This was written by Marina.
East Port-Kalunda Mainline
7 January 2163 AST
Another freight was rumbling past the siding that the General Faeria was resting on. It was one of an endless stream, of every train that could be mustered by the rail company officials, rolling past with every conceivable kind of item which might be remotely useful in a siege, directed with all the efficiency possible of modern industrial organization. One care after another, wheels click-clacking along steel as the broad-gauge line ran to maximum capacity.
They'd opened the line late on the night of the 5th of January, and now for more than fourty-eight hours they'd kept it open as they shoved everything they could down the track at five minute intervals and brought it back just as quickly as they could. They were going to run out of time soon, very soon, and Captain Arshon knew it. The reports they had been getting were progressively more disturbing.
To cover the side of the track where the freights were passing and masking her guns, she'd dispatched a group of armoured fighting vehicles which had been carried on the General Faeria in the car originally reserved for the heavy rostok Jhayka had originally brougth with her for exploring the countryside. It was night, but all sensors were fully operational and for the personnel on the train it might as well be as clear as day, though the Kalundans were still getting the hang of operations. They simply didn't have enough time.
Suddenly an alarm blared. “Combat alert! Combat alert from AFV squadron!”
Captain Arshon swung her chair to bring up the protection, even as a staticky mic crackled with a warning:
“Alert! Tanks! Alert! Tanks!”
“Copy that. This is Captain Arshon. Get me a read on numbers, now.” A pause, then, train-wide: “Full alert! Man the guns! Shields up, air pressure positive.”
Sensor relays came in from the AFV's, patched through on a link that the brute energy of the train could bring through the jamming fields here. They were facing big 150t MBT's, heavily armoured enough to actually have a chance against their guns, and probably fifteen or twenty of them. They were nosing forward quietly, the Normans apparently thinking that they could not be detected in the darkness with their heat levels kept to minimum, but the sensors on the train were to refined for that.
“Should we give a warning to the freight, Captain?” One of her control center crewers asked.
“Negative, they want to get as close as possible before surprising us, they'll just spring the trap sooner and hurt the civvies if they start to do any fancy acceleration. Send a telegraph tap through the line, though, tell them to halt all further trains and in fact standby to start withdrawing toward East Port.”
“Fuck, it's that bad?”
“Belay that!” Arshon snapped. “We're facing.. Hmm..” The numbers had refined. “Sixteen MBT's. We can take 'em, but I want the railroad employees prepared in case it's worse. They don't deserve to get caught in this, anyway..” A frown, a brief thought. “Dump all the data we've got back to Kalundan control now.”
“Understood, Sir.”
“Order the AFV's to head west. I want them to get to the flank of that tank company so they can use their LOSAT's on their side armour, with luck.” Muttered a moment later, softly, to herself: “Damn it all that they've got forest cover like that...”
“Copied and transmitted..”
“..Receipt acknowledged.”
“Confirmation from Kalundan control.”
Captain Arshon listened tensely as the reports came back in. The unknowing crew of the train was already long past, as the last cars of their 450-car heavy freight consist rumbled past the point where the General Faeria waited. The forward gun of the train was already unmasked, and it immediately swung toward the forest...
A howl was audible through the train as artillery crashed down around them from several guns.
“Get me a source!” Captain Arshon shouted, then a moment later: “Weapons free! Weapons free!” She flicked on the battle-link to the AFV's. “Hold LOSAT fire until you're in position! I want side-shots only with those missiles, we don't got many!”
A quick-thinking assistant tagged on the order to the slow freighter to accelerate out of the area, even as its last cars were just passing by the rear of the General Faeria. The guns there immediately swung out to face the forest even as the forward guns opened up. Plasma bolts flared across the open spaces along the railroad track and tore through the forest, igniting dozens of trees into towering infernos in a heartbeat.
Another salvo from the artillery, wherever it was, rained down. This time there was the hideous sound of impact as one of the shells hit the top armour of the train. On the gun-car that was struck, the roof plates buckled slightly and metal splinters were sent flying about the upper gun-compartment, knocking one machinegun out of action temporarily; all the crew had personal body armour, though, and was unhurt and quickly repaired the mount.
“We've got approximately eight heavy self-propelled guns.. Look like ADN models.. Probably 200mm's.”
“Sounds about right for the dent that made.” Arshon commented wryly. The main broadside guns were now firing on the surprised tankers, who were not expecting to be the first target for the vengeance of the train from the fire of their artillery. These were by far the best-trained Normans, operating their best weapons, of which they had precious few, and they'd learned from the fiasco in their own home-city.
The tanks rolled, firing on the move and angling to avoid the areas of the forest set on fire by the rapid stutter of the plasma guns. Shots from the broadside powerguns slammed into them, but they kept their frontal armour facing the General Faeria, and the immense glacis plate of the tanks was sufficient to absorb a hit from even the powerguns at that range.
An armour-piercing shot from one of the tanks hit home. It shattered a plate of side armour and sprung the structure of the car it had struck—the accomadations car.; their car. It shuddered violently, but nothing more. No threat to the battle damage, though Captain Arshon was glad Jhayka was not aboard; though of course her principal would have been here, running the show instead of herself... And of course the control compartment itself was much more heavily armoured than even the rest of the car.
One of the tankers made the mistake of even slightly presenting the side of his vehicle as he turned to avoid one of the vast confalgrations in the forest ignited by the plasma fire. Even as more artillery fire hit the General Faeria, the gunner on one of the broadside powerguns lined in for his shot and caressed the trigger. The bolt snapped through and penetrated the side armour just below the turret which had swung to avoid presenting its own side to the General Faeria's guns. Here, the armour could be penetrated even at this range, and it was, the tank's engine demolished by the strike, and the crew leaping out for cover as their vehicle caught on fire.
The General Faeria's mortars were now opening up, and they were using CP rounds like before, which presented a serious threat to the top armour of the tanks. At 240mm they presented an almost indefensible threat to the vertical armour of even these massive tanks. The shells crashed down about the moving vehicles, but were, being from mortars, rather inaccurate against rapidly moving targets.
One shell hit the forward repair cars from the artillery, smashing the undefended vehicles thoroughly. A damage control officer in the armoured control compartment used electronic controls to automatically unlock the couples from the damaged set of flats. Another two tank shots crashed into the armour of the General Faeria, but it held....
Then the AFV's were in position, and opened up with their LOSATs. They scored two hits on the side armour of the tanks from an extreme angle, smashing through and connecting with something vital enough to fireball one. The other was crippled and the crew bailed. With three of the sixteen tanks knocked out, the Normans withdrew slightly to regroup—and suffered even more. The gunners on the mortars had been firing somewhat high, anyway, and as the tanks retreated, a CP shell crashed down into another one. It fireballed, too, adding to the carnage in the forest.
“Okay. Recall the AFV's now!” Captain Arshon ordered crisply. “They won't last long out there if the artillery fire-shifts.”
Even as the AFV's were coming in, bad news was reported. A second Norman tank company was detected by the sensors coming in from the opposite side. They were going to try and, it seemed, completely surrounding the armoured train and smash it through both numbers and firepower.
“Expedite recovery, and prepare to pull back to the city. Inform Kalundan control that we're withdrawing under the threat of battalion-strength armoured forces.”
“Understood, Sir.”
The names were running together in the ask of the action; a young woman in a Crimson Guard uniform asked: “What about the tanks coming in, should we fire-shift, Sir..?”
“Negative—belay that, just the plasma cannons. Swing 'em around and rapid fire on the fresh company, let's see if we can burn off their sensors and soft-kill 'em.”
The order was implemented at once, even as the armoured doors to the transport car were dropped down from the AFV's to quickly drive up onboard. The two plasma guns on their pintle mounts at either end of the train presented their armoured shields to the second tank platoon and opened up, rapid fire. The bolts tore through the forest like before, igniting countless trees, but also, now, they focused in on two lead tanks, covering them in high-intensity plasma fire which set their paint alight, starved the tank of oxygen to the engine and the crew compartment, forcing the later onto their survival tanks and the former to temporarily stop, as many of their more advanced and vulnerable sensors were melted away.
It halted the advance just long enough—the moment the plasma cannons shifted to another two tanks, the previous ones started up and began to rumble forward again, guided by periscope and internal vibration sensors. But in the meantime, the AFV's had been recovered, the armoured doors snappeed up on their powerful hydraulics.
“Tracks still confirm intact and clear?” Arshon asked one last time, even as the whang! of the first AP round from the new tanks hit home against them, so damn incredibly loud against the armour, with no insulation.. Though the sound wasn't that much different from the artillery still firing at them.. Yet, he tanks they'd defeated on the far side were started back toward them. They could stand and take out many of their enemies, to be sure, but it was getting to hot to handle, and the firepower of the train would be better used in close proximity to the city, with infantry support.
“Confirmed! We've got a clear track into Kalunda.”
“Full reverse power!” Arshon ordered without further wait.
As the General Faeria accelerated back toward Kalunda, the Norman forces—including almost 2/3rds of their heavy armour—which had been detailed to defeat her instead had the slightly lesser honour of cutting the East Port-Kalunda line for good, and formally beginning the Siege of Kalunda. There was no way out, now.
[TGG] 55 Days in Kalunda.
Moderator: LadyTevar
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Kalunda, Gilead
11 November 2841
8 January 2163 AST
Day Two
Jhayka stood at the top of the Fire Tower of Kalunda. It was a huge structure, intended for the pumping of water and the drying of fire hoses, which had been built with the importation of the new technology to improve the fire-fighting services in the city. It was also the highest building, and it gave her a field of view in most directions for many kilometers. There were six lines of defense, named after the seven great Taloran heroes. Line Fileya was the outermost, named after Valera's middle daughter. Line Taradrua, after her oldest, followed. Line In'ghara, after the founder of the dynasty, was next. Then Line Taliya, Line Valera, and the innermost line, Line Eibermoni. Each consisted of three trenches, the second one set one hundred meters back from the first, the third, five hundred meters back from the second, with a series of interconnected trenches between them. One kilometer back from the rear trench was the first trench of the next line. So far the first three lines had been completed and the rest were under construction as part of a truly epic effort.
In all, a space of ten kilometers out from the city walls in each direction was roughly defended, though it was not a perfect circle as it hewed closely to the terrain, and bulged out to the northeast to encompass the industrial district and rail yards, forming more of a rough ellipse.
In total, there were some five hundred thousand soldiers called to the colours in Kalunda, or literally one-third of the native population. It included a large number of outlanders, though, since the total population of more than one-point-six million included a significant number. Everyone from the outlying towns and villages and farms had, of course, been brought into the city, and the freight trains had provided a vast stockpile of food still being brought into the city as well. Not all of the soldiers had arms, but for the moment their best use was in digging, and Jhayka had certainly saw to it everyone had a shovel.
They were probably facing an aggregate force of around eight hundred thousand, which could remain for perhaps three months before all food supplies in the region were totally exhausted, including calculations of their home reserves they could use the railroads to bring in. The odds were not bad, save that many of the powers of the primitive zone had yet to take sides, and Jhayka was aware that, theoretically, one and a half million troops could ultimately end up besieging Kalunda. Worse, she was only certain of having the supplies to conduct a modern war for one and a half human months. The question, then, was the munitions available to the enemy.
“They're sort of stupid. They should already be trying to knock this tower down,” she muttered quietly to herself in her own tongue as she finished the calculations, and the surveys with her powerful electronically enhanced binoculars.
Nominally Jhayka was Julio's Chief of Staff. As a practical matter that meant she had total control over all aspects of the defensive arrangements, and was fully direct the combat, with a series of corps commanders manning actual sections of the trenches.
She expected an attack soon, an all-out effort to overrun the city and avoid being bogged down in extended fighting in the siege, to break through before all the defensive lines were finished. It wasn't happening.
Then one of the young officer-cadets peering through a massive visual scanner straightened up and turned to her. “Your Highness—great clouds of dust on the horizon.”
“Very good, lad, let me see through that then,” Jhayka settled her own binoculars down and went, stooping carefully, to gaze through the visual scanner. The situation resolved itself....
“Hmm.” It was either their relief or their doom; from what Julio had said, the former, but Jhayka was most paranoid about this world by now, unsurprisingly.
“Have a message sent to His Majesty that the al-Farani Army has been sighted approaching.”
“At once, Highness!”
A moment later..
“Your Highness, His Majesty wishes to speak with you personally.”
“Of course.” Jhayka swiveled back over and reached for the comm. “Your Majesty, how may I be of service?”
“We were about to leave for a meeting with a Norman ambassador... They're sending a parley. Do you have confirmation that the al-Farani Army is approaching?”
“I saw their banners with my own eyes; unless it is a conscious ruse on the part of the enemy, yes, they approach, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you. That could be crucial here. You'll receive further instructions when the negotiations have been completed. Over and out.”
Jhayka walked to the rail. She looked out one last time to where Dani was most likely supervising the reinforcing of the walls. It was time to head below, and over to the fortified command bunker below the palace. But she decided on an impulse, before the shooting started—for she still expected it would—to take a surprise inspection tour of the front. It would mean, after all, a chance for one more meeting with Dani before everything began, and it would, besides, be good for the troops to see her.
Julio was in formal dress and standing with his guard detail, accompanied by Amber and Sarina, when the city's former Norman ambassador returned. At his request, the al-Farani, Sedevacanticist, and Amazon ambassadors were already present, and the Heiress Sen Xiao Li could easily inform her father of what had happened. He too had confirmed the arrival of the Emir's troops. Now Julio would apply that knowledge to his benefit.
"Hail, Your Majesty," Ambassador Protun proclaimed. A thin stingy merchant caste Norman, Protun was more diplomatic than most of his type, but he still carried himself arrogantly.
"Ambassador, your army has surrounded my city and cut off our communications to the outside world. Explain yourself."
"Ah, yes, Majesty. Those were measures taken to impose upon you the gravity of this situation." Protun's expression was solemn. "Ar has been most grievously injured by the actions of the Princess itl dhin Intuit, who is now being held in refuge in the city of Kalunda. We demand she, the foreign spy Danielle Verdes, and the officers of the Princess' entourage be turned over to Norman custody for trial."
Julio knew better than to openly react. "Is there any other terms which the Ubar has decreed before he would re-open our communications?"
"Yes. We insist that the Kingdom of Kalunda sign a treaty with Ar, a mutual guarantee of autonomy against all forces foreign to our region that would suppress it, including the Gilean government. Alternatively, if you do not wish to help defend your autonomy as well as our's, we demand you deliver to us three-quarters of your modern weaponry and demolish your walls and pay a tribute to the Eastern Alliance that is now being forged against the Gilean government."
At that Julio finally did chuckle. "Oh please, Ambassador. You think me a fool? Ar desires the restoration of her empire. This 'Eastern Alliance' is a grouping of foolish little villages and tribes that are blinded by their distrust of the tech world, so blinded that they will believe your sincerity until the day the first tribute army marches into their lands to demand tribute in the form of their most beautiful daughters."
The Amazonian Ambassador, a fierce-looking light-skinned woman with short-cut hair, a facial scar, and brown hair, glared at him. "The Amazon Society is not a foolish little village. Certainly if we can trust the Normans, you can too."
Julio smirked. "Ah, I see that the Ubar and his men have been displaying uncharacteristic diplomacy. I take it they even went to the extent of hiding their statues of enslaved Magestrices from your eyes?"
"Majesty..."
"Oh please, Ambassador Protun, you insult me. Ar has been stockpiling modern weapons to wage war, whether against the central government or the peoples of this region makes no difference. Miss Verdes stumbled upon them and for that you lashed her back more thoroughly than any of your poor programmed slave girls. I would never turn her over, never mind the Princess Jhayka, and if anything I am tempted to offer Miss Verdes a commendation."
All that remained now was for him to seal the issue. "Kalunda has nothing to fear from you. The Emir's army marches south even now, and soon I am certain the Pope's will follow. The Great Alliance still stands. I see no reason to turn over to you a sovereign princess from another star empire, particularly one whom I have granted a high commission to prepare my city's defense. The Marshal itl dhin Intuit and her people will not be handed over. You will withdraw your forces and then we will leave your disarmament for the future."
At that moment Julio's stomach twisted. Protun's expression was calm. Too calm. Something was going on. Have they already defeated the al-Farani?
But it was not Protun who spoke. An Arabic accent replied instead. "Ah, Majesty, you are mistaken," the Emir's Ambassador stated. "Our army has not come to support you. Our army has come to support our Norman and Amazon allies."
Silence pervaded the room. Even the Sedevacanticist ambassador, Bishop Gabriel d'Estaing, looked like he'd just been kicked. Julio frowned deeply, hiding a new apprehension for the future. "What is this treachery?"
"Allah has blessed the Emir with the foresight to see the destruction of our people by the tech-worlders," was the reply. "With that knowledge, the Emir has trusted in Allah and has made the Ubar and his people our allies.
"For centuries the Norman tribute army of the north ravaged your southern frontier annually," Julio said harshly. "Only when that army was crushed in East Henley did the Emir's horsemen finish their destruction with the aid of the Kalundan Army. Now you seek to re-empower the men who once kidnapped your daughters and debased them?"
"We trust in Allah's judgement."
"So you say. I believe that you have misinterpreted it. Does Allah insist you violate your pacts? Did Allah tell the Emir to break the bond of brotherhood he swore to us that day when our armies killed Henrik Rasgoz and his men in the Kurik Pass?" Julio's voice rose to a rumble of righteous indignation. "If so, then get out of my sight, and remember that the al-Farani shall now be remembered in history not as noble warriors but as opportunistic cutthroats. Your own people will curse your names in a hundred years."
The ambassador smirked and shrugged. "Allah permits the faithful to make false hudna with the kaffir whenever it suits the needs of the faithful."
Not looking at Protun's smug expression or the Al-Farani ambassador, Julio turned to the Bishop d'Estaing. "And what of you? Will your people also fight beside the Normans?"
The Bishop looked to Protun and shook his head. "No. We would never. However, the Normans have a legitimate complaint against you for sheltering this alien noblewoman after she has done them such harm. At this time, I have been instructed to inform you we do not consider ourselves bound to send troops to aid you under our interpretation of the standing alliance treaty."
Julio bit into his lip to restrain himself from going off on the man. In other words, you wish to stay to yourselves and see who will win so that you can join the victors and share the spoils. "Very well. Then Kalunda stands alone."
"Yes, Majesty, which is why I implore you to accept our terms. And we would vastly prefer your alliance. Together, we could easily control the Eastern Region and force the government to accept our autonomy."
"I might have considered that, might I say, were you not also demanding me to turn over to your cruel justice those under my protection and now in my service. The Princess itl dhin Intuit acted on behalf of someone under her sworn protection, someone who had by accident discovered your little game and for that had come under cruel tortures by, I'll add, someone who was not a Norman citizen." Julio gestured at him to leave. "I refuse all demands. I make the following offer: remove your forces and I will not side against you when the central government orders your disarmament, nor will I have my representative vote for your suppression if it comes to that. I will also offer your non-combatants safe shelter in Kalundan lands."
Protun laughed. "Now who is posturing, Majesty? You would free our slaves the moment they entered your territory and would stand by on behalf of the tech world you adore while the rest of us are subjugated and denatured. No, you must accept our demands. The Ubar and Emir insist, and if you do not they will consider us to be at war."
Julio looked to Sarina and Amber. Both had grim expressions on their faces. He looked back at Protun and the al-Farani representative. "Then I have only this to say to my so-called 'brothers', the Ubar and the Emir. I insist you deliver this word for word." He pointed at them. "I say to their demands and their threat of war.... then war it shall be!"
11 November 2841
8 January 2163 AST
Day Two
Jhayka stood at the top of the Fire Tower of Kalunda. It was a huge structure, intended for the pumping of water and the drying of fire hoses, which had been built with the importation of the new technology to improve the fire-fighting services in the city. It was also the highest building, and it gave her a field of view in most directions for many kilometers. There were six lines of defense, named after the seven great Taloran heroes. Line Fileya was the outermost, named after Valera's middle daughter. Line Taradrua, after her oldest, followed. Line In'ghara, after the founder of the dynasty, was next. Then Line Taliya, Line Valera, and the innermost line, Line Eibermoni. Each consisted of three trenches, the second one set one hundred meters back from the first, the third, five hundred meters back from the second, with a series of interconnected trenches between them. One kilometer back from the rear trench was the first trench of the next line. So far the first three lines had been completed and the rest were under construction as part of a truly epic effort.
In all, a space of ten kilometers out from the city walls in each direction was roughly defended, though it was not a perfect circle as it hewed closely to the terrain, and bulged out to the northeast to encompass the industrial district and rail yards, forming more of a rough ellipse.
In total, there were some five hundred thousand soldiers called to the colours in Kalunda, or literally one-third of the native population. It included a large number of outlanders, though, since the total population of more than one-point-six million included a significant number. Everyone from the outlying towns and villages and farms had, of course, been brought into the city, and the freight trains had provided a vast stockpile of food still being brought into the city as well. Not all of the soldiers had arms, but for the moment their best use was in digging, and Jhayka had certainly saw to it everyone had a shovel.
They were probably facing an aggregate force of around eight hundred thousand, which could remain for perhaps three months before all food supplies in the region were totally exhausted, including calculations of their home reserves they could use the railroads to bring in. The odds were not bad, save that many of the powers of the primitive zone had yet to take sides, and Jhayka was aware that, theoretically, one and a half million troops could ultimately end up besieging Kalunda. Worse, she was only certain of having the supplies to conduct a modern war for one and a half human months. The question, then, was the munitions available to the enemy.
“They're sort of stupid. They should already be trying to knock this tower down,” she muttered quietly to herself in her own tongue as she finished the calculations, and the surveys with her powerful electronically enhanced binoculars.
Nominally Jhayka was Julio's Chief of Staff. As a practical matter that meant she had total control over all aspects of the defensive arrangements, and was fully direct the combat, with a series of corps commanders manning actual sections of the trenches.
She expected an attack soon, an all-out effort to overrun the city and avoid being bogged down in extended fighting in the siege, to break through before all the defensive lines were finished. It wasn't happening.
Then one of the young officer-cadets peering through a massive visual scanner straightened up and turned to her. “Your Highness—great clouds of dust on the horizon.”
“Very good, lad, let me see through that then,” Jhayka settled her own binoculars down and went, stooping carefully, to gaze through the visual scanner. The situation resolved itself....
“Hmm.” It was either their relief or their doom; from what Julio had said, the former, but Jhayka was most paranoid about this world by now, unsurprisingly.
“Have a message sent to His Majesty that the al-Farani Army has been sighted approaching.”
“At once, Highness!”
A moment later..
“Your Highness, His Majesty wishes to speak with you personally.”
“Of course.” Jhayka swiveled back over and reached for the comm. “Your Majesty, how may I be of service?”
“We were about to leave for a meeting with a Norman ambassador... They're sending a parley. Do you have confirmation that the al-Farani Army is approaching?”
“I saw their banners with my own eyes; unless it is a conscious ruse on the part of the enemy, yes, they approach, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you. That could be crucial here. You'll receive further instructions when the negotiations have been completed. Over and out.”
Jhayka walked to the rail. She looked out one last time to where Dani was most likely supervising the reinforcing of the walls. It was time to head below, and over to the fortified command bunker below the palace. But she decided on an impulse, before the shooting started—for she still expected it would—to take a surprise inspection tour of the front. It would mean, after all, a chance for one more meeting with Dani before everything began, and it would, besides, be good for the troops to see her.
Julio was in formal dress and standing with his guard detail, accompanied by Amber and Sarina, when the city's former Norman ambassador returned. At his request, the al-Farani, Sedevacanticist, and Amazon ambassadors were already present, and the Heiress Sen Xiao Li could easily inform her father of what had happened. He too had confirmed the arrival of the Emir's troops. Now Julio would apply that knowledge to his benefit.
"Hail, Your Majesty," Ambassador Protun proclaimed. A thin stingy merchant caste Norman, Protun was more diplomatic than most of his type, but he still carried himself arrogantly.
"Ambassador, your army has surrounded my city and cut off our communications to the outside world. Explain yourself."
"Ah, yes, Majesty. Those were measures taken to impose upon you the gravity of this situation." Protun's expression was solemn. "Ar has been most grievously injured by the actions of the Princess itl dhin Intuit, who is now being held in refuge in the city of Kalunda. We demand she, the foreign spy Danielle Verdes, and the officers of the Princess' entourage be turned over to Norman custody for trial."
Julio knew better than to openly react. "Is there any other terms which the Ubar has decreed before he would re-open our communications?"
"Yes. We insist that the Kingdom of Kalunda sign a treaty with Ar, a mutual guarantee of autonomy against all forces foreign to our region that would suppress it, including the Gilean government. Alternatively, if you do not wish to help defend your autonomy as well as our's, we demand you deliver to us three-quarters of your modern weaponry and demolish your walls and pay a tribute to the Eastern Alliance that is now being forged against the Gilean government."
At that Julio finally did chuckle. "Oh please, Ambassador. You think me a fool? Ar desires the restoration of her empire. This 'Eastern Alliance' is a grouping of foolish little villages and tribes that are blinded by their distrust of the tech world, so blinded that they will believe your sincerity until the day the first tribute army marches into their lands to demand tribute in the form of their most beautiful daughters."
The Amazonian Ambassador, a fierce-looking light-skinned woman with short-cut hair, a facial scar, and brown hair, glared at him. "The Amazon Society is not a foolish little village. Certainly if we can trust the Normans, you can too."
Julio smirked. "Ah, I see that the Ubar and his men have been displaying uncharacteristic diplomacy. I take it they even went to the extent of hiding their statues of enslaved Magestrices from your eyes?"
"Majesty..."
"Oh please, Ambassador Protun, you insult me. Ar has been stockpiling modern weapons to wage war, whether against the central government or the peoples of this region makes no difference. Miss Verdes stumbled upon them and for that you lashed her back more thoroughly than any of your poor programmed slave girls. I would never turn her over, never mind the Princess Jhayka, and if anything I am tempted to offer Miss Verdes a commendation."
All that remained now was for him to seal the issue. "Kalunda has nothing to fear from you. The Emir's army marches south even now, and soon I am certain the Pope's will follow. The Great Alliance still stands. I see no reason to turn over to you a sovereign princess from another star empire, particularly one whom I have granted a high commission to prepare my city's defense. The Marshal itl dhin Intuit and her people will not be handed over. You will withdraw your forces and then we will leave your disarmament for the future."
At that moment Julio's stomach twisted. Protun's expression was calm. Too calm. Something was going on. Have they already defeated the al-Farani?
But it was not Protun who spoke. An Arabic accent replied instead. "Ah, Majesty, you are mistaken," the Emir's Ambassador stated. "Our army has not come to support you. Our army has come to support our Norman and Amazon allies."
Silence pervaded the room. Even the Sedevacanticist ambassador, Bishop Gabriel d'Estaing, looked like he'd just been kicked. Julio frowned deeply, hiding a new apprehension for the future. "What is this treachery?"
"Allah has blessed the Emir with the foresight to see the destruction of our people by the tech-worlders," was the reply. "With that knowledge, the Emir has trusted in Allah and has made the Ubar and his people our allies.
"For centuries the Norman tribute army of the north ravaged your southern frontier annually," Julio said harshly. "Only when that army was crushed in East Henley did the Emir's horsemen finish their destruction with the aid of the Kalundan Army. Now you seek to re-empower the men who once kidnapped your daughters and debased them?"
"We trust in Allah's judgement."
"So you say. I believe that you have misinterpreted it. Does Allah insist you violate your pacts? Did Allah tell the Emir to break the bond of brotherhood he swore to us that day when our armies killed Henrik Rasgoz and his men in the Kurik Pass?" Julio's voice rose to a rumble of righteous indignation. "If so, then get out of my sight, and remember that the al-Farani shall now be remembered in history not as noble warriors but as opportunistic cutthroats. Your own people will curse your names in a hundred years."
The ambassador smirked and shrugged. "Allah permits the faithful to make false hudna with the kaffir whenever it suits the needs of the faithful."
Not looking at Protun's smug expression or the Al-Farani ambassador, Julio turned to the Bishop d'Estaing. "And what of you? Will your people also fight beside the Normans?"
The Bishop looked to Protun and shook his head. "No. We would never. However, the Normans have a legitimate complaint against you for sheltering this alien noblewoman after she has done them such harm. At this time, I have been instructed to inform you we do not consider ourselves bound to send troops to aid you under our interpretation of the standing alliance treaty."
Julio bit into his lip to restrain himself from going off on the man. In other words, you wish to stay to yourselves and see who will win so that you can join the victors and share the spoils. "Very well. Then Kalunda stands alone."
"Yes, Majesty, which is why I implore you to accept our terms. And we would vastly prefer your alliance. Together, we could easily control the Eastern Region and force the government to accept our autonomy."
"I might have considered that, might I say, were you not also demanding me to turn over to your cruel justice those under my protection and now in my service. The Princess itl dhin Intuit acted on behalf of someone under her sworn protection, someone who had by accident discovered your little game and for that had come under cruel tortures by, I'll add, someone who was not a Norman citizen." Julio gestured at him to leave. "I refuse all demands. I make the following offer: remove your forces and I will not side against you when the central government orders your disarmament, nor will I have my representative vote for your suppression if it comes to that. I will also offer your non-combatants safe shelter in Kalundan lands."
Protun laughed. "Now who is posturing, Majesty? You would free our slaves the moment they entered your territory and would stand by on behalf of the tech world you adore while the rest of us are subjugated and denatured. No, you must accept our demands. The Ubar and Emir insist, and if you do not they will consider us to be at war."
Julio looked to Sarina and Amber. Both had grim expressions on their faces. He looked back at Protun and the al-Farani representative. "Then I have only this to say to my so-called 'brothers', the Ubar and the Emir. I insist you deliver this word for word." He pointed at them. "I say to their demands and their threat of war.... then war it shall be!"
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Kalunda, Gilead
12 November 2841
9 January 2163 AST
Day Three
It felt good to be active again, even if the circumstances weren't so good.
Dani had finally been cleared by medical personnel to take on greater duties, and she had started by overseeing the final stages of the gunboat construction she'd already started during her recovery.
Waiting for her was something she hadn't quite expected to see again - a commission; Admiral of the Crimson Guard River Flotilla. "So I made Admiral by fifty after all" had been her flippant remark upon being presented with the King's Commission, as it was officially called, just to be informed by Sarina d'Kellius that it was a brand new rank in the Crimson Guard - even the all-male River Defense Fleet only went up to Line Captain in rank given it's lack of actual blue water ships.
Dani had also found her new service was hardly a navy. The Crimson Guard River Flotilla seemed to be more a law enforcement and rescue force, lifeguards and boat police merged into one. Now she'd have to call upon everything in her training and officer education to make it an honest-to-God warfighting force.
The first thing she'd done was get rid of the uniforms. Because their typical task was to quietly sail the river and aid boaters in distress, even the field uniform was more in tune with Kalundan libertine mentality than practical ideas. Though it had belts with pockets and pouches for equipment and such, it was actually a sleeveless skin-hugging red corset-like piece - with a strap that wrapped around the neck but left the upper two-thirds of the back bared - and knee-length leggings and standard issue shoes. Rank insignia was displayed on the right breast beside the person's name. Life jackets and other concessions to necessity existed, naturally, but from what Dani had already seen, they only wore those when necessary.
Though most of her Crimson Guard subordinates were still, for the moment, in the old uniform, new ones were already on the way and Dani was already wearing one. It was form-hugging, though not skin-tight, to reduce baggyness that might cause the silk cloth to get caught. The top was an actual jacket with collar and full sleeves, the bottom pantaloons much the same, with rank insignia now on the collar. Dani had not been able to get a good naval cap, so she was stuck with the red beret bearing the royal Kalundan crest.
There were three boat factories in Kalunda, each placed on the river in what used to be open land on the southern bank, just within the main wall. Each was now appropriated and building Dani's gunboats. Given that Jhayka had already taken liberties with applying Taloran names to her defenses, Dani was doing the same with her own names, and the first type of each of her gunboat designs - save the armored "escort" gunboat - had been launched; the Abraham Lincoln, the John Brown, and the Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Ward Beecher were now in their little "drydocks" being assembled.
Dani's aide was from the River Defense Fleet. Commander Lyle Dusham was a tall, ruddy-faced man, strong and handsome, with dirty blond hair and striking blue eyes. His uniform was at least practical without modification necessary, and Dani kept him close by for the moment as she went over the timetables for putting more of her boats out on the river. "I'm delivering the second flight of boats to you, they should be done in two days."
"We'll just have to hope the boats we've got out there are enough to deal with anything they try to put into the water," Dusham agreed. He was enjoyably stoic for a Kalundan, not giving Dani more than a second glance upon their first meeting and now all-business. "We're not heavily-armed."
"By most standards you still won't be, even after getting these upgraded boats. But our job isn't to control the seas, it's to control the river, harrass Norman lines of supply to their forces to the south, and provide extra fire support to our defenses on the river banks." Dani turned her attention to her right and to a fellow non-Kalundan; Lt. Commander Tristan MacDougall in the Lisean Navy. MacDougall had an advantage over her in that he was a reservist who held his main post as a blue-water navy officer in charge of water-borne operations on his native planet of Wilson. MacDougall had been on vacation alone, having chosen Kalunda for obvious reasons, but he had quickly slipped back into duty form when the crisis came. "Commander MacDougall will be supervising the short training your people will be given. I will personally oversee the Crimson Guard's training with Captain d'Hegia."
Captain d'Hegia was standing outside, of course, overseeing the final work on the Beecher. Magni d'Hegia, third daughter of the Baron d'Hegia, was half Dani's age. Her Captain rank was not naval but ground-based - the Crimson Guard had a universal system even for their Flotilla - and so she was only an O-3, a sailing enthusiaist known for throwing wild river parties on her yacht for Kalundans her age that had a particular reputation for debauchery even amongst Kalundans. This had been a big concern for Dani, but Captain d'Hegia oddly enough acted far differently from the hedonistic playgirl reputation she had, with the reserve and disciplined she'd expect (and demand) from a Stellar Navy lieutenant. It was an interesting contradiction that the Kalundans were displaying, their entire society casting off their hedonist attitudes like it were a coat and overnight becoming stern nationalists willing to die to defeat their hated enemies and their former, treacherous friends.
