to grow, the response was to attempt to crush it quickly and thoroughly. And when that did not always work, the Hird began to employ harsher and harsher measures.

In Auferstanden, where the numerous Hirdsmen and thousands of Zakrapati troops were not yet seriously threatened, reprisals against acts of resistance stayed relatively mild. True, the guilty person's home would be seized, what valuable property they had would be divided up among the Hirdsmen, and they themselves - along with their families - would go either to the Zakrapati forced-labor camps or occasionally to Hirdsmen as bondsmen and bonderwomen. But there were few executions and reprisal killings as yet. It was still a good life for the occupiers in the great cities: as often as the Griffencrest-lent planes arrived from Sortmark bearing reinforcements to replace the battle-weary or simply those eager for home, they departed again laden with loot, gold, silver, war-captives, all the things that would add to a Hirdsman's glory when he returned to the halls of Kiev and impressed eager listeners with his tales of Freidlichen's obscene wealth, of the great riches even now still remaining to be taken.

In the mountain villages it was a different story, since Hird garrisons were often isolated, relatively far from support and in unfriendly terrain. Control was more tenuous, and so the more the Freidlicher people were stirred up to resist, the more brutal the repression became whenever the Hird could lay hands on the enemy.

Hostage-taking was one of the Hird's main weapons, and was practiced from the very beginning. It was a natural tactic for an army which came from lands where family and personal ties were reckoned more important than abstract national bonds of allegiance, where the great flood of romantic nationalism had never really risen to replace older loyalties to a man's own neighbors, comrades and relatives. It was also an ageless tactic in a sense, at least in this kind of fighting. A flying guerilla column of mountain fighting men was one thing, but you couldn't put women, or children, or the old in that and expect it to still work to its original purpose. And so, as the saying went, a man's family was his enemy. It takes a certain kind of devotion to a cause to refuse to surrender when you know that children, perhaps yours among them, will die if you do not. Those who did not have such courage often ended up saving others' lives with the ransom of their own - another kind of bravery, perhaps, but the kind that was useful to the Hirdsmen.

The Hird made efforts to specifically track down the families of insurgents and resistance fighters, but Hirdsmen did not always discriminate; often entire villages would be rounded up, to be killed one by one unless a certain group of fighters surrendered itself. These killings, starting most often as simple hangings or shootings, became steadily more brutal as the Freidlichers seemed to get more, not less resistant over time, and what started as clean killing often progressed towards gruesomeness in an effort to deter further resistance. By the third month of the occupation it was not uncommon to find corpses of villagers torn apart by dogs, or locked into burning homes, or beaten and tortured to death in the wake of a Hird unit moving through one of the isolated mountain hamlets far from the highway network, if the people were suspected of having harbored rebels. It was the kind of war that Sortmark had been fighting against itself for a thousand years, and the Hirdsmen knew their tactics. But still, outside of the plains, venturing up into the mountains, they only seemed to hold the ground they stood on.

Informers and collaborators were also used whenever and wherever they could be bought, whether with money, property, women, positions of power in the occupation government, or whatever else might motivate a man to betray another. Sometimes it was greed, just as often the real motivation was to try to protect oneself or another. Here again a man's family was made into his enemy, and some who might never have turned in their comrades on their own account did so when the threats were directed not against themselves, but against a brother held in the camps in Auferstanden, a sister seized by the Hird, a father or a mother stuck in the more firmly occupied zones. And just as the Hird made efforts to kill the families of resisters, they also made good on promises to protect the families of collaborators from the rape, looting, forced labor, and all the depredations of the occupation.

The final great tool was the deportation - clearing the mountain towns by forcibly sending the entire population to the lowlands where they could be policed, or perhaps to labor in Zakrapat proper where they would no longer be in friendly country at all. Either way, in the wake of the deportations the Hird would often burn what it did not need for its own use, in order to deny it to the rebels.

Yet still, the mountains were the perfect terrain for an insurgency, and inhabited by those who knew them far better than the Hirdsmen. And while none of the opponents had military training, those who survived were getting better with guns and tactics, and progressing past the level of just armed civilians with no real idea what they were doing. Skirmishes became ever more vicious, and in the mountains the sound of Hirdsmen leading howling dogs on the trail of Freidlicher raiders was often supplemented by battle-cries and the chatter of gunfire. Control, such as it existed anywhere outside the lowlands, was tenuous.

Onboard a tanker

"Clear!"

A heavy boot connected with the door and Naval Infantry stormed into the entry to the living quarters, to find that the crew had already retreated deeper into the ship, behind further locked doors and hallways, and were nowhere in sight for the moment. No matter, at least it was a welcome relief from the chaos outside, and a chance to re-organize after the chaotic boarding, while safe from the CIWS and remotely operated weapons fire out on the deck. A few advanced a short way down the hallway to cover the doors against any crewmen coming out to attack, but the Manthians mainly expected the enemy to try to hole up and keep the advantages of defense.

Those who were able quickly joined the growing group just inside the hallway - expecting just such ambushes as the crew were preparing, nobody was about to storm ahead until they had gathered their forces. Outside, several who had not or could not make it continued to pepper CIWS stations with grenades where they could, but several Naval Infantrymen caught out in the open, unable to take cover around the superstructure or behind something on deck, were cut down by the heavy automatic weapons fire.

Simple surprise at the amount of heavy weaponry the "tankers" were carrying was proving costly for the Manthians.


Tripolitania

Meanwhile on the bridge of the Tripolitania far from the action, officers were listening to airwaves suddenly full of chatter. The loss of two helicopters and a number of Naval Infantry had been registered, and an officer had been on the line with naval command in Alexandria since the action started. There would certainly be long-term consequences...