In fact, upon meeting Dani, Captain d'Hegia had saluted promptly and requested permission to be transferred to the land division - she wanted to join the Crimson Guard's infantry. Dani had shot her down, of course, and imposed upon her the idea that her personal sailing experiences, no matter how they were applied before, were necessary; now the young twenty-three year old girl turned her energies gleefully to preparing the boat service of the Crimson Guard to kill Normans.
Before their conversation could continue, there was a distant rumble. Not just one rumble, but many in sequence. Dani felt her stomach twist because inside she knew what that meant.
It was MacDougall, however, who grimly announced, "Sounds like the war's begun."
Dani immediately stood from her seat. "Then let's hurry it up. We've all got jobs to do."
12 November 2841
9 January 2163 AST
Day Three
It felt good to be active again, even if the circumstances weren't so good.
Dani had finally been cleared by medical personnel to take on greater duties, and she had started by overseeing the final stages of the gunboat construction she'd already started during her recovery.
Waiting for her was something she hadn't quite expected to see again - a commission; Admiral of the Crimson Guard River Flotilla. "So I made Admiral by fifty after all" had been her flippant remark upon being presented with the King's Commission, as it was officially called, just to be informed by Sarina d'Kellius that it was a brand new rank in the Crimson Guard - even the all-male River Defense Fleet only went up to Line Captain in rank given it's lack of actual blue water ships.
Dani had also found her new service was hardly a navy. The Crimson Guard River Flotilla seemed to be more a law enforcement and rescue force, lifeguards and boat police merged into one. Now she'd have to call upon everything in her training and officer education to make it an honest-to-God warfighting force.
The first thing she'd done was get rid of the uniforms. Because their typical task was to quietly sail the river and aid boaters in distress, even the field uniform was more in tune with Kalundan libertine mentality than practical ideas. Though it had belts with pockets and pouches for equipment and such, it was actually a sleeveless skin-hugging red corset-like piece - with a strap that wrapped around the neck but left the upper two-thirds of the back bared - and knee-length leggings and standard issue shoes. Rank insignia was displayed on the right breast beside the person's name. Life jackets and other concessions to necessity existed, naturally, but from what Dani had already seen, they only wore those when necessary.
Though most of her Crimson Guard subordinates were still, for the moment, in the old uniform, new ones were already on the way and Dani was already wearing one. It was form-hugging, though not skin-tight, to reduce baggyness that might cause the silk cloth to get caught. The top was an actual jacket with collar and full sleeves, the bottom pantaloons much the same, with rank insignia now on the collar. Dani had not been able to get a good naval cap, so she was stuck with the red beret bearing the royal Kalundan crest.
There were three boat factories in Kalunda, each placed on the river in what used to be open land on the southern bank, just within the main wall. Each was now appropriated and building Dani's gunboats. Given that Jhayka had already taken liberties with applying Taloran names to her defenses, Dani was doing the same with her own names, and the first type of each of her gunboat designs - save the armored "escort" gunboat - had been launched; the Abraham Lincoln, the John Brown, and the Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Ward Beecher were now in their little "drydocks" being assembled.
Dani's aide was from the River Defense Fleet. Commander Lyle Dusham was a tall, ruddy-faced man, strong and handsome, with dirty blond hair and striking blue eyes. His uniform was at least practical without modification necessary, and Dani kept him close by for the moment as she went over the timetables for putting more of her boats out on the river. "I'm delivering the second flight of boats to you, they should be done in two days."
"We'll just have to hope the boats we've got out there are enough to deal with anything they try to put into the water," Dusham agreed. He was enjoyably stoic for a Kalundan, not giving Dani more than a second glance upon their first meeting and now all-business. "We're not heavily-armed."
"By most standards you still won't be, even after getting these upgraded boats. But our job isn't to control the seas, it's to control the river, harrass Norman lines of supply to their forces to the south, and provide extra fire support to our defenses on the river banks." Dani turned her attention to her right and to a fellow non-Kalundan; Lt. Commander Tristan MacDougall in the Lisean Navy. MacDougall had an advantage over her in that he was a reservist who held his main post as a blue-water navy officer in charge of water-borne operations on his native planet of Wilson. MacDougall had been on vacation alone, having chosen Kalunda for obvious reasons, but he had quickly slipped back into duty form when the crisis came. "Commander MacDougall will be supervising the short training your people will be given. I will personally oversee the Crimson Guard's training with Captain d'Hegia."
Captain d'Hegia was standing outside, of course, overseeing the final work on the Beecher. Magni d'Hegia, third daughter of the Baron d'Hegia, was half Dani's age. Her Captain rank was not naval but ground-based - the Crimson Guard had a universal system even for their Flotilla - and so she was only an O-3, a sailing enthusiaist known for throwing wild river parties on her yacht for Kalundans her age that had a particular reputation for debauchery even amongst Kalundans. This had been a big concern for Dani, but Captain d'Hegia oddly enough acted far differently from the hedonistic playgirl reputation she had, with the reserve and disciplined she'd expect (and demand) from a Stellar Navy lieutenant. It was an interesting contradiction that the Kalundans were displaying, their entire society casting off their hedonist attitudes like it were a coat and overnight becoming stern nationalists willing to die to defeat their hated enemies and their former, treacherous friends.
In fact, upon meeting Dani, Captain d'Hegia had saluted promptly and requested permission to be transferred to the land division - she wanted to join the Crimson Guard's infantry. Dani had shot her down, of course, and imposed upon her the idea that her personal sailing experiences, no matter how they were applied before, were necessary; now the young twenty-three year old girl turned her energies gleefully to preparing the boat service of the Crimson Guard to kill Normans.
Before their conversation could continue, there was a distant rumble. Not just one rumble, but many in sequence. Dani felt her stomach twist because inside she knew what that meant.
It was MacDougall, however, who grimly announced, "Sounds like the war's begun."
Dani immediately stood from her seat. "Then let's hurry it up. We've all got jobs to do."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
This part was written by Marina.
KALUNDA
DAY THREE
A desultory Norman barrage was commenced against the city of Kalunda. It amounted to a battalion of heavy self-propelled guns and a short brigade (less losses) of light infantry support guns, along with a towed brigade of 155's produced very cheaply. There were two short brigades of assorted katyushas as well. In short, not all that much artillery for the numbers of troops involved.
Numbers were, of course, a curse here. Both sides had huge numbers of mouths to feed and not much infrastructure for feeding them. That would limit the duration of the siege, and so Jhayka's biggest priority had been bringing in food. They now had enough in the city for about two terran months—sixty-two days to be precise—albeit on starvation rations for every except the military forces, on half rations. Fortunately, casualties will serve to partially increase the time we can hold out, Jhayka noted mentally with the cold calculation of a siege engineer.
There was nothing except for the siege. Deep inside the palace of the Kalundan monarchy, there was a command station, firmly hardened against the heaviest bombardment, save by the nuclear artillery of starships, from which the battle might be directed. Due to the facility of its communications equipment, Jhayka remained here for the moment though she fully intended to head to the front the moment the attack became clear.
The Normans were going to attack, of course, and attack quickly. They likely would have attacked the day before if it wasn't for the fact that they were waiting for the al-Farani to arrive, along with other allies, to provide mass for their attack. The al-Farani, of course, had not experienced hard combat against the General Faeria and so were much more eager to attack the defences.
Altogether the bombardment lasted only an hour. It was very desultory, and aimed entirely at the trenches. This coincidently left it at the height of ineffectiveness, and Jhayka watched with a quiet pleasure at the waste of ammunition. They should have been aiming to disrupt the supply and reinforcement points instead of bombarding the front line, but the Normans were thinking in terms of walls, where a major breach is fatal, and the target easy to ultimately batter down, even with mechanical artillery, let alone their powerful new weapons.
Ilavna watched silently at the data-screens and the reports coming in, and finally turned back to Jhayka. “Your Highness, it must be a very intense fire out there,” she commented softly.
“A hell. But they will really be quite fine. Shelling trenches is one of the most impressively useless things ever devised, tactically. There is no reason to even really be worried about the troops out there. Wastage, at most.”
“That's a very cruel word, Your Highness.”
“War is the business of mass cruelty.”
Even this deep under the ground and with the shock absorbers they had, they could feel the bombardment. And the Talorans, certainly, dimly heard those vibrations, and waited in an uncomfortable silence.
The bombardment ceased. The main viewscreen in the command post focused in on a sector of the front along the southern part of the city, near the river. It then switched to IR. The signatures of a massed force of around a hundred and fifty, perhaps a hundred and seventy large vehicles could clearly be seen—and three or four times as many smaller ones. They began to lurch forward.
It took about five minutes, and Jhayka in particular could simply not believe what she saw with her eyes. “By the Lord!”
The Kalundas in the command post turned their attention to her. “Your Highness?” One of them queried delicately.
“Look at the speed of their advance. They're not even trying to rush us... They're going at scarcely more than a run.”
The view resolved, from a front-line camera concealed in a rise just before the line. Now it could be seen that waves of tens of thousands of infantry were following up the vehicles, which consisted of somewhat less than five hundred technicals and around a hundred and twenty medium and light tanks, along with about fourty-five or fifty MBT's. It was a sizable force, yet it was clear that it was also all of the Norman armour. They were determined to simply push through in one massed assault.
Many of the technicals, though, had al-Farani markings or even flags attached to them, and the banners of the advancing units were also clearly displayed.
“Hyper-focus on the enemy troops, please,” Jhayka asked mildly.
The view closed in, and showed before them an impressive sight, still moreso. The running Norman troops, slowly falling behind their tanks, were divided evenly, it seemed, between those armed with modern assault weapons, and those armed with ancient rifles, or simply axes or hatches, or swords. They ran as fast as they could, showing that the Normans at least understood the need to cover the killing ground of the open fields as quickly as possible. They just thought about it in terms of infantry and were holding up the tanks so they didn't get to far ahead of the advancing foot.
“Order the General Faeria to siding Military-Twelve,” Jhayka ordered, noting one of the hastily laid temporary tracks so that the train could shift to bring its guns to bear on nearly any point of the lines. “Weapons free against the tanks on Captain Arshon's discretion,” she added a brief moment later.
Then: “Infantry in Line Fileya to remain in dugouts. Machine-gun crews and mortar crews on quick shelter notice. Anti-tank teams to shelter. Proceed with action plan Backfire.”
Once this general instructions had been issued, Jhayka left the direction of the combat to the area commanders. Of course, her place in the battle was not over. “Come on, Ilavna, it's time to go,” she said shortly and started off, out of the command post. In case things got bad, Jhayka intended to be on the scene to right them.
Manning the lines were the regular army and the militia. The Crimson Guard was in reserve, because of the weaker abilities of human females physically (though Jhayka didn't put it in those terms)--the reserve was of course critical, but it was not in action, generally, for as long as the main line units were, so less stamina was required of it and therefore the effectiveness of the Crimson Guard would, in that role, be almost completely identical to a human male unit in the same role; the statistical deviation was in fact negligible. Jhayka's position was of course, now, to survey the field and decide if and when to commit the guard.
The Kalundan artillery opened up. Kalunda had two brigades of modern heavy howitzers, and these were emplaced in the city, from which they could command every side of the defences, even if it meant exposing the civilian districts to counterbattery fire: The advantages were to great to pass up the positioning.
They were firing VT fused shrapnel shells over the Norman, al-Farani, and allied infantry. The result was an instant massacre. The fire of two brigades, almost a hundred and fifty guns, at twenty-five rounds a minute, shattered the masses of troops as the shells burst over their heads and released showers of hot shrapnel down upon them from every direction. The enemy formations disintegrated at once. Men who had never 'cowered' in battle before dropped to the faces in the soft loam of the flood plain, quivering and looking around in horror as the shrapnel cut through their comrades on every side around them.
There were at least sixty thousand foot infantry involved in the assault, however, a great mass of the strength of the Norman and al-Farani nations to punch through the Kalundan lines over the distance of a mere five kilometers of front. They were supported in turn by nine thousand or more in the technicals and riding on the tanks which were going in to the front, and about eighteen thousand launching flanking attacks on each side of the main push.
Now, though, these numbers were already much reduced. The number of casualties was not as great as it might seem, but it was still atrocious, and it ruined the mass of the action. Now the troops clustered and dashed forward in little groups. The Normans had at least braved gunfire before. The al-Farani had not, and to the extreme disgust of the Emir, several whole units broke under the Kalundan guns, which under the plan Jhayka had prepared were concentrated especially on the al-Farani units for just that purpose whenever they could be identified. Many more of the units simply collapsed in cohesion and were left in total disarray on the field, whereas the Normans continued to advance in smaller clusters.
Ahead, the tanks were nearly on the lines when the guns of the General Faeria came into play. Four light tanks were instantly blasted apart and left burning from powergun fire as the heavy plasma guns stuttered across the field and smashed apart two more. The powerguns fired again, and this time two MBT's were caught and destroyed with side shots. The powerguns quickly focused on the MBT's as the plasma guns stuttered against the light tanks which single hits from their fire could seriously damage.
The trench mortars opened up on the leading waves of the infantry at that moment, even as the heavy machine-gun emplacements tore into the unarmoured technicals packed with troops. Jhayka had supervised the mass-production of cheap and simple 60mm mortars, and now each company could boast a two-mortar section. Battalion-level 120mm mortars were slower coming, but each battalion also had at least two of them and some of them had three. The 60mm mortars, though using blackpowder for propellant and blast, had the charge laced with aluminium powder to increase the explosive power by 40%.
They fired thirty rounds a minute; the 120mm mortars managed twenty. The result of some four hundred of these mortars of both types being able to fire on the Norman advance was absolute carnage, and it was sustained for not less than four minutes at the maximum rapidity even as the machine-guns tore through the advancing technicals. This time, even the Norman infantry was checked by the combination of machine-gun fire and the massed mortar barrage. The artillery was still smashing up the rear waves of the offensive thrust.
General Faeria was under the massed fire of the Norman artillery now, however. The armoured train had smashed up the Norman armour, destroying eight MBT's and a dozen medium and light tanks, but it was under heavily massed guns and the threat of track damage was high. Captain Arshon, though, stood to her exposed position and fought the train even when the counter-fire of the MBT's proved able to inflict damage on several positions. One of the main guns was even knocked out, killing two men of the crew, though not before the death-toll to the MBT's had been increased to eleven, and three more left with their sensors blasted off by the plasma cannon and forced to retire as they also shifted fire.
At last, the Norman tanks smashed through the wire in front of the Kalundan lines. That was the signal. The machine-gunners and mortar crews left their positions and took cover in their dugouts. The Norman tanks rushed on, triumphant... And then a ripple of explosions raced across the front. Five more MBT's were left burning hulks as the awesomely powerful improvised anti-tank mines, clusters of artillery shells, which had been emplaced in front of the line were detonated under them. Seventeen lighter tanks were also knocked out in crossing over the minefield as the explosions continued for some time.
Then they carried the trench. The surviving technicals followed closely, a few more blowing up to the mines before they ran into the obvious problem, which some of the drivers were too naïve to recognize: pickup trucks could not follow tanks across trenches. They had been ordered to dismount their men here, but some of the overeager ones pushed on anyway and wrecked their vehicles, tossing the men, unsecured in the back, around like tenpins.
For those men who's drivers had kept their wits, they skidded their vehicles to a halt on the lip of the trench, and squads of men armed with satchel charges, bags of grenades, and hatchets, swords, and even axes and pick-axes spilled and into the Kalundan trenches, following a volley of grenades which skittered down into the trench proper and exploded close enough to wound some of the men who leaped down right after them.
Captain Askan Carhill waited in one of the dugouts with his men, serving as a company command post and concentration point and the position for his anti-tank weapons. He'd received rigorous training over several days from a Taloran woman—strange, ethereal they were, introverted and modest and so unlike Kalundan women that he'd been almost attracted to her despite her alienness, indeed, precisely because of it, though he'd only seen her at a distance out of a group of hundreds. He'd later found out, to his slight embarassment, that she was actually only a corporal and yet she'd known so much more about war-fighting than he had, even he who was in a unit of the regular army; now the itch to prove himself simply burned.
Units of the regular army were interspersed with the militia on the lines, for the purpose of stiffening the militia units which were less reliable though more numerous. It was their job to execute the most daring part of Plan Backfire. The sound of heavy tanks rumbling directly over their heads, smashing in the walls of the trenches, snorting and grinding through the dirt and revving forward, the roof of the dugout shaking and falling in here and there, was all the warning that it was time to execute the manoeuvre that they could ever need.
“Infantry squads, forward with me—tankbusters, you know your places. Up and at 'em!” He grabbed up his own assault rifle and led his men from the front. As he tumbled out into the main trench proper his cheek was cut by a flying piece of shrapnel from a grenade and he saw Normans armed with axes and carrying sacks--grenades, surely--tumbling down into the trench. He fired a burst from his rifle as did the men immediately with him, and a number of the Normans toppled with a sudden appearance of red on their bodies before they even realized they were facing the enemy. Askan didn't realize that if he'd come out a millisecond earlier he would have been torn to shreds by the grenades they'd thrown.
They dashed into the trenches, and were met by platoons spilling out of other dugouts and men running out of diagonal reserve trenches to nowhere, intended to protect them from assaults on the front line in narrow files and defilades from which they could spill in surprise against an enemy who thought the main line to be lightly defended. All the while, their rifles were chattering and grenades were thrown at point-blank range into the Norman stormers.
The purpose of Askan and his men was to provide cover for the mortar crews and the machine-gunners, who immediately rushed back to their posts, heedless of the dangers around them, even though they were in fact deeply afraid, trusting in the abilities of their comrades to protect them from the attackers on every side. Teamwork alone would hold the trench, and the Kalundans were going to have to learn the real gist of it in a coordinated and integrated army right now, in the baptism of fire. Askan proved himself able of it as he formed up his men and guided them out, sweeping in both directions. His sergeant, turning from organization a section, came up to him at once. It was only then that Askan realized they'd cleared that section of the trench as well...
“Sir, we've got to push out, keep pushing, bring in touch everyone along the line—let the gunners an' t'mortars handle the main waves.”
“We'll push out hard to the left, we've got a company gap there... More chance of losing touch.”
“I'll detail four platoon's section two to it right off, sirrah,” the sergeant replied with a roll of his tongue at the last word, a tough, wiry man who turned aside, moving at once to execute the orders.
Askan heard a whoosh behind him and a sound of an explosion much closer than the constant roll of them elsewhere, the stench of burning, and heavy machineguns firing to their rear of all places... But the first sound reassured him that the plan was at least being executed.
It had required a level of epic daring. Plan Backfire was intended to allow the Kalundans, weak in anti-tank weapons, the maximum chance of disabling heavy MBT's with MANPADs. It was very simple, which was what made it at once so dangerous and so potentially rewarding. The tanks crossed the trench....
And the anti-tank teams burst out of their dugouts, dashed up to special firing pits inlaid in the reverse of the trench, and fired point-blank into the weak rear armour of the heavy MBT's.
This was exactly what they had done, and they had paid for it. Dashing up even as the grenades exploded around them, many had been felled or wounded. The loaders grabbed the tubes from the gunners to get in one shot, or the gunners carried on with their loaders for the same, the rest formed up their teams neatly, the pits protected from fire from the rear, the front of the trenches of course, as the Normans tossed grenades and fought in amongst them. They had only one focus, the giant snorting monsters of MBT's directly in front of them.
Dozens of MANPAD crews lined up their shots and fired all along the line. It was total surprise. The range was in no cases greater than thirty meters, and in most, a mere twenty, or even less, some so close that the men firing the MANPADs were actually wounded by the backblast from their impacts against the targeted tanks. That was worth it. The ten closest and very solid, dead-on rear hits succeeded in disabling ten MBT's outright, and almost twenty medium and light tanks were destroyed as well within the first few salvoes, which soon added another seven seriously damaged or disabled MBT's to the list.
It came at a very severe cost. The machineguns of the tanks were brought around to bear immediately, and some of the more successful stormers tossed grenades into the anti-tank weapon pits. They tore through the men in their positions, who had to expose themselves to continue firing, and the hideous casualties in the units were more than half of their strength altogether.
Moreover, all of the Norman tanks had been carrying tank riders, and these had now dismounted to sweep back into the front-line trenches from the rear, slaughtering still more of the anti-tank teams even as they killed two more MBT's—which were now turning to bring their thicker side armour to bear, denying the chance to take out any more –and six more lights and mediums.
As they went back to the rear, though, the order was given from the battalion and brigade commanders in the communications and reserve trenches to bring forward their immediate reserve companies. These forces rose up, men dashing forward into the machineguns of the tanks on their front armour which could still bear; the tanks which had turned to far couldn't bring them into action and they had to notice and fire-shift with their main turret-mounted HMG's to tear through the Kalundan ranks. The orders to the tank-riders had to be countermanded, and in the meantime the daring Kalundan companies had closed the gap with the almost stationary tanks, which now actually began to fire their main guns against the rear trenches, though it was of questionable effectiveness, as satchel charges were tossed under the tanks, and flamethrower teams covered their engine intakes in liquid fire.
The tank-riders turning about were also caught by the flamethrower teams in the open. Sometimes they fired fast enough to tear through the tanks of the portable flamethrowers and incinerate the flamethrower men. Most of the time they didn't, and sweeping lances of fire turned whole groups of men into human torches. In several cases men leaped up onto the tanks. Most of them were blasted apart at once by the HMG's but a few lasted long enough to break molotov cocktails on critical places and start fires.
It was a complete hell. Guns were firing in every direction, the massive cannon of the MBT's tearing up sections of the rear trenches as gunfire was exchanged everywhere at point-blank and men dashed in against the tanks to disable them or damage them with whatever they had. The General Faeria was still in action, having suffered more serious damage now, but Captain Arshon kept her guns firing and kept disabling Norman tanks with them until Jhayka, arriving back into the field of sight of the action, expressly ordered the train, surrounded as it was by the endless fire of the artillery and rocketry of the Normans, to retire back to the city, its shields glowing brilliantly under the fire, and the shield-penetrating rounds causing them to flare up as damage was done.
Even with the guns of the General Faeria gradually falling to silence, the Norman tanks were scarcely in a good position. The effectiveness of their penetration of the Kalundan trenches now depended entirely on their infantry making good on the vicious battle along the Fileya Line as the fighting rolled around them.
The machiengunners, putting their lives in the hands of their infantry comrades, the mortar teams, doing the same, went ahead and proved themselves fully worth their mettle here. They cleaned their weapons of the intense buildup of blackpowder soot in the tubes from the extreme rapidity of firing, and then commenced firing again, on the same 30 rounds a minute for four minutes drill. They leapt to it like madmen, even as the machineguns again opened fire on full automatics.
The Norman infantry had just reached the torn through areas of the barbed wire. They pushed through where their tanks had opened paths for them and forged ahead, into the areas made safe by the passage of the tanks. This naturally bunched them together again...
It left the perfect targets for the resumption of the mortar and machinegun fire which ripped into their formations in such horrific quantities as to entirely overwhelm the senses with the level of concentrated killing that took place. However brave the Normans were, they had never before faced this sort of fighting, worse than even what had happened at Ar, a pure slaughter on the scale of thousands and thousands. Somehow, they forged ahead, even as they tried to disperse for cover.
As they tried to disperse for cover, they found out the penultimate secret of the Fileya line: There was also an anti-personnel minefield, which of course the tanks and technicals had not detonated, since they were highly pressure sensitive with modern gauges. The lighter pressure of a human footprint set them off, and soon countless men were missing legs, crying out for help on the ground with the twisted stumps of legs spurting out their life's blood in torrents.
The ultimate secret was that just before the lines there were tiny slit trenches dug, with swine-feathers, iron-tipped pieces of wood or simply sharpened wood punji sticks placed all along them. Even the technicals had been able to drive over these without noticing them, but a man's foot slipped into them easily if he made the wrong step, and there were large numbers of caltrops scattered around the fronts of the trenches as well which cut viciously into the feet of the men who managed to avoid the mines and the punji-beds to reach the verge of the trench. There were hideous scenes, of men fallen half into the slit trenches, legs cut up brutally and serious groin and genital injuries inflicted as they helplessly fell further down, some then mercifully killed by the Kalundan machineguns sweeping back and forth on full automatic.
Inside the trenches, Captain Askan was just going ahead to lead his men against one of the remaining groups of stormers when a hideous flame leapt out from the rear of the trench into it; his sergeant was again somehow there, and held him back when by instinct he tired to press on ahead and nearly ran into the flame for it. The screams of the Normans echoed hideously as they were burned alive, and as soon as the flames had in places died away, more of the reserve units' men leaped down into the trenches to finish off what survivors as there might be.
They had, it seemed, secured the trenches....
...But ahead, the Normans had somehow braved the vast and intense fire of the Kalundan defenders in sufficient numbers that groups of them, many wounded but still forging ahead to fight, leapt down into the trenches to immediately renew the war of the fallen stormers. The Norman artillery, too, opened up on the main front of the battle with the definite retreat of the General Faeria, this time on the communications and reserve trenches to the rear of the main trench where their troops were fighting, to aide the efforts of the surviving tanks to break through on ahead and thereby disperse any reinforcements being sent forward to save the situation at the front trench of the Fileya Line. The battle had in fact just reached its most critical point.
KALUNDA
DAY THREE
A desultory Norman barrage was commenced against the city of Kalunda. It amounted to a battalion of heavy self-propelled guns and a short brigade (less losses) of light infantry support guns, along with a towed brigade of 155's produced very cheaply. There were two short brigades of assorted katyushas as well. In short, not all that much artillery for the numbers of troops involved.
Numbers were, of course, a curse here. Both sides had huge numbers of mouths to feed and not much infrastructure for feeding them. That would limit the duration of the siege, and so Jhayka's biggest priority had been bringing in food. They now had enough in the city for about two terran months—sixty-two days to be precise—albeit on starvation rations for every except the military forces, on half rations. Fortunately, casualties will serve to partially increase the time we can hold out, Jhayka noted mentally with the cold calculation of a siege engineer.
There was nothing except for the siege. Deep inside the palace of the Kalundan monarchy, there was a command station, firmly hardened against the heaviest bombardment, save by the nuclear artillery of starships, from which the battle might be directed. Due to the facility of its communications equipment, Jhayka remained here for the moment though she fully intended to head to the front the moment the attack became clear.
The Normans were going to attack, of course, and attack quickly. They likely would have attacked the day before if it wasn't for the fact that they were waiting for the al-Farani to arrive, along with other allies, to provide mass for their attack. The al-Farani, of course, had not experienced hard combat against the General Faeria and so were much more eager to attack the defences.
Altogether the bombardment lasted only an hour. It was very desultory, and aimed entirely at the trenches. This coincidently left it at the height of ineffectiveness, and Jhayka watched with a quiet pleasure at the waste of ammunition. They should have been aiming to disrupt the supply and reinforcement points instead of bombarding the front line, but the Normans were thinking in terms of walls, where a major breach is fatal, and the target easy to ultimately batter down, even with mechanical artillery, let alone their powerful new weapons.
Ilavna watched silently at the data-screens and the reports coming in, and finally turned back to Jhayka. “Your Highness, it must be a very intense fire out there,” she commented softly.
“A hell. But they will really be quite fine. Shelling trenches is one of the most impressively useless things ever devised, tactically. There is no reason to even really be worried about the troops out there. Wastage, at most.”
“That's a very cruel word, Your Highness.”
“War is the business of mass cruelty.”
Even this deep under the ground and with the shock absorbers they had, they could feel the bombardment. And the Talorans, certainly, dimly heard those vibrations, and waited in an uncomfortable silence.
The bombardment ceased. The main viewscreen in the command post focused in on a sector of the front along the southern part of the city, near the river. It then switched to IR. The signatures of a massed force of around a hundred and fifty, perhaps a hundred and seventy large vehicles could clearly be seen—and three or four times as many smaller ones. They began to lurch forward.
It took about five minutes, and Jhayka in particular could simply not believe what she saw with her eyes. “By the Lord!”
The Kalundas in the command post turned their attention to her. “Your Highness?” One of them queried delicately.
“Look at the speed of their advance. They're not even trying to rush us... They're going at scarcely more than a run.”
The view resolved, from a front-line camera concealed in a rise just before the line. Now it could be seen that waves of tens of thousands of infantry were following up the vehicles, which consisted of somewhat less than five hundred technicals and around a hundred and twenty medium and light tanks, along with about fourty-five or fifty MBT's. It was a sizable force, yet it was clear that it was also all of the Norman armour. They were determined to simply push through in one massed assault.
Many of the technicals, though, had al-Farani markings or even flags attached to them, and the banners of the advancing units were also clearly displayed.
“Hyper-focus on the enemy troops, please,” Jhayka asked mildly.
The view closed in, and showed before them an impressive sight, still moreso. The running Norman troops, slowly falling behind their tanks, were divided evenly, it seemed, between those armed with modern assault weapons, and those armed with ancient rifles, or simply axes or hatches, or swords. They ran as fast as they could, showing that the Normans at least understood the need to cover the killing ground of the open fields as quickly as possible. They just thought about it in terms of infantry and were holding up the tanks so they didn't get to far ahead of the advancing foot.
“Order the General Faeria to siding Military-Twelve,” Jhayka ordered, noting one of the hastily laid temporary tracks so that the train could shift to bring its guns to bear on nearly any point of the lines. “Weapons free against the tanks on Captain Arshon's discretion,” she added a brief moment later.
Then: “Infantry in Line Fileya to remain in dugouts. Machine-gun crews and mortar crews on quick shelter notice. Anti-tank teams to shelter. Proceed with action plan Backfire.”
Once this general instructions had been issued, Jhayka left the direction of the combat to the area commanders. Of course, her place in the battle was not over. “Come on, Ilavna, it's time to go,” she said shortly and started off, out of the command post. In case things got bad, Jhayka intended to be on the scene to right them.
Manning the lines were the regular army and the militia. The Crimson Guard was in reserve, because of the weaker abilities of human females physically (though Jhayka didn't put it in those terms)--the reserve was of course critical, but it was not in action, generally, for as long as the main line units were, so less stamina was required of it and therefore the effectiveness of the Crimson Guard would, in that role, be almost completely identical to a human male unit in the same role; the statistical deviation was in fact negligible. Jhayka's position was of course, now, to survey the field and decide if and when to commit the guard.
The Kalundan artillery opened up. Kalunda had two brigades of modern heavy howitzers, and these were emplaced in the city, from which they could command every side of the defences, even if it meant exposing the civilian districts to counterbattery fire: The advantages were to great to pass up the positioning.
They were firing VT fused shrapnel shells over the Norman, al-Farani, and allied infantry. The result was an instant massacre. The fire of two brigades, almost a hundred and fifty guns, at twenty-five rounds a minute, shattered the masses of troops as the shells burst over their heads and released showers of hot shrapnel down upon them from every direction. The enemy formations disintegrated at once. Men who had never 'cowered' in battle before dropped to the faces in the soft loam of the flood plain, quivering and looking around in horror as the shrapnel cut through their comrades on every side around them.
There were at least sixty thousand foot infantry involved in the assault, however, a great mass of the strength of the Norman and al-Farani nations to punch through the Kalundan lines over the distance of a mere five kilometers of front. They were supported in turn by nine thousand or more in the technicals and riding on the tanks which were going in to the front, and about eighteen thousand launching flanking attacks on each side of the main push.
Now, though, these numbers were already much reduced. The number of casualties was not as great as it might seem, but it was still atrocious, and it ruined the mass of the action. Now the troops clustered and dashed forward in little groups. The Normans had at least braved gunfire before. The al-Farani had not, and to the extreme disgust of the Emir, several whole units broke under the Kalundan guns, which under the plan Jhayka had prepared were concentrated especially on the al-Farani units for just that purpose whenever they could be identified. Many more of the units simply collapsed in cohesion and were left in total disarray on the field, whereas the Normans continued to advance in smaller clusters.
Ahead, the tanks were nearly on the lines when the guns of the General Faeria came into play. Four light tanks were instantly blasted apart and left burning from powergun fire as the heavy plasma guns stuttered across the field and smashed apart two more. The powerguns fired again, and this time two MBT's were caught and destroyed with side shots. The powerguns quickly focused on the MBT's as the plasma guns stuttered against the light tanks which single hits from their fire could seriously damage.
The trench mortars opened up on the leading waves of the infantry at that moment, even as the heavy machine-gun emplacements tore into the unarmoured technicals packed with troops. Jhayka had supervised the mass-production of cheap and simple 60mm mortars, and now each company could boast a two-mortar section. Battalion-level 120mm mortars were slower coming, but each battalion also had at least two of them and some of them had three. The 60mm mortars, though using blackpowder for propellant and blast, had the charge laced with aluminium powder to increase the explosive power by 40%.
They fired thirty rounds a minute; the 120mm mortars managed twenty. The result of some four hundred of these mortars of both types being able to fire on the Norman advance was absolute carnage, and it was sustained for not less than four minutes at the maximum rapidity even as the machine-guns tore through the advancing technicals. This time, even the Norman infantry was checked by the combination of machine-gun fire and the massed mortar barrage. The artillery was still smashing up the rear waves of the offensive thrust.
General Faeria was under the massed fire of the Norman artillery now, however. The armoured train had smashed up the Norman armour, destroying eight MBT's and a dozen medium and light tanks, but it was under heavily massed guns and the threat of track damage was high. Captain Arshon, though, stood to her exposed position and fought the train even when the counter-fire of the MBT's proved able to inflict damage on several positions. One of the main guns was even knocked out, killing two men of the crew, though not before the death-toll to the MBT's had been increased to eleven, and three more left with their sensors blasted off by the plasma cannon and forced to retire as they also shifted fire.
At last, the Norman tanks smashed through the wire in front of the Kalundan lines. That was the signal. The machine-gunners and mortar crews left their positions and took cover in their dugouts. The Norman tanks rushed on, triumphant... And then a ripple of explosions raced across the front. Five more MBT's were left burning hulks as the awesomely powerful improvised anti-tank mines, clusters of artillery shells, which had been emplaced in front of the line were detonated under them. Seventeen lighter tanks were also knocked out in crossing over the minefield as the explosions continued for some time.
Then they carried the trench. The surviving technicals followed closely, a few more blowing up to the mines before they ran into the obvious problem, which some of the drivers were too naïve to recognize: pickup trucks could not follow tanks across trenches. They had been ordered to dismount their men here, but some of the overeager ones pushed on anyway and wrecked their vehicles, tossing the men, unsecured in the back, around like tenpins.