In the meantime there was still the immediate fighting to take care of. Vice-admiral Konstantinos had arrived on the bridge slightly before the operation started, and now, presented with the growing reports of dead pilots and Naval Infantrymen, his habitual frown had grown deep and unpleasant.

He seemed to reach a decision as a radio operator called out that a third helicopter had been struck by CIWS fire, and while the pilots had at least managed to bail in this case, the Manthian air contingent was now reduced nearly by half.

"If this is the price of capturing just two of six ships by boarding, it's not a price we'll pay for the others."

"Sink them?" This from Captain Vikelides.

"Yes. Perhaps the crews on the other boats will surrender if they realize it's that or death."

Vikelides nodded, and turned from the Admiral to give a stream of orders. The surface ships were too far off to risk a missile strike in such congested water - with only long-distance targeting, it was entirely possible that a missile might lose its lock temporarily on its assigned target, and reacquire a different target entirely. Accidentally sinking some Saevitian or Stabistani ship would hardly be the point the Manthians wanted to make... Too risky, then, to kill from a few hundred kilometers away. An airstrike launched from much closer might work, and Vikelides gave the orders as a precaution - within a minute ASM-armed strike fighters would be roaring off Tripolitania's deck - but there was a quicker option.

SSN-1887, Adriatic Sea

"New orders." The submarine was running close to the surface to stay in radio contact (via buoy), and so Lieutenant-Captain Andreas had been well apprised of the ongoing situation on board the Griffencrest tankers. He had expected something like this, and quickly unfolded the paper he was handed, nodding to himself as he scanned over the orders.

"Right then." he straightened his back and looked around the control room, full of grim faces. "You've been listening to the radios, you've heard our men out there. We've been chosen to deliver the retaliation - so let's give them something to remember us by."

SSN-1887 had been listening to the Griffencrest ships for a while now, oil supertankers were hardly quiet vessels. A single torpedo to each of the four vessels named would probably suffice - the enemy tankers might have basic defensive armaments, but Andreas doubted that they carried warship-grade sonars and torpedo defenses as well. A sonar line was too obviously visible for ships that had been trying to conceal their armaments.

Knowing this, Andreas ordered two torpedoes for each vessel anyway. Sink them fast and the crew would have less time to get out from under decks and swim for it. It was a small measure of revenge - everyone in the control room had winced when they heard the confirmation of two helicopters down.

It took about forty seconds to confirm all four targets - it might have been faster, but pains were taken to make triply sure that neither of the vessels currently hosting Manthian naval infantry would be targeted - and then eight torpedoes were on course towards each of the four Griffencrest tankers that had not yet been boarded.

For vessels heavily loaded down with fuel - at least theoretically so, the Manthians were no longer sure whether these were actually legitimate cargo ships after seeing so many weapons pop out of the decks - the attack would hopefully be even more devastating even than the normal effects of a keelbreaker torpedo.

OOC: That last little posting holiday is the last – I’m completely finished with my RL testing and am now back on task entirely. Profuse apologies all around, I really feel bad about making you guys wait, but I didn’t want to half-ass a post and respond with anything but the same that you all have been doing.

Suite One (http://www.imeem.com/popmusic11/music/jdkC0AYo/london-metropolitan-orchestramichael-kamen-band-of-brothers/)
Auferstanden

Though five hairy, muscled, quite frankly enormous men had just burst through the door, neither Doctor Ziegler nor the minister (whose name had escaped Hans at that moment) had managed to turn fast enough. With a roar, the lead Hirdsman gunned down both of them before throwing himself at Hans, who had dropped his rifle instinctively and slid a bone knife out of his hip sheath. The two Freidlichers dropped silently to the floor, blood pooling around them as Hans struggled to absorb the blow of a two hundred some pound Hirdsman launching himself at him with two makeshift clubs in his hands.

The first blow impacted on Hans’ head, as Varg swung his rifle butt wildly and managed to make contact with his chin. His head jerked upwards and he recoiled, his back touching the wall behind him as the realization dawned on him that there was nowhere to run. With a yell, Hans launched himself forward, slicing down with his knife but hitting air – Varg replied with a deft blow to the back of the head as Hans dove harmlessly past him, smacking into the log walls with a sickening crunch. Blood dripping from his mouth and matting his blond hair, he rose again, coughing up more blood as he quickly collapsed.

With his last bit of strength, Hans gripped the blade of his knife, whittled with care over years of loneliness in the mountains, and neatly hurled it at the enormous man’s heart, his vision darkening before he managed to see whether or not he had made contact. A call from the outside was the last thing Hans heard before the remaining Hirdsman opened fire, plastering his body against the floor of the cabin.

***

The yell was enough to pause the barrage from the Freidlicher’s weapons, and Alois slung his weapon over his shoulder and cupped his hands around his mouth, eyes darting from side to side, anticipating some trickery.

“Weapons are going down!” he bellowed, waving for two men to follow and tapping his other hand on the ground to indicate that the men’s weapons should be dropped. “Three men coming out, fire and we will!” He stepped into the open with his hands around the back of his head, indicating that the other two should do the same. “We are unarmed!” This was, of course, a complete lie. All three of the men had managed to hide Zakrapatian pistols in their boots, and had strategically positioned themselves so that they could jump behind a pile of logs if the Hirdsmen decided to be Hirdsmen.

“What are we doing, Alois?” one of the men whispered frantically. “They’ll kill us for sure!”

“I need to see the boys – if they are bluffing, we will all be killed. Better three than a hundred of us.”

Autobahn Route 11
One month later

Fritz and Karl peered eagerly through their sets of captured field goggles at the passing troop transports and jeeps, Zakrapatian flags visible even this late at night. Those unflagged trucks were likely the dreaded Hirdsmen, men who, if found wounded or stranded by Freidlicher resistance fighters in the mountains, were almost always tortured and killed. Those who were not were simply thrown off cliffs. There was a respect for them nonetheless, and before having their limbs hacked off with spoons, captured Hirdsmen were always allowed the luxury of a smoke. It was a luxury not given to captured Zakrapatian soldiers, but then again, they didn’t have the issue of having their eyes ripped out of their sockets by spare rounds.

“Ten seconds, Fritz,” Karl gasped, barely containing his sadistic happiness. “Ka-boom, ka-boom!” He pushed a bit of snow off the cliff he and his fellow resistance fighter were perched on, mocking the explosions soon to come. The mountain road below was heavily iced-over, and though the Hirdsmen’s jeeps usually could make the winding turns without delay, Zakrapatian transports often slid down the slopes to their dooms, Freidlicher citizens in the adjacent valley often only too happy to help their injured occupiers.

“I know, Karl, I know,” Fritz replied, holding a detonator in his left hand. “Would you like to do the honors?” Without a reply, Karl smashed down his hand on Fritz’s, the banging of flesh and bone on rock drowned out by the set of fireballs erupting below them on the mountain pass road. Metal shapes were thrown into the air, while others merely vaporized, and still more were engulfed in fire, the canvas roofs igniting while Zakrapatian soldiers piled out from the frying pan into the oven. “Wonderful effects this time, Karl.” The other man’s face had fallen, and he sighed heavily. “What’s the matter?”

“No Hirdsmen.” The lack of tracers firing into the mountains meant either that the mercenaries had all been killed in the explosions (unlikely, as they tended to drive ahead of the formation), or that this particular convoy of troops was made up entirely of regulars. Though the danger of stray bullets was not an issue for the two fighters, they both sighed nonetheless. Killing Zakrapatians was such a bore. No one jumped off the cliff while still on fire to try to land on a Freidlicher’s house below and set it alight; no one attempted to scale the cliffside to seek out the perpetrators, and worst of all, no one’s jeep had been blown into the sky, the extra fuel carried by the mercenaries normally causing a massive fireball which illuminated the mountains for several kilometers.

“Damn, you’re right. Maybe next time…”

Zwickau, Freidlichen

Zwickau had been the home of the Crown Prince during the summer months, yet the Prince’s castle was now empty, its inhabitants forced into hiding (or in the case of the Prince, killed), and its halls looted. It stood, imposing, upon the mountain overlooking the city, and after several sweeps, was confirmed to hold nothing more than spiders. It was inside the Prince’s personal bedroom where a group of five now met – four men and a woman, all dirtied and exhausted, and in the case of the Prime Minister, in desperate need of a toothbrush and comb.

“Our forces have managed to strike a critical blow to the enemy’s supply lines.” The man speaking, Nicklas, had assumed the mantle of leader of the resistance across Freidlichen, able to communicate with his resistance cells in other cities through an intricate communications system running through the now-deserted underground train lines, consisting mainly of a man running very fast with a piece of paper in his hand, trying not to trip in the blackness of the tunnels. “Two of my men have reported the convoy to Altenberg completely obliterated, and I have learned personally from refugees that a large number of hostile supply ships have been held up en route to the city.”

Lieutenant Beyer nodded in agreement. “My regulars have managed to knock off two additional supply lines with Javelin missiles last week. As it stands right now, Altenberg’s military supply lines are completely cut.” Sophie lifted herself up from the stone floor and glided silently to the window. She peered out to the mountains, where additional, intermittent flashes were visible.

“And those?” she inquired, pointing out the lights.

“Could be anything,” one of the resistance workers muttered, quickly raising his voice once he realized that eyes had shifted to him. “Ah, it could be a battalion of tanks falling off a road, it could be gunfire, it could be, erm…reprisals.” Sophie closed her eyes and the other three men shot the worker death stares.

“How prepared are we for a push?” The four men’s eyebrows rose simultaneously.

“What do you mean ‘push,’ Prime Minister?” Beyer asked, now standing. “You mean push as in an offensive action?”

“You damn well know what I mean, Lieutenant,” she whispered, a look of either determination or fanaticism plastered unnaturally on her face. “I mean Altenberg.” There was a long pause as the Lieutenant and two resistance workers looked at her, horrified, and Nicklas closed his eyes.

“We’re in no position to – ” one of the workers started, not noticing that Nicklas was now grinning madly.

“We need support, ma’am,” Nicklas said. “International support, that is, and for that, we need to get out a message to the fleets our scouts tell us are perched just outside the border. I can get something out by tomorrow night.” Sophie began to speak again, but Nickas knew what was about to come, and lifted a hand to silence her. “I see – you wish to know how possible this push would be.” She nodded as the three others stared on incredulously. “Quite frankly, ma’am, not very. But I’m tired of this damn castle, of this damn city. Tired of running, tired of hiding. Ma’am, let’s kick the bastards back to their own God-forsaken country. I’m tired of them fucking up this one.”


OOC: Just assume that the transmission is sent – you don’t have to wait for me to actually post sending it. “Our forces will be advancing on Altenberg to attempt to take it in an all-out assault in one week,” is the basic gist of the message.

Captain Chandler groaned.

This had gone south rather quickly. His old adage had once again proven true: Never trust ships owned by people like Griffencrest. After the helicopters had gone poof from their scopes, the Stabistani ships had managed to pick up fractured calls of confusion and distress. Immediately, he ordered a message to be transmitted to the Manthian ships.