For those men who's drivers had kept their wits, they skidded their vehicles to a halt on the lip of the trench, and squads of men armed with satchel charges, bags of grenades, and hatchets, swords, and even axes and pick-axes spilled and into the Kalundan trenches, following a volley of grenades which skittered down into the trench proper and exploded close enough to wound some of the men who leaped down right after them.
Captain Askan Carhill waited in one of the dugouts with his men, serving as a company command post and concentration point and the position for his anti-tank weapons. He'd received rigorous training over several days from a Taloran woman—strange, ethereal they were, introverted and modest and so unlike Kalundan women that he'd been almost attracted to her despite her alienness, indeed, precisely because of it, though he'd only seen her at a distance out of a group of hundreds. He'd later found out, to his slight embarassment, that she was actually only a corporal and yet she'd known so much more about war-fighting than he had, even he who was in a unit of the regular army; now the itch to prove himself simply burned.
Units of the regular army were interspersed with the militia on the lines, for the purpose of stiffening the militia units which were less reliable though more numerous. It was their job to execute the most daring part of Plan Backfire. The sound of heavy tanks rumbling directly over their heads, smashing in the walls of the trenches, snorting and grinding through the dirt and revving forward, the roof of the dugout shaking and falling in here and there, was all the warning that it was time to execute the manoeuvre that they could ever need.
“Infantry squads, forward with me—tankbusters, you know your places. Up and at 'em!” He grabbed up his own assault rifle and led his men from the front. As he tumbled out into the main trench proper his cheek was cut by a flying piece of shrapnel from a grenade and he saw Normans armed with axes and carrying sacks--grenades, surely--tumbling down into the trench. He fired a burst from his rifle as did the men immediately with him, and a number of the Normans toppled with a sudden appearance of red on their bodies before they even realized they were facing the enemy. Askan didn't realize that if he'd come out a millisecond earlier he would have been torn to shreds by the grenades they'd thrown.
They dashed into the trenches, and were met by platoons spilling out of other dugouts and men running out of diagonal reserve trenches to nowhere, intended to protect them from assaults on the front line in narrow files and defilades from which they could spill in surprise against an enemy who thought the main line to be lightly defended. All the while, their rifles were chattering and grenades were thrown at point-blank range into the Norman stormers.
The purpose of Askan and his men was to provide cover for the mortar crews and the machine-gunners, who immediately rushed back to their posts, heedless of the dangers around them, even though they were in fact deeply afraid, trusting in the abilities of their comrades to protect them from the attackers on every side. Teamwork alone would hold the trench, and the Kalundans were going to have to learn the real gist of it in a coordinated and integrated army right now, in the baptism of fire. Askan proved himself able of it as he formed up his men and guided them out, sweeping in both directions. His sergeant, turning from organization a section, came up to him at once. It was only then that Askan realized they'd cleared that section of the trench as well...
“Sir, we've got to push out, keep pushing, bring in touch everyone along the line—let the gunners an' t'mortars handle the main waves.”
“We'll push out hard to the left, we've got a company gap there... More chance of losing touch.”
“I'll detail four platoon's section two to it right off, sirrah,” the sergeant replied with a roll of his tongue at the last word, a tough, wiry man who turned aside, moving at once to execute the orders.
Askan heard a whoosh behind him and a sound of an explosion much closer than the constant roll of them elsewhere, the stench of burning, and heavy machineguns firing to their rear of all places... But the first sound reassured him that the plan was at least being executed.
It had required a level of epic daring. Plan Backfire was intended to allow the Kalundans, weak in anti-tank weapons, the maximum chance of disabling heavy MBT's with MANPADs. It was very simple, which was what made it at once so dangerous and so potentially rewarding. The tanks crossed the trench....
And the anti-tank teams burst out of their dugouts, dashed up to special firing pits inlaid in the reverse of the trench, and fired point-blank into the weak rear armour of the heavy MBT's.
This was exactly what they had done, and they had paid for it. Dashing up even as the grenades exploded around them, many had been felled or wounded. The loaders grabbed the tubes from the gunners to get in one shot, or the gunners carried on with their loaders for the same, the rest formed up their teams neatly, the pits protected from fire from the rear, the front of the trenches of course, as the Normans tossed grenades and fought in amongst them. They had only one focus, the giant snorting monsters of MBT's directly in front of them.
Dozens of MANPAD crews lined up their shots and fired all along the line. It was total surprise. The range was in no cases greater than thirty meters, and in most, a mere twenty, or even less, some so close that the men firing the MANPADs were actually wounded by the backblast from their impacts against the targeted tanks. That was worth it. The ten closest and very solid, dead-on rear hits succeeded in disabling ten MBT's outright, and almost twenty medium and light tanks were destroyed as well within the first few salvoes, which soon added another seven seriously damaged or disabled MBT's to the list.
It came at a very severe cost. The machineguns of the tanks were brought around to bear immediately, and some of the more successful stormers tossed grenades into the anti-tank weapon pits. They tore through the men in their positions, who had to expose themselves to continue firing, and the hideous casualties in the units were more than half of their strength altogether.
Moreover, all of the Norman tanks had been carrying tank riders, and these had now dismounted to sweep back into the front-line trenches from the rear, slaughtering still more of the anti-tank teams even as they killed two more MBT's—which were now turning to bring their thicker side armour to bear, denying the chance to take out any more –and six more lights and mediums.
As they went back to the rear, though, the order was given from the battalion and brigade commanders in the communications and reserve trenches to bring forward their immediate reserve companies. These forces rose up, men dashing forward into the machineguns of the tanks on their front armour which could still bear; the tanks which had turned to far couldn't bring them into action and they had to notice and fire-shift with their main turret-mounted HMG's to tear through the Kalundan ranks. The orders to the tank-riders had to be countermanded, and in the meantime the daring Kalundan companies had closed the gap with the almost stationary tanks, which now actually began to fire their main guns against the rear trenches, though it was of questionable effectiveness, as satchel charges were tossed under the tanks, and flamethrower teams covered their engine intakes in liquid fire.
The tank-riders turning about were also caught by the flamethrower teams in the open. Sometimes they fired fast enough to tear through the tanks of the portable flamethrowers and incinerate the flamethrower men. Most of the time they didn't, and sweeping lances of fire turned whole groups of men into human torches. In several cases men leaped up onto the tanks. Most of them were blasted apart at once by the HMG's but a few lasted long enough to break molotov cocktails on critical places and start fires.
It was a complete hell. Guns were firing in every direction, the massive cannon of the MBT's tearing up sections of the rear trenches as gunfire was exchanged everywhere at point-blank and men dashed in against the tanks to disable them or damage them with whatever they had. The General Faeria was still in action, having suffered more serious damage now, but Captain Arshon kept her guns firing and kept disabling Norman tanks with them until Jhayka, arriving back into the field of sight of the action, expressly ordered the train, surrounded as it was by the endless fire of the artillery and rocketry of the Normans, to retire back to the city, its shields glowing brilliantly under the fire, and the shield-penetrating rounds causing them to flare up as damage was done.
Even with the guns of the General Faeria gradually falling to silence, the Norman tanks were scarcely in a good position. The effectiveness of their penetration of the Kalundan trenches now depended entirely on their infantry making good on the vicious battle along the Fileya Line as the fighting rolled around them.
The machiengunners, putting their lives in the hands of their infantry comrades, the mortar teams, doing the same, went ahead and proved themselves fully worth their mettle here. They cleaned their weapons of the intense buildup of blackpowder soot in the tubes from the extreme rapidity of firing, and then commenced firing again, on the same 30 rounds a minute for four minutes drill. They leapt to it like madmen, even as the machineguns again opened fire on full automatics.
The Norman infantry had just reached the torn through areas of the barbed wire. They pushed through where their tanks had opened paths for them and forged ahead, into the areas made safe by the passage of the tanks. This naturally bunched them together again...
It left the perfect targets for the resumption of the mortar and machinegun fire which ripped into their formations in such horrific quantities as to entirely overwhelm the senses with the level of concentrated killing that took place. However brave the Normans were, they had never before faced this sort of fighting, worse than even what had happened at Ar, a pure slaughter on the scale of thousands and thousands. Somehow, they forged ahead, even as they tried to disperse for cover.
As they tried to disperse for cover, they found out the penultimate secret of the Fileya line: There was also an anti-personnel minefield, which of course the tanks and technicals had not detonated, since they were highly pressure sensitive with modern gauges. The lighter pressure of a human footprint set them off, and soon countless men were missing legs, crying out for help on the ground with the twisted stumps of legs spurting out their life's blood in torrents.
The ultimate secret was that just before the lines there were tiny slit trenches dug, with swine-feathers, iron-tipped pieces of wood or simply sharpened wood punji sticks placed all along them. Even the technicals had been able to drive over these without noticing them, but a man's foot slipped into them easily if he made the wrong step, and there were large numbers of caltrops scattered around the fronts of the trenches as well which cut viciously into the feet of the men who managed to avoid the mines and the punji-beds to reach the verge of the trench. There were hideous scenes, of men fallen half into the slit trenches, legs cut up brutally and serious groin and genital injuries inflicted as they helplessly fell further down, some then mercifully killed by the Kalundan machineguns sweeping back and forth on full automatic.
Inside the trenches, Captain Askan was just going ahead to lead his men against one of the remaining groups of stormers when a hideous flame leapt out from the rear of the trench into it; his sergeant was again somehow there, and held him back when by instinct he tired to press on ahead and nearly ran into the flame for it. The screams of the Normans echoed hideously as they were burned alive, and as soon as the flames had in places died away, more of the reserve units' men leaped down into the trenches to finish off what survivors as there might be.
They had, it seemed, secured the trenches....
...But ahead, the Normans had somehow braved the vast and intense fire of the Kalundan defenders in sufficient numbers that groups of them, many wounded but still forging ahead to fight, leapt down into the trenches to immediately renew the war of the fallen stormers. The Norman artillery, too, opened up on the main front of the battle with the definite retreat of the General Faeria, this time on the communications and reserve trenches to the rear of the main trench where their troops were fighting, to aide the efforts of the surviving tanks to break through on ahead and thereby disperse any reinforcements being sent forward to save the situation at the front trench of the Fileya Line. The battle had in fact just reached its most critical point.
Most of this was written by Marina, save the one paragraph of dialogue from Dani Verdes and the river boat attack.
DAY THREE: CONCLUSION.
The Kalundans armed with flamethrowers had just reached the front-rank trench themselves and cleared it when the Norman infantry arrived, and they reacted immediately, pressing up to the firing parapets with their horrific weapons and letting loose in long, sustained bursts using up the rest of the fuel in their tanks. The massed Norman attackers who were trying to push through the gaps in the minefields were incinerated by the dozens as they were covered in torrents of burning liquid napalm. This halted the waves of Normans for precious seconds until the fuel ran out. By then, however, a volley of potato-masher grenades was hurled into the Norman ranks as well and a desultory last fire from the trenches tore them up before the masses began to leap down, and brought the issue to doubt hand-to-hand.
Men stabbed and thrust with swords and axes and picks to chop apart the Kalundans in the ranks, only to be met with the stabbing of bayonets, the firing of shotguns, and the clatter of assault rifles at point-blank range. Many men were also armed with stamped-metal submachineguns that the factories of Kalunda were turning out, and could be used with deadly effect in the close confines of the trenches. Entrenching tools, also, proved themselves able in allowing the Kalundans to hold their own against the attacking Normans in the melee. It was a bloody mess worthy of any of the battles of old in which men had clashed with cold steel, and the Normans relished it for that, but it had the ugly edge of modern violence in tempo and intensity.
Though the Kalundans were for the moment holding their own, as the Normans flooded into the trenches and threatened the strongpoints, it was clear that they would soon be able to get the upper hand. Jhayka had by this time arrived at one of the forward command posts, and through a scanning periscope focused in close on the situation in the Fileya Line.
“Commit One Guard Corps,” she said after a moment. “I'll go further forward to the Taliya Line to observe their progress myself.”
“Your Highness,” Ilavna interrupted gently, “That's within range of the Norman artillery.”
“Yes, I'm aware of that. That's what the trenches are for. We'll proceed by side-car,” she noted and started forward even as another objection was lodged.
“Marshal, that's our whole reserve for this half of the southern sector. If we commit it all, moreso, the Normans will know that the northern sector is weaker in reserves.”
“We'll have to take the risk. I also want the front-line troops to fall back to the communications trench. We can't hold the front-line trench long enough for the reserves to arrive. They'll have to attack from the reserve trench to reinforce the front-line troops in the communications trench and then push back. That's the real reason we need the whole corps, we're simply going to lose the front-line trench, if temporarily.”
“Understood,” the officer saluted stiffly and turned to prepare the orders.
Jhayka and Ilavna dashed out to where they had waiting motorcycles, driving on boards laid down along the bottoms of the main longitudinal trenches. Jhayka, as proper, pulled on a pair of goggles and some gloves before settling down into the one side car. They were off in a moment, at the maniac speed urged on by the enthusiastic young girls of the Crimson Guard who drove them, as couriers normally.
They raced along on the desperately fast, bouncing ride, Jhayka's delicate-seeming six-fingered hands in her long leather gloves gripping to the side of the sidecar tensely as the journey was undertaken out to the front. She was, ultimately, still a brigadier, and her instincts told her to be with the troops making this assault.
There was to be no respite for the Kalundans anywhere on the line. From the moment that the Normans discovered that they had such strong reinforcements advancing, they redoubled the fire of their artillery, and ordered the tanks to advance over the next line of fortifications, which were very lightly defended, to meet the attacking Crimson Guard. They began to do so at once, but the tankers quickly discovered that for all that the Taradrua Line was lightly manned, it had been fully completed. Heavy anti-tank mines destroyed six more tanks, including one MBT, before the Normans halted their advance. Until their infantry could seize the lines behind them and come up with tools (which for the Normans were ludicrously primitive) for working through the minefield, they could not risk any more of their now-precious tanks.
Captain Askan fought with his men in the retreat through the madly zig-zagging longitudinal trenches leading back to the communications trench, less heavily defended, but cleared of the enemy. The Normans had few rifles with them by this point, having run out of ammunition through their lack of fire discipline or simply lost the majority of their rifle-armed troops, but they made up for it at skill at melee weapons and the throwing of grenades. Each barricade of the retreating Kalundans down one twisted corridor or another preserved the retreat at little cost, though, for the men could stand and fire their assault rifles until the Normans had closed to finish them with grenades, save in a few exceptions.
He got his company into position in the communications trench at last. “Get some men over here to fill in the side trench with whatever we can!” He shouted. “Everyone else—man the firing parapets!”
As men appeared all along the narrow parapet of the shallower communications trench, they were able to command the field as the Normans advanced once more. The Normans for their part tried to use the longitudinal trenches to breach the communications trenches, but the Kalundans were already quickly filling these in, or mining them, and men on both sides of each connecting trench threw a hail of grenades down into it until the Normans, thoroughly chopped up, were forced to retreat from them. The effort over open ground also faltered under assault-rifle fire, though the Normans had managed to capture many of the machine-guns. The few that were set up again were nonetheless able to wreak an incredible execution across the short span between the trenches.
For a few minutes the situation held as hundreds more Normans were chopped up by the renewed vigor of the Kalundan defences, fighting from lines which the Normans had not yet penetrated, save by a few advanced squads which had already long been suppressed. The purpose of this line was to hold long enough for a counterattack to be organized, and the calls and encouraging speeches of their officers made clear to the men on the lines that they were soon to be reinforced if they could just here stand their ground against the Norman host.
On the far side of the river to the west northwest, though, a second attack had developed. Here the Amazons held the line, and they had not yet been involved in the attacks. Now, without warning or preparatory bombardment, they charged ahead to assault the trenches of the Kalundan defenders. Their armament was much weaker than that of the Normans, and was with the support of only a limited number of technicals, but there were a lot of them, and they came on very fast and without any strategic warning, of which Jhayka had a good hour's of the Norman attack in the south. It was clear that the attack was entirely opportunistic but even as the machine-guns and mortars of the Kalundan lines in that area began to chop through it, there was a real chance that it could succeed, or at least force the Kalundans to commit their emergency reserves, leaving nothing available to meet any attacks elsewhere along the line, or an unexpected failure of the reserves now moving up against the main Norman assault to succeed in retaking the front-line trench.
As this attack was developing, Jhayka had reached the fast moving corps headquarters of One Guard Corps, and the General commanding—a woman veteran officer of Julio's Long March—greeted her with a terse assessment of the situation. Jhayka had herself just received the new reports of the Amazonian attack, and she made her decision in a fly. Dani will regret this so soon, I think, but we've scarcely any choice.
“Get me a direct link to central headquarters,” Jhayka ordered to the General Hisabal's Chief of Staff. It was providedc without a complaint about the peremptory nature of the Taloran's directives as she went for it, rather disdainful of the uniforms of the Crimson Guard staff officers but scarcely complaining now, as she brought up the channel.
“Your Majesty,” she said frankly as Julio came on the line. “I'd like to release the artilery to begin firing gas shells at the Amazonians. Chlorine.”
“This soon in the battle?” Julio frowned. “The Normans will come up with a counter for it.”
“That will just make them overconfident against Phosgene,” Jhayka replied. “And it can't be helped if we're going to hold the outer line, anyway. Unless you want us to abandon it already, Your Majesty...”
“No, we'll hold.” Julio answered. “Alright. The necessary orders will be issued.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. With your permission..?”
“Good luck to you, Marshal,” Julio replied, and cut off the communications link himself.
“Alright, I see you're preparing,” Jhayka noted at a quick glance over the computer linkups displaying in the dugout command centre, and then shifted the link herself to one that she knew by heart—directly to Dani, of course.
"Dani, this is Jhayka. I'm with the One Guard Corps HQ right now. We've got an Amazonian attack developing west-northwest pinning their flank on the river. The Normans clearly ordered it once they saw a corps-level response from our defences here. I want you to provide fire support for the defenders there along the river. Since we don't have the troops to reinforce that sector without eliminating our emergency reserves, I'm going to use chlorine gas on them so execute NBC procedures for your ships."
On the other end there was soon a response. "I've got all three boats moving into position now. I'll radio for them to commence fire support under NBC procedure immediately."
“Roger that. Over and out, Dani—and take care of yourself.” Jhayka turned off the link before Dani could reply, not wanting to clog herself with emotional issues at the moment to be sure.
“I'm going up to the jumping-off points in Line Taradrua myself,” Jhayka decided and announced aloud as she did.
“Your Highness,” General Hisabal frowned deeply. “Are you aware that the Norman tanks nearly reached that point?”
“Yes, and I want to make sure that you use your anti-tank weapons to the best effect. It'll be better for the soldiers to see themselves under my eye and my person on the front, anyway,” Jhayka answered. “Launch your attack as soon as all battalions are in position, columns through the longitudinal trenches and then deploy to battle-formation in the Fileya Line reserve trench and hit them with everything from there, over the top and straight forward. Sweep the communications trench first and then charge to the front line.”
“And the men holding the communications trench? You expect them..”
“Oh, they should still be there, they're still holding the Normans off right now,” Jhayka glanced to one of the screens to confirm that actually remained the case, which it was to her relief, “But it'll be hand-to-hand by that point.” A frown. “Well, order grenades to be saved for recapturing the front-line trench, that'll avoid excessive friendly fire casualties.”
“A reasonable suggestion, Marshal,” General Hisabal accepted the compromise.
“Then I'm going forward. God's grace to you, General Hisabal.” Jhayka started forward once more.
Captain Askan was firing one of his fallen men's rifles from the parapet himself, pouring out the contents of magazine after magazine as he was reduced to an example for his men in the desperate holding action in the communications trench. The Norman attacks were steadily growing more organized as they reformed their assault rifle armed contigents and distributed grenades which had been brought up by male slave-runners carrying replacement ammunition through the minefield on threat of death from HMG-armed technicals behind them if they turned back.
Most of the 60mm mortars had been evacuated and set back up, and so to counterbalance the increased firepower of the Normans and the improved coordination of their attacks, they were suffering again from the fire of the mortars whenever they had the ammunition to pump out their sustained twenty rounds a minute, or thirty round minutes for short bursts. The ground ahead and the overrun Front Line Trench was a continuous hell of falling mortar shells, both from those and the 120mm mortars which were set further to the rear anyway.
“They're broken through the barricade!!” Came a screaming shout to his left which reached even his defeaned ears. Maybe it was even over the headset he wore, though he was no longer sure—the right half of it had in fact been shot off in a miraculous near-miss.
“Four of you,” Askan responded automatically, gesturing with his free hand as he ducked down with the parapet and selecting them with gestures. “With me!” He started off, expecting to find the enemy.
Their men, fortunately, incredibly, still held on in a close-quarters fight of bayonet, bullet, and axe with the Normans. The dead bodies of several men with heads completely smashed and stove in by axes laid on the ground along with those who seemed dead of no discernable cause, and another man screamining incoherently as he tried to stuff his guts back into his ripped open stomach.
Firing ahead, and they met it with their firing, rushing up to the defenders and aiding them with only five rifles, but five rifles which were firing point-blank on full automatic in the midst of the Normans. The Kalundan guns in this sector used caseless ammunition and the doubled-up magazines held seventy rounds each. In all, 350 rounds were put into the Normans in a minute at most from those five rifles alone, possibly less time... Twelve or fourteen riddled bodies fell, and the defenders rushed back to repairing the barricades as Askan slapped a new magazine into his rifle and pushed up toward the barriacades and the collapsed dirt himself.
A burst from a submachinegun distracted him for a second as a Norman standing above the trench toppled in, having just about to fire down at them all. There was no time to marvel at the lucky break. He just grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and flung it down the longitudinal trench into the latest mass of rushing Normans, and then taking cover in the dirt of the partially collapsed trench wall, let loose again, now with careful aimed shots which in conjunction with many others checked this latest assault down the connecting trenches.
They still held. Somehow, they still held, but they could not hold for much longer, he knew it... We'll die here, but the reinforcements come, the city will hold, was the grim thought on his mind, which he hid from his troops as he walked along the vastly reduced front of his company and urged them to continue fighting, to fight with their guns until they had exhausted their ammunition, and then to stand and fight with their bayonets and shovels. And he, of course, would fight with them, right until the end.
The Amazonians were facing a sort of war which their ceremonial cultural, steeped in Dianic paganism, had never prepared them for. Not even the worst of the great and most disastrous conflicts against the Normans, which the constant threat of rape if captured in the air which lent them a ferocious and desperate aspect (and castration for captured Normans, yielding it also the other side as well), compared with the strange sort of madness into which they had now advanced.
As they had attacked, their had pushed straight into the teeth of massed heavy machineguns firing continuously on full-automatic from the prepared positions of the trenches and with them hundreds of mortar shells falling in their ranks every second, the combination of which had torn their formations to shreds and wounded and maimed countless numbers of the brave women who, seeing the battle as their chance to redeem the honour of their nation and society and as an act of restoring the Dianic traditions of their past, now encountered mechanized and modern slaughter in a set-piece battle designed by the maddening alien woman to kill as many people as possible over the longest period possible. It took the sort of war that Sara Proctor had introduced so many decades ago to a whole new level, and a whole new ruthlessness.
Yet the Amazons were brave. It was undeniable, and for all the thousands who were downed by the mortar and machine-gun and rifle fire along, there were thousands more who pushed on toward the minefields and the caltrops and swine-feather traps and bared wire of the Kalundan defences, and when they had exacted their toll, yet thousands more who could carry the trenches.
They had been able to get in close thanks to the lack of warning of any kind of preparatory bombardment or massing of tanks, and they were light and fast in running across the field, and showed at least some marginal ability to advance, cover, advance, cover and thereby reduce their casualties, a natural extension of the form of warfare of their nation which they favoured.
Because of all of this, they were in fact a major danger to the Kalundan defences as they attacked in the tens of thousands. The defenders of the Kalundan trenches were preparing for the worst, meeting them hand-to-hand, but it would not come to that.
Deep inside the city, the 150 heavy howitzers of the Kalundan Army had shifted their ammunition as new trucks arrived loaded with shells which had a skull and a toxic symbol painted on them, along with, notably, a green cross. Gas shells, working against the resperatory tract.
Along the Kalundan trenches, warnings were received, and for the first time in the primitive zone went out a strange call from the officers and the sergeants:
“DON YOUR GAS MASKS!”
They were primitive contraptions of leather and rubber, with simple charcoal filters, but they could work very well against chlorine, and in the past days the Kalundan troops had been forced to drill in donning and doffing them and in wearing them during combat operations constantly. Fire slacked from the trenches for a moment as they all donned their masks in unison and cheers went up from the Amazons as they rushed forward, thinking victory was at last in their grasp, just to get pinned up on the wire and in the minefields as the Kalundans abruptly returned to action after mere seconds with a devastating new barrage.
Then, with a distinctive warbling overhead familiar to anyone who had been gassed before, but strange and frightening to the Amazons, the first salvo, and then another, and another, of the gas shells raced over the field, spewing their distinct load until they crashed into the ground softly, without exploding, and released even more of it. A strange yellow-green cloud began to grow and spread over no-man's land, engulfing the entirely unprotected Amazons. It had a distinct smell, combined pineapple and pepper, it seemed like...
Soon the women were suffering, as they tried to break into the Kalundan trenches, from chest pains and burning throats. Those who inhaled the highest concentrations were dead, even if it took hours or days for them to die, without the most modern of medical attention. For many of the worst gassed the pain in their chests, like the pain from pneumonia, and the intense burning in the throat, so hot it seemed to be radiating fire and an intense, aching dryness, was rapidly disabling and incredibly terrifying, even for those far less affected.
Soon after that, the river squadron went into action..
Moving up on the Kalunda River were Dani's three new boats; the Lincoln, Douglass, and Brown. Lincoln was fitted with the largest direct-fire cannon available for a boat it's size. Douglass, which was the most heavily-armored, had large flamethrowers fixed to it, while the Brown - almost as well-armored - had the two largest mortars that could be conceivably fitted to the craft.
The all-female Crimson Guard crews of all three boats were ready for the chlorine gas should the wind push it in their direction. They came up to their firing range and began the support fire that Admiral Verdes had ordered.
Commanding the "First Boat Division" from the Lincoln was Lt. Colonel Rose Juginis, a forty-seven year old brunette with a slim figure. She was a Kalundan commoner, a reservist who ordinarily worked as a manager at the Kalundan Boat Manufacturing Combine, and she had served with the Guard's river fleet since she was 20. She had been only six when she watched Norman men rape her mother and aunts during the horrible first sack of Kalunda - and act that led to her mother's death from infection mere weeks later - and she was not about to leave herself or her daughters to their mercies. With a grim expression of satisfaction she had ordered the bombardment, not caring for the moment that she was slaughtering Amazons and not Normans. It would be their turn soon enough.
Fire and shot fell into the clouds of greenish-yellow. There were screams to be heard, but Juginis was deaf to the suffering of her targets. Kalunda had fallen once and it had fallen intact - this time, it would not fall so, but if defeated, there wouldn't be a city left for their enemies to rule. This was her oath, and the oath of all the women under her command.
The Frederick Douglass was under the command of Captain Helen Carver. The half-Lisean girl, fathered by a Lisean consular official and the Kalundan wife he took, was a beautiful twenty-five year old with Hispanic, Caucasian, Arabic, and Oriental heritages, her appearance combining aspects of all to stunning perfection - the slight slimness to her eyes, the exotic bronze tan of her skin, her healthy flowing black hair, shining blue eyes, not to mention the exquisite beauty of her physical form. Captain Carver was no stranger to her physical beauty, maintaining a gainful side employment as an "entertainer" for Captain Magni d'Hegia's yacht parties (because of it's formally small size, the Crimson Guard's River Flotilla tended to be tightly-knit, with almost all of it's officers acquainted in one way or another with the others), but now she was a killer, and her lips curled into a devilish grin as she gave the order for the flamethrower crews to attack, sparing no mercy for the foe that was soon to receive the hellish hand of justice from the Douglass.
Steams of flame reached out far from the Douglass. They easily reached the shore where the flames quickly pierced the masses of screaming Amazon "huntresses", as they liked to be called, even before they could reach the thick cloud of chlorine that was choking their comrades ahead. Hair, cloth, and even flesh caught flame, and the frenzied screams of battle were replaced by screams of terrible agony as the women thrashed about, trying to extinguish the blazes that were burning them alive.
The combination of the gas and the attacks from the river proved to much to the Amazons, who had still failed to get through the defences of the wire, mines, and other obstructions. They broke and fled to the rear, trying to escape the killing gas, trying to escape the enfilading fire from the river, and once they had broken, trying to escape everything as the vigorous machine-gunning and mortar fire continued even as they retreated, and they had to run hundreds of yards through the chlorine gas which even in weak concentrations inhibited their breathing and limited their ability to such exercise.
The slaughter as they tried to escape the field was nearly as bad as during the attack, and thus ended the effort of the allies to exploit the Kalundan concentration in the south. But the Norman attack there was itself not yet expended.
With a flash of pink hair, their commander ran down their ranks in full armour, so immensely tall. The young women of the Crimson Guard were awed at the alien and her equally-alien and tall assistant, as they dashed out with them down the supporting trenches toward the Fileya line. Progressively Jhayka had made it clear that she intended to lead off the counterattack, and Ilavna's resistance had been chipped away moment after moment as Jhayka inched her way from one forward point to another.
The I Guard Corps had already seen action. The enemy tanks—heavily attrited—had been between it and the Fileya line. But the General Faeria had been somewhat repaired, and with the tanks so far forward and exposed, could engage them with some guns without fully exposing itself to the Norman artillery. Quickly knocking out eight tanks, the General Faeria returned armoured support to the Kalundans and thereby shifted the course of the battle once again. The Kalundan artillery, having thoroughly gassed the Amazonian attack, now shifted with anti-tank cluster munitions to begin firing on the exposed Norman armour.
Of course, above all, the anti-tank troops of I Guard had in the advance pushed up and hit the remaining tanks with their MANPADs at close range, until at last the Normans, aware that they had lost huge numbers of their whole tank force, ordered its retreat. In the process of that retreat, fired on from every direction, the tanks nevertheless made themselves useful, collapsing several longitudinal trenches and attacking the defenders of the communications trench from behind before pulling back entirely beyond the Fileya Line, leaving countless burned out hulks behind them as a testament to the failure of the Norman tactics.
The communications trench was heavily embattled. The tanks retreating over it and firing into it whenever they could bear had created enough damage and chaos and confusion for the Norman attacks to finally break through, and intense hand-to-hand fighting raged all along it. Captain Askan was himself still alive, though wounded thrice. Propped up in the trench along a collapsed wall from the tanks where the dirt spilled in on everything, including his severe wounds, resting on his back and bloody, he still held his rifle and fired whenever he thought he could against a Norman in the confused shifting of the press. They could only last a few more minutes at most.
Now the I Guard Corps was arriving at the reserve trench of the Fileya line itself, and was quickly deploying to push up out of it and make a general assault along every sector of the front where the Normans had seized the front-line trench. The young women in their flamboyant uniforms with modern weapons stared at the burning and smokey hell of the maddening war ahead of them, or simply couldn't see at all inside the trenches, nothing but the press of bodies and the smell of sweat and of the wet earth all around them, and prepared to ascend the parapets and advance and die. They were mostly nervous, and Jhayka moved among them saying encouraging words, and then looked with dire seriousness to Ilavna:
“Stay here.”
Ilavna's eyes got wide. “You..!?”
“Stay. That is a command from your sovereign.” Jhayka turned toward the sally-ports in the trench, the stepping off points prepared in it for a counterattacks to be conducted from it. They were now packed with troops. As the officers received the necessary radio signals, they prepared that cheap and most infamous signal of when it was time to go over the top, to attack and die.. Their whistles.
Jhayka, in a single bound, leapt up from the firing parapet, knowing in her modern armour that it wasn't as dangerous as it looked. A large piece of shrapnel hit her, not damaging the armour, though she was staggered. Standing firm she held up her swagger stick, and in the local language and with all the force of her voice:
“Follow me!” She started walking forward.
The whistle blew. The example was noticed immediately by those around her, and they, surprised at the foreigner and alien risking her life so, surged ahead in a desire to show their own bravery for their King's cause in following her action. They charged upwards, and as they surged, all along the attack front the example was imitated, as the officers saw it or heard it from their fellow-officers on the comnet of the corps, and immediately sought to imitate Jhayka, dashing to the front-rank themselves and many dying.
Tens of thousands of Kalundans, bayonets on their rifles fixed, charged forward across no-man's land, across less than two hundred meters to the communications trench, until they had surpassed Jhayka herself, who reluctantly let their mass take the lead, knowing her own life to be vital, until they hda swept on forward and reached the communications trench in but a two minute's time with the execution of a desperate charge which saw them suffering, as it turned out, almost no casualties at all. Only the Norman tanks, and in the last moment, artillery opened fire, and by then it was to late. Jhayka took cover in one of the longitudinal trenches, and the women of the Crimson Guard surged forward and into the communications trench by tens of thousands, overwhelming by sheer numbers at point of bayonet the neigh-victorious Normans there.
Stabbing and shooting and throwing grenades down the longitudinal trenches forward, they cleared out the Normans, who recoiled from their immense numbers even as they tried to fight harder against the womanly foe whom they particularly despised, and in so doing exposed themselves both to the disciplined efforts of the Crimson Guard and to the vigorous fighting ability of the surviving Kalundan men in the communications trench. They swept over it, driving their bayonets mercilessly into the stomachs of most of the wounded Normans as they pressed on the last seventy meters to the front-line trench.
With the majority of the Normans who had survived to reach the front-line trench have gone ahead and pressed on to hit the communications trench, almost every man with a weapon in the front-line trench now was Norman wounded or guards for the slaves being forced to carry forward the ammo. They had no chance against the victorious rush off the Crimson Guard with bayonets fixed and guns and grenades firing and being flung. In fifteen minutes of sharp action, the front-line trench was cleared also at point of bayonet, cold steel victorious even in the hands of these mere girls, and Jhayka herself had to rush to the front to help the surviving officers in halting them before they tried to counterattack beyond their own front-line trenches, so great was their momentum and enthusiasm for the attack. Thus ended the fighting of the Third Day.
The first Norman effort at taking Kalunda by coup de main had failed, and it was also the last--but the siege was just beginning.
DAY THREE: CONCLUSION.
The Kalundans armed with flamethrowers had just reached the front-rank trench themselves and cleared it when the Norman infantry arrived, and they reacted immediately, pressing up to the firing parapets with their horrific weapons and letting loose in long, sustained bursts using up the rest of the fuel in their tanks. The massed Norman attackers who were trying to push through the gaps in the minefields were incinerated by the dozens as they were covered in torrents of burning liquid napalm. This halted the waves of Normans for precious seconds until the fuel ran out. By then, however, a volley of potato-masher grenades was hurled into the Norman ranks as well and a desultory last fire from the trenches tore them up before the masses began to leap down, and brought the issue to doubt hand-to-hand.
Men stabbed and thrust with swords and axes and picks to chop apart the Kalundans in the ranks, only to be met with the stabbing of bayonets, the firing of shotguns, and the clatter of assault rifles at point-blank range. Many men were also armed with stamped-metal submachineguns that the factories of Kalunda were turning out, and could be used with deadly effect in the close confines of the trenches. Entrenching tools, also, proved themselves able in allowing the Kalundans to hold their own against the attacking Normans in the melee. It was a bloody mess worthy of any of the battles of old in which men had clashed with cold steel, and the Normans relished it for that, but it had the ugly edge of modern violence in tempo and intensity.
Though the Kalundans were for the moment holding their own, as the Normans flooded into the trenches and threatened the strongpoints, it was clear that they would soon be able to get the upper hand. Jhayka had by this time arrived at one of the forward command posts, and through a scanning periscope focused in close on the situation in the Fileya Line.
“Commit One Guard Corps,” she said after a moment. “I'll go further forward to the Taliya Line to observe their progress myself.”
“Your Highness,” Ilavna interrupted gently, “That's within range of the Norman artillery.”
“Yes, I'm aware of that. That's what the trenches are for. We'll proceed by side-car,” she noted and started forward even as another objection was lodged.
“Marshal, that's our whole reserve for this half of the southern sector. If we commit it all, moreso, the Normans will know that the northern sector is weaker in reserves.”
“We'll have to take the risk. I also want the front-line troops to fall back to the communications trench. We can't hold the front-line trench long enough for the reserves to arrive. They'll have to attack from the reserve trench to reinforce the front-line troops in the communications trench and then push back. That's the real reason we need the whole corps, we're simply going to lose the front-line trench, if temporarily.”
“Understood,” the officer saluted stiffly and turned to prepare the orders.
Jhayka and Ilavna dashed out to where they had waiting motorcycles, driving on boards laid down along the bottoms of the main longitudinal trenches. Jhayka, as proper, pulled on a pair of goggles and some gloves before settling down into the one side car. They were off in a moment, at the maniac speed urged on by the enthusiastic young girls of the Crimson Guard who drove them, as couriers normally.
They raced along on the desperately fast, bouncing ride, Jhayka's delicate-seeming six-fingered hands in her long leather gloves gripping to the side of the sidecar tensely as the journey was undertaken out to the front. She was, ultimately, still a brigadier, and her instincts told her to be with the troops making this assault.
There was to be no respite for the Kalundans anywhere on the line. From the moment that the Normans discovered that they had such strong reinforcements advancing, they redoubled the fire of their artillery, and ordered the tanks to advance over the next line of fortifications, which were very lightly defended, to meet the attacking Crimson Guard. They began to do so at once, but the tankers quickly discovered that for all that the Taradrua Line was lightly manned, it had been fully completed. Heavy anti-tank mines destroyed six more tanks, including one MBT, before the Normans halted their advance. Until their infantry could seize the lines behind them and come up with tools (which for the Normans were ludicrously primitive) for working through the minefield, they could not risk any more of their now-precious tanks.
Captain Askan fought with his men in the retreat through the madly zig-zagging longitudinal trenches leading back to the communications trench, less heavily defended, but cleared of the enemy. The Normans had few rifles with them by this point, having run out of ammunition through their lack of fire discipline or simply lost the majority of their rifle-armed troops, but they made up for it at skill at melee weapons and the throwing of grenades. Each barricade of the retreating Kalundans down one twisted corridor or another preserved the retreat at little cost, though, for the men could stand and fire their assault rifles until the Normans had closed to finish them with grenades, save in a few exceptions.
He got his company into position in the communications trench at last. “Get some men over here to fill in the side trench with whatever we can!” He shouted. “Everyone else—man the firing parapets!”
As men appeared all along the narrow parapet of the shallower communications trench, they were able to command the field as the Normans advanced once more. The Normans for their part tried to use the longitudinal trenches to breach the communications trenches, but the Kalundans were already quickly filling these in, or mining them, and men on both sides of each connecting trench threw a hail of grenades down into it until the Normans, thoroughly chopped up, were forced to retreat from them. The effort over open ground also faltered under assault-rifle fire, though the Normans had managed to capture many of the machine-guns. The few that were set up again were nonetheless able to wreak an incredible execution across the short span between the trenches.
For a few minutes the situation held as hundreds more Normans were chopped up by the renewed vigor of the Kalundan defences, fighting from lines which the Normans had not yet penetrated, save by a few advanced squads which had already long been suppressed. The purpose of this line was to hold long enough for a counterattack to be organized, and the calls and encouraging speeches of their officers made clear to the men on the lines that they were soon to be reinforced if they could just here stand their ground against the Norman host.
On the far side of the river to the west northwest, though, a second attack had developed. Here the Amazons held the line, and they had not yet been involved in the attacks. Now, without warning or preparatory bombardment, they charged ahead to assault the trenches of the Kalundan defenders. Their armament was much weaker than that of the Normans, and was with the support of only a limited number of technicals, but there were a lot of them, and they came on very fast and without any strategic warning, of which Jhayka had a good hour's of the Norman attack in the south. It was clear that the attack was entirely opportunistic but even as the machine-guns and mortars of the Kalundan lines in that area began to chop through it, there was a real chance that it could succeed, or at least force the Kalundans to commit their emergency reserves, leaving nothing available to meet any attacks elsewhere along the line, or an unexpected failure of the reserves now moving up against the main Norman assault to succeed in retaking the front-line trench.
As this attack was developing, Jhayka had reached the fast moving corps headquarters of One Guard Corps, and the General commanding—a woman veteran officer of Julio's Long March—greeted her with a terse assessment of the situation. Jhayka had herself just received the new reports of the Amazonian attack, and she made her decision in a fly. Dani will regret this so soon, I think, but we've scarcely any choice.
“Get me a direct link to central headquarters,” Jhayka ordered to the General Hisabal's Chief of Staff. It was providedc without a complaint about the peremptory nature of the Taloran's directives as she went for it, rather disdainful of the uniforms of the Crimson Guard staff officers but scarcely complaining now, as she brought up the channel.
“Your Majesty,” she said frankly as Julio came on the line. “I'd like to release the artilery to begin firing gas shells at the Amazonians. Chlorine.”
“This soon in the battle?” Julio frowned. “The Normans will come up with a counter for it.”
“That will just make them overconfident against Phosgene,” Jhayka replied. “And it can't be helped if we're going to hold the outer line, anyway. Unless you want us to abandon it already, Your Majesty...”
“No, we'll hold.” Julio answered. “Alright. The necessary orders will be issued.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. With your permission..?”
“Good luck to you, Marshal,” Julio replied, and cut off the communications link himself.
“Alright, I see you're preparing,” Jhayka noted at a quick glance over the computer linkups displaying in the dugout command centre, and then shifted the link herself to one that she knew by heart—directly to Dani, of course.
"Dani, this is Jhayka. I'm with the One Guard Corps HQ right now. We've got an Amazonian attack developing west-northwest pinning their flank on the river. The Normans clearly ordered it once they saw a corps-level response from our defences here. I want you to provide fire support for the defenders there along the river. Since we don't have the troops to reinforce that sector without eliminating our emergency reserves, I'm going to use chlorine gas on them so execute NBC procedures for your ships."
On the other end there was soon a response. "I've got all three boats moving into position now. I'll radio for them to commence fire support under NBC procedure immediately."
“Roger that. Over and out, Dani—and take care of yourself.” Jhayka turned off the link before Dani could reply, not wanting to clog herself with emotional issues at the moment to be sure.
“I'm going up to the jumping-off points in Line Taradrua myself,” Jhayka decided and announced aloud as she did.
“Your Highness,” General Hisabal frowned deeply. “Are you aware that the Norman tanks nearly reached that point?”
“Yes, and I want to make sure that you use your anti-tank weapons to the best effect. It'll be better for the soldiers to see themselves under my eye and my person on the front, anyway,” Jhayka answered. “Launch your attack as soon as all battalions are in position, columns through the longitudinal trenches and then deploy to battle-formation in the Fileya Line reserve trench and hit them with everything from there, over the top and straight forward. Sweep the communications trench first and then charge to the front line.”
“And the men holding the communications trench? You expect them..”
“Oh, they should still be there, they're still holding the Normans off right now,” Jhayka glanced to one of the screens to confirm that actually remained the case, which it was to her relief, “But it'll be hand-to-hand by that point.” A frown. “Well, order grenades to be saved for recapturing the front-line trench, that'll avoid excessive friendly fire casualties.”
“A reasonable suggestion, Marshal,” General Hisabal accepted the compromise.
“Then I'm going forward. God's grace to you, General Hisabal.” Jhayka started forward once more.
Captain Askan was firing one of his fallen men's rifles from the parapet himself, pouring out the contents of magazine after magazine as he was reduced to an example for his men in the desperate holding action in the communications trench. The Norman attacks were steadily growing more organized as they reformed their assault rifle armed contigents and distributed grenades which had been brought up by male slave-runners carrying replacement ammunition through the minefield on threat of death from HMG-armed technicals behind them if they turned back.
Most of the 60mm mortars had been evacuated and set back up, and so to counterbalance the increased firepower of the Normans and the improved coordination of their attacks, they were suffering again from the fire of the mortars whenever they had the ammunition to pump out their sustained twenty rounds a minute, or thirty round minutes for short bursts. The ground ahead and the overrun Front Line Trench was a continuous hell of falling mortar shells, both from those and the 120mm mortars which were set further to the rear anyway.
“They're broken through the barricade!!” Came a screaming shout to his left which reached even his defeaned ears. Maybe it was even over the headset he wore, though he was no longer sure—the right half of it had in fact been shot off in a miraculous near-miss.
“Four of you,” Askan responded automatically, gesturing with his free hand as he ducked down with the parapet and selecting them with gestures. “With me!” He started off, expecting to find the enemy.
Their men, fortunately, incredibly, still held on in a close-quarters fight of bayonet, bullet, and axe with the Normans. The dead bodies of several men with heads completely smashed and stove in by axes laid on the ground along with those who seemed dead of no discernable cause, and another man screamining incoherently as he tried to stuff his guts back into his ripped open stomach.
Firing ahead, and they met it with their firing, rushing up to the defenders and aiding them with only five rifles, but five rifles which were firing point-blank on full automatic in the midst of the Normans. The Kalundan guns in this sector used caseless ammunition and the doubled-up magazines held seventy rounds each. In all, 350 rounds were put into the Normans in a minute at most from those five rifles alone, possibly less time... Twelve or fourteen riddled bodies fell, and the defenders rushed back to repairing the barricades as Askan slapped a new magazine into his rifle and pushed up toward the barriacades and the collapsed dirt himself.
A burst from a submachinegun distracted him for a second as a Norman standing above the trench toppled in, having just about to fire down at them all. There was no time to marvel at the lucky break. He just grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and flung it down the longitudinal trench into the latest mass of rushing Normans, and then taking cover in the dirt of the partially collapsed trench wall, let loose again, now with careful aimed shots which in conjunction with many others checked this latest assault down the connecting trenches.
They still held. Somehow, they still held, but they could not hold for much longer, he knew it... We'll die here, but the reinforcements come, the city will hold, was the grim thought on his mind, which he hid from his troops as he walked along the vastly reduced front of his company and urged them to continue fighting, to fight with their guns until they had exhausted their ammunition, and then to stand and fight with their bayonets and shovels. And he, of course, would fight with them, right until the end.
The Amazonians were facing a sort of war which their ceremonial cultural, steeped in Dianic paganism, had never prepared them for. Not even the worst of the great and most disastrous conflicts against the Normans, which the constant threat of rape if captured in the air which lent them a ferocious and desperate aspect (and castration for captured Normans, yielding it also the other side as well), compared with the strange sort of madness into which they had now advanced.
As they had attacked, their had pushed straight into the teeth of massed heavy machineguns firing continuously on full-automatic from the prepared positions of the trenches and with them hundreds of mortar shells falling in their ranks every second, the combination of which had torn their formations to shreds and wounded and maimed countless numbers of the brave women who, seeing the battle as their chance to redeem the honour of their nation and society and as an act of restoring the Dianic traditions of their past, now encountered mechanized and modern slaughter in a set-piece battle designed by the maddening alien woman to kill as many people as possible over the longest period possible. It took the sort of war that Sara Proctor had introduced so many decades ago to a whole new level, and a whole new ruthlessness.
Yet the Amazons were brave. It was undeniable, and for all the thousands who were downed by the mortar and machine-gun and rifle fire along, there were thousands more who pushed on toward the minefields and the caltrops and swine-feather traps and bared wire of the Kalundan defences, and when they had exacted their toll, yet thousands more who could carry the trenches.
They had been able to get in close thanks to the lack of warning of any kind of preparatory bombardment or massing of tanks, and they were light and fast in running across the field, and showed at least some marginal ability to advance, cover, advance, cover and thereby reduce their casualties, a natural extension of the form of warfare of their nation which they favoured.
Because of all of this, they were in fact a major danger to the Kalundan defences as they attacked in the tens of thousands. The defenders of the Kalundan trenches were preparing for the worst, meeting them hand-to-hand, but it would not come to that.
Deep inside the city, the 150 heavy howitzers of the Kalundan Army had shifted their ammunition as new trucks arrived loaded with shells which had a skull and a toxic symbol painted on them, along with, notably, a green cross. Gas shells, working against the resperatory tract.
Along the Kalundan trenches, warnings were received, and for the first time in the primitive zone went out a strange call from the officers and the sergeants:
“DON YOUR GAS MASKS!”
They were primitive contraptions of leather and rubber, with simple charcoal filters, but they could work very well against chlorine, and in the past days the Kalundan troops had been forced to drill in donning and doffing them and in wearing them during combat operations constantly. Fire slacked from the trenches for a moment as they all donned their masks in unison and cheers went up from the Amazons as they rushed forward, thinking victory was at last in their grasp, just to get pinned up on the wire and in the minefields as the Kalundans abruptly returned to action after mere seconds with a devastating new barrage.
Then, with a distinctive warbling overhead familiar to anyone who had been gassed before, but strange and frightening to the Amazons, the first salvo, and then another, and another, of the gas shells raced over the field, spewing their distinct load until they crashed into the ground softly, without exploding, and released even more of it. A strange yellow-green cloud began to grow and spread over no-man's land, engulfing the entirely unprotected Amazons. It had a distinct smell, combined pineapple and pepper, it seemed like...
Soon the women were suffering, as they tried to break into the Kalundan trenches, from chest pains and burning throats. Those who inhaled the highest concentrations were dead, even if it took hours or days for them to die, without the most modern of medical attention. For many of the worst gassed the pain in their chests, like the pain from pneumonia, and the intense burning in the throat, so hot it seemed to be radiating fire and an intense, aching dryness, was rapidly disabling and incredibly terrifying, even for those far less affected.
Soon after that, the river squadron went into action..
Moving up on the Kalunda River were Dani's three new boats; the Lincoln, Douglass, and Brown. Lincoln was fitted with the largest direct-fire cannon available for a boat it's size. Douglass, which was the most heavily-armored, had large flamethrowers fixed to it, while the Brown - almost as well-armored - had the two largest mortars that could be conceivably fitted to the craft.
The all-female Crimson Guard crews of all three boats were ready for the chlorine gas should the wind push it in their direction. They came up to their firing range and began the support fire that Admiral Verdes had ordered.
Commanding the "First Boat Division" from the Lincoln was Lt. Colonel Rose Juginis, a forty-seven year old brunette with a slim figure. She was a Kalundan commoner, a reservist who ordinarily worked as a manager at the Kalundan Boat Manufacturing Combine, and she had served with the Guard's river fleet since she was 20. She had been only six when she watched Norman men rape her mother and aunts during the horrible first sack of Kalunda - and act that led to her mother's death from infection mere weeks later - and she was not about to leave herself or her daughters to their mercies. With a grim expression of satisfaction she had ordered the bombardment, not caring for the moment that she was slaughtering Amazons and not Normans. It would be their turn soon enough.
Fire and shot fell into the clouds of greenish-yellow. There were screams to be heard, but Juginis was deaf to the suffering of her targets. Kalunda had fallen once and it had fallen intact - this time, it would not fall so, but if defeated, there wouldn't be a city left for their enemies to rule. This was her oath, and the oath of all the women under her command.
The Frederick Douglass was under the command of Captain Helen Carver. The half-Lisean girl, fathered by a Lisean consular official and the Kalundan wife he took, was a beautiful twenty-five year old with Hispanic, Caucasian, Arabic, and Oriental heritages, her appearance combining aspects of all to stunning perfection - the slight slimness to her eyes, the exotic bronze tan of her skin, her healthy flowing black hair, shining blue eyes, not to mention the exquisite beauty of her physical form. Captain Carver was no stranger to her physical beauty, maintaining a gainful side employment as an "entertainer" for Captain Magni d'Hegia's yacht parties (because of it's formally small size, the Crimson Guard's River Flotilla tended to be tightly-knit, with almost all of it's officers acquainted in one way or another with the others), but now she was a killer, and her lips curled into a devilish grin as she gave the order for the flamethrower crews to attack, sparing no mercy for the foe that was soon to receive the hellish hand of justice from the Douglass.
Steams of flame reached out far from the Douglass. They easily reached the shore where the flames quickly pierced the masses of screaming Amazon "huntresses", as they liked to be called, even before they could reach the thick cloud of chlorine that was choking their comrades ahead. Hair, cloth, and even flesh caught flame, and the frenzied screams of battle were replaced by screams of terrible agony as the women thrashed about, trying to extinguish the blazes that were burning them alive.
The combination of the gas and the attacks from the river proved to much to the Amazons, who had still failed to get through the defences of the wire, mines, and other obstructions. They broke and fled to the rear, trying to escape the killing gas, trying to escape the enfilading fire from the river, and once they had broken, trying to escape everything as the vigorous machine-gunning and mortar fire continued even as they retreated, and they had to run hundreds of yards through the chlorine gas which even in weak concentrations inhibited their breathing and limited their ability to such exercise.
The slaughter as they tried to escape the field was nearly as bad as during the attack, and thus ended the effort of the allies to exploit the Kalundan concentration in the south. But the Norman attack there was itself not yet expended.
With a flash of pink hair, their commander ran down their ranks in full armour, so immensely tall. The young women of the Crimson Guard were awed at the alien and her equally-alien and tall assistant, as they dashed out with them down the supporting trenches toward the Fileya line. Progressively Jhayka had made it clear that she intended to lead off the counterattack, and Ilavna's resistance had been chipped away moment after moment as Jhayka inched her way from one forward point to another.
The I Guard Corps had already seen action. The enemy tanks—heavily attrited—had been between it and the Fileya line. But the General Faeria had been somewhat repaired, and with the tanks so far forward and exposed, could engage them with some guns without fully exposing itself to the Norman artillery. Quickly knocking out eight tanks, the General Faeria returned armoured support to the Kalundans and thereby shifted the course of the battle once again. The Kalundan artillery, having thoroughly gassed the Amazonian attack, now shifted with anti-tank cluster munitions to begin firing on the exposed Norman armour.
Of course, above all, the anti-tank troops of I Guard had in the advance pushed up and hit the remaining tanks with their MANPADs at close range, until at last the Normans, aware that they had lost huge numbers of their whole tank force, ordered its retreat. In the process of that retreat, fired on from every direction, the tanks nevertheless made themselves useful, collapsing several longitudinal trenches and attacking the defenders of the communications trench from behind before pulling back entirely beyond the Fileya Line, leaving countless burned out hulks behind them as a testament to the failure of the Norman tactics.
The communications trench was heavily embattled. The tanks retreating over it and firing into it whenever they could bear had created enough damage and chaos and confusion for the Norman attacks to finally break through, and intense hand-to-hand fighting raged all along it. Captain Askan was himself still alive, though wounded thrice. Propped up in the trench along a collapsed wall from the tanks where the dirt spilled in on everything, including his severe wounds, resting on his back and bloody, he still held his rifle and fired whenever he thought he could against a Norman in the confused shifting of the press. They could only last a few more minutes at most.
Now the I Guard Corps was arriving at the reserve trench of the Fileya line itself, and was quickly deploying to push up out of it and make a general assault along every sector of the front where the Normans had seized the front-line trench. The young women in their flamboyant uniforms with modern weapons stared at the burning and smokey hell of the maddening war ahead of them, or simply couldn't see at all inside the trenches, nothing but the press of bodies and the smell of sweat and of the wet earth all around them, and prepared to ascend the parapets and advance and die. They were mostly nervous, and Jhayka moved among them saying encouraging words, and then looked with dire seriousness to Ilavna:
“Stay here.”
Ilavna's eyes got wide. “You..!?”
“Stay. That is a command from your sovereign.” Jhayka turned toward the sally-ports in the trench, the stepping off points prepared in it for a counterattacks to be conducted from it. They were now packed with troops. As the officers received the necessary radio signals, they prepared that cheap and most infamous signal of when it was time to go over the top, to attack and die.. Their whistles.
Jhayka, in a single bound, leapt up from the firing parapet, knowing in her modern armour that it wasn't as dangerous as it looked. A large piece of shrapnel hit her, not damaging the armour, though she was staggered. Standing firm she held up her swagger stick, and in the local language and with all the force of her voice:
“Follow me!” She started walking forward.
The whistle blew. The example was noticed immediately by those around her, and they, surprised at the foreigner and alien risking her life so, surged ahead in a desire to show their own bravery for their King's cause in following her action. They charged upwards, and as they surged, all along the attack front the example was imitated, as the officers saw it or heard it from their fellow-officers on the comnet of the corps, and immediately sought to imitate Jhayka, dashing to the front-rank themselves and many dying.
Tens of thousands of Kalundans, bayonets on their rifles fixed, charged forward across no-man's land, across less than two hundred meters to the communications trench, until they had surpassed Jhayka herself, who reluctantly let their mass take the lead, knowing her own life to be vital, until they hda swept on forward and reached the communications trench in but a two minute's time with the execution of a desperate charge which saw them suffering, as it turned out, almost no casualties at all. Only the Norman tanks, and in the last moment, artillery opened fire, and by then it was to late. Jhayka took cover in one of the longitudinal trenches, and the women of the Crimson Guard surged forward and into the communications trench by tens of thousands, overwhelming by sheer numbers at point of bayonet the neigh-victorious Normans there.
Stabbing and shooting and throwing grenades down the longitudinal trenches forward, they cleared out the Normans, who recoiled from their immense numbers even as they tried to fight harder against the womanly foe whom they particularly despised, and in so doing exposed themselves both to the disciplined efforts of the Crimson Guard and to the vigorous fighting ability of the surviving Kalundan men in the communications trench. They swept over it, driving their bayonets mercilessly into the stomachs of most of the wounded Normans as they pressed on the last seventy meters to the front-line trench.
With the majority of the Normans who had survived to reach the front-line trench have gone ahead and pressed on to hit the communications trench, almost every man with a weapon in the front-line trench now was Norman wounded or guards for the slaves being forced to carry forward the ammo. They had no chance against the victorious rush off the Crimson Guard with bayonets fixed and guns and grenades firing and being flung. In fifteen minutes of sharp action, the front-line trench was cleared also at point of bayonet, cold steel victorious even in the hands of these mere girls, and Jhayka herself had to rush to the front to help the surviving officers in halting them before they tried to counterattack beyond their own front-line trenches, so great was their momentum and enthusiasm for the attack. Thus ended the fighting of the Third Day.
The first Norman effort at taking Kalunda by coup de main had failed, and it was also the last--but the siege was just beginning.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Written by Marina:
DAY FOUR
KALUNDA CENTRAL HOSPITAL
Leeasa Avrila shuddered as she took another pained breath which left her body wracked in convulsions. She was having such difficulty breathing, such pain.. Each breath was like a sledgehammer striking her chest. Even the pain medications--I've been given pain medications?--she tried to remember where she was..
Oh, right. A Kalundan hospital. Strange. I should have thought they'd have killed me, or worse. She forced her eyes open. There was a strange scene there, a human woman, tall and immensely beautiful to Leeasa's eyes, a warriorress proper, talking in a hushed tone to...
The alien. The Normans had made a great deal of fuss over her; the Amazons had privately been glad for her strike against Ar, such a daring thing against allies with whom they had a long history of bad blood. But turning her over to the Normans, if distasteful, would have still be acceptable for the sake of the nation... Clearly it wasn't going to work like that.
Leeasa inhaled deeply into her respirator, desperate for the air and rewarded with pain that she still had to fight. The human woman before her eyes left, and the alien with her long pink hair trailing down, and bulging gray eyes, approached with the gaze of a fish. She was tall and very lean and her ears flexed attentively, as gray-green pale as the rest of her flesh, down to the strange six-fingered hands which reached toward the Amazon and brushed her cheek.
It was almost an electric, affectionate gesture, as the alien began to speak in her equally odd, singsong accent. “You were very brave, Chiliarch. I did not think that any troops could stand being gassed like that and continue to advance for as long as you did before breaking. You had no protection.. To stand that sort of war, without it, lends my utmost admiration.”
Leeasa rasped back through the respirator, voice muffled, though the Taloran heard it fine: “Why did you do that..” A hacking cough.. “To us?”
“It was a military necessity.”
“It's not war but slaughter.” Another cough. “Shal.. Shall I even live? Answer me honestly.. Fellow-huntress.”
“Yes.” Jhayka flatly continued: “Many of your command won't. We don't have the ability to treat many badly gassed peoplpe here. You'd actually be hurting rather less right now if your lungs weren't in the process of recovery, so be thankful for the pain.”
Another lurching, desperately pained breath, followed by intense coughing. “Why did you spare me?”
Jhayka smiled vaguely. “You were the highest ranking prisoner we took. Understandable, considering you'd been shot in the leg and gassed so badly.”
“I didn't even know about the leg wound,” Leeasa confessed, feeling very strange that she hadn't.
“Easier to control the pain from that than from your lungs almost liquifying,” Jhayka answered, and then began. “I did indeed give you the best care for a purpose. I want you, Chiliarch. I want you because I don't want to fight your people. Your alliance with the Normans and the al-Farani is ideologically unnatural. I am of a different species, with a different history, but we are both females to be sure and I know what the Normans do—I have seen it with my own eyes, even to someone.. Very dear to me. So let us talk, instead.”
“You kill us by poisoning our air and then you want to talk peace with the daughters of Diana—why? Why even fight for Julio?”
“For my life, for my sacred honour. I must return to Ar victorious—I will return victorious to Ar—and lay to rest the bodies of those under my command, and punish that city for the violation of the laws of its own making, of hospitality, and of civilized behaviour. I will avenge myself upon Ar at the behest of all those who have suffered in her evil halls before this time.”
Another cough, and Leeasa shook her head slightly. “You are determined enough that I think the Normans are lying and you telling the truth, but I cannot help you. It is my people who matter, now.. We are fighting for the very survival of our culture and our peoplehood, of all that makes us who we are, for the future in which our daughters my be raised by the same traditions to which we were raised..”
“I can give you all of that,” Jhayka answered simply. “My interest now is in surviving, keeping those under my care alive, preserving Kalunda, and avenging myself upon the Norman people and doing the work of Justice upon them. If I have to pay a stiff price to insure that all, I will do so.”
“It would be a stiff price indeed, for then you would have to turn and also fight the government of Gilead, and shall your people do this also? Do you command that much respect from them?”
“I am not in the councils of Her Serene Majesty,” Jhayka asked. “That's not the point. I don't mean to make war against Gilead. I propose to do something entirely different, which eliminates the problem entirely.”
“Speak it plainly.”
“I would take the whole population of Amazonia and provide for you all a continent the same size as this one on a world in my universe, in the realms of the Taloran Star Empire and newly opened for colonization, purchased in my name and given to your people by charter, so that it is entirely your's under the terms of that charter, and autonomous under the laws of my Principality, which I rule under Her Serene Majesty. There you may rebuild your society; and there I would provide for you the technology that we have which would allow you to reproduce without men. Your utopia would finally be there for you to do whatever you please with it”
Silence.
Leeasa inhaled thickly and in pain, and had to remind herself again that as the alien said, the pain meant she was getting better. It's to good to be true—but she promised she would tell the truth and I don't think she's breaking it here, she's a fighter like ourselves and a free woman, under a sovereign Lady..
“It is such a great thing... Wonderful if true.. But..” She fell into a coughing fit, and Jhayka reached for her hand and smiled gently. As it passed, Leeasa continued: “Why go to those ends for an enemy, that you kill as you did..? Few will believe it..”
“Then you must convince them, for it is your only hope as a people. You, Leeasa. Go to your people and tell them of my offer. You are an officer of high rank; they will at least listen to you. In four days you will be recovered enough to leave this hospital, and I will parole you and six of your soldiers to aide and escort you through to your lines.”
“I will tell my people, but..” A strange and embarassed look. “What is this parole you offer?”
“Such brutality here,” Jhayka sighed. “I want your word and the word of those I send with you on your family honour and their's, respectively, and under the eye of your deity, that you will not take up arms against Kalunda again for the duration of this war. Under those terms I will release you on your mission.”
“I have never heard of such mercy before. Of course I will accept, though it is a grave burden and our sisters will think odd of us for it, though will also be amazed at the mercy you induce in the Kalundans.” She began to cough again.
Jhayka waited for it to pass, and then quietly answered: “They've been rather good about it, actually. I only had to hang two men for trying to abuse captives from your army.”
Leeasa nearly bolted up in bed. “You hung your own men for trying to rape captive Amazons? Now, with this news, I believe what you say..”
And I pity you, Jhayka thought, for living in such an uncivilized place that such is not a practice so common as to be uncommented upon. “You may see their bodies as you leave if you wish.”
“It will help those who would otherwise not believe you.”
“Good. Their deaths shall come to something, then. Now, I must return to my duties. Get better, Chiliarch, for you shall have your own to your people soon enough.”
“I thank you..”
“Do that when you have left this forsaken place, and not before,” Jhayka answered tightly, and turned to leave without another word.
It left Leeasa to muse on a woman who would seem so kind, yet show regret over the death of men, and also, it seemed clear, be so interested in them and yet so repulsed by the their world. She was altogether very confused, and missed the point of Jhayka's intentions in the offer. Not really her fault, for Jhayka had intended it so, and her own presumptions were sufficient enough to make her an eager participant in the Princess' effort to crack the alliance.
DAY FOUR
KALUNDA CENTRAL HOSPITAL
Leeasa Avrila shuddered as she took another pained breath which left her body wracked in convulsions. She was having such difficulty breathing, such pain.. Each breath was like a sledgehammer striking her chest. Even the pain medications--I've been given pain medications?--she tried to remember where she was..
Oh, right. A Kalundan hospital. Strange. I should have thought they'd have killed me, or worse. She forced her eyes open. There was a strange scene there, a human woman, tall and immensely beautiful to Leeasa's eyes, a warriorress proper, talking in a hushed tone to...
The alien. The Normans had made a great deal of fuss over her; the Amazons had privately been glad for her strike against Ar, such a daring thing against allies with whom they had a long history of bad blood. But turning her over to the Normans, if distasteful, would have still be acceptable for the sake of the nation... Clearly it wasn't going to work like that.
Leeasa inhaled deeply into her respirator, desperate for the air and rewarded with pain that she still had to fight. The human woman before her eyes left, and the alien with her long pink hair trailing down, and bulging gray eyes, approached with the gaze of a fish. She was tall and very lean and her ears flexed attentively, as gray-green pale as the rest of her flesh, down to the strange six-fingered hands which reached toward the Amazon and brushed her cheek.
It was almost an electric, affectionate gesture, as the alien began to speak in her equally odd, singsong accent. “You were very brave, Chiliarch. I did not think that any troops could stand being gassed like that and continue to advance for as long as you did before breaking. You had no protection.. To stand that sort of war, without it, lends my utmost admiration.”
Leeasa rasped back through the respirator, voice muffled, though the Taloran heard it fine: “Why did you do that..” A hacking cough.. “To us?”
“It was a military necessity.”
“It's not war but slaughter.” Another cough. “Shal.. Shall I even live? Answer me honestly.. Fellow-huntress.”
“Yes.” Jhayka flatly continued: “Many of your command won't. We don't have the ability to treat many badly gassed peoplpe here. You'd actually be hurting rather less right now if your lungs weren't in the process of recovery, so be thankful for the pain.”
Another lurching, desperately pained breath, followed by intense coughing. “Why did you spare me?”
Jhayka smiled vaguely. “You were the highest ranking prisoner we took. Understandable, considering you'd been shot in the leg and gassed so badly.”
“I didn't even know about the leg wound,” Leeasa confessed, feeling very strange that she hadn't.
“Easier to control the pain from that than from your lungs almost liquifying,” Jhayka answered, and then began. “I did indeed give you the best care for a purpose. I want you, Chiliarch. I want you because I don't want to fight your people. Your alliance with the Normans and the al-Farani is ideologically unnatural. I am of a different species, with a different history, but we are both females to be sure and I know what the Normans do—I have seen it with my own eyes, even to someone.. Very dear to me. So let us talk, instead.”
“You kill us by poisoning our air and then you want to talk peace with the daughters of Diana—why? Why even fight for Julio?”
“For my life, for my sacred honour. I must return to Ar victorious—I will return victorious to Ar—and lay to rest the bodies of those under my command, and punish that city for the violation of the laws of its own making, of hospitality, and of civilized behaviour. I will avenge myself upon Ar at the behest of all those who have suffered in her evil halls before this time.”
Another cough, and Leeasa shook her head slightly. “You are determined enough that I think the Normans are lying and you telling the truth, but I cannot help you. It is my people who matter, now.. We are fighting for the very survival of our culture and our peoplehood, of all that makes us who we are, for the future in which our daughters my be raised by the same traditions to which we were raised..”
“I can give you all of that,” Jhayka answered simply. “My interest now is in surviving, keeping those under my care alive, preserving Kalunda, and avenging myself upon the Norman people and doing the work of Justice upon them. If I have to pay a stiff price to insure that all, I will do so.”