"This is Stabistani Task Force 3, we managed to hear your assault team's predicament. Do you require assistance?"

Short and concise, as was his style.

An ensign piped in from his station. "Captain, we're getting a somewhat garbled transmission from the mainland. All I can pick up is Altenberg, all-out, and one week." "Interesting," he replied. "I'd assume that's the rebels. Patch that through to the other friendly fleets, but encrypt it heavily. No need to broadcast it to anyone with a radio."

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

Having recieved the reports of actual fire and casualties, the Stabistani planes immediately turned back for the Arit, seeing as they only had dummy missiles. The Falchions rearmed first, seeing as the Bardiches had a slightly greater fuel capacity (although the Falchion's was nothing to be sneezed at), enabling them to wait longer.

One of the sleek fighters gracefully swooped down and landed with a repeated erk of its tires as the arrestor hook caught the line across the deck, rolling to a stop before taxing to the elevator that would take it down to the hangar. Belowdecks, it was towed to one of several gaggles of flight crew, missile racks ready to give the bird of prey its talons. Twenty millimeter belts were slid into place for the rotary cannon that was on most planes, just in case those missiles didn't work out... While all this occured, a hose was attached to a port on the top of the craft, pumping a considerable amount of aviation-grade fuel into the craft. Once the cycle was done, it scooted forward to another elevator to wait on the flight deck with some of its brethren.

After a hurried period, all the planes had been refueled and rearmed in Arit's record time. Of course, none were to be launched until the Manthians confirmed their need for help. No point in buggering things up if they DIDN'T need it, after all. BUt, as the saying went, it's better to be safe than sorry.

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

The fleet diverted from its exercise heading and began to slowly swing towards the confrontation at the freighters. An apology was issued to the Saevitian ships, the general gist of which stated that although they hated to throw such a wrench in the operation, real lives were more important than an exercise. Under the waves, the two attack subs raced ahead of the fleet, hoping to assist if necessary.



[A Falchion (http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2199/falchioncol.png) and a Bardiche, (http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/9525/bardichcol.gif) for those who wish to see what they look like.]

"One moment please. It's been weeks since it happened, and events have been moving quickly. Our job has changed significantly. Still, before we get back to the business at hand, I'd like to take a moment to honor those we lost. The extraction of personnel from the Saevitian embassy was a difficult task. We had to slip people out of the heart of occupied territory.

Yes, we took losses, and yes, things did not go according to plan. We lost multiple helicopters, multiple crew. We lost men and women I worked alongside. Yet, we won. Even though the occupiers rapidly became aware of our presence - even though we had to engage in a running battle with a city of flak - even though our cover was blown, we persevered. Not one of the Saevitians lost their life in the flight from the embassy. That is success.

Not that it isn't a bittersweet success. We won, but we lost lives. Any similar operation will be a lot harder; when you embarrass someone, they work hard to avoid being embarrassed the same way again. And that's why we're doing this exercise. Today, we'll be practicing a different approach - not an air assault, but landing in clearings, working with local militias to infiltrate an occupied city in preparation for an all-out attack on the occupiers..." With that, Lee shifted gears. Emotional Lee, the Lee that had lost friends, subsided; Business Lee, the default state, re-emerged. And so the platoon, with reinforcements provided from the usual mix of dregs and ideologues, killers and propagandists, criminals and glory-seekers, learned the day's mission.

OOC: A bit different from the current bit of plot, but hey. Reflection, and maybe foreshadowing? Also, did any letter get sent out by Griffencrest informing the appropriate parties that Ivan Mishkin et al had been taken prisoner?

Auferstanden

Varg rolled to his feet, vaguely registering the automatic weapons fire that was plastering Hans to the wall through the mist of adrenaline and the pounding in his ears.

Some in this country who aren't cowards, at least, he thought to himself as he turned to the other Hirdsmen.

"Spread out, clear the floor!" he barked, or tried to. For some reason when he opened his mouth no breath came out.

A small twinge of pain in his chest was making itself felt even through the adrenaline, but Varg was paying more attention to the Hirdsmen, wondering why two men were staring openly at him.

"Get him his knife!" one said urgently, and Varg felt the familiar leather grip pressed into his hand. He looked down, saw a small carved bone handle protruding neatly from his chest.

Oh...

He touched the handle almost wonderingly with a light finger - it was still warm from the other man's hand. There was only a small trickle of dark blood at the base of the blade, and it still hardly hurt.

The laugh came out airlessly, the collapsed lung still not letting him get a breath, but the convulsions turned the pain from an itch into a sudden torrent, and the blood burst out red as Varg carelessly wrapped one hand around the bone knife and drew it out. He tossed it aside almost contemptuously, but he was already swaying as a Hirdsmen caught him and laid him down.

The Father of Battle gives victory to no man forever...

Varg squinted away the brown creeping around the edges of his vision, and with an effort waved away the Hirdsman leaning over him - the other nodded and stepped back, giving orders in a low voice. Varg leaned back and stared at four pairs of boots trampling the floorboards next to his face as the Hirdsmen moved on, then at the walls as they grew ever closer and more indistinct.

He shifted his grip on the leather handle of the long knife, smiled, and waited for the woman in white to step through them.

***

The Hirdsmen were of course still being Hirdsmen, just in a different way. The bellow returned, haphazardy German as always,

"The hands where we see, enter the house, one then one! If for negotiating?"

However at least nobody immediately shot the three men, though elsewhere through the town Hirdsmen continued to return fire on the Freidlichers as the chaotic gunfight continued to attract more defenders from various houses.