“It would be a stiff price indeed, for then you would have to turn and also fight the government of Gilead, and shall your people do this also? Do you command that much respect from them?”
“I am not in the councils of Her Serene Majesty,” Jhayka asked. “That's not the point. I don't mean to make war against Gilead. I propose to do something entirely different, which eliminates the problem entirely.”
“Speak it plainly.”
“I would take the whole population of Amazonia and provide for you all a continent the same size as this one on a world in my universe, in the realms of the Taloran Star Empire and newly opened for colonization, purchased in my name and given to your people by charter, so that it is entirely your's under the terms of that charter, and autonomous under the laws of my Principality, which I rule under Her Serene Majesty. There you may rebuild your society; and there I would provide for you the technology that we have which would allow you to reproduce without men. Your utopia would finally be there for you to do whatever you please with it”
Silence.
Leeasa inhaled thickly and in pain, and had to remind herself again that as the alien said, the pain meant she was getting better. It's to good to be true—but she promised she would tell the truth and I don't think she's breaking it here, she's a fighter like ourselves and a free woman, under a sovereign Lady..
“It is such a great thing... Wonderful if true.. But..” She fell into a coughing fit, and Jhayka reached for her hand and smiled gently. As it passed, Leeasa continued: “Why go to those ends for an enemy, that you kill as you did..? Few will believe it..”
“Then you must convince them, for it is your only hope as a people. You, Leeasa. Go to your people and tell them of my offer. You are an officer of high rank; they will at least listen to you. In four days you will be recovered enough to leave this hospital, and I will parole you and six of your soldiers to aide and escort you through to your lines.”
“I will tell my people, but..” A strange and embarassed look. “What is this parole you offer?”
“Such brutality here,” Jhayka sighed. “I want your word and the word of those I send with you on your family honour and their's, respectively, and under the eye of your deity, that you will not take up arms against Kalunda again for the duration of this war. Under those terms I will release you on your mission.”
“I have never heard of such mercy before. Of course I will accept, though it is a grave burden and our sisters will think odd of us for it, though will also be amazed at the mercy you induce in the Kalundans.” She began to cough again.
Jhayka waited for it to pass, and then quietly answered: “They've been rather good about it, actually. I only had to hang two men for trying to abuse captives from your army.”
Leeasa nearly bolted up in bed. “You hung your own men for trying to rape captive Amazons? Now, with this news, I believe what you say..”
And I pity you, Jhayka thought, for living in such an uncivilized place that such is not a practice so common as to be uncommented upon. “You may see their bodies as you leave if you wish.”
“It will help those who would otherwise not believe you.”
“Good. Their deaths shall come to something, then. Now, I must return to my duties. Get better, Chiliarch, for you shall have your own to your people soon enough.”
“I thank you..”
“Do that when you have left this forsaken place, and not before,” Jhayka answered tightly, and turned to leave without another word.
It left Leeasa to muse on a woman who would seem so kind, yet show regret over the death of men, and also, it seemed clear, be so interested in them and yet so repulsed by the their world. She was altogether very confused, and missed the point of Jhayka's intentions in the offer. Not really her fault, for Jhayka had intended it so, and her own presumptions were sufficient enough to make her an eager participant in the Princess' effort to crack the alliance.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
East Port, Gilead
13 November 2841
10 January 2163 AST
DAY FOUR[/b]
It was the middle of the night in East Port, where tensions were near the breaking point. News had already come of the Normans and their allies attacking the defense lines around Kalunda. Their communities within East Port were now resembling fortresses as each gathered weapons and prepared to fight if attacked.
Nevertheless, the night was peaceful..... until the silence of the night was broken by the sound of gunfire and explosions across the warehouse district that bordered, commonly, the enclaves of all the major Eastern Region societies.
One such center of activity was a storehouse for Norman goods, including slaves kidnapped or "bought" from the tech world and now weapons. Xue Guan Cai was none of the first in, his Zhai robes replaced by black jacket, trousers, and face mask. With weapon in hand he led this contingent from the Legion of Sen Yu Ling through the building. The dungeon within was sparsely inhabited - only two young nineteen year old girls from New Marshville were within and were quickly freed - so the real prize was in the warehouse proper. The guards had been on alert and there was a brief firefight. Slipping around one group of boxes, Guan Cai lifted his rifle and squeezed off four shots. One headshot killed a Norman guard, and another took a hit to his shoulder. The slacking of the guards' fire allowed the rest of Guan Cai's team to secure the building.
Within the boxes were AK-90s and infantry mortars. More weapons meant for shipment to Ar. Guan Cai ordered them secured - the Legion would make better use of them.
The attacks, meanwhile, added to the tensions that exploded as dawn came about. News that the Norman attack had failed - and the casualties inflicted on the Norman and al-Farani armies - enraged those groups, and with the attacks on their warehouses to further provoke them, they had no qualms about attacking the Kalundan and Zhai enclaves in the city. The Legion of Sen Yu Ling helped fight back, bolstered in number by dozens of willing volunteers freed from the slave pens.
The police of the city attempted to restore order but were quickly overwhelmed by the outbreaks of violence. Civilians no longer existed for all intents and purposes, and the Normans and al-Farani particularly began to kill or abduct anyone who was not one of them. The one foreign consulate in the city, the Dutch consulate, was not spared attack, though it's security forces were able to beat off the enraged al-Farani who attempted to fight their way inside.
Before noon came to East Port, the entire city was engulfed in violence and chaos....
Cranstonville, Gilead
General de la Hoya was alone with a few of his officers, speaking over a secured line with Tessa Stuart. "There's violence now in East Port," he confirmed for her, "and recent satellite overpasses have confirmed that the Norman assault on Kalunda yesterday was repulsed."
"I see. What do we have to do about it?"
"This is ruining all of our timing, but I see no choice. I'm going today to ask President Crayshaw to permit me to use military force to pacify East Port and break the siege of Kalunda."
"And if he says no?"
"I'll give him a few days to change his mind." De La Hoya frowned. "And if he doesn't make a decision by the 16th, I'll make it for him. Have everything ready."
"Understood."
De La Hoya set his receiver down and looked to his officers, all of them trusted men and women. "Make immediate preparations for the 10th, 12th, 18th, and 22nd Divisions to enter East Port. Do it on the sly. I'm going to see the President."
"No, absolutely not."
Crayshaw shook his head adamantly, confronted both by General de la Hoya and Miles Tusk, the slim-figured Secretary of the Confederacy's Department of Security and Defense. "Mister President, there are innocent Gileans dying even as we speak," de la Hoya said insistantly. "East Port is a war zone, and the fighting at Kalunda has already claimed thousands of lives. You must act!"
"I cannot. It would.... it would betray everything the Confederacy stands for!"
Crayshaw looked confused, dazed, and certainly bewildered. Secretary Tusk stepped forward. "Mister President, we're getting pressure from a number of foreign states about this. There are foreign nationals still trapped in Kalunda and East Port. We must act."
"To hell with those fat capitalists and those overbearing autocrats!" Crayshaw slammed a fist on the table. "This is Gilead! This is the true paradise of the cosmos, where men and women can come and live as they please! If I use force to interfere in the Primitive Zone, it will undermine every bit of that! We'll be no different from any other Human State, using authority to impose a single social mold upon everyone. It's tyranny and I won't allow it!" Crayshaw gestured to them. "Go, leave. I'm going to have another talk with Prince Carlis and Representative Marius to see if I can get this settled."
Worcesterville, Illustrious
Sara was sitting in her study, wearing simple clothes and looking over requisition orders. The Fabian was almost finished loading now, stacked with as much equipment as Sara would dare bring. Her crew - save Aziz, her faithful Prantonese friend who was now married with an expecting wife - would be traveling with her to Gilead.
Assuming this worked.
At the appointed hour, she received confirmation of a call from the planet Devenshire itself. She looked to her screen and saw Minerva appear, Prime Minister Driscova in the background. Minerva was even more informally dressed, wearing a robe over what was clearly a skimpy swimsuit - she and her husband had been out swimming, undoubtedly, when Sara's call had come - and with her hair disheveled and unkept. She and Driscova had listened silently as Sara outlined her plan.
Finally it was Driscova who spoke first. "I am not in favor of this, Your Highness," she said. "As a high-ranked Grand Duke of this Kingdom, your participation could be seen as an attempt by our government to interfere in Gilead."
"I'm sure the British will understand," Sara said.
"Perhaps, but it is not they I am worried about. The Slavians and the Hispanics undoubtedly possess their own designs on Gilead. They may mistake your involvement as an attempt by Devenshire to meddle, either for herself or for allies such as the Allied Nations." Driscova shook her head. "This is simply too dangerous."
Sara put her hands together. "You don't understand, Prime Minister. Julio needs me. His people need me. I can't just stand by and watch the Normans do this to Kalunda again."
"Do not forget that you have a duty to Devenshire now," Driscova reminded her flatly. "Your wishes alone cannot determine policy."
Tears appeared in Sara's eyes. All of this and she was about to be rejected because she'd let herself get talked into accepting this position "for the good of billions". "Your Majesty, I have been waiting for Julio for longer than you have lived. Your parents were children when I made the vow to him that we would marry when his work was done. Please, Julio is the man I love. I want to save him. You know what the Normans will do, you've seen the records, read the books... you've told me..." Sobbing softly, Sara rested her head against her right hand, propped up on her desk. "Please, Majesty, I will not do anything to hurt the Kingdom, you have my word, but please let me go save the man I love. Please."
Driscova looked to Minerva, and the young woman looked intently at Sara. "I owe you my life, Duchess. And I know you will keep your word. You may go, so long as you do so as an individual and not the Grand Duchess of Illustrious."
"Yes, Majesty, I will! God bless you, Your Majesty." Sara smiled sweetly, thankful that her faith in Minerva had not been displaced.
"Go with God, Duchess. May He protect you in the dark places you will be walking through." Minerva's hand reached forward and the line was ended.
Sara stood up from the desk, holding back tears. She had very nearly had everything taken from her, but Minerva had prevailed for her, and now she would go and save Julio.
Now to finish getting ready.
A cry arose from the car pool in the Ducal Palace; "No, absolutely not!" Sara's face turned read as she stared down her grandson William, who was clad in normal clothing with a duffel bag over his shoulder. "It's enough that I'm going, William. You have to remain behind in case something happens to me."
"Grandmother, you need me. My militia training and what I've learned so far mean I can train the locals to fight in the modern style. You'll need me to help get the East Henley Valley peoples ready to fight."
Sara stared at him for a moment. "William, how in the hell did you know that was what I was going to do?"
He shrugged. "I read your book, Grandma. I know you're not planning to land in Kalunda, since that would win you nothing. You want to raise an army in the East Valley, and I guess the mountain tribes too, and march on Ar and Kellervil to force the Normans and Amazons to weaken their siege to save their homes."
After a moment to recover from hearing her grandson lay out most of her plan, Sara sighed. "Well, I wasn't planning on marching against the Amazons or Ar itself, just the Norman lands. But yeah, that's pretty much it."
"Grandma, you've got a good crew, but not enough people with the background to train. I may not be a long service NCO, but I know the basics, and that's important enough." William looked at her firmly. "You must let me go. If something happens to both of us, Sara will become your heiress, and that is something she would do well."
Sara slowly nodded. "Yes, Sara... she is probably the best suited of us all to actually be a ruler...." She put her hand to her forehead. "Oh, William, what will I tell Mother? That I took you into danger with me?"
"Grandma Abigail knows already. She's not happy but she'll live with it." William shifted his duffel bag. "So..."
Sara bit into her lip. God damn you, but you've got a point. "And the Army?"
"Considering the circumstances, Colonel Kenning is giving me leave. For as long as I need it. I can make up later, he said."
It took Sara quite a while to decide, nearly an eternity for William, but finally she sighed in defeat. "Fine. You can come."
Standing at a window overlooking the car pool, Abigail Proctor watched her daughter and great-grandson climb into a waiting vehicle, which pulled away. She gripped the curtain with a withered hand, tears flowing down her cheeks. She knew she could lose them both in this, and she had wanted desperately for them to stay. But Abigail knew that God had His own plans for them, and she could do nothing but pray that He would bring them home.
13 November 2841
10 January 2163 AST
DAY FOUR[/b]
It was the middle of the night in East Port, where tensions were near the breaking point. News had already come of the Normans and their allies attacking the defense lines around Kalunda. Their communities within East Port were now resembling fortresses as each gathered weapons and prepared to fight if attacked.
Nevertheless, the night was peaceful..... until the silence of the night was broken by the sound of gunfire and explosions across the warehouse district that bordered, commonly, the enclaves of all the major Eastern Region societies.
One such center of activity was a storehouse for Norman goods, including slaves kidnapped or "bought" from the tech world and now weapons. Xue Guan Cai was none of the first in, his Zhai robes replaced by black jacket, trousers, and face mask. With weapon in hand he led this contingent from the Legion of Sen Yu Ling through the building. The dungeon within was sparsely inhabited - only two young nineteen year old girls from New Marshville were within and were quickly freed - so the real prize was in the warehouse proper. The guards had been on alert and there was a brief firefight. Slipping around one group of boxes, Guan Cai lifted his rifle and squeezed off four shots. One headshot killed a Norman guard, and another took a hit to his shoulder. The slacking of the guards' fire allowed the rest of Guan Cai's team to secure the building.
Within the boxes were AK-90s and infantry mortars. More weapons meant for shipment to Ar. Guan Cai ordered them secured - the Legion would make better use of them.
The attacks, meanwhile, added to the tensions that exploded as dawn came about. News that the Norman attack had failed - and the casualties inflicted on the Norman and al-Farani armies - enraged those groups, and with the attacks on their warehouses to further provoke them, they had no qualms about attacking the Kalundan and Zhai enclaves in the city. The Legion of Sen Yu Ling helped fight back, bolstered in number by dozens of willing volunteers freed from the slave pens.
The police of the city attempted to restore order but were quickly overwhelmed by the outbreaks of violence. Civilians no longer existed for all intents and purposes, and the Normans and al-Farani particularly began to kill or abduct anyone who was not one of them. The one foreign consulate in the city, the Dutch consulate, was not spared attack, though it's security forces were able to beat off the enraged al-Farani who attempted to fight their way inside.
Before noon came to East Port, the entire city was engulfed in violence and chaos....
Cranstonville, Gilead
General de la Hoya was alone with a few of his officers, speaking over a secured line with Tessa Stuart. "There's violence now in East Port," he confirmed for her, "and recent satellite overpasses have confirmed that the Norman assault on Kalunda yesterday was repulsed."
"I see. What do we have to do about it?"
"This is ruining all of our timing, but I see no choice. I'm going today to ask President Crayshaw to permit me to use military force to pacify East Port and break the siege of Kalunda."
"And if he says no?"
"I'll give him a few days to change his mind." De La Hoya frowned. "And if he doesn't make a decision by the 16th, I'll make it for him. Have everything ready."
"Understood."
De La Hoya set his receiver down and looked to his officers, all of them trusted men and women. "Make immediate preparations for the 10th, 12th, 18th, and 22nd Divisions to enter East Port. Do it on the sly. I'm going to see the President."
"No, absolutely not."
Crayshaw shook his head adamantly, confronted both by General de la Hoya and Miles Tusk, the slim-figured Secretary of the Confederacy's Department of Security and Defense. "Mister President, there are innocent Gileans dying even as we speak," de la Hoya said insistantly. "East Port is a war zone, and the fighting at Kalunda has already claimed thousands of lives. You must act!"
"I cannot. It would.... it would betray everything the Confederacy stands for!"
Crayshaw looked confused, dazed, and certainly bewildered. Secretary Tusk stepped forward. "Mister President, we're getting pressure from a number of foreign states about this. There are foreign nationals still trapped in Kalunda and East Port. We must act."
"To hell with those fat capitalists and those overbearing autocrats!" Crayshaw slammed a fist on the table. "This is Gilead! This is the true paradise of the cosmos, where men and women can come and live as they please! If I use force to interfere in the Primitive Zone, it will undermine every bit of that! We'll be no different from any other Human State, using authority to impose a single social mold upon everyone. It's tyranny and I won't allow it!" Crayshaw gestured to them. "Go, leave. I'm going to have another talk with Prince Carlis and Representative Marius to see if I can get this settled."
Worcesterville, Illustrious
Sara was sitting in her study, wearing simple clothes and looking over requisition orders. The Fabian was almost finished loading now, stacked with as much equipment as Sara would dare bring. Her crew - save Aziz, her faithful Prantonese friend who was now married with an expecting wife - would be traveling with her to Gilead.
Assuming this worked.
At the appointed hour, she received confirmation of a call from the planet Devenshire itself. She looked to her screen and saw Minerva appear, Prime Minister Driscova in the background. Minerva was even more informally dressed, wearing a robe over what was clearly a skimpy swimsuit - she and her husband had been out swimming, undoubtedly, when Sara's call had come - and with her hair disheveled and unkept. She and Driscova had listened silently as Sara outlined her plan.
Finally it was Driscova who spoke first. "I am not in favor of this, Your Highness," she said. "As a high-ranked Grand Duke of this Kingdom, your participation could be seen as an attempt by our government to interfere in Gilead."
"I'm sure the British will understand," Sara said.
"Perhaps, but it is not they I am worried about. The Slavians and the Hispanics undoubtedly possess their own designs on Gilead. They may mistake your involvement as an attempt by Devenshire to meddle, either for herself or for allies such as the Allied Nations." Driscova shook her head. "This is simply too dangerous."
Sara put her hands together. "You don't understand, Prime Minister. Julio needs me. His people need me. I can't just stand by and watch the Normans do this to Kalunda again."
"Do not forget that you have a duty to Devenshire now," Driscova reminded her flatly. "Your wishes alone cannot determine policy."
Tears appeared in Sara's eyes. All of this and she was about to be rejected because she'd let herself get talked into accepting this position "for the good of billions". "Your Majesty, I have been waiting for Julio for longer than you have lived. Your parents were children when I made the vow to him that we would marry when his work was done. Please, Julio is the man I love. I want to save him. You know what the Normans will do, you've seen the records, read the books... you've told me..." Sobbing softly, Sara rested her head against her right hand, propped up on her desk. "Please, Majesty, I will not do anything to hurt the Kingdom, you have my word, but please let me go save the man I love. Please."
Driscova looked to Minerva, and the young woman looked intently at Sara. "I owe you my life, Duchess. And I know you will keep your word. You may go, so long as you do so as an individual and not the Grand Duchess of Illustrious."
"Yes, Majesty, I will! God bless you, Your Majesty." Sara smiled sweetly, thankful that her faith in Minerva had not been displaced.
"Go with God, Duchess. May He protect you in the dark places you will be walking through." Minerva's hand reached forward and the line was ended.
Sara stood up from the desk, holding back tears. She had very nearly had everything taken from her, but Minerva had prevailed for her, and now she would go and save Julio.
Now to finish getting ready.
A cry arose from the car pool in the Ducal Palace; "No, absolutely not!" Sara's face turned read as she stared down her grandson William, who was clad in normal clothing with a duffel bag over his shoulder. "It's enough that I'm going, William. You have to remain behind in case something happens to me."
"Grandmother, you need me. My militia training and what I've learned so far mean I can train the locals to fight in the modern style. You'll need me to help get the East Henley Valley peoples ready to fight."
Sara stared at him for a moment. "William, how in the hell did you know that was what I was going to do?"
He shrugged. "I read your book, Grandma. I know you're not planning to land in Kalunda, since that would win you nothing. You want to raise an army in the East Valley, and I guess the mountain tribes too, and march on Ar and Kellervil to force the Normans and Amazons to weaken their siege to save their homes."
After a moment to recover from hearing her grandson lay out most of her plan, Sara sighed. "Well, I wasn't planning on marching against the Amazons or Ar itself, just the Norman lands. But yeah, that's pretty much it."
"Grandma, you've got a good crew, but not enough people with the background to train. I may not be a long service NCO, but I know the basics, and that's important enough." William looked at her firmly. "You must let me go. If something happens to both of us, Sara will become your heiress, and that is something she would do well."
Sara slowly nodded. "Yes, Sara... she is probably the best suited of us all to actually be a ruler...." She put her hand to her forehead. "Oh, William, what will I tell Mother? That I took you into danger with me?"
"Grandma Abigail knows already. She's not happy but she'll live with it." William shifted his duffel bag. "So..."
Sara bit into her lip. God damn you, but you've got a point. "And the Army?"
"Considering the circumstances, Colonel Kenning is giving me leave. For as long as I need it. I can make up later, he said."
It took Sara quite a while to decide, nearly an eternity for William, but finally she sighed in defeat. "Fine. You can come."
Standing at a window overlooking the car pool, Abigail Proctor watched her daughter and great-grandson climb into a waiting vehicle, which pulled away. She gripped the curtain with a withered hand, tears flowing down her cheeks. She knew she could lose them both in this, and she had wanted desperately for them to stay. But Abigail knew that God had His own plans for them, and she could do nothing but pray that He would bring them home.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Co-written by Marina and myself.
Kalunda, Gilead
Jhayka got back late. She was worried about Danielle; the two had been checking up on wounded in the hospital, Danielle one of her own and Jhayka.. Someone important.. When they'd exchanged words in the morning. But now the evening was coming on, and she'd just gotten back from talking with Captain Arshon, and reluctantly approving Ilavna's mission that evening. It was a lot to think about, and she was very worried about Ilavna even though the girl had handled herself ably in the breakout from Ar. Now, though, most of all, Jhayka was feeling the burden of her position. She entered the suites quietly, and went toward the connecting door to Dani's room, knocking on it gently. "May I come in, Dani?" She asked through it.
Inside Dani was at her desk pouring over her design notes, wearing her nightrobe loosely enough that it bared everything between her shoulders with nothing else underneath. Jhayka's request made her nearly jump from her chair. She stood and quickly pulled her the robe closely over herself, tying the sash so that it would cover her up to just below the neck. As she was tying it she called out, "Yes." She turned and opened the door. As Jhayka entered, Dani unconsciously used her left hand to let out her hair where some of it had been laying upon her left shoulder.
Jhayka smiled brightly as Dani opened the door. "May I come in?" She asked, even as she reached to pull off the heavy greatcoat she'd be wearing. "I just want to relax a bit.. With you. For I've not had the chance since the fighting started on the third, and there's been a lot happening today as you may recall from the hospital. That, and.. I admit that I was a bit worried about you yesterday, and it's nice to have you around me in person, Dani."
"Well, I'm not going out on the boats quite yet. I was relaying those orders to the boats, you see. I'm still needed at the factories to make sure they know how to do everything." Dani sighed. "I was really worried about you, leading that counter-attack and everything." Dani gestured to a pair of seats at the mini-bar included in her suite. "Want a seat? Maybe something to drink? I've got quite a few drinks in the wet bar here."
"Sure, a little wine wouldn't hurt," Jhayka answered agreeably as she moved to sit, unbuttoning the uniform top, in a surprising degree of informality from her, to reveal a thin silk blouse under it, which probably for the first time showed the fact that her chest was not completely, irrevocably flat, though to say that Jhayka had an A cup by human standards would probably be tottering toward generous. Her pink hair lent as flamboyant of an air as one could expect, and she slumped somewhat to the side. "Well, I know it was somewhat dangerous, but I didn't want them thinking that I wouldn't risk myself simply because I was a foreigner. For the troops of Kalunda to really obey me, they must see that I am prepared to sacrifice myself for their country as much as they are."
Dani nodded at that. She looked into the mini-bar's wine cooler. "Haven't had a chance to see what's in here. Hmm.... Scathfordian Port, dated 2790. Older than I am by a bit... More Scathfordian Port, 2788. 2804... 2818.... Ah, I was hoping for this." Dani reached in and pulled out a bottle. "Nordsen Wine Company. Family vineyard on New Minnesota in my home universe, really good stuff. It's port, and I know you like that." She retrieved a couple of glasses and set one before Jhayka, pouring a bit for her with all due carefulness. Dani then poured herself some and sat opposite from Jhayka. It was then that she noticed the year of the vintage - 2503 - and frowned. That brought up some memories she'd rather not think about.
Setting the bottle aside, she took her glass. "I understand why you did what you did. I'm going to be heading out on the river myself, as soon as I'm sure the crews at the boatyards can build on their own. So..." She raised a glass. "To victory. Before we know it, we'll be back in Ar to dictate peace to these pinheads at the mouth of the General Faeria's guns."
Jhayka smiled, though it was a smile without humour. "To Victory," she acknowledged the toast. "I'm not so sure about the 'before we know it' part, though. I was able to send a party forward to where the Normans cut the tracks last night, and establish a connection with the electrical control impulses in the rails. We can communicate via morse code with the stations up the line that way--well, we could until daybreak, anyway. There's been civil violence in East Port, and the Normans are advancing toward it with some second-line forces, mostly reinforced by worthless tribals for this sort of fight." A pause. "Anyway, I've got an operation on tonight to try and secure East Port. I'm sending the General Faeria there--she'll be less effective in our further defensive efforts with most of the Norman heavy tanks already knocked out, and can be of better use leading a relief column from East Port once the government gets things stabilized. Even so, I would not rule out the siege lasting a month." Jhayka stretched and straightened, smiling a bit. "I hope this is not to worrying for you--I'd like to relax, but I thought you deserved to know, and, really, our defensive situation is excellent."
Dani took a drink of her wine. "That it is, and it'll get better when I get more boats on the river. It'll help if we can force them to keep their attacks away from the river banks so you can focus more reserves there. I've also been talking with Sarina d'Kellius about forming some Crimson Guard detachments for raiding behind the lines. We could use our river mobility to sneak them upriver or down river so they can raise some Hell in the enemy rear areas. Blow up some supply dumps, that kind of thing. Since I'm sure they'll soon be moving all their supplies further inland so the boats can't do just that."
"That's a very interesting idea. I approve of it, seeing as I've already authorized some trench raiding tonight to cover the track repairs necessary to facilitate the breakout of the General Faeria," Jhayka noted, neglecting to mention that it was Ilavna who was going to lead one of the teams. The Normans had, since the day before, been using their advanced positions only a hundred meters or so from the Fileya Line's outer defences in many places to begin digging their own trenches, and the steady thump of the mortars along the front line savaging the working parties--mostly slaves--could be very faintly heard. Jhayka sipped her wine, and relaxed a bit, again, the sound almost reassuring to her now. "Tell me about New Minnesota, Dani? I'd rather focus on you and what your life has been like rather than on all these details at the moment."
"Well, I've only been to New Minnesota once. It was.... fifteen years ago, and I was still technically in the United States Star Navy at the time. I was serving on a cruiser, the Wichita, then, and we had a stopover at New Minnesota to pick up some supplies after some idiots didn't get the right parts back to us." Dani sipped at her wine. "It's a nice world. Earth-like, greenish-blue star, lots of farming and such. It got the name because, at the time, New Minnesota had the most identifiable freshwater lakes of any explored planet. New Minneapolis was founded in the smack middle of the main continent, Humphrey, along a river about twenty-five percent longer than the Mississippi back on Earth - which starts in Minnesota, I'll add."
She sipped again. "Anyway, I spent the leave in the tropics of the planet. The Luden Islands straddle the planet's equator, a thousand or so kilometers off of Humphrey's western coast. There are sixty islands in the archipelago, and the ten largest each have a volcano. The largest, Emily Island, has it's own small mountain range that you can see from the beach on it's northern shore. It's a beautiful view. I've got some really nice pictures of the place back in my storage locker." Dani put her hand to her face. "And, dammit, I just realized I'm going to have to fork over a few months' rent to get that stuff back."
"I grew up in Minnesota myself. Just outside of Minneapolis. My Dad was a retired Master Chief from the USSN and my Mom, well, she was a homemaker as we call them. We lived well for what Dad earned, so I had a comfortable childhood. The only problem, of course, was that by the time I was fifteen I decided I liked looking at other girls more than I liked looking at boys." Dani sighed. "My mom took me to Mass every week too, and was pretty determined to make me another good Catholic woman with a husband and kids. Didn't make my feelings any easier to deal with." Taking a drink of her wine, Dani added, "I... don't talk with her that much anymore. I keep in touch through Dad of course, but it's safe to say my Mom considers me a big disappointment as a daughter, no matter how well I've done in my career, and she really doesn't like talking to me too often." Dani's eyes looked distant as she blithely added, "I figure the only way I can get good with her is if I introduced her to a devout Catholic man I'm engaged to marry. Anything short of that...."
"I'll pay the rent for you. And any other expenses," Jhayka responded with a soft smile, and then frowned, her ears flexing, as she listened to the rest of it. "You humans are so funny at times. Your monotheistic religions are rather parochial, and it seems that when they try to modernize to be closer to the vision of God they instead just go further and further astray." She paused for a moment and thought. "You know that you could be married under the Lord's grace in the Farzian faith, yes? I mean, if you were to convert, there's nothing stopping you from marrying another woman of the Farzian faith in a sanctified union..." Her ears flattened. "Your family, though, I fear would not accept that, would they?"
"Dad would, in his own way. Mom never would." Dani set her glass down and drew in a sigh. "For a few years I tried to suppress it, you know. Finally I couldn't any longer. When I was 17 I had met a cheerleader for our High School, Jenny, in one of my classes. One day I had her over at my home for a school project and, well, my parents were supposed to be gone for the whole evening and one thing led to another. It was my first time with another girl. And just as we were.... well.... as we were winding down from it, my parents returned early."
Dani brought her hand up and pushed some strands of hair out of her eyes. "My Mom screamed like she'd never screamed before. She called me every nasty word she could think of and threw me out before I could do more than put on some underwear. So I ended up staying the night with Jenny's brother in his apartment, and I cried all night. I just wanted to go home. My Dad came by at 5 that morning, on his way to work, and brought me home first. Told me not to do it again around Mom." Dani chuckled wryly. "That same day, Mom dragged me to Church and made me take confession of what I'd done to the priest. Father Dawson gave me the usual penance and then a speech about resisting the flesh and all." Taking another sip, Dani finished her story by saying, "I'd been toying with getting my engineering degree in the Navy. After this all happened, I decided to give a shot. Anything to get away from home and away from Mother. And when I refused to Confirm, well, that's all she wrote for my relationship with Mom." Dani took yet another drink. "I talk to Dad, well, every other week at least. I made sure to send him letters when we were in Kalunda last time, and I had another brief one sent while I was recovering in the hospital. I hope he's not worrying too much."
"I'm sure he knows war well enough if he is a Navy man," Jhayka answered softly, and then continued... "Let me tell you a little about myself. I was... Never good at resisting temptation, either. Never. The first time my governess caught me playing around with the daughter of the stable master I was, oh, four years old--thirteen by the terran calendar." Jhayka looked like she'd never talked about this before. "Anyway, my parents made me stand under showering cold water for an hour at a time after they caught me, which was often enough. I was very indiscrete, then, and it wasn't until I was six and in the military academy that I really learned discretion, though, of course, I just carried on my wild ways with my fellow-officers. It was then that I got a taste for low-born women, particularly with blonde hair, like Dalamarians, and a bit of a curve to them.." Jhayka smiled in vague fondness. "It was a long and painful time, going through management school and serving as a page and an attendant in the Parliament, before I could return to military life and of course I had.. Hmm.. Sixteen years service, more than fifty by your count. I had quite the reputation in the Mess, but things kept in the regimental Mess stay there, so it was never a problem. I ultimately served in the government of the principality for about the same length of time and after that my mother was ailing and I cared for her before she died; she'd only had me very late in life, and I had an older sister I never met who was killed in action in the Ghastid suppression before I was born. It probably didn't help my mother's health at all that she had me, but otherwise the line would have reverted to some very distant cousins, and she was particular about such things." A frown. "I avoided indiscretion for her sake late in life, but everything with Lashila just.. Caught up with me all at once. And so here I am. I've never found anyone other than her I'd really want to marry, at least up to the present--who knows about the future--and of course I couldn't marry her."
Dani nodded in understanding. "It's not easy. Makes me envy the Kalundans a bit. They don't see anything weird or unnatural about it. Of course, given why they got such attitudes, I'm not sure that's any better." She finished her wine. "I've been with men too. Never enjoyed it as much, but I've been capable of it. It's just that... I don't understand them much, you know? And I've never been able to get in any kind of relationship with a man. All of my romances have been with other women." Dani reached for the bottle, again noticing the year on it. "This is a really good year." She poured herself a bit more and held the bottle toward Jhayka. "More?"
"One more glass, only. It is very fine," Jhayka allowed, and smiled wryly. "Nobody would have been really that upset if I'd gotten involved with another woman of my own class. It would have warranted a bit more gossip than usual but nothing else. My problem was not that I was a.. Hmmm.. Lesbian, but that I had a bunch of indiscrete affairs with commoners."
Dani filled her glass. "Is the distinction really that strong? I mean, do your people really not accept the idea that love is something that can surpass social rank?"
Flatly: "Yes. Or at least that love between social classes is inappropriate and that if you engage in it you're being sinful, because the different orders of society have different roles. We actually have a fair degree of social mobility, but within a particular rank adherence is very strict to these principles. And of course we think that such things must be controlled; yet I have always been bad at controlling that aspect of my personality." A faint shrug was allowed there as she drank more of her wine. "I think your problems are far more severe than mine, at any rate, which are at least my personal failings, something your's are not."
Dani didn't respond for a moment. "Well, maybe part of it is a personal failing. I've, well, I've lived most of my life with relationships that were more physical than anything else. Attachment and marriage weren't what I was looking for.. Of course, that means when I finally found myself wanting something like that, my partner ends up with her old lover on the doorstep and I soon find myself getting shown the door." Dani raised her glass. "A second toast, then, to personal failings, and the painful education they've given us."
"With respect, I'd decline," Jhayka said abruptly, and perhaps a bit oddly. "For that implies that I've learned my lesson. And, well, let us be honest for a moment--we are in mortal danger here, and though it might seem right for me to come to accounts before the Lord, I would rather say that I shall carry on as I have before, in confidence that I shall have time in the future to rectify whatever errors I've made. It seems rather more optimistic, at least to my mind, Dani."
Dani shrugged and took a sip from the raised glass. "Ah well, must be another one of those differences of view that we've discussed before. Me? I don't mind much looking back at mistakes in my life even here, since they can't be fixed or anything. Might as well think about them, learn from them if you can, and then laugh at them." Dani set her glass down. "You know, the last time I drank this kind of wine, it was my first formal date with the woman I've already mentioned. I went to the trouble of buying her a nice dress since we were going to an expensive, ritzy Italian restaurant. They had a good Chianti, but I insisted on Nordsen Port. We had a nice meal, went clubbing briefly, and ended the night in her apartment." Dani looked into the glass, a forced grin on her face. "It was... fun. If only things hadn't ended as they did, I'd be smiling for real instead of feeling like my heart's going to crack."