Thousands upon thousands of gallons of oil were now pouring into the Adriatic, undoubtedly causing a horrific environmental impact on Italy and the other nations sharing a coast line with this sea, an impact which Griffincrest was quick to exploit. Messages were sent to all the countries on the Adriatic informing them of the situation, and urging action to be taken against those who so needlessly threw away the lives of innocent sailors and destroyed the ecosystem of one of the world's great seas.

The Griffincrest fleet was making full steam for the combat area to apprehend the Manthian officers in charge of the attack. Sinking Griffincrest property and killing their sailors for no reason was a major offense to the Corporation, and was also illegal on the world stage.

In Zakrapat, the lack of oil was beginning to become troublesome, but it was not yet at the point of crisis, merely one of conservation. In civilian areas, there was consideration about oil being rationed in the near future so the military could continue their occupation of Friedlichen. Everyday, Zakrapatians were told the occupation was going smoothly, and that the majority of their forces should be home within a year.


In Friedlichen itself, the few Griffincrest advisors in the nation had been lucky enough to avoid capture, mostly because they stayed on the larger bases, none of which had been successfully taken by the resistance as of yet. The Zakrapatian generals were now beginning to take a more aggresive stance against the resistance. Hundreds of soldiers would pour into villages at random, kicking in doors and searching the properties of all in the town. Anyone who was found in possession of anything that could be related to the rebels was taken to a work camp, no questions asked. The military had hoped that this would break the back of the resistance, but only time could tell if this strategy would work.

The Griffincrest fleet was making full steam for the combat area to apprehend the Manthian officers in charge of the attack. Sinking Griffincrest property and killing their sailors for no reason was a major offense to the Corporation, and was also illegal on the world stage.

With a mumbled, rather uncharacteristic "bugger it", Captain Chandler ordered four Knifehawks to fly over to one of the fleet's supply ships, to grab spray dispersal canisters with bioremediation accelerators and helicopter-towed skimmers. Stabistan had once accidentally caused an oil spill off the coast of a friendly nation, and as such always packed at least basic anti-spill measures in fleets above a certain size.

Of course, he began to maneuver his fleet to the confrontation, all arms brought to bear at the Griffencrest ships, although not firing until they were fired upon or asked for help from the Manthians.

Griffencrest people either have enormous balls, or are outright crazy. Trying to arrest the Manthians when THEY shot at them first? he mused in a somewhat disjointed, yet "pure facts" sort of manner that was his signature, Manthians were well within their rights, seeing as this IS a "naval training exercise area" and the Griffencrest tankers were repeatedly warned. Hrm. His thoughts trailed off.

Thankfully, the fleet's sensor gear had manged to pick it all up, and he immediately opened a channel to the nearest Italian naval ship. As for a message, all it contained was "Tankers shot first, have hidden guns. Relaying data." After all, no point in being pointlessly verbose when you have more important matters to attend to.

Adriatic

"This is Stabistani Task Force 3, we managed to hear your assault team's predicament. Do you require assistance?"

A brief pause followed the Stabistani transmission before the Manthian reply went out.

"I copy Stabistani Task Force 3, this is Tripolitania. No direct assistance required at this time, unless possible without endangering soldiers on board the remaining hostile vessels. Be advised tankers are Q-ships and heavily armed. If possible standby for rescue, medical assistance and damage control after the situation is resolved. Be advised of Union Navy Cartagena-class submarines operating near your vessels...

***

The burning hulks of the four tankers could keep on sinking and leaking oil as far as the Vice-Admiral was concerned. Oil tankers had been sunk in combat often enough in history, the damage was regrettable but unavoidable and hopefully a good bit of the oil wold burn off with the wreckage rather than spreading too fast. Meanwhile he was quite content to let any enemy crewmen who had dived for safety bob back up into the middle of a burning oil slick. After all, they had killed Manthian soldiers first.

More pressing was the communication from Navy High Command which he was now holding in thin hands, which informed him that one of the Griffencrest Corporation's ten fleets was currently unaccounted for but believed to be headed towards the Mediterranean. They might arrive within a few days, by which time the Manthian naval forces in the area would have grown fivefold - but still a large naval battle offshore of Italy would not be in the Navy's interests at the moment. But it didn't take a genius to guess that the Griffencrest fleet would have hostilities in mind.

Fortunately there was only one real entry point into the Mediterranean for a fleet the size of the Griffencrest one, since the Suez Canal would be far too small. Seal off Gibraltar, keep a strong air presence in the west and near Suez, and the fleet would be kept out of the Med. Then the Navy could engage and destroy it on the high seas at leisure, after sufficient forces were gathered.

He paced over to a communications station, and directed a lieutenant there to open a channel with the Sinai, the last of the five battlegroups about to enter the Mediterranean.

Onboard the two remaining tankers

The explosion and sinking of the other four tankers was heard (and communicated over the radio) but not seen by the Naval Infantrymen huddled inside the shelter of the tankers' superstructures. After a few moments spent reorganizing from the attack outside and in one case treating a wounded soldier, the Naval Infantrymen began to press further into the interior.

Rather than pursuing the crew as they retreated deeper into the bowels of the ship, however, the Naval Infantrymen went up. At this point they were perfectly happy that the crew was withdrawing - first priority wasn't the crewmen, but the bridge that they had abandoned, so that the Naval Infantry could take control of and disable the automated weapons. The bridge was the logical place to do that.

Once that was done, more soldiers could be landed on board safely. A few men remained to cover the halls the enemy had retreated down and make sure they didn't re-emerge to catch the rest of the soldiers in the back while they were headed the other way.


CVBG Sinai, off Gibraltar

Rear-Admiral Kantor cut the communications link with the Tripolitania and nodded to himself. He had been following the whole situation from the bridge of the Sinai, and had already started his battle group preparing for the orders he had expected and had just received.

"Message for our submarines at the next communications check-in," he began, "copy to escorts immediately: On arriving in the Straits of Gibraltar we are to begin mine-laying operations to seal off the Straits to naval traffic..."

Over the next 24 hours CVBG Sinai, joined after three hours by CVBG Alexandria and later also by part of CVBG Cyrenaica, would cooperate in laying (and carefully charting the positions of) almost twelve hundred naval anti-shipping and anti-submarine mines in the Straits of Gibraltar, leaving just a narrow and unmarked pathway for friendly vessels. Shortly before the operation began a message was released internationally:

NOTICE TO MARINERS
Denomination of Strategy

The Union Navy has begun mining the Gibraltar Straits and the approaches. The Union Navy does not currently offer to escort neutral shipping through the Straits. ALL SHIPS are WARNED to avoid the area.

Adriatic

A brief pause followed the Stabistani transmission before the Manthian reply went out
**


"Message for our submarines at the next communications check-in," he began, "copy to escorts immediately: On arriving in the Straits of Gibraltar we are to begin mine-laying operations to seal off the Straits to naval traffic..."

A collective groan went up aboard the Broadsword's bridge. At first, the Manthians had been within their rights as they were fired upon first, but mining international waters? That was highly illegal. Oh well, the diplomatic consequences could be dealt with later.

Nonetheless, the force steamed forward, warming up their unlaunched whirlybirds and loading medical supplies and sea-rescue gear onto them. However, two were fitted with the gunship loadout, just in case.

As for assistance, Stabistan was always direct.

From the Colichemarde, two RIBs launched, carrying one team of Stabistani Naval Commandos and one of Stabistani Marines. They looped around the Griffencrest ships, using the burning wreckage and flames as cover from the guns' detection system so they could get to where the Griffencrust weapons couldn't depress far enough.

They readied their grappling hooks as the fleet relayed the fact they sent reinforcements to the Manthians.

Mother of God, Here I Stand (http://www.imeem.com/people/caI6geL/music/RzgAEHs6/john-tavener-mother-of-god-here-i-stand/)

Altenberg

“We will of course have no way of knowing whether or not our transmission has been heard,” Nicklas muttered as he turned the wheel, pulling the van into the parking lot of the Freidlicher Broadcasting Company’s headquarters “But without their help, our efforts will be for naught.” A Zakrapatian soldier stepped out of his guard post and held up a gloved hand, his Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Nicklas stopped the van without waiting for Beyer’s answer.

“Identification, Ostragoth,” the man spat, adjusting the shoulder strap on the rifle. Nicklas handed him his driver’s license, shooting Beyer an unknowing look. There was no way to know exactly what sort of identification the soldier desired from him, and no prior thought had been given to the matter. Both men noted that there were no other soldiers in the vicinity. “What is this?” the Zakrapatian demanded, throwing the laminated piece of plastic to the ground.

Beyer reacted instantly, opening the glove compartment and removing the sidearm. The soldier groped for his rifle, but was slowed considerably by a rather large bullet placed between his eyes. The van rolled on.

“There is no going back now,” a woman’s voice said from behind the two mens’ seats, from a small metal grate connecting the body of the van to the driver’s seat. “We need to get inside quickly and find Freidlicher staff.” Beyer turned and looked through the grate, the Prime Minister’s civilian clothes mixing strangely with the twelve heavily armed and uniformed Freidlicher Guardsmen sitting next to her.

“Agreed, Miss Metzger,” he replied, opening the door forcefully and jumping onto the pavement without a hint of discreetness. He was dressed in a civilian sweatshirt to conceal his identity from the guard, but he hastily discarded it, revealing flecktarn fatigues. He gripped the sidearm and opened the van’s rear door, the twelve men piling out before the Prime Minister stepped calmly onto the parking lot, no weapon in her hand.

A gust of wind blew through Sophie’s hair, and a second later the ground shook under her feet and an audible blast roared through the lot. “Your friends in the resistance, Nicklas?” she asked, the corners of her mouth twisting upwards into a barely noticeable smile. Nicklas did not answer, but his much larger grin answered her question just the same as the fifteen individuals waltzed through the main doors of FBC’s headquarters, the Freidlicher receptionist’s mouth agape.

Ten minutes later

Beyer peered out the window of the broadcasting room as dirt and debris was blown inhumanly fast out of the café, followed almost instantly by a massive fireball and explosion. The bodies of four Zakrapatian soldiers were flung out and incinerated in the blink of an eye. He turned back without remorse to the Prime Minister, who had been broadcasting on all frequencies for the last five minutes.

“Citizens of Altenberg!” She had been repeating the same message continuously, and Beyer chuckled as he mouthed the words as she spoke them. “The revolution has begun! Today is the day we throw off our shackles and retake our capital! Do not stand by idly as the invaders rape our nation – take to the streets, resist!” She rolled her eyes as Beyer mocked clapping, and Nicklas laughed. Not even the Guardsmen, hardened by weeks of guerrilla fighting in the mountains, were scowling.

“We should go,” Beyer commented, breaking the mood. “I’m sure the Zakrapatians will realize soon that there’s only one broadcasting tower in the city.” Sophie nodded and the group filed out through the hallways, clapping accompanying their walk back to the main lobby as Freidlicher businessmen and workers poked their heads out of their offices and patted the soldiers on the back heartily.