Dani shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I'm not going to dwell on that. Time to move on. Got a long day tomorrow. Trying to get you some more boats."
"No. Don't, Dani." Jhayka said, ears abruptly straightened and looking long and hard toward the alien woman across from her, gray eyes most intense in their bulging, dead way. "If we die here, we shouldn't die alone. Come here, Dani. Sit with me. You mean to much to me for us to part ways now. Don't let your heart suffer tonight. I... I care about you so very much."
Hearing that made Dani's heart quiver. It was odd to think of how things had gone between them - from careful curiosity to friendship and now, perhaps, to something even more. "I care about you too, Jhayka. I care very much." Dani reached a hand across the bar. "If you want, we can sit here. We don't even need to talk, just sit." She smiled sweetly. "I love having you around."
"Yes." Jhayka offered her hand and smiled faintly, though it was at least genuine emotion that reflected in her voice as she replied, far more strongly than her normally reserved facial expressions could have delivered it. "Come, and sit beside me, and you'll see that my body is warm enough to succor your's. We'll sit quietly, and go to bed when the artillery falls silent, or when we no longer care about it."
Kalunda, Gilead
Jhayka got back late. She was worried about Danielle; the two had been checking up on wounded in the hospital, Danielle one of her own and Jhayka.. Someone important.. When they'd exchanged words in the morning. But now the evening was coming on, and she'd just gotten back from talking with Captain Arshon, and reluctantly approving Ilavna's mission that evening. It was a lot to think about, and she was very worried about Ilavna even though the girl had handled herself ably in the breakout from Ar. Now, though, most of all, Jhayka was feeling the burden of her position. She entered the suites quietly, and went toward the connecting door to Dani's room, knocking on it gently. "May I come in, Dani?" She asked through it.
Inside Dani was at her desk pouring over her design notes, wearing her nightrobe loosely enough that it bared everything between her shoulders with nothing else underneath. Jhayka's request made her nearly jump from her chair. She stood and quickly pulled her the robe closely over herself, tying the sash so that it would cover her up to just below the neck. As she was tying it she called out, "Yes." She turned and opened the door. As Jhayka entered, Dani unconsciously used her left hand to let out her hair where some of it had been laying upon her left shoulder.
Jhayka smiled brightly as Dani opened the door. "May I come in?" She asked, even as she reached to pull off the heavy greatcoat she'd be wearing. "I just want to relax a bit.. With you. For I've not had the chance since the fighting started on the third, and there's been a lot happening today as you may recall from the hospital. That, and.. I admit that I was a bit worried about you yesterday, and it's nice to have you around me in person, Dani."
"Well, I'm not going out on the boats quite yet. I was relaying those orders to the boats, you see. I'm still needed at the factories to make sure they know how to do everything." Dani sighed. "I was really worried about you, leading that counter-attack and everything." Dani gestured to a pair of seats at the mini-bar included in her suite. "Want a seat? Maybe something to drink? I've got quite a few drinks in the wet bar here."
"Sure, a little wine wouldn't hurt," Jhayka answered agreeably as she moved to sit, unbuttoning the uniform top, in a surprising degree of informality from her, to reveal a thin silk blouse under it, which probably for the first time showed the fact that her chest was not completely, irrevocably flat, though to say that Jhayka had an A cup by human standards would probably be tottering toward generous. Her pink hair lent as flamboyant of an air as one could expect, and she slumped somewhat to the side. "Well, I know it was somewhat dangerous, but I didn't want them thinking that I wouldn't risk myself simply because I was a foreigner. For the troops of Kalunda to really obey me, they must see that I am prepared to sacrifice myself for their country as much as they are."
Dani nodded at that. She looked into the mini-bar's wine cooler. "Haven't had a chance to see what's in here. Hmm.... Scathfordian Port, dated 2790. Older than I am by a bit... More Scathfordian Port, 2788. 2804... 2818.... Ah, I was hoping for this." Dani reached in and pulled out a bottle. "Nordsen Wine Company. Family vineyard on New Minnesota in my home universe, really good stuff. It's port, and I know you like that." She retrieved a couple of glasses and set one before Jhayka, pouring a bit for her with all due carefulness. Dani then poured herself some and sat opposite from Jhayka. It was then that she noticed the year of the vintage - 2503 - and frowned. That brought up some memories she'd rather not think about.
Setting the bottle aside, she took her glass. "I understand why you did what you did. I'm going to be heading out on the river myself, as soon as I'm sure the crews at the boatyards can build on their own. So..." She raised a glass. "To victory. Before we know it, we'll be back in Ar to dictate peace to these pinheads at the mouth of the General Faeria's guns."
Jhayka smiled, though it was a smile without humour. "To Victory," she acknowledged the toast. "I'm not so sure about the 'before we know it' part, though. I was able to send a party forward to where the Normans cut the tracks last night, and establish a connection with the electrical control impulses in the rails. We can communicate via morse code with the stations up the line that way--well, we could until daybreak, anyway. There's been civil violence in East Port, and the Normans are advancing toward it with some second-line forces, mostly reinforced by worthless tribals for this sort of fight." A pause. "Anyway, I've got an operation on tonight to try and secure East Port. I'm sending the General Faeria there--she'll be less effective in our further defensive efforts with most of the Norman heavy tanks already knocked out, and can be of better use leading a relief column from East Port once the government gets things stabilized. Even so, I would not rule out the siege lasting a month." Jhayka stretched and straightened, smiling a bit. "I hope this is not to worrying for you--I'd like to relax, but I thought you deserved to know, and, really, our defensive situation is excellent."
Dani took a drink of her wine. "That it is, and it'll get better when I get more boats on the river. It'll help if we can force them to keep their attacks away from the river banks so you can focus more reserves there. I've also been talking with Sarina d'Kellius about forming some Crimson Guard detachments for raiding behind the lines. We could use our river mobility to sneak them upriver or down river so they can raise some Hell in the enemy rear areas. Blow up some supply dumps, that kind of thing. Since I'm sure they'll soon be moving all their supplies further inland so the boats can't do just that."
"That's a very interesting idea. I approve of it, seeing as I've already authorized some trench raiding tonight to cover the track repairs necessary to facilitate the breakout of the General Faeria," Jhayka noted, neglecting to mention that it was Ilavna who was going to lead one of the teams. The Normans had, since the day before, been using their advanced positions only a hundred meters or so from the Fileya Line's outer defences in many places to begin digging their own trenches, and the steady thump of the mortars along the front line savaging the working parties--mostly slaves--could be very faintly heard. Jhayka sipped her wine, and relaxed a bit, again, the sound almost reassuring to her now. "Tell me about New Minnesota, Dani? I'd rather focus on you and what your life has been like rather than on all these details at the moment."
"Well, I've only been to New Minnesota once. It was.... fifteen years ago, and I was still technically in the United States Star Navy at the time. I was serving on a cruiser, the Wichita, then, and we had a stopover at New Minnesota to pick up some supplies after some idiots didn't get the right parts back to us." Dani sipped at her wine. "It's a nice world. Earth-like, greenish-blue star, lots of farming and such. It got the name because, at the time, New Minnesota had the most identifiable freshwater lakes of any explored planet. New Minneapolis was founded in the smack middle of the main continent, Humphrey, along a river about twenty-five percent longer than the Mississippi back on Earth - which starts in Minnesota, I'll add."
She sipped again. "Anyway, I spent the leave in the tropics of the planet. The Luden Islands straddle the planet's equator, a thousand or so kilometers off of Humphrey's western coast. There are sixty islands in the archipelago, and the ten largest each have a volcano. The largest, Emily Island, has it's own small mountain range that you can see from the beach on it's northern shore. It's a beautiful view. I've got some really nice pictures of the place back in my storage locker." Dani put her hand to her face. "And, dammit, I just realized I'm going to have to fork over a few months' rent to get that stuff back."
"I grew up in Minnesota myself. Just outside of Minneapolis. My Dad was a retired Master Chief from the USSN and my Mom, well, she was a homemaker as we call them. We lived well for what Dad earned, so I had a comfortable childhood. The only problem, of course, was that by the time I was fifteen I decided I liked looking at other girls more than I liked looking at boys." Dani sighed. "My mom took me to Mass every week too, and was pretty determined to make me another good Catholic woman with a husband and kids. Didn't make my feelings any easier to deal with." Taking a drink of her wine, Dani added, "I... don't talk with her that much anymore. I keep in touch through Dad of course, but it's safe to say my Mom considers me a big disappointment as a daughter, no matter how well I've done in my career, and she really doesn't like talking to me too often." Dani's eyes looked distant as she blithely added, "I figure the only way I can get good with her is if I introduced her to a devout Catholic man I'm engaged to marry. Anything short of that...."
"I'll pay the rent for you. And any other expenses," Jhayka responded with a soft smile, and then frowned, her ears flexing, as she listened to the rest of it. "You humans are so funny at times. Your monotheistic religions are rather parochial, and it seems that when they try to modernize to be closer to the vision of God they instead just go further and further astray." She paused for a moment and thought. "You know that you could be married under the Lord's grace in the Farzian faith, yes? I mean, if you were to convert, there's nothing stopping you from marrying another woman of the Farzian faith in a sanctified union..." Her ears flattened. "Your family, though, I fear would not accept that, would they?"
"Dad would, in his own way. Mom never would." Dani set her glass down and drew in a sigh. "For a few years I tried to suppress it, you know. Finally I couldn't any longer. When I was 17 I had met a cheerleader for our High School, Jenny, in one of my classes. One day I had her over at my home for a school project and, well, my parents were supposed to be gone for the whole evening and one thing led to another. It was my first time with another girl. And just as we were.... well.... as we were winding down from it, my parents returned early."
Dani brought her hand up and pushed some strands of hair out of her eyes. "My Mom screamed like she'd never screamed before. She called me every nasty word she could think of and threw me out before I could do more than put on some underwear. So I ended up staying the night with Jenny's brother in his apartment, and I cried all night. I just wanted to go home. My Dad came by at 5 that morning, on his way to work, and brought me home first. Told me not to do it again around Mom." Dani chuckled wryly. "That same day, Mom dragged me to Church and made me take confession of what I'd done to the priest. Father Dawson gave me the usual penance and then a speech about resisting the flesh and all." Taking another sip, Dani finished her story by saying, "I'd been toying with getting my engineering degree in the Navy. After this all happened, I decided to give a shot. Anything to get away from home and away from Mother. And when I refused to Confirm, well, that's all she wrote for my relationship with Mom." Dani took yet another drink. "I talk to Dad, well, every other week at least. I made sure to send him letters when we were in Kalunda last time, and I had another brief one sent while I was recovering in the hospital. I hope he's not worrying too much."
"I'm sure he knows war well enough if he is a Navy man," Jhayka answered softly, and then continued... "Let me tell you a little about myself. I was... Never good at resisting temptation, either. Never. The first time my governess caught me playing around with the daughter of the stable master I was, oh, four years old--thirteen by the terran calendar." Jhayka looked like she'd never talked about this before. "Anyway, my parents made me stand under showering cold water for an hour at a time after they caught me, which was often enough. I was very indiscrete, then, and it wasn't until I was six and in the military academy that I really learned discretion, though, of course, I just carried on my wild ways with my fellow-officers. It was then that I got a taste for low-born women, particularly with blonde hair, like Dalamarians, and a bit of a curve to them.." Jhayka smiled in vague fondness. "It was a long and painful time, going through management school and serving as a page and an attendant in the Parliament, before I could return to military life and of course I had.. Hmm.. Sixteen years service, more than fifty by your count. I had quite the reputation in the Mess, but things kept in the regimental Mess stay there, so it was never a problem. I ultimately served in the government of the principality for about the same length of time and after that my mother was ailing and I cared for her before she died; she'd only had me very late in life, and I had an older sister I never met who was killed in action in the Ghastid suppression before I was born. It probably didn't help my mother's health at all that she had me, but otherwise the line would have reverted to some very distant cousins, and she was particular about such things." A frown. "I avoided indiscretion for her sake late in life, but everything with Lashila just.. Caught up with me all at once. And so here I am. I've never found anyone other than her I'd really want to marry, at least up to the present--who knows about the future--and of course I couldn't marry her."
Dani nodded in understanding. "It's not easy. Makes me envy the Kalundans a bit. They don't see anything weird or unnatural about it. Of course, given why they got such attitudes, I'm not sure that's any better." She finished her wine. "I've been with men too. Never enjoyed it as much, but I've been capable of it. It's just that... I don't understand them much, you know? And I've never been able to get in any kind of relationship with a man. All of my romances have been with other women." Dani reached for the bottle, again noticing the year on it. "This is a really good year." She poured herself a bit more and held the bottle toward Jhayka. "More?"
"One more glass, only. It is very fine," Jhayka allowed, and smiled wryly. "Nobody would have been really that upset if I'd gotten involved with another woman of my own class. It would have warranted a bit more gossip than usual but nothing else. My problem was not that I was a.. Hmmm.. Lesbian, but that I had a bunch of indiscrete affairs with commoners."
Dani filled her glass. "Is the distinction really that strong? I mean, do your people really not accept the idea that love is something that can surpass social rank?"
Flatly: "Yes. Or at least that love between social classes is inappropriate and that if you engage in it you're being sinful, because the different orders of society have different roles. We actually have a fair degree of social mobility, but within a particular rank adherence is very strict to these principles. And of course we think that such things must be controlled; yet I have always been bad at controlling that aspect of my personality." A faint shrug was allowed there as she drank more of her wine. "I think your problems are far more severe than mine, at any rate, which are at least my personal failings, something your's are not."
Dani didn't respond for a moment. "Well, maybe part of it is a personal failing. I've, well, I've lived most of my life with relationships that were more physical than anything else. Attachment and marriage weren't what I was looking for.. Of course, that means when I finally found myself wanting something like that, my partner ends up with her old lover on the doorstep and I soon find myself getting shown the door." Dani raised her glass. "A second toast, then, to personal failings, and the painful education they've given us."
"With respect, I'd decline," Jhayka said abruptly, and perhaps a bit oddly. "For that implies that I've learned my lesson. And, well, let us be honest for a moment--we are in mortal danger here, and though it might seem right for me to come to accounts before the Lord, I would rather say that I shall carry on as I have before, in confidence that I shall have time in the future to rectify whatever errors I've made. It seems rather more optimistic, at least to my mind, Dani."
Dani shrugged and took a sip from the raised glass. "Ah well, must be another one of those differences of view that we've discussed before. Me? I don't mind much looking back at mistakes in my life even here, since they can't be fixed or anything. Might as well think about them, learn from them if you can, and then laugh at them." Dani set her glass down. "You know, the last time I drank this kind of wine, it was my first formal date with the woman I've already mentioned. I went to the trouble of buying her a nice dress since we were going to an expensive, ritzy Italian restaurant. They had a good Chianti, but I insisted on Nordsen Port. We had a nice meal, went clubbing briefly, and ended the night in her apartment." Dani looked into the glass, a forced grin on her face. "It was... fun. If only things hadn't ended as they did, I'd be smiling for real instead of feeling like my heart's going to crack."
Dani shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I'm not going to dwell on that. Time to move on. Got a long day tomorrow. Trying to get you some more boats."
"No. Don't, Dani." Jhayka said, ears abruptly straightened and looking long and hard toward the alien woman across from her, gray eyes most intense in their bulging, dead way. "If we die here, we shouldn't die alone. Come here, Dani. Sit with me. You mean to much to me for us to part ways now. Don't let your heart suffer tonight. I... I care about you so very much."
Hearing that made Dani's heart quiver. It was odd to think of how things had gone between them - from careful curiosity to friendship and now, perhaps, to something even more. "I care about you too, Jhayka. I care very much." Dani reached a hand across the bar. "If you want, we can sit here. We don't even need to talk, just sit." She smiled sweetly. "I love having you around."
"Yes." Jhayka offered her hand and smiled faintly, though it was at least genuine emotion that reflected in her voice as she replied, far more strongly than her normally reserved facial expressions could have delivered it. "Come, and sit beside me, and you'll see that my body is warm enough to succor your's. We'll sit quietly, and go to bed when the artillery falls silent, or when we no longer care about it."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
All of this is by Marina.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FOUR
Ilavna Lashila was preparing for a trench raid. She was commanding a company of 95 troops in power armour. They were of Taloran design, though most were intended for human mercenaries and therefore of a different build. A few humans had been found suitable for the Taloran suits which didn't have Talorans in them; the rest did, so that there were seven of them altogether including Ilavna on the field, and the other 88 were hand-picked Kalundans. Taloran power armour was of a simple design. It required a neck jack providing direct interface into the body to operate, as it didn't actually move the user, or move on the user's muscle power. Rather, its movements were exactly synchronized to the muscle movements of the user, so that the armour supported entirely its own weight and the weight of anything carried on it, and all the energy used in its movement came from its own internal power supply. This meant that the user was capable of the same feats of motion and endurance as a normal, completely unemcumbered human or Taloran.
The suit was sufficiently well-armoured to repel 4.9mm tungsten hypervelocity penetrators from assault rifles (though those accelerated by much longer-barreled support weapons could easily penetrate it) at all but extreme point-blank ranges if they hit with a poor angle, and from reasonable ranges with a good angle of impact, to all areas of the body, with somewhat improved protection beyond that to the torso and head. It provided complete NBC protection, and the casualties in Ar raid from men wearing them had been entirely due to lucky hits by support weapons or artillery. Its integral weapons were minmal, though. The suit was designed for full functionality of the hand-gloves, so someone in it could use a normal assault rifle. For mounted weapons, it had a twelve-inch vibro-blade attached to each wrist which could cut through almost any armour in existance, and it had an electronic defence system which could shock someone coming in contact with the suit, or produce an arc of electricity at close range. There were smoke projectors, as well, fully integrated night-vision, and most of all, two electronically-ignited grenade launchers, one on each side of the head, each of which held seven 40mm grenades and could be fired by looking toward a target.
It was actually the support group of a nearly equally-sized unit, which had been rated a half-company along with the armoured forces, forming the total of her some 200-troop company, which was divided into seven teams of sixteen each. These were armed with grenades, knives and hammers, picks and dirks, shotguns and submachineguns—the later loaded down with 100-round drum magazines. These troops were unarmoured, however, and they had the precarious task of infiltrating the Norman defensive works, while Ilavna's main company followed behind and waited in no-man's land. If there was silence ahead, they would advance to seize the trench cleared by the small parties, and hold it against counterattack to inflict as many casualties on the Normans as possible. If there was the sound of the firing of guns, it meant they should provide fire support to the retreat of the raiding parties. To allow the grenades to be used without exciting a general response, an artillery barrage was planned as cover for the raid.
They were actually attacking to the north, where there were more Norman allies than Norman units themselves, to the east of the Amazonian positions. There was a reason for this, of course, based heavily on the actual purpose of their mission, which in addition to breaking up the construction of the Norman defensive lines, was to provide cover for the work parties heading out to clear the breach in the tracks under the cover of a two-brigade spoiling attack to allow the breakout of the General Faeria, which was taking the Zhai Princess Sen Xiao Li to East Port. The train would be escorting as many trains as possible which could make it out of the marshalling yards before the Normans forced the spoiling brigades back and retook the line; these would be carrying wounded from the fighting on the 3rd who were to ill to recover and rejoining the fighting, and a large number of children and other noncombatants useless in the siege. Thousands had already been evacuated on trains returning to East Port beforehand when supplies had been coming in during the days when the siege wasn't closed yet, but the more they evacuated the longer they could hold.
East Port itself would have to be secured before the people on the trains could be safe, though. For that reason, the General Faeria herself was packed with a thousand-man battalion of militia which was probably the worst in the city. Jhayka had decided to send them, judging that they'd be better than nothing and could be effective enough in controlling the sort of disorganized mob violence in East Port, and better yet, helping to quickly suppress it before additional Norman and allied forces in the field reached the city to take advantage of it. Captain Arshon, in command with the rank of brevet Colonel, would also have the task of trying to convince the government forces there to intervene, and send a series of dispatches from Jhayka relating the events of the first days of the siege to the Taloran government along with an appeal for help.
This breakout was soon to happen, and Ilavna knew that her operation was critical in aiding it by diverting vital Norman resources, particularly in terms of their more advanced equipment. It was not to be the only diversion, however. Where the great Norman offensive of the third had taken place to the south west of the city the Normans had not retreated, thanks to the cover of their armoured vehicles, and had instead begun to dig entrenchments over a distance of several kilometers which where at points considerably less than one hundred meters from the Kalundan lines, at some points, as few as fourty meters. Here the situation was excellent for an attack on the building parties, and extensive supplies of grenades had been supplied to the front-line troops. That attack was just a minute away from beginning; Ilavna would lead her troops forward five minutes after that.
Time ticked away, and then reached the go-point. In the Norman trenches, slaves were being worked vigorously to deepen the fortifications. They were supported by longitudinal trenches which had been worked forward to provide cover for the supplies and for the men arriving on the front-line trench to spread out on each side of them and begin to build the whole of the trenches under cover. Suddenly, a great number of bomb-throwers, simple mechanical devices with rubber bands, hurled hundreds of grenades into the Norman trenches in the southwest. They were followed by the men with the strongest arms, who'd crawled forward into no-man's land, throwing their stick-grenades by hand straight into the trenches. Mortars quickly followed, and rifle-grenades were fired from inside the trenches themselves by the troops with assault rifles. In the first seconds of the opening battle, hundreds of mortar shells and grenades exploded around or in the Norman trenches.
Hapless slaves and whip-bearing overseers were killed alike, guts torn open and heads cut up by the shrapnel from the grenades and mortar bombs. A flamethrower modified out of a high-pressure water pump opened up from the Kalundan front-line trench, covering the 40 meters to the Norman entrenchments and drenching them in burning napalm as an arc of eerie, orange-burning liquid lit up the sky. The artillery began to fire, even as illumination rockets raced into the air and cast a harsh metallic glint over the battlefield, turning the night into satanic day.
This battlefield extended right down through the dunes and the beach along the river, and here, where the Normans had been extending their trenches right down to the edge of the river, the Kalundan gunboats approached under the cover of the noise of the artillery barrage, raining down high-explosive on the Norman rear-areas, mostly for psychological effect and masking of the other attacks, though 150 x 24cm howitzers firing with the maximum rapidity, even just with high explosive, was still a devastating experience. The Kalundan gunboats soon turned it into the absolute pit of Hades.
Even as the Douglass directed her powerful flamethrowers against the Normans along the bank of the river and a hundred meters inland, the other two gunboats began to engage with mortars and direct-fire artillery, firing unique and vicious white phosphorous shells. The “Willy Pete” shells produced hideous burns even worse than those from the jellied gasoline of the flamethrowers. As the phosphorous particles burned into the flesh they continued to burn, right down to bone, unless dosed in water—and the moment the water was removed, they reignited. Having insufficient medical personnel and they being completely untrained in how to deal with this hideous substance, the Normans afflicted by these shells along the river bank ran into the water for safety. As they tried to do, the machine-guns on the river gunboats opened up on them, scything through the running men, some of whom were running with their clothes fully engulfed in flame, screaming in agony as the Willy Pete burned down through their flesh.
A new horror awaited those who made it into the water. Those only hit by willy pete below the face were fine; they quickly learned to submerge themselves so that only their mouth and nose were above water, and the flames mercifully ceased. For those hit on the head, however, a particular kind of agony awaited. Each time they surfaced for a breath of air, the flames reignited. They had to choose between death by incineration or death by drowning.
As the horrors of incendiary warfare cleared a swathe of the Norman trenches closest to the river, further inland where the trenches were still, for several kilometers, so close together, parties of bombers had advanced further into no-man's land and continued to hurtle a great number of grenades, now including regular baseball grenades, straight into the Norman trenches, even as rifle-grenades and mortar shells continued to be fired from the trenches. Many of these grenades were hideously simple affairs, blackpowder laced with aluminium dust to increase the explosive power, with the simplest of fuses ignited by a piece of metal crashing down onto a cap of mercury fulminate. Sometimes they exploded before they were thrown and wounded or killed the bomber.
The Normans had only posted light forces in their front-line trenches, though, as they were still very much under construction. Now they raced forward, and these were their best troops, to the front-line—save in those areas where the trenches were obscured in massive amounts of burning napalm—and on reaching the front, immediately began to return fire by throwing their own grenades back toward the Kalundan bombers and the Kalundan lines, and setting up mortars. Direct hits by the massive howitzer shells sometimes massacred dozens in the longitudinal trenches, but quickly a stiff resistance had developed to the Kalundans. A bomber's fight was underway, countless grenades exchanged as fast as the bombers could throw them all along the front, at exceedingly close ranges.
It had really only been about eleven minutes since the thunder of the guns sounded and all Hell broke lose to the southwest. Now Ilavna was going forward, quietly, with the troops under her command, up through the paths through the minefields and the wire, into no-man's land, then, crawling toward the Norman trenches very slowly while the thunder of the guns reverberated and shook through the ground. The armoured troops advanced in the front for now while the infiltrators followed them. Everything was done by hand-signals, lest the Normans had listening devices which could detect radio communications in the area, even at very low signal-powers.
They reached about fifteen meters from the Norman trenches before they came to a halt. At this point, Ilavna's vitality to the mission came to the forefront. She reached forward to the minds of the Norman sentries in the trenches, and began, very gently, to work through the natural defensive layers of the mind and to distract them, to gently nudge them into being over-focused on the artillery and the sounds of fighting to the west, and to ignore the area around them. It took time, and the company settled down in no-man's late to wait for Ilavna's signal.
She was in a battle of misdirection with the minds of the sentries. A strange sort of covert battle, part of a grand battle of misdirection which marked the whole breakout effort of the General Faeria. There was nothing to do but delve deeply into the minds of these sick and sickening men, all for the sake of slightly nudging their attention, and it was terribly exhausting to Ilavna, but she would still have to fight afterward...
She whispered a prayer, and then decided it was to be enough. The gesture was simple. She held her armoured hand up in view, holding a red signal flag, and flung it forward without another motion. It was reacted to instantly, each of the seven groups of sixteen dashing forward and spreading out to make the last distance into the Norman trenches, working their way in silent swiftness through the Norman wire, cutting it whereever they could, and dropping down into the midst of the distracted and unprepared guards, still held in the grip of Ilavna's wiles.
Those guards never stood a chance. The Kalundans were on them in a silent heartbeat, chopping and stabbing and swinging hammers to inflict brutal blunt-force trauma. Broken corpses, throats cut so that they couldn't cry out, toppled down to the ground in many places, and now, using the noise of the artillery barrage as cover, they pressed rapidly through the trenches, silently and quickly overwhelming men in half-finished dugouts, roofs still open to the sky, dropping grenades down into their midst and butchering the survivors with knives and hatchets.
Silence was the signal, and Ilavna, her mental efforts now abandoned, and having been abandoned at the first sign of pain from one of the men lest she suffer the feelings of their deaths, rose up and led her armoured half-company forward, through the gaps in the wire created by the infiltrators and down into the unfinished Norman trench. Five groups of sixteen each spread out. Each one had an anti-tank section, a flamethrower section, a demolition section, and the rest were riflemen. The remaining fifteen including Ilavna herself formed the command section and reserve in the center of the area of the occupied trench.
It was not long now before the Normans became aware that something was dreadfully wrong. As they began to respond and form up, and commanders hastily radioed in for reinforcements, the infiltration units at last opened up on full-automatic with their submachineguns and their shotguns, pumping any Normans they could see full of lead as they threw grenades further down the trenches. At that point, concentrated 120mm mortars in the Kalundan lines opened fire on the Norman support trenches. With the Normans finally responding in force, the infiltration squads, not intended for heavy combat, began to quickly fall back on the support of the armoured squads.
As the screaming rush of guided missiles being fired in confined trenches at point-blank tore through the night, the anti-tank crews let loose on fortified dugouts, smashing them with their missiles in a flaming blink of an eye, while their heavy railgun assault rifles began to hammer out the sound of their hypervelocity penetrators, often tearing through any obstacle except for thick dirt to reach and kill Normans covering behind it, as they threw very heavy grenades with the assist of their suit power, which tumbled on stabilized sticks to great distances, and these were no simple grenades, either, but heavy plasma grenades which could actually collapse the trench walls. The infiltration squads reached cover safely under that kind of vicious fire with only six casualties, and the Normans fell back in disarray from their initial efforts to counterattack the seized portion of their lines.
This meant that for the moment the trench was being held against the local forces, which were not well armed or trained, anyway. The Normans were therefore having to commit reserves in two places, to deal with the seizure of parts of one of their lines by Ilavna, and to deal with the massive grenade battle near the river where the lines were exceptionally close together.
“Get the infiltration squads working to establish defensive lines inside this trench sector. They're as good with shovels as anyone else,” Ilavna directed as soon as the situation had stabilized. “And detail the support unit of this command group to do the exact same thing,” a moment later. “I want us to have as strong a position as possible. Do we have any prisoners?”
“Perhaps twenty, Sir,” one of the platoon sergeants commented.
“Find the ones who can work and get them on it with shovels, too. They can repay a bit of their debt,” she added righteously.
“On it, Sir,” the Sergeant saluted and turned away, voice metallic and grating.
“Got any runners with ammunition from the main trenches yet?”
“No, Sir.”
A series of thuds sounded from behind them, and Ilavna turned, startled by them and tense.
“Ahh. Sir, don't worry about it. They're just clearing the Norman defences which weren't damaged in the infiltration, to make our retreat easier.”
“Oh.” A vague frown. “Well, let's keep 'em off balance. Keep back the first armoured squad as a reserve and send the other four forward to keep smashing and hitting their trenches wherever we can. If they encounter significant resistance they're to fall back on our defensive position.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The orders were transmitted at once, and armoured squads 2 – 5 moved to attack positions. Each had two flamethrowers, and these were now used to good effect, psychological terror on the Normans as they closed with assault railguns, grenades, and the vicious flames, to hit the Normans just disordered by their failed counterattack, to root them out, to kill them, and to generally drive them back and prevent them from organizing for further counterattacks. The armoured squads moved far, fast, with a surprising ease which allowed them to strike hard and keep on hitting.
It naturally let to a further concentration of reserves against the pocket by the Normans, and in this environment it was not long before Jhayka—who had gotten only three hours of sleep that night, though it seemed like enough--judged the situation to be exactly what she wanted it to be. The Marshal of the Kalundan Militia and Brigadier of the Taloran Pioneers gave the order, and the first infiltration squads began to work their way forward along the ruined rail-line out of the city across no-man's land toward the Norman trenches, a company on each side, all infiltrators—but unlike the infiltration units until Ilavna's command, they had an extra weapon.
Instead of attacking immediately like the other infiltration units, also, they just concentrated in no-man's land.. And there, they began to assemble bangalore torpedoes and push them forward into the Norman wire and defences, connecting each segment in turn and slowly extending them. Behind them, in the Kalundan trenches, two brigades of troops prepared for the assault, a flamethrower assigned to each platoon, and each man issued six grenades instead of the usual three. Behind them, in turn, twelve of Kalunda's precious few assault guns began to rev up their engines...
Last of all, the General Faeria slowly rolled forward toward the limit of the intact track.
It was now fifteen minutes until zero hour, 0200 hours local.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FOUR
Ilavna Lashila was preparing for a trench raid. She was commanding a company of 95 troops in power armour. They were of Taloran design, though most were intended for human mercenaries and therefore of a different build. A few humans had been found suitable for the Taloran suits which didn't have Talorans in them; the rest did, so that there were seven of them altogether including Ilavna on the field, and the other 88 were hand-picked Kalundans. Taloran power armour was of a simple design. It required a neck jack providing direct interface into the body to operate, as it didn't actually move the user, or move on the user's muscle power. Rather, its movements were exactly synchronized to the muscle movements of the user, so that the armour supported entirely its own weight and the weight of anything carried on it, and all the energy used in its movement came from its own internal power supply. This meant that the user was capable of the same feats of motion and endurance as a normal, completely unemcumbered human or Taloran.
The suit was sufficiently well-armoured to repel 4.9mm tungsten hypervelocity penetrators from assault rifles (though those accelerated by much longer-barreled support weapons could easily penetrate it) at all but extreme point-blank ranges if they hit with a poor angle, and from reasonable ranges with a good angle of impact, to all areas of the body, with somewhat improved protection beyond that to the torso and head. It provided complete NBC protection, and the casualties in Ar raid from men wearing them had been entirely due to lucky hits by support weapons or artillery. Its integral weapons were minmal, though. The suit was designed for full functionality of the hand-gloves, so someone in it could use a normal assault rifle. For mounted weapons, it had a twelve-inch vibro-blade attached to each wrist which could cut through almost any armour in existance, and it had an electronic defence system which could shock someone coming in contact with the suit, or produce an arc of electricity at close range. There were smoke projectors, as well, fully integrated night-vision, and most of all, two electronically-ignited grenade launchers, one on each side of the head, each of which held seven 40mm grenades and could be fired by looking toward a target.
It was actually the support group of a nearly equally-sized unit, which had been rated a half-company along with the armoured forces, forming the total of her some 200-troop company, which was divided into seven teams of sixteen each. These were armed with grenades, knives and hammers, picks and dirks, shotguns and submachineguns—the later loaded down with 100-round drum magazines. These troops were unarmoured, however, and they had the precarious task of infiltrating the Norman defensive works, while Ilavna's main company followed behind and waited in no-man's land. If there was silence ahead, they would advance to seize the trench cleared by the small parties, and hold it against counterattack to inflict as many casualties on the Normans as possible. If there was the sound of the firing of guns, it meant they should provide fire support to the retreat of the raiding parties. To allow the grenades to be used without exciting a general response, an artillery barrage was planned as cover for the raid.