Auferstanden
One month earlier

There was a collective groan among anyone on the Freidlicher side of the street still able to hear. Having three men enter a building alone was inviting an ambush, and these were not garden variety soldiers – these were Hirdsmen. Their names were uttered only in whispers, and decades from that moment on the street, stories of their brutality would still frighten Freidlicher children. Alois shared the groan and flicked his eyes upward for good measure.

“No!” he bellowed, keeping his hands above his head, but inching slowly back towards cover. “You bring them out and then we talk!” Whether or not the Hirdsmen actually had hostages was something which would be considered later – what was certain was that they were not going into that house. His son had been left in the care of a family in this city when he was shipped to a work camp, and that was the sole reason he had come here. He was not ready to die for God and country just yet.

Adriatic

"Two new messages, sir."

The Vice-Admiral nodded, glancing over the report he was handed.

"Acknowledge and thank the Stabistani task force for its assistance. Open communications with all military forces in the area with the exception of Zakrapat. We will be apprising them of future operations and cooperating where possible."

He turned.

"Captain Vikelides, this is direct from Navy High Command. As soon as the enemy tankers are neutralized we are to begin efforts to assist the Freidlichers in any way possible. That includes direct military action, at our discretion. Please ready the air group for suppression of air defence measures around Freidlichen and ground attack missions."

Altenberg

Practically no sooner had Beyer spoken than the sound of jeep engines approaching fast became audible outside...

A Hird unit had been specially dedicated to hunting down the rogue Prime Minister for months, almost from the first days of the invasion when she had not been captured, but despite many close calls in the mountains the Sortmarkers had never managed to catch up with her. With the high mountains practically impassable for the occupation forces for the past week, they had almost given up looking.

And now, all of the sudden, she was broadcasting in the city, and the sole radio spire towering over the rooftops of Altenberg made a wonderful beacon...

Auferstanden, in the past

In the pause while the Freidlichers were talking one of the Hirdsmen had gone down into the locked basement of this house, where about ten hostages were being kept - the rest in other basements or such confinement in the various houses that the Hirdsmen had "requisitioned." He returned, dragging a small, blond-haired boy behind him who could not have been more than ten.

Once the heavy basement door had slammed to, he turned on the child and in a moment the long knife was out and had done its work. It was just a job to be done as quickly and cleanly, or as slowly and painfully, as necessary to persuade others to surrender or to instill the appropriate fear during reprisals. There was no honor or point in carrying things any further... anyone could wage war against children, it did not take a Hirdsman's skill or pride, and so the boy was, in a sense, perhaps lucky. He was getting a far cleaner death than the rebels could expect if they surrendered, and probably a lot cleaner than the other hostages could expect if they did not.

Sometime in between the first words and the three Freidlichers retreating it seemed that the Hird had finally scrounged up a Hirdsman who spoke German half-competently. At least, the reply was clear even over the sounds of gunfire elsewhere in the small town.

"You preserve your lives so carefully, at the expense of your children and parents? Hirdsmen make no false promises - if you surrender, they live. If not - you want them brought out? We'll bring them out one by one for you - like this!"

The last line was accompanied by a missile sailing out of a top window, to roll to a stop by the first Freidlicher's feet. The man might have flinched, but it did not explode.

Instead, it lay there, slightly crushed from impact, unseeing eyes looking up at Alois as red spread over the pavement underneath.

"If you want to negotiate, you come in, one by one, unarmed. If not, you will die anyway and they will die also."

******

The four remaining Hirdsmen downstairs joined Geirr to take position at the front windows, or burst out the door and find cover and firing positions somewhere in the yard, planning to catch a clump of Freidlichers down the street in enfilading fire. In short order another two Hirdsmen emerged from the house across the street, knives bloody, to join their own rifles to the automatic weapons fire hurled down at the rebels.

Auferstanden was the site of the first rebellion against the occupation, and the Hird was here to make it also the first in the series of names that would leave the memory of the Hird burned into Freidlichen's national consciousness for a generation...

Upstairs, only one Hirdsman had been left to guard eight bonderwomen and the wounded Adolph, and he had moved them all into the same room to make the job easier. Adolph was bleeding out, though, and despite some basic medical ministrations there was little the other Hirdsman could do.

In the midst of one such bandaging the boy moved and groaned, causing a new burst of black blood to seep out from under dirty cloth. He looked up at the other Hirdsman, in too much pain to speak - Adolph had never been the most intimidating or experienced warrior of the Hird, but now he looked far less the part of a warrior and far more the part of a thirteen-year old boy not ready for all this.

Adolph tried to say something, and dark red blood bubbled out and dribbled over his chin as well. The other Hirdsman stood back and watched the dying. A few minutes later he closed Adolph's eyes with a few murmured words.

"Absolve, we beseech thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant..."

Altenberg, in the present again

A battered, ancient C-47 cmilitary transport sat at Altenberg's airport among the Zakrapati Soviet fighters and a few more modern planes. The Jarl of Kiev did not have the funds for modern aircraft, and the Hird possessed few enough of these ancient exemplars, paid for with the plunder of some old raid or conflict so many decades ago that few Hirdsmen were as old as the planes they rode. They were kept in service only intermittently, and even so the possession of such aircraft was part of what set Kiev apart from the innumerable small, impoverished petty Jarldoms of Sortmark.

This aircraft was about to make its return flight, after dropping off a fresh load of leidang conscripts and a few new Hirdsmen to replace those who were wounded or returning to Sortmark. Eirik was one of the latter - he had stayed the month at the request of Whiteleather, and had fought several times in ambush and counter-ambush actions in the Freidlicher mountains, but word had recently come that, in the absence of so much of the Kievan Hird, his family house in Sortmark had fallen victim to a raid from the forces of the pretender Magnus of Novgorod. Father, younger brother and two cousins had been killed in the defence, and Eirik was required back in Kiev to see to the burial and to lead a raid north in vengeance.

After receiving the news Eirik had stopped his usual visits with his foreign prisoners (which had otherwise gone on for several weeks, swapping war stories as well as descriptions of home, old Sortmarker legends, and even poetry), and they were now seeing him for the first time since then, as two Hirdsmen led them towards the ancient plane. He explained the situation to them shortly, and told them that he had written a letter to their company to arrange for a prisoner-price and an exchange once they arrived back in Sortmark, before leaving them to spend the trip alone near the front of the plane.

There were few other passengers. Two Freidlicher bonderwomen of Eirik's rode in the back with the prisoners, one of whom was traveling with a young boy of four who Eirik had apparently taken a liking to and adopted into his family. A few underfed-looking teenage leidang conscripts were also in the back to watch the prisoners, but both only spoke heavily dialectal East Norwegian. Besides those, the only companions for the long flight were a few wounded Hirdsmen - one missing an arm, one with a heavily bandaged shoulder but a cheery grin, who looked liable to recover, and a third who had taken a gut wound and would spend most of the flight unconscious or delirious, who apparently was being brought home to die.

FBC Building Lot

“Damn it to hell,” Beyer bellowed, as bullets ricocheted over his head. He pulled the pin from a fragmention grenade and threw it over the slab of concrete behind which he and the Prime Minister were taking cover, bracing himself as the explosive detonated. Four Freidlichers were already dead, lying face down in pools of blood – and Nicklas was nowhere to be found. The Sortmarkers had ambushed them coming out of the FBC main entrance, cutting down two men before they had a chance to blink, and now the remaining soldiers were pinned down.

Freidlicher Guardsmen were trained extensively in urban combat and were, in every sense of the word, elite soldiers. Surprise had killed four of the men already, but that element was lost to the Sortmarkers now, and the Guardsmen were returning fire with a fury. Sophie was unhurt as of yet, but it seemed to be only a matter of time before their position was overrun – everything now relied on foreign intervention. If foreign help arrived in time, or if by some miracle the citizenry managed to organize and resist en masse, Beyer and the Prime Minister could theoretically slip away as the Sortmarkers were distracted…

Outskirts of Altenberg

A snowdrift was instantly vaporized as a heavy wind blew the white powder towards Karl’s tank, still completely concealed by ferns and snow on the outskirts of Altenberg. A final pot of coffee was drained and Karl’s commander gave a quick final overview of the situation before popping out of the Leopard 2’s top hatch and observing the now smoking buildings of the city with his own eyes. A pair of binoculars was raised to his eyes and Karl lifted his torso out of the second hatch.

“They’re still there…” he muttered, observing the reinforced hangars at the far side of the runway. “F-16s appear in working order, alongside an enormous number of ancient Soviet jets and what looks like a transport.”

“Agreed,” the commander replied. “They haven’t scrambled yet either – apparently the element of surprise is still on our side.” He looked next towards the city itself. “Nobody’s on the street, though. Apparently the Prime Minister’s little show didn’t have the desired effect.” A buzz went through the tank, and ten other Leopards pulled themselves out of the undergrowth next to Karl.

“Go time,” Karl whispered, eying the airport and slipping back down into the turret.

OOC: Sorry, I’ll do Auferstanden in my next post.

ooc: BC has mentioned that he is too busy with work to be posting right now, and the liberties with the tanker are taken with his permission

I'm taking some liberties elsewhere too in order to move on a little, sorry for the rushed post

Near the last Griffencrest tanker, a surviving helicopter was hovering low over the ocean surface to pluck survivors out of the water; on board, shots and the occasional flashbang could be heard as the Naval Infantry, after gaining the bridge and disabling the remotely operated weapons, was pressing further into the crew quarters with help from Stabistani reinforcements.

It took a full half-hour of shooting and another five casualties - three killed, two wounded - before the remaining crew, realizing that the situation was hopeless, began coming out of bedrooms or stairwells, hands on their heads, coughing in the thick white smoke drifting through the hallways. They were quickly seized, cuffed with no particular gentleness, and hauled up to the deck to be taken off ship and questioned - the next few days would not be pleasant ones for the Griffencrest mercenaries.

At least they were alive, though - and as they were led past the bodies of those who had been killed in the fighting, or as they heard the crack of shotguns as a few stubborn holdouts were smoked out and shot down, that was something.

Zakrapat

The declaration had been made a little while before the boarding began, and just a little longer after the Prime Minister's radio broadcast was picked up by a Manthian operator aboard the Sinai, but as Zakrapat was not recognized as a legitimate government by the Greater Economic Union, there were no diplomatic facilities to deliver it directly; it had been routed through a third-party embassy, and was just now making its way to the Zakrapati government.

The message was short and to the point; it declared that a Manthian military mission was now beginning in Freidlichen, and that it would continue until the government of Freidlichen was restored to power. Zakrapati military which began leaving the country immediately, it promised, would not be targeted; all others would be removed by force. Zakrapati warships would not be targeted so long as they remained in port; the instand a ship left harbor, the message promised, it would be sunk from the air.

Planes had begun roaring off of five carrier decks fifteen minutes earlier. A squadron was en route to monitor the Zakrapati harbor from standoff range, and to ensure that the ships, having once returned, did not try to leave again; but the bulk was en route to Freidlichen.