They were actually attacking to the north, where there were more Norman allies than Norman units themselves, to the east of the Amazonian positions. There was a reason for this, of course, based heavily on the actual purpose of their mission, which in addition to breaking up the construction of the Norman defensive lines, was to provide cover for the work parties heading out to clear the breach in the tracks under the cover of a two-brigade spoiling attack to allow the breakout of the General Faeria, which was taking the Zhai Princess Sen Xiao Li to East Port. The train would be escorting as many trains as possible which could make it out of the marshalling yards before the Normans forced the spoiling brigades back and retook the line; these would be carrying wounded from the fighting on the 3rd who were to ill to recover and rejoining the fighting, and a large number of children and other noncombatants useless in the siege. Thousands had already been evacuated on trains returning to East Port beforehand when supplies had been coming in during the days when the siege wasn't closed yet, but the more they evacuated the longer they could hold.
East Port itself would have to be secured before the people on the trains could be safe, though. For that reason, the General Faeria herself was packed with a thousand-man battalion of militia which was probably the worst in the city. Jhayka had decided to send them, judging that they'd be better than nothing and could be effective enough in controlling the sort of disorganized mob violence in East Port, and better yet, helping to quickly suppress it before additional Norman and allied forces in the field reached the city to take advantage of it. Captain Arshon, in command with the rank of brevet Colonel, would also have the task of trying to convince the government forces there to intervene, and send a series of dispatches from Jhayka relating the events of the first days of the siege to the Taloran government along with an appeal for help.
This breakout was soon to happen, and Ilavna knew that her operation was critical in aiding it by diverting vital Norman resources, particularly in terms of their more advanced equipment. It was not to be the only diversion, however. Where the great Norman offensive of the third had taken place to the south west of the city the Normans had not retreated, thanks to the cover of their armoured vehicles, and had instead begun to dig entrenchments over a distance of several kilometers which where at points considerably less than one hundred meters from the Kalundan lines, at some points, as few as fourty meters. Here the situation was excellent for an attack on the building parties, and extensive supplies of grenades had been supplied to the front-line troops. That attack was just a minute away from beginning; Ilavna would lead her troops forward five minutes after that.
Time ticked away, and then reached the go-point. In the Norman trenches, slaves were being worked vigorously to deepen the fortifications. They were supported by longitudinal trenches which had been worked forward to provide cover for the supplies and for the men arriving on the front-line trench to spread out on each side of them and begin to build the whole of the trenches under cover. Suddenly, a great number of bomb-throwers, simple mechanical devices with rubber bands, hurled hundreds of grenades into the Norman trenches in the southwest. They were followed by the men with the strongest arms, who'd crawled forward into no-man's land, throwing their stick-grenades by hand straight into the trenches. Mortars quickly followed, and rifle-grenades were fired from inside the trenches themselves by the troops with assault rifles. In the first seconds of the opening battle, hundreds of mortar shells and grenades exploded around or in the Norman trenches.
Hapless slaves and whip-bearing overseers were killed alike, guts torn open and heads cut up by the shrapnel from the grenades and mortar bombs. A flamethrower modified out of a high-pressure water pump opened up from the Kalundan front-line trench, covering the 40 meters to the Norman entrenchments and drenching them in burning napalm as an arc of eerie, orange-burning liquid lit up the sky. The artillery began to fire, even as illumination rockets raced into the air and cast a harsh metallic glint over the battlefield, turning the night into satanic day.
This battlefield extended right down through the dunes and the beach along the river, and here, where the Normans had been extending their trenches right down to the edge of the river, the Kalundan gunboats approached under the cover of the noise of the artillery barrage, raining down high-explosive on the Norman rear-areas, mostly for psychological effect and masking of the other attacks, though 150 x 24cm howitzers firing with the maximum rapidity, even just with high explosive, was still a devastating experience. The Kalundan gunboats soon turned it into the absolute pit of Hades.
Even as the Douglass directed her powerful flamethrowers against the Normans along the bank of the river and a hundred meters inland, the other two gunboats began to engage with mortars and direct-fire artillery, firing unique and vicious white phosphorous shells. The “Willy Pete” shells produced hideous burns even worse than those from the jellied gasoline of the flamethrowers. As the phosphorous particles burned into the flesh they continued to burn, right down to bone, unless dosed in water—and the moment the water was removed, they reignited. Having insufficient medical personnel and they being completely untrained in how to deal with this hideous substance, the Normans afflicted by these shells along the river bank ran into the water for safety. As they tried to do, the machine-guns on the river gunboats opened up on them, scything through the running men, some of whom were running with their clothes fully engulfed in flame, screaming in agony as the Willy Pete burned down through their flesh.
A new horror awaited those who made it into the water. Those only hit by willy pete below the face were fine; they quickly learned to submerge themselves so that only their mouth and nose were above water, and the flames mercifully ceased. For those hit on the head, however, a particular kind of agony awaited. Each time they surfaced for a breath of air, the flames reignited. They had to choose between death by incineration or death by drowning.
As the horrors of incendiary warfare cleared a swathe of the Norman trenches closest to the river, further inland where the trenches were still, for several kilometers, so close together, parties of bombers had advanced further into no-man's land and continued to hurtle a great number of grenades, now including regular baseball grenades, straight into the Norman trenches, even as rifle-grenades and mortar shells continued to be fired from the trenches. Many of these grenades were hideously simple affairs, blackpowder laced with aluminium dust to increase the explosive power, with the simplest of fuses ignited by a piece of metal crashing down onto a cap of mercury fulminate. Sometimes they exploded before they were thrown and wounded or killed the bomber.
The Normans had only posted light forces in their front-line trenches, though, as they were still very much under construction. Now they raced forward, and these were their best troops, to the front-line—save in those areas where the trenches were obscured in massive amounts of burning napalm—and on reaching the front, immediately began to return fire by throwing their own grenades back toward the Kalundan bombers and the Kalundan lines, and setting up mortars. Direct hits by the massive howitzer shells sometimes massacred dozens in the longitudinal trenches, but quickly a stiff resistance had developed to the Kalundans. A bomber's fight was underway, countless grenades exchanged as fast as the bombers could throw them all along the front, at exceedingly close ranges.
It had really only been about eleven minutes since the thunder of the guns sounded and all Hell broke lose to the southwest. Now Ilavna was going forward, quietly, with the troops under her command, up through the paths through the minefields and the wire, into no-man's land, then, crawling toward the Norman trenches very slowly while the thunder of the guns reverberated and shook through the ground. The armoured troops advanced in the front for now while the infiltrators followed them. Everything was done by hand-signals, lest the Normans had listening devices which could detect radio communications in the area, even at very low signal-powers.
They reached about fifteen meters from the Norman trenches before they came to a halt. At this point, Ilavna's vitality to the mission came to the forefront. She reached forward to the minds of the Norman sentries in the trenches, and began, very gently, to work through the natural defensive layers of the mind and to distract them, to gently nudge them into being over-focused on the artillery and the sounds of fighting to the west, and to ignore the area around them. It took time, and the company settled down in no-man's late to wait for Ilavna's signal.
She was in a battle of misdirection with the minds of the sentries. A strange sort of covert battle, part of a grand battle of misdirection which marked the whole breakout effort of the General Faeria. There was nothing to do but delve deeply into the minds of these sick and sickening men, all for the sake of slightly nudging their attention, and it was terribly exhausting to Ilavna, but she would still have to fight afterward...
She whispered a prayer, and then decided it was to be enough. The gesture was simple. She held her armoured hand up in view, holding a red signal flag, and flung it forward without another motion. It was reacted to instantly, each of the seven groups of sixteen dashing forward and spreading out to make the last distance into the Norman trenches, working their way in silent swiftness through the Norman wire, cutting it whereever they could, and dropping down into the midst of the distracted and unprepared guards, still held in the grip of Ilavna's wiles.
Those guards never stood a chance. The Kalundans were on them in a silent heartbeat, chopping and stabbing and swinging hammers to inflict brutal blunt-force trauma. Broken corpses, throats cut so that they couldn't cry out, toppled down to the ground in many places, and now, using the noise of the artillery barrage as cover, they pressed rapidly through the trenches, silently and quickly overwhelming men in half-finished dugouts, roofs still open to the sky, dropping grenades down into their midst and butchering the survivors with knives and hatchets.
Silence was the signal, and Ilavna, her mental efforts now abandoned, and having been abandoned at the first sign of pain from one of the men lest she suffer the feelings of their deaths, rose up and led her armoured half-company forward, through the gaps in the wire created by the infiltrators and down into the unfinished Norman trench. Five groups of sixteen each spread out. Each one had an anti-tank section, a flamethrower section, a demolition section, and the rest were riflemen. The remaining fifteen including Ilavna herself formed the command section and reserve in the center of the area of the occupied trench.
It was not long now before the Normans became aware that something was dreadfully wrong. As they began to respond and form up, and commanders hastily radioed in for reinforcements, the infiltration units at last opened up on full-automatic with their submachineguns and their shotguns, pumping any Normans they could see full of lead as they threw grenades further down the trenches. At that point, concentrated 120mm mortars in the Kalundan lines opened fire on the Norman support trenches. With the Normans finally responding in force, the infiltration squads, not intended for heavy combat, began to quickly fall back on the support of the armoured squads.
As the screaming rush of guided missiles being fired in confined trenches at point-blank tore through the night, the anti-tank crews let loose on fortified dugouts, smashing them with their missiles in a flaming blink of an eye, while their heavy railgun assault rifles began to hammer out the sound of their hypervelocity penetrators, often tearing through any obstacle except for thick dirt to reach and kill Normans covering behind it, as they threw very heavy grenades with the assist of their suit power, which tumbled on stabilized sticks to great distances, and these were no simple grenades, either, but heavy plasma grenades which could actually collapse the trench walls. The infiltration squads reached cover safely under that kind of vicious fire with only six casualties, and the Normans fell back in disarray from their initial efforts to counterattack the seized portion of their lines.
This meant that for the moment the trench was being held against the local forces, which were not well armed or trained, anyway. The Normans were therefore having to commit reserves in two places, to deal with the seizure of parts of one of their lines by Ilavna, and to deal with the massive grenade battle near the river where the lines were exceptionally close together.
“Get the infiltration squads working to establish defensive lines inside this trench sector. They're as good with shovels as anyone else,” Ilavna directed as soon as the situation had stabilized. “And detail the support unit of this command group to do the exact same thing,” a moment later. “I want us to have as strong a position as possible. Do we have any prisoners?”
“Perhaps twenty, Sir,” one of the platoon sergeants commented.
“Find the ones who can work and get them on it with shovels, too. They can repay a bit of their debt,” she added righteously.
“On it, Sir,” the Sergeant saluted and turned away, voice metallic and grating.
“Got any runners with ammunition from the main trenches yet?”
“No, Sir.”
A series of thuds sounded from behind them, and Ilavna turned, startled by them and tense.
“Ahh. Sir, don't worry about it. They're just clearing the Norman defences which weren't damaged in the infiltration, to make our retreat easier.”
“Oh.” A vague frown. “Well, let's keep 'em off balance. Keep back the first armoured squad as a reserve and send the other four forward to keep smashing and hitting their trenches wherever we can. If they encounter significant resistance they're to fall back on our defensive position.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The orders were transmitted at once, and armoured squads 2 – 5 moved to attack positions. Each had two flamethrowers, and these were now used to good effect, psychological terror on the Normans as they closed with assault railguns, grenades, and the vicious flames, to hit the Normans just disordered by their failed counterattack, to root them out, to kill them, and to generally drive them back and prevent them from organizing for further counterattacks. The armoured squads moved far, fast, with a surprising ease which allowed them to strike hard and keep on hitting.
It naturally let to a further concentration of reserves against the pocket by the Normans, and in this environment it was not long before Jhayka—who had gotten only three hours of sleep that night, though it seemed like enough--judged the situation to be exactly what she wanted it to be. The Marshal of the Kalundan Militia and Brigadier of the Taloran Pioneers gave the order, and the first infiltration squads began to work their way forward along the ruined rail-line out of the city across no-man's land toward the Norman trenches, a company on each side, all infiltrators—but unlike the infiltration units until Ilavna's command, they had an extra weapon.
Instead of attacking immediately like the other infiltration units, also, they just concentrated in no-man's land.. And there, they began to assemble bangalore torpedoes and push them forward into the Norman wire and defences, connecting each segment in turn and slowly extending them. Behind them, in the Kalundan trenches, two brigades of troops prepared for the assault, a flamethrower assigned to each platoon, and each man issued six grenades instead of the usual three. Behind them, in turn, twelve of Kalunda's precious few assault guns began to rev up their engines...
Last of all, the General Faeria slowly rolled forward toward the limit of the intact track.
It was now fifteen minutes until zero hour, 0200 hours local.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Again, all by Marina:
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FIVE
Two minutes to zero hour. The artillery of the Kalundans ceased firing, and the batteries were hastily recalibrated toward an aerial target as Willy Pete illumination rounds were loaded into the chamber automatically. Everything stood ready. In the trenches along the one-kilometer-long attack front, two brigades of the Crimson Guard fixed bayonets and slipped the safeties off their assault rifles, along with two regiments of militia in the trenches with them which consituted the normal manning strength for that segment of the line and flanking extensions. It was necessary to use the Guard for the assault because of the lack of other reliable reserve troops, and Jhayka was confident in their ability. Everyone was tensed as the officers prepared their whistles and the first squads mounted the parapets to the lip of the trench. In no-man's land, the infiltration squads readied to fire their bangalore torpedoes and then rush through the gaps, and behind the Kalundan front-line trenches, the assault guns had their engines rumbling and cannons loaded.
Zero hour. The massed artillery deep in revenants in the city of Kalunda proper fired. The Willy Pete shells burst high in the air in mass, their combined number and strength lighting up the sky brighter than the day. It was an obvious signal even as the artillery reloaded and opened fire, one brigade engaging to each flank of the attack to cover the assault troops. In no-man's land, the infiltration companies fired off a total of eighty-four bangalore torpedoes along the one-kilometer front, each one blasting a .6 meter gap, give or take, through the wire and the mines and obstacles off the Norman defences. Then they rushed up and forward through the gaps, hurtling grenades into the Norman trenches before diving in right on the heels of the blasts, submachineguns and shotguns firing into the Norman defenders and flamethrowers licking out to deal death in the night.
Behind the front line trenches, the order was given to the assault gun crews. They revved up and advanced forward toward the enemy lines, crossing their own trenches at prepared points and then driving straight forward, to smash even larger gaps into the Norman wire than the bangalore torpedoes had. As the tanks passed overhead and around them, the officers of the Crimson Guard and the militia in the front-line trenches blew their whistles. The troops rose up, overcoats twirled in the wind of the cold of the night as they dashed forward in disciplined silence, running, yet left behind by the charging of the tanks at maximum speed as they crossed the hundred meters or so to the Norman lines and burst through the wire, firing their cannon into the general area of the Norman rear positions, tank riders on them ready to leap down and defend the vehicles once they'd pierced the Norman lines. The waves of troops surged on and on, rank after rank storming forward even as the infiltrators ahead of them wreaked merry hell on the Norman trenches.
The assault guns passed the Norman lines and pushed on to their lightly protected rear-areas, firing point-blank with shrapnel and HE as their machine-guns kept up a heavy fire. The tank riders leaped down and moved alongside them, eyes scanning everywhere for enemies, killing anyone who moved who might threaten the armoured vehicles. Behind them, the Norman defence was in tatters from the efforts of the infiltration companies, and just in time, too.
The first waves of the main assault leaped into the trenches, and inevitably in their company were the flamethrowers. The great number of flamethrowers, most of them very simple, proved to be horrific in their power to clear the trenches. Each platoon was supported by one, and the platoons were attacking in column, so that the flamethrowers presented almost a solid front to the Normans, supported by the troops immediately around them and the infiltrators ahead in their effort to root out every Norman holdout with liquid fire, paving the way for the general advance to carry on. Normans tried to resist, just to find themselves facing flamethrowers firing directly into their dugouts and engulf them in a hideous death of intense heat and fire.
Grenades were thrown and rapid-fire weapons used at point-blank range to continue the clearing, as the intent of the troops was to move with maximum rapidity forward, and this they did. The Norman defences collapsed, unable to respond with the limited troops they had in the area to the sheer mass and ferocity of the Kalundan attack, even by those short girls, few of them even reaching five and a half feet, who had in many cases training not terribly better than that of the militia, though much determination and esprit d'corps which sustained them in the shock of the assault.
As illumination rockets and shells exploded over the field, and the artillery rained down on every side, with the snorting of diesel engines ahead and behind and the mortars firing with the maximum rapidity, machine-guns and assault rifles clattering and the heavy sound of automatic shotguns being fired, these girls fought through the storm of steel, many torn through and killed by the defensive fire which the Normans managed to put out, but the vast majority carried on over the light Norman works, meant essentially only for the staging of an attack, and followed the armoured vehicles on and through the trenches, having taken them in fire and blood.
Along the river the Norman rear-areas were for a while under an intense fire from the gunboats, and they'd brought up some assault guns of their own to engage the vessels, which had shifted to attacking the other bank when they'd finished off all the targets to the east bank. Some of their guns, however, kept the rear areas of the Norman trenches which they'd hit thoroughly with flamethrowers and Willy Pete under a harassing fire from normal HE shells to prevent a reorganization, even as the Amazonian trenches near the river also had to be evacuated under the fire of flamethrowers and the white phosphorus shells.
Pull the pin and throw! Over and over again, just further inland, the Kalundans and the Normans sustained their maddening point-blank combat of thrown grenades, rifles cracking and machine-guns chattering while, through it all, was the constant hail of the grenades, of improvised bombs, of anything that the simple mechanical throwers could handle. They even took to flinging molotov cocktails with them, and bottles of acid, while rifled grenades were expended by the men in the trenches, and the bombers in no-man's land had closed enough with each other to subject their opponents to a hail of close-in defensive grenades.
Brave were the runners on both sides who brought the ammunition to the men in no-man's land, in the positions to hurl grenades at each other and the enemy trenches, to keep up the continuous fight. As the Norman reinforcements arrived the ferocity of their retaliatory attacks steadily increased until, even as the Crimson Guard broke the Norman lines, the Normans along the river had intensified the grenadier's fight until it was of equal carnage and ferocity to both sides, the most vigorous exchange of grenades as could be managed, of every type, and molotovs and primitive, improvised bombs eagerly included in the mix, often as not wounding or killing the thrower as doing great execution amongst the enemy.
This stalemate of murder was not going to end any time soon, that was clear, for even the redoubling of the Norman retaliation did not force the Kalundans back into the trenches, and the Normans at any rate found themselves caught up in more serious conflicts. Their reserves were overstretched, and the Kalundans could shift troops much more easily through the interior lines of communication. So, since they stood and fought, a raging battle at close ranges, but neither side having the strength to dislodge the other, inevitably developed and was sustained with the utmost bitterness.
Ilavna was in the center of a fine and marvelous fight. Her armoured squads could not be defeated by the Norman troops on the scene, and in the end she had abandoned an effort to establish a regular command post under the constant harassing fire and had joined in the raids of her forces, leading great numbers of men forward with her fellow Talorans to strike home for the honour of the Farzian faith. In the thickest press their armoured suits availed to defend them of the weapons of the Normans in almost every case, and they inflicted such a damage on them as to smash up every one of their formations in the area.
Yet as time passed the resistance of the Normans increased, as the outlying tribal levies gave way to trained citizens of Ar who fought much harder, and used small group tactics effectively. In the press that developed around each and every one of them, many availabled of their melee weapons and their integral grenade launchers to kill dozens of Normans with their suits at close range just to buy enough time to reload their Assault Railguns, and still the Normans came on, until Ilavna, in the thick of the press and wounded despite the armour of her suit, though only lightly, realized that she must withdrawal, and gave the necessary orders.
The armoured squads returned to the barricades that the infiltration units had erected only just in time as a whole Norman brigade of reinforcements began to press hard against them, ignoring the hundreds of casualties it suffered in force the hundred power-armoured troops back, to keep driving until, with the aide of the infiltration half-company which snatched up their weapons from the works, they stood behind the barricades and with a vigorous fusillade halted the Norman advance. Ilavna sank down, exhausted, the sounds of mental and the mental feel of so many desperate and frightened people overwhelming to her, yet she forced herself to go on, driven by faith and a resolute belief that here she was fighting evil.
In the centre of the breakout effort, the General Faeria advanced. A crane mounted on one of the flat cars pushed in front of her armoured cars lifted up whole sections of track, rails connected to ties by spike and plate, and lowered them into place by an aligning laser on the roadbed. Men immediately rushed into place, fixing connecting plates between the newly-laid track section and those already set, and twisting giant wrenches to fix in place huge bolts to hold the track together. Each track segment was 25 meters long, and one could be laid in two minutes, with another minute for the train to advance somewhat further to repeat the process, so that in the first twelve minutes after the divisional commander in the area had reported to Jhayka that operations could commence, the one hundred meters to the Norman lines had been re-laid.
Just ahead, the cuts in the embankment for the trenches were, over a course of the past fifteen minutes, filled in by armoured combat bulldozers, which had advanced directly in the wake of the infantry seizing the Norman trenches. As they were filled in, men leaped on top of the embankment with shovels as dump trucks arrived with gravel, and a mere five-minute delay was required to provide at least a loose roadbed for the laying of the track—it only had to last for a few hours, after all. At that point, track was laid across it, and the General Faeria advanced to the intact embankment beyond. At this rate, it would take less than two hours to close the gap, and any effort by the Normans to widen it would expose their troops intolerably to the awesome firepower of the armoued train.
But more was happening. Ahead of the General Faeria, sapper regiments were repairing the roadbed damage, the old-fashioned way, with shovels and wheelbarrows of gravel and sheer grit. They sang as they worked, even though they were under sporadic fire and taking casualties, and the General Faeria supported them with a desultory counterbattery barrage from her forward guns. That meant that it wasn't going to take two hours at all.
It was an incredible sight, as hardy farmhands ran along the sides of the embankment, carrying heavy steel rails on their backs even as the artillery rained down around them, and work-gangs of hundreds swung hammers and worked with their shovels, as trucks raced up across improvised bridges laid across the Norman trenches, and armoured bulldozers dragged materials in place for the sappers to lay the track. They sang to keep the time, and even the stretcher-bearers to carry away the wounded kept up a macabre little tune.
At this rate, the track-work would be finished in a mere fourty minutes. The use of the militia in this case once again demonstrated the importance of the spade to war, and in this Jhayka took a particular pride as the operation was conducted, and the two attacking brigades of the Crimson Guard, each supported by six assault guns but also by the guns of the General Faeria, dug longitudinal trenches to defend their positions covering the work of the sapper regiments in advancing the railroad across the gap formed by the Norman forces.
For more than thirty minutes Ilavna Lashila led a defensive action of 200 troops against more than 6,000. The odds were thirty-to-one, even if they were evened by half the Kalundan troops being in power armour. Fighting in the trenches behind defensive barricades, Ilavna engaged in a methodical book-action, of an officer unsure of herself, but fundamentally solid, and therefore, simply obeying the book, and in doing so, carrying on ably enough to keep her objectives in sight and her force cohesive and intact.
Lapping at the barricades in the trenches, the Normans with incredible depth in the confined battlefield charged forward and were butchered enmasse, just to provide cover for skilled small-unit teams which pushed up out of the trenches into the hail of gunfire, and crawling along, sheltering from the blazing light of the illumination flares, forced their way forward to drop down into the trenches and attack Ilavna's defenders from the rear. Ilavna responded to these incursions herself, with a flying squad mixed armour and light troops, and was possessed of a righteous fury as she cut through them, viewing the fight as a religious crusade against evil.
Even this inspired and vigorous effort could not change the damning fact of the situation, however, that the force was massively outnumbered, and Ilavna was constantly forced to authorize them to fall back more and more, until at last they were manning the front-line trench of the Normans alone, in reverse, facing waves of Norman attackers and beating them back with the aide of mortar fire from their own lines. Not one blade was undrenched in the blood of the infidel, and the grim armoured figure of the Farzian priestess stood firm in the midst of her test of fire. For more than thirty-five minutes they lasted in this fashion, and then the Normans burst through all around them, and Ilavna was forced to compress herself more and more, suffering greater losses as she did so.
Now, only one hundred and fifty out of those two hundred stood, and they stood back to back, veritably, occupying a mere 150 meter stretch of the Norman front-line trench, and fighting off constant assaults as the last of the wounded still in their area were evacuated. The Normans had brought up mortars and were bombarding their position heavily, now, and grenades were being thrown in all around. Soon many more of the remaining infiltrators, lacking in any kind of protective armour, were wounded.
“We'll hold with armoured troops alone until they've been evacuated!” Ilavna snapped in response to the appeal from one of her lieutenants to begin a withdrawal. And so the stretcher-bearers dashed across no-man's land, while the unwounded and the walking wounded tried to help their more seriously injured comrades clear. There was nothing more and nothing less that they could do. And still Ilavna held.
“The rail-line's been completed! The General Faeria is through!” The report crackled metallically, yet with pride and euphoric joy, over the radio com.
“Sir, we've accomplished our mission, let's pull out now,” one of her armoured lieutenants appealed again. They were now down to less than one hundred meters of Norman trench front, seventy to be precise, and even that was to much for their reduced numbers against the forces surging against them, which, worse, put up a vigorous enfilading fire across no-man's land which prevented any more ammunition from reaching them.
“No, we shall fight here until we our down to our last rounds of ammunition!” Ilavna replied sharply. “We are holding out fine and the enemy can scarcely wound us in our armour,” though the explosion of the heavy shells told otherwise, and rocket-propelled grenades were slamming down around them with a real deadly potential. Her subordinates grimly obeyed.
Along the rail-line, the General Faeria rolled up onto a siding about another half-kilometer down the track. There she came to a halt and swung her guns to the right, while the twelve precious assault guns assigned to the offensive were all concentrated on the left side of the railroad embankment, where armoured bulldozers had quickly dug out positions for them to fight hull-down. In this way, with a brigade of infantry protecting the track on each side as well, the trains loaded with evacuees could begin to roll out of the city, heading toward the dubious safety of an East Port already rocked in civil violence.
The Normans were responding already, halting further reinforcement to the river battles and instead diverting the troops to attack the railroad embankment, while they prepared to commit their remaining tank reserves to take on the General Faeria in a last effort to knock her out.
Back in Ilavna's position, the fighting had reached a peak. Each of her troops was down to not more than a half-magazine, and firing single aimed shots only. They had expended all of their grenades and rockets, and they had lost seven of their number to heavy mortar shells and the rocket propelled grenades of the Norman attacks. They had now held for fifty minutes against the full strength of an entire brigade. Ilavna at last sensed, psychically, that her troops were on the breaking point and that the enemy was determined to press home the attack at any cost, and she realized she must withdraw back to her own trenches.
“2 Squad, make your break. Shorten the defensive line to fifty meters!” The order went out, and the remaining squads compressed as the fourteen survivors of 2 Squad made their way back across no-man's land with the support of the guns in their own trenches and under the fire of the Normans. Thirteen of them made it. Then it was the turn of 3 Squad; all thirteen survivors made it back. Twelve of 4 squad, nine of the badly hit 5 squad, and then it was just 1 squad and the command group, twenty-one soldiers against five thousand—for a thousand Normans had been killed or wounded in Ilavna's stand!
“Put a heavy mortar barrage directly on our position in one minute,” Ilavna ordered at last to the desperate artillery officers back in the trenches, hardly a pleasant order, but now necessary. “Everyone, make your way to the best of your ability back to our lines!” She gave the second order, and then waited, making sure the other twenty got back across, and only when they had all cleared the trench did she follow, the first of the mortar shells licking at her heels as she staggered back across no-man's land, across a hundred meters of fire in a daze to tumble into the Kalundan front-line trench, thoroughly mentally and physically exhausted.
With no reinforcements, the Normans fighting close to the river were trapped in the bomber's fight which had now lasted for nearly three hours. In that time, more than twenty thousand grenades had been thrown by both sides, and even more light mortar rounds, along with some five thousand more improvised explosives by the Kalundans, usually hurtled using simple mechanical throwing devices, along with a very thousand heavy mortar rounds. The Normans had retaliated by maintaining an almost-continuous barrage of 132mm Katyusha rockets for the past hour. Despite all of this firepower smashing down on but a few kilometers of ground, the bombers had kept up their fight on both sides, and grenades were being thrown as fast as when the conflict started, little parties working forward at times to try and get a better position, supported by a vigorous fusillade whenever a target presented itself for the riflemen, though it was truly a bomber's show here.
The vicious stalemate had no end in sight, with neither side willing to put enough forces into it to crack it open, and both having their own reasons for continuing it. The slaughter and the madness would only stop when one side or the other had decided there was no further point in continuing the grenade battle to the utmost height of combat under the continuous flare and metallic blaze of illumination rockets.
In the meanwhile, the Normans had finally put together their attacks on the railroad embankment. A whole division hit it from, roughly, the south, as a brigade hit the other side. In addition to this, the Normans fielded fourteen MBTs on each side of the embankment. These approached the General Faeria cautiously on the one side, and soon found that at the ranges the terrain dictated, they had little protect from her weapons. The train's heavy mortars could knock them out, and did, and the guns did serious damage and in a few lucky cases destroyed the tanks outright. Soon four were knocked out and two heavily damaged and the rest retreated. The attack had turned into another abortive disaster.
On the opposite side of the train, though, where the General Faeria's guns were masked by the cars of the evacuation trains rolling past and then accelerating clear, the twelve dug-in assault guns were facing a much more serious fight. Five were lost in short order to the heavy guns of the Norman MBT's, for the loss of one of their own only, in return. This meant that Captain Arshon had no choice but to halt the evacuation. The train then passing, freight cars loaded with children, elderly, and wounded, was the last. The assault guns held until it past the General Faeria, losing two more of their number but managing to kill another Norman MBT.
Then the guns of the armoured train were unmasked, and they let loose a vigorous five-minute firefight with the Norman MBT force, swinging around and emerging from the ports on the opposite side of the train to blast the MBTs, which had closed excessively, with powergun fire at close ranges. The Normans managed to get a single damaging shot of their own in against the train, punching through the shields to smash up the interior of one of the gun cars and temporarily disable a powergun. But in return, three more Norman MBT's were killed, and they were left with 19 operational MBT's around Ar out of the original force, though they had additional ones advancing against East Port.
As the tanks retreated, the two brigades of Crimson Guard were still engaged in a savage firefight of their own. Particularly the division coming up from the south was having successes; on the other side, the Crimson Guard was now able, along with a single regiment of militia, to retreat on its own, actually outnumbering its attackers by a small margin and having stood them off with a horrific slaughter of four hundred in fifteen minutes of fighting. On the right flank, though, the General Faeria had to turn her guns on the Norman division, remaining long enough in danger from the Norman artillery, which shifted to begin firing on her and the track, to force the retreat of the Normans by subjecting to a hail of rapid fire plasma from the fore and aft guns and the terrific impacts of the powerguns salvoing into infantry who's only protection was to fall prone to the ground.
Even as the Norman attack abruptly disintegrated under that kind of incredible firepower, the Norman artillery succeeded in damaging the track just ahead of the General Faeria. Captain—brevet Colonel--Arshon had to dispatch a team to repair the track, a feat which took six minutes to accomplish. Ironically this aided the Crimson Guard in retreating, for it allowed Colonel Arshon to remain long enough to keep the Normans under a heavy fire which prevented them from reforming for a second attack. In this fashion the train now stood alone, separated from the city, when the repairs under fire—at the cost of five wounded and two killed—were completed to the track. The wounded were brought back into the train, and Colonel Arshon at once ordered full power, the advance of the civilian evacuation trains in front of her having proved himself that the track was not booby-trapped.
The General Faeria headed out of Kalunda, heading from one frying-pan into another, the chaos of East Port which Colonel Arshon must somehow or another get under control with the train and a single battalion of poor quality militia; but, like the defence of Kalunda itself, it would simply have to be done.
The breakout a successful, Jhayka did no more than sigh faintly, and issue the orders for the cessation of the bomber's fight along the river.
It came quietly, without much resistance from the Normans. The intensity of the fighting was such that more bombers had collapsed from sheer exhaustion in the act of throwing so many hundreds of grenades in a period of more than three hours than from actually suffering injuries or being killed. In all more than thirty thousand grenades were finally exchanged in a fight of less than four hours before the two sides quietly broke off the conflict and the survivors and wounded left the dead behind to escape to their own trenches with the aide of the daring stretcher bearers who worked for such a humane cause in the field of death.
It was over, but the siege continued. An hour later, the sun rose over the horizon, but in no-man's land only the sightless eyes of the dead saw it. The living cowered in the darkness of the trenches. Somewhere, a bird warbled its call to greet the rising of the sun, and a tense Kalundan fired a burst from his assault rifle in response. Squaking angrily, the bird flew off, leaving the fields in which only corpses grew for friendlier climes. The Norman commanders did not consider its wisdom, and continued to build their advanced lines through the harassing shellfire of the Kalundan artillery all through the day, and into the next.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FIVE
Two minutes to zero hour. The artillery of the Kalundans ceased firing, and the batteries were hastily recalibrated toward an aerial target as Willy Pete illumination rounds were loaded into the chamber automatically. Everything stood ready. In the trenches along the one-kilometer-long attack front, two brigades of the Crimson Guard fixed bayonets and slipped the safeties off their assault rifles, along with two regiments of militia in the trenches with them which consituted the normal manning strength for that segment of the line and flanking extensions. It was necessary to use the Guard for the assault because of the lack of other reliable reserve troops, and Jhayka was confident in their ability. Everyone was tensed as the officers prepared their whistles and the first squads mounted the parapets to the lip of the trench. In no-man's land, the infiltration squads readied to fire their bangalore torpedoes and then rush through the gaps, and behind the Kalundan front-line trenches, the assault guns had their engines rumbling and cannons loaded.
Zero hour. The massed artillery deep in revenants in the city of Kalunda proper fired. The Willy Pete shells burst high in the air in mass, their combined number and strength lighting up the sky brighter than the day. It was an obvious signal even as the artillery reloaded and opened fire, one brigade engaging to each flank of the attack to cover the assault troops. In no-man's land, the infiltration companies fired off a total of eighty-four bangalore torpedoes along the one-kilometer front, each one blasting a .6 meter gap, give or take, through the wire and the mines and obstacles off the Norman defences. Then they rushed up and forward through the gaps, hurtling grenades into the Norman trenches before diving in right on the heels of the blasts, submachineguns and shotguns firing into the Norman defenders and flamethrowers licking out to deal death in the night.
Behind the front line trenches, the order was given to the assault gun crews. They revved up and advanced forward toward the enemy lines, crossing their own trenches at prepared points and then driving straight forward, to smash even larger gaps into the Norman wire than the bangalore torpedoes had. As the tanks passed overhead and around them, the officers of the Crimson Guard and the militia in the front-line trenches blew their whistles. The troops rose up, overcoats twirled in the wind of the cold of the night as they dashed forward in disciplined silence, running, yet left behind by the charging of the tanks at maximum speed as they crossed the hundred meters or so to the Norman lines and burst through the wire, firing their cannon into the general area of the Norman rear positions, tank riders on them ready to leap down and defend the vehicles once they'd pierced the Norman lines. The waves of troops surged on and on, rank after rank storming forward even as the infiltrators ahead of them wreaked merry hell on the Norman trenches.
The assault guns passed the Norman lines and pushed on to their lightly protected rear-areas, firing point-blank with shrapnel and HE as their machine-guns kept up a heavy fire. The tank riders leaped down and moved alongside them, eyes scanning everywhere for enemies, killing anyone who moved who might threaten the armoured vehicles. Behind them, the Norman defence was in tatters from the efforts of the infiltration companies, and just in time, too.
The first waves of the main assault leaped into the trenches, and inevitably in their company were the flamethrowers. The great number of flamethrowers, most of them very simple, proved to be horrific in their power to clear the trenches. Each platoon was supported by one, and the platoons were attacking in column, so that the flamethrowers presented almost a solid front to the Normans, supported by the troops immediately around them and the infiltrators ahead in their effort to root out every Norman holdout with liquid fire, paving the way for the general advance to carry on. Normans tried to resist, just to find themselves facing flamethrowers firing directly into their dugouts and engulf them in a hideous death of intense heat and fire.
Grenades were thrown and rapid-fire weapons used at point-blank range to continue the clearing, as the intent of the troops was to move with maximum rapidity forward, and this they did. The Norman defences collapsed, unable to respond with the limited troops they had in the area to the sheer mass and ferocity of the Kalundan attack, even by those short girls, few of them even reaching five and a half feet, who had in many cases training not terribly better than that of the militia, though much determination and esprit d'corps which sustained them in the shock of the assault.
As illumination rockets and shells exploded over the field, and the artillery rained down on every side, with the snorting of diesel engines ahead and behind and the mortars firing with the maximum rapidity, machine-guns and assault rifles clattering and the heavy sound of automatic shotguns being fired, these girls fought through the storm of steel, many torn through and killed by the defensive fire which the Normans managed to put out, but the vast majority carried on over the light Norman works, meant essentially only for the staging of an attack, and followed the armoured vehicles on and through the trenches, having taken them in fire and blood.
Along the river the Norman rear-areas were for a while under an intense fire from the gunboats, and they'd brought up some assault guns of their own to engage the vessels, which had shifted to attacking the other bank when they'd finished off all the targets to the east bank. Some of their guns, however, kept the rear areas of the Norman trenches which they'd hit thoroughly with flamethrowers and Willy Pete under a harassing fire from normal HE shells to prevent a reorganization, even as the Amazonian trenches near the river also had to be evacuated under the fire of flamethrowers and the white phosphorus shells.
Pull the pin and throw! Over and over again, just further inland, the Kalundans and the Normans sustained their maddening point-blank combat of thrown grenades, rifles cracking and machine-guns chattering while, through it all, was the constant hail of the grenades, of improvised bombs, of anything that the simple mechanical throwers could handle. They even took to flinging molotov cocktails with them, and bottles of acid, while rifled grenades were expended by the men in the trenches, and the bombers in no-man's land had closed enough with each other to subject their opponents to a hail of close-in defensive grenades.
Brave were the runners on both sides who brought the ammunition to the men in no-man's land, in the positions to hurl grenades at each other and the enemy trenches, to keep up the continuous fight. As the Norman reinforcements arrived the ferocity of their retaliatory attacks steadily increased until, even as the Crimson Guard broke the Norman lines, the Normans along the river had intensified the grenadier's fight until it was of equal carnage and ferocity to both sides, the most vigorous exchange of grenades as could be managed, of every type, and molotovs and primitive, improvised bombs eagerly included in the mix, often as not wounding or killing the thrower as doing great execution amongst the enemy.
This stalemate of murder was not going to end any time soon, that was clear, for even the redoubling of the Norman retaliation did not force the Kalundans back into the trenches, and the Normans at any rate found themselves caught up in more serious conflicts. Their reserves were overstretched, and the Kalundans could shift troops much more easily through the interior lines of communication. So, since they stood and fought, a raging battle at close ranges, but neither side having the strength to dislodge the other, inevitably developed and was sustained with the utmost bitterness.
Ilavna was in the center of a fine and marvelous fight. Her armoured squads could not be defeated by the Norman troops on the scene, and in the end she had abandoned an effort to establish a regular command post under the constant harassing fire and had joined in the raids of her forces, leading great numbers of men forward with her fellow Talorans to strike home for the honour of the Farzian faith. In the thickest press their armoured suits availed to defend them of the weapons of the Normans in almost every case, and they inflicted such a damage on them as to smash up every one of their formations in the area.
Yet as time passed the resistance of the Normans increased, as the outlying tribal levies gave way to trained citizens of Ar who fought much harder, and used small group tactics effectively. In the press that developed around each and every one of them, many availabled of their melee weapons and their integral grenade launchers to kill dozens of Normans with their suits at close range just to buy enough time to reload their Assault Railguns, and still the Normans came on, until Ilavna, in the thick of the press and wounded despite the armour of her suit, though only lightly, realized that she must withdrawal, and gave the necessary orders.
The armoured squads returned to the barricades that the infiltration units had erected only just in time as a whole Norman brigade of reinforcements began to press hard against them, ignoring the hundreds of casualties it suffered in force the hundred power-armoured troops back, to keep driving until, with the aide of the infiltration half-company which snatched up their weapons from the works, they stood behind the barricades and with a vigorous fusillade halted the Norman advance. Ilavna sank down, exhausted, the sounds of mental and the mental feel of so many desperate and frightened people overwhelming to her, yet she forced herself to go on, driven by faith and a resolute belief that here she was fighting evil.
In the centre of the breakout effort, the General Faeria advanced. A crane mounted on one of the flat cars pushed in front of her armoured cars lifted up whole sections of track, rails connected to ties by spike and plate, and lowered them into place by an aligning laser on the roadbed. Men immediately rushed into place, fixing connecting plates between the newly-laid track section and those already set, and twisting giant wrenches to fix in place huge bolts to hold the track together. Each track segment was 25 meters long, and one could be laid in two minutes, with another minute for the train to advance somewhat further to repeat the process, so that in the first twelve minutes after the divisional commander in the area had reported to Jhayka that operations could commence, the one hundred meters to the Norman lines had been re-laid.
Just ahead, the cuts in the embankment for the trenches were, over a course of the past fifteen minutes, filled in by armoured combat bulldozers, which had advanced directly in the wake of the infantry seizing the Norman trenches. As they were filled in, men leaped on top of the embankment with shovels as dump trucks arrived with gravel, and a mere five-minute delay was required to provide at least a loose roadbed for the laying of the track—it only had to last for a few hours, after all. At that point, track was laid across it, and the General Faeria advanced to the intact embankment beyond. At this rate, it would take less than two hours to close the gap, and any effort by the Normans to widen it would expose their troops intolerably to the awesome firepower of the armoued train.
But more was happening. Ahead of the General Faeria, sapper regiments were repairing the roadbed damage, the old-fashioned way, with shovels and wheelbarrows of gravel and sheer grit. They sang as they worked, even though they were under sporadic fire and taking casualties, and the General Faeria supported them with a desultory counterbattery barrage from her forward guns. That meant that it wasn't going to take two hours at all.
It was an incredible sight, as hardy farmhands ran along the sides of the embankment, carrying heavy steel rails on their backs even as the artillery rained down around them, and work-gangs of hundreds swung hammers and worked with their shovels, as trucks raced up across improvised bridges laid across the Norman trenches, and armoured bulldozers dragged materials in place for the sappers to lay the track. They sang to keep the time, and even the stretcher-bearers to carry away the wounded kept up a macabre little tune.
At this rate, the track-work would be finished in a mere fourty minutes. The use of the militia in this case once again demonstrated the importance of the spade to war, and in this Jhayka took a particular pride as the operation was conducted, and the two attacking brigades of the Crimson Guard, each supported by six assault guns but also by the guns of the General Faeria, dug longitudinal trenches to defend their positions covering the work of the sapper regiments in advancing the railroad across the gap formed by the Norman forces.
For more than thirty minutes Ilavna Lashila led a defensive action of 200 troops against more than 6,000. The odds were thirty-to-one, even if they were evened by half the Kalundan troops being in power armour. Fighting in the trenches behind defensive barricades, Ilavna engaged in a methodical book-action, of an officer unsure of herself, but fundamentally solid, and therefore, simply obeying the book, and in doing so, carrying on ably enough to keep her objectives in sight and her force cohesive and intact.
Lapping at the barricades in the trenches, the Normans with incredible depth in the confined battlefield charged forward and were butchered enmasse, just to provide cover for skilled small-unit teams which pushed up out of the trenches into the hail of gunfire, and crawling along, sheltering from the blazing light of the illumination flares, forced their way forward to drop down into the trenches and attack Ilavna's defenders from the rear. Ilavna responded to these incursions herself, with a flying squad mixed armour and light troops, and was possessed of a righteous fury as she cut through them, viewing the fight as a religious crusade against evil.
Even this inspired and vigorous effort could not change the damning fact of the situation, however, that the force was massively outnumbered, and Ilavna was constantly forced to authorize them to fall back more and more, until at last they were manning the front-line trench of the Normans alone, in reverse, facing waves of Norman attackers and beating them back with the aide of mortar fire from their own lines. Not one blade was undrenched in the blood of the infidel, and the grim armoured figure of the Farzian priestess stood firm in the midst of her test of fire. For more than thirty-five minutes they lasted in this fashion, and then the Normans burst through all around them, and Ilavna was forced to compress herself more and more, suffering greater losses as she did so.
Now, only one hundred and fifty out of those two hundred stood, and they stood back to back, veritably, occupying a mere 150 meter stretch of the Norman front-line trench, and fighting off constant assaults as the last of the wounded still in their area were evacuated. The Normans had brought up mortars and were bombarding their position heavily, now, and grenades were being thrown in all around. Soon many more of the remaining infiltrators, lacking in any kind of protective armour, were wounded.
“We'll hold with armoured troops alone until they've been evacuated!” Ilavna snapped in response to the appeal from one of her lieutenants to begin a withdrawal. And so the stretcher-bearers dashed across no-man's land, while the unwounded and the walking wounded tried to help their more seriously injured comrades clear. There was nothing more and nothing less that they could do. And still Ilavna held.
“The rail-line's been completed! The General Faeria is through!” The report crackled metallically, yet with pride and euphoric joy, over the radio com.
“Sir, we've accomplished our mission, let's pull out now,” one of her armoured lieutenants appealed again. They were now down to less than one hundred meters of Norman trench front, seventy to be precise, and even that was to much for their reduced numbers against the forces surging against them, which, worse, put up a vigorous enfilading fire across no-man's land which prevented any more ammunition from reaching them.
“No, we shall fight here until we our down to our last rounds of ammunition!” Ilavna replied sharply. “We are holding out fine and the enemy can scarcely wound us in our armour,” though the explosion of the heavy shells told otherwise, and rocket-propelled grenades were slamming down around them with a real deadly potential. Her subordinates grimly obeyed.
Along the rail-line, the General Faeria rolled up onto a siding about another half-kilometer down the track. There she came to a halt and swung her guns to the right, while the twelve precious assault guns assigned to the offensive were all concentrated on the left side of the railroad embankment, where armoured bulldozers had quickly dug out positions for them to fight hull-down. In this way, with a brigade of infantry protecting the track on each side as well, the trains loaded with evacuees could begin to roll out of the city, heading toward the dubious safety of an East Port already rocked in civil violence.
The Normans were responding already, halting further reinforcement to the river battles and instead diverting the troops to attack the railroad embankment, while they prepared to commit their remaining tank reserves to take on the General Faeria in a last effort to knock her out.
Back in Ilavna's position, the fighting had reached a peak. Each of her troops was down to not more than a half-magazine, and firing single aimed shots only. They had expended all of their grenades and rockets, and they had lost seven of their number to heavy mortar shells and the rocket propelled grenades of the Norman attacks. They had now held for fifty minutes against the full strength of an entire brigade. Ilavna at last sensed, psychically, that her troops were on the breaking point and that the enemy was determined to press home the attack at any cost, and she realized she must withdraw back to her own trenches.
“2 Squad, make your break. Shorten the defensive line to fifty meters!” The order went out, and the remaining squads compressed as the fourteen survivors of 2 Squad made their way back across no-man's land with the support of the guns in their own trenches and under the fire of the Normans. Thirteen of them made it. Then it was the turn of 3 Squad; all thirteen survivors made it back. Twelve of 4 squad, nine of the badly hit 5 squad, and then it was just 1 squad and the command group, twenty-one soldiers against five thousand—for a thousand Normans had been killed or wounded in Ilavna's stand!
“Put a heavy mortar barrage directly on our position in one minute,” Ilavna ordered at last to the desperate artillery officers back in the trenches, hardly a pleasant order, but now necessary. “Everyone, make your way to the best of your ability back to our lines!” She gave the second order, and then waited, making sure the other twenty got back across, and only when they had all cleared the trench did she follow, the first of the mortar shells licking at her heels as she staggered back across no-man's land, across a hundred meters of fire in a daze to tumble into the Kalundan front-line trench, thoroughly mentally and physically exhausted.
With no reinforcements, the Normans fighting close to the river were trapped in the bomber's fight which had now lasted for nearly three hours. In that time, more than twenty thousand grenades had been thrown by both sides, and even more light mortar rounds, along with some five thousand more improvised explosives by the Kalundans, usually hurtled using simple mechanical throwing devices, along with a very thousand heavy mortar rounds. The Normans had retaliated by maintaining an almost-continuous barrage of 132mm Katyusha rockets for the past hour. Despite all of this firepower smashing down on but a few kilometers of ground, the bombers had kept up their fight on both sides, and grenades were being thrown as fast as when the conflict started, little parties working forward at times to try and get a better position, supported by a vigorous fusillade whenever a target presented itself for the riflemen, though it was truly a bomber's show here.
The vicious stalemate had no end in sight, with neither side willing to put enough forces into it to crack it open, and both having their own reasons for continuing it. The slaughter and the madness would only stop when one side or the other had decided there was no further point in continuing the grenade battle to the utmost height of combat under the continuous flare and metallic blaze of illumination rockets.
In the meanwhile, the Normans had finally put together their attacks on the railroad embankment. A whole division hit it from, roughly, the south, as a brigade hit the other side. In addition to this, the Normans fielded fourteen MBTs on each side of the embankment. These approached the General Faeria cautiously on the one side, and soon found that at the ranges the terrain dictated, they had little protect from her weapons. The train's heavy mortars could knock them out, and did, and the guns did serious damage and in a few lucky cases destroyed the tanks outright. Soon four were knocked out and two heavily damaged and the rest retreated. The attack had turned into another abortive disaster.
On the opposite side of the train, though, where the General Faeria's guns were masked by the cars of the evacuation trains rolling past and then accelerating clear, the twelve dug-in assault guns were facing a much more serious fight. Five were lost in short order to the heavy guns of the Norman MBT's, for the loss of one of their own only, in return. This meant that Captain Arshon had no choice but to halt the evacuation. The train then passing, freight cars loaded with children, elderly, and wounded, was the last. The assault guns held until it past the General Faeria, losing two more of their number but managing to kill another Norman MBT.
Then the guns of the armoured train were unmasked, and they let loose a vigorous five-minute firefight with the Norman MBT force, swinging around and emerging from the ports on the opposite side of the train to blast the MBTs, which had closed excessively, with powergun fire at close ranges. The Normans managed to get a single damaging shot of their own in against the train, punching through the shields to smash up the interior of one of the gun cars and temporarily disable a powergun. But in return, three more Norman MBT's were killed, and they were left with 19 operational MBT's around Ar out of the original force, though they had additional ones advancing against East Port.
As the tanks retreated, the two brigades of Crimson Guard were still engaged in a savage firefight of their own. Particularly the division coming up from the south was having successes; on the other side, the Crimson Guard was now able, along with a single regiment of militia, to retreat on its own, actually outnumbering its attackers by a small margin and having stood them off with a horrific slaughter of four hundred in fifteen minutes of fighting. On the right flank, though, the General Faeria had to turn her guns on the Norman division, remaining long enough in danger from the Norman artillery, which shifted to begin firing on her and the track, to force the retreat of the Normans by subjecting to a hail of rapid fire plasma from the fore and aft guns and the terrific impacts of the powerguns salvoing into infantry who's only protection was to fall prone to the ground.
Even as the Norman attack abruptly disintegrated under that kind of incredible firepower, the Norman artillery succeeded in damaging the track just ahead of the General Faeria. Captain—brevet Colonel--Arshon had to dispatch a team to repair the track, a feat which took six minutes to accomplish. Ironically this aided the Crimson Guard in retreating, for it allowed Colonel Arshon to remain long enough to keep the Normans under a heavy fire which prevented them from reforming for a second attack. In this fashion the train now stood alone, separated from the city, when the repairs under fire—at the cost of five wounded and two killed—were completed to the track. The wounded were brought back into the train, and Colonel Arshon at once ordered full power, the advance of the civilian evacuation trains in front of her having proved himself that the track was not booby-trapped.
The General Faeria headed out of Kalunda, heading from one frying-pan into another, the chaos of East Port which Colonel Arshon must somehow or another get under control with the train and a single battalion of poor quality militia; but, like the defence of Kalunda itself, it would simply have to be done.
The breakout a successful, Jhayka did no more than sigh faintly, and issue the orders for the cessation of the bomber's fight along the river.
It came quietly, without much resistance from the Normans. The intensity of the fighting was such that more bombers had collapsed from sheer exhaustion in the act of throwing so many hundreds of grenades in a period of more than three hours than from actually suffering injuries or being killed. In all more than thirty thousand grenades were finally exchanged in a fight of less than four hours before the two sides quietly broke off the conflict and the survivors and wounded left the dead behind to escape to their own trenches with the aide of the daring stretcher bearers who worked for such a humane cause in the field of death.
It was over, but the siege continued. An hour later, the sun rose over the horizon, but in no-man's land only the sightless eyes of the dead saw it. The living cowered in the darkness of the trenches. Somewhere, a bird warbled its call to greet the rising of the sun, and a tense Kalundan fired a burst from his assault rifle in response. Squaking angrily, the bird flew off, leaving the fields in which only corpses grew for friendlier climes. The Norman commanders did not consider its wisdom, and continued to build their advanced lines through the harassing shellfire of the Kalundan artillery all through the day, and into the next.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
By me:
Cranstonville, Gilead
16 November 2841
13 January 2163 AST
DAY SEVEN
President Crayshaw was sitting in his office reading reports from East Port when he heart his secretary squeal. "What's going on?!" he demanded, rising to his feet. As he came around his desk the door flew open. General de la Hoya entered with half a dozen armed troops. Crayshaw's bodyguards were on their knees in the other room, Crayshaw could see, their wrists being bound by other soldiers. "What's the meaning of this?!"
The Spanish-accented general frowned and walked up. "For your failure to protect Gilean and Confederacy citizens and to honor the laws of the Confederacy, we are placing you under arrest."
And with those words, the coup was on.
Word soon spread through the streets as passers-by noticed the army trucks parked in front of the Presidential Mansion. The real confirmation came when other trucks motored toward the Gilean Congress, laden with troops. Congressmen coming to work heard the rumors and tried to flee, only to be caught in some cases by their own bodyguards, provided by the Army as they were. Others fared better, escaping with the help of staff or locals.
Meanwhile, a hedonist activist group that had chosen to demonstrate that day against intervention in the Primitivist Zone - on the grounds that such intervention would eventually lead to the "imposition" of "Judeo-Christian social tyranny" on Gilead - heard of what was happening and milled through the streets. When they finally came upon an Army convoy they blocked the road, screaming abuse at the troops in the trucks and refusing to let them pass. Particularly critical was that their mission had been to secure the Spaceport.
As the troops muttered to themselves, wondering what to do, those Congressmen and other political leaders who feared the Army would come for them got to the Spaceport and used it to flee, either to somewhere else on Gilead or off-world entirely.
Finally the standoff with the Hedonists turned tragically bloody. A street tough, on neither side, happened to be using the chaos to try his hand at a random mugging, and when his target unexpectently fought back, the gun in his hand went off. Close as it was to the troops, they and the crowd panicked simultaneously, and the activists began to flee even as the troops opened fire. Dozens of the hedonists were mowed down in the streets, blood flowing everywhere as the troops only after a long ten seconds stopped firing, long enough to see that they'd not been under fire after all.
The violence, however, had happened. Other hedonist groups in and around the city, convinced that a religious coup was underway, grabbed arms or fled to the sanctuary of foreign embassies, while those Congressmen who escaped redoubled their efforts to flee. Within a mere few hours of de la Hoya's coup d'etat beginning, Cranstonville erupted into violence as street gangs, hedonist groups, religious groups, and other individuals caught up in the mess fought with or against the Army.
The news of the chaos and violence was soon to spread elsewhere. Confused reports flooded the airwaves and spacewaves. Claims were made that hedonist radicals had opened fire on Army troops moving to protect the Congress. Others claimed that the Army, controlled by anti-Gilean Confederate officers, had opened fire on peaceful activists as part of a coup d'etat to install a dictatorship. Rumors abounded that the coup was being backed by the Chinese, or the Slavians, or the Hispanics, or even the British and their new allies from the other universes. The hedonist enclaves rose up in protest and near-revolt; the religious enclaves did nearly the same, and all sides feared that "the Other" was going to impose their tyrannical/Godless lifestyles upon one another.
The fabric of the loose Gilean Confederacy began to unravel, placed under the stresses of the failed coup. As it was, the Norman assault on Kalunda was about to become more than it had been, and a regional land battle for autonomy and hegemony and revenge now became merely the first shots in an interstellar civil war....
Cranstonville, Gilead
16 November 2841
13 January 2163 AST
DAY SEVEN
President Crayshaw was sitting in his office reading reports from East Port when he heart his secretary squeal. "What's going on?!" he demanded, rising to his feet. As he came around his desk the door flew open. General de la Hoya entered with half a dozen armed troops. Crayshaw's bodyguards were on their knees in the other room, Crayshaw could see, their wrists being bound by other soldiers. "What's the meaning of this?!"
The Spanish-accented general frowned and walked up. "For your failure to protect Gilean and Confederacy citizens and to honor the laws of the Confederacy, we are placing you under arrest."
And with those words, the coup was on.
Word soon spread through the streets as passers-by noticed the army trucks parked in front of the Presidential Mansion. The real confirmation came when other trucks motored toward the Gilean Congress, laden with troops. Congressmen coming to work heard the rumors and tried to flee, only to be caught in some cases by their own bodyguards, provided by the Army as they were. Others fared better, escaping with the help of staff or locals.
Meanwhile, a hedonist activist group that had chosen to demonstrate that day against intervention in the Primitivist Zone - on the grounds that such intervention would eventually lead to the "imposition" of "Judeo-Christian social tyranny" on Gilead - heard of what was happening and milled through the streets. When they finally came upon an Army convoy they blocked the road, screaming abuse at the troops in the trucks and refusing to let them pass. Particularly critical was that their mission had been to secure the Spaceport.
As the troops muttered to themselves, wondering what to do, those Congressmen and other political leaders who feared the Army would come for them got to the Spaceport and used it to flee, either to somewhere else on Gilead or off-world entirely.
Finally the standoff with the Hedonists turned tragically bloody. A street tough, on neither side, happened to be using the chaos to try his hand at a random mugging, and when his target unexpectently fought back, the gun in his hand went off. Close as it was to the troops, they and the crowd panicked simultaneously, and the activists began to flee even as the troops opened fire. Dozens of the hedonists were mowed down in the streets, blood flowing everywhere as the troops only after a long ten seconds stopped firing, long enough to see that they'd not been under fire after all.
The violence, however, had happened. Other hedonist groups in and around the city, convinced that a religious coup was underway, grabbed arms or fled to the sanctuary of foreign embassies, while those Congressmen who escaped redoubled their efforts to flee. Within a mere few hours of de la Hoya's coup d'etat beginning, Cranstonville erupted into violence as street gangs, hedonist groups, religious groups, and other individuals caught up in the mess fought with or against the Army.
The news of the chaos and violence was soon to spread elsewhere. Confused reports flooded the airwaves and spacewaves. Claims were made that hedonist radicals had opened fire on Army troops moving to protect the Congress. Others claimed that the Army, controlled by anti-Gilean Confederate officers, had opened fire on peaceful activists as part of a coup d'etat to install a dictatorship. Rumors abounded that the coup was being backed by the Chinese, or the Slavians, or the Hispanics, or even the British and their new allies from the other universes. The hedonist enclaves rose up in protest and near-revolt; the religious enclaves did nearly the same, and all sides feared that "the Other" was going to impose their tyrannical/Godless lifestyles upon one another.
The fabric of the loose Gilean Confederacy began to unravel, placed under the stresses of the failed coup. As it was, the Norman assault on Kalunda was about to become more than it had been, and a regional land battle for autonomy and hegemony and revenge now became merely the first shots in an interstellar civil war....
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Mission, Berglund Enclave, Berglund
17 November 2841
14 January 2163 AST
DAY EIGHT
Three weeks had passed since Fayza and Marzi had escaped with the woman they knew as Consuela. In the days since they had been forced to stay at the Mission. It was not safe to try to leave with the Berglund enclave police looking for them - the killing of the security guard in the Berglund estate was the excuse for what Father Delgado informed them was an "unprecedented" effort to find them. "Usually Berglund just sends a few thugs to try and scare us," he'd told them.
Because of this they'd been forced to disguise themselves as nuns among the two dozen or so who lived with Father Delgado and his two deacons. Consuela had blended in best, often praying by herself or with the other nuns. Marzi and Fayza only joined them when it was necessary, having been taught the proper prayers and mannerisms. Because of Fayza's complexion, and it's similarities to Hispanicc complexion, she'd taken the extra step of learning some Spanish to use in every-day conversation should someone be watching.
Today was supposed to be their final escape. News had come of the coup d'etat in Cranstonville and the resulting chaos, and now it was certain that the next step in the local Underground Railroad could be reached. Kelvintowne was the "conservative" Wiccan enclave on Berglund's northern border and it's population disliked Berglund and abhored Illian. During the weeks that'd passed Fayza had learned there had already been a little violence when Berglund's "raiders", looking for some "harmless fun" with the Kelvintowners' daughters, had come under fire from the armed men of the community. Now that there was no worry of being turned over for the killing of Berglund's security man, they could continue on.
From there they would go on to the Amish enclave at Durgensburg, where a contact would get them to the Alliance Consulate in the local metropolis of New Bergen. And then they would be home free.
Aside from recovering from her ordeal, Fayza had also found herself worried about Dani. What had happened to her? Did they try to kidnap her too? She was distraught about all the possible fates of her friend.
She was seated now with Marzi in a secluded room. It was sparse for appearances, and there was in fact very little for them to do but sit and talk. Marzi had spelled out her life - her teenage years of wanderlust after leaving Trill. She'd ended up broke in the Sphere, and to get money she'd been forced to work in an Orion-run strip club, first as a waitress, then a dancer, and finally as a prostitute. By that point she'd become a literal slave, and Oloparatho had made that official when he forced her to follow him to Gilead, where her path had crossed with Fayza.
Fayza had then explained her life. Her mother's decision to convert to Christianity, her estrangment from her devout Muslim father, and her career as a naval engineer - including her friendship with Dani, whom Fayza at times suspected wanted to be "more than friends".
Suddenly a shout came from below. Fayza and Marzi ran out of their rooms, just to meet some of the nuns as they ran in the opposite direction. Deacon Munez looked to them and shouted, "Run! Run to the underground passage! Berglund's security forces are breaking in!"
Aurora had been on her knees praying when she heard Father Delgado shouting at the door. Berglund's men busted in and fanned out through the mission. She jumped too her feet and ran to a corner, shedding her nun clothing for the black sports bra and shorts she wore underneath, acquired from the secret stores in the mission for escapees.
An armed man, wearing the camo of the Berglund Militia, came around the corner. Aurora grabbed his gun and drove her elbow into his throat, recalling her self-defense lessons easily. She pushed him against the wall and used him to balance herself as she brought her legs up, double-kicking his friend and knocking the soldier down, one of her feet having smashed in his airpipe. She regained her footing when her feet came down and pulled the first man she'd attacked into the hall behind the altar. She broke his neck with a single twist and pulled his gun off. Keeping herself low to the ground as she came up to the corner, Aurora peeked out long enough to see the soldier she kicked finally getting up. She raised the rifle she'd seized and fired off a shot that struck him in the throat. He fell gagging. "Flee!" Aurora shouted, hoping the others heard her. "To the passage!"
It was too little too late for some. Aurora could hear frightened screams as the militia soldiers grabbed nuns who'd not gotten into the back of the mission in time. Scowling, she moved back out into the main chapel of the church, ducking in front of a pew and aiming upward to see a light-skinned nun being accosted. Ignoring a couple of bullets that went off near her head, making her left ear ring, Aurora squeezed off a couple of shots to save the nun. One shot went straight into the unarmored neck of an assailant, the other was graced in the ear. Aurora fired a third shot as he brought his gun up, screaming, "Sister Denise, run! To the passage!"
The terrified nun took off. Aurora looked up to see if there were others. As she moved to change her cover, a round went through her right shoulder. The strength of the impact made her twist backward and she fell onto her back. Before she could get up to fight back, a guard came over her, rifle pointed straight at her. "Don't move, bitch! Let go of the gun! Let go!"
Aurora breathed hard and obeyed.
Militia soldiers were right behind them as Fayza and Marzi got into the passage, wearing the sports bra and shorts they'd been given along with Aurora for wear under their discarded nun robes. It was in a backroom, a rope ladder leading down into a mostly dark earthen tunnel about six feet high and only four or so feet wide - only a line of dim lights above provided any kind of illumination.
As Fayza and Marzi climbed down, Deacon Munez followed belatedly. "Hurry! Hurry!" he shouted.
Marzi promptly dropped down when she was a couple of feet off the ground. She landed and began running. Fayza came right after her, and Munez in turn took up the rear.
"How are we going to stop them?" Fayza shouted. "They're going to follow us!"
"No, they're not."
They ran for another second before Fayza could hear an explosion behind them. Another explosion followed, and another, and she could feel some heat on her back.
Minutes passed and the tunnel seemed to grow a bid in width. Finally the explosions stopped behind them. The tunnel had been collapsed.
They were safe. For now, at least...
Aurora had been tended to by her captors, but only just. Her wrists were strapped painfully behind her back and her ankles similarly bound. The nuns had also been restrained, as had Father Delgado.
The chapel of the mission had been cleared out of pews and everyone arranged into the middle of the room. After an hour or so of waiting, a figure came in from the receiving room for the mission. Aurora frowned at seeing Illian Berglund bedecked in a regal uniform. He walked toward them, a deceptively sweet smile on his face. "Ah, Consuela, so good to see you again. Presuming that is your name. I am, you see, most interested in finding out who your employer is." Berglund looked around at the other captives. A couple of the youngest were weeping and praying. "There are only fourteen prisoners here, not counting Consuela. Where are the others? There were at least 40 people living here."
"Escaped sir. Through a shaft in the back. They blew it before we could follow."
Berglund sighed. "Oh, dear. I guess I'll have to bring out equipment to find where the shaft leads."
"Do you think they are foolish enough to exit in this enclave?" Aurora asked him. "They'll be out of your area when they come out. Out of your jurisdiction."
Berglund shrugged. "Oh, not for long."
Aurora stared at him. "What do you mean by that?"
"Why, what do you think? The Gilean Confederacy is dead. Berglund is no longer merely a semi-autonomous enclave. We are an independent state, and I am King Illian the First of the Kingdom of Berglund." He grinned widely. "I have the best militia and security troops within two thousand kilometers. My Kingdom will grow nicely in the next few weeks, you'll see."
"And what do you think the Gilean Army will do? They'll stop you."
"Of course not," Berglund laughed in reply. "They're too busy fighting amongst themselves. Already the fighting has spread to seventeen more worlds, in just a day! Some planets are afraid the Army will take their rights away, others see this as a chance to strike a blow for.... heh heh.... 'good morals'. No, my dear, the Army has far more important things to do than to worry about me. It's not like I'm conquering a planet! I'll be overrunning a bunch of agrarians and small town societies. Half of them, I bet, will invite me in to protect them from the other half."
Berglund walked up to her and pressed a finger on her chest, over her heart. "As for you.... you have committed an act of rebellion against me, your Master... your King. The penalty, well, I'm not sure yet."
A strong fear rose in Aurora's heart. She found herself hoping Berglund was at least intelligent about this. Granted, it meant she would likely be tortured for information before being shot and thrown into a grave, but he'd also be smart enough to let Father Delgado and the mission's nuns go, knowing it would heavily provoke the Catholic nations of the universe to do anything to them.
But Aurora could see he was not so smart. He was looking over the other girls, spotting one with a complexion the same as Aurora's. He pulled the headdress off the girl and used his hand to make her look up. "Lovely girl. A virgin too, I imagine. Sad that this backward faith causes such beautiful women to deny themselves the pleasures their beauty makes possible for them." He clasped his hands behind his back and looked to his assistant. "Get the stocks of dehib. Tonight, we shall re-dedicate this place - this bastion of repression and ignorance - to a new purpose, and these beauties will have a part in that."
"Bastard!" Aurora snarled and glared at him. "Do with me as you will, but let them go! Otherwise you will invite the rage of every Catholic alive!"
"What do I fear from the Catholics of the Multiverse? The British Empire is not Catholic! Nor are the Allied Nations, their war-time ally. No, my dear, the British will never allow an outside party to impinge upon their interests. And no state will risk war against the British and Alliance combined." Berglund's smug grin belied his confidence. "The time has come for the Berglunds to give to their neighbors freedom from superstition and sexual repression. These young things will get that freedom tonight. Perhaps I'll keep you here long enough to join in the festivities." Berglund looked to one of his security people. "Make the announcements, and get my lower tier girls to join in. We can't let these ladies have all the fun, can we?"
17 November 2841
14 January 2163 AST
DAY EIGHT
Three weeks had passed since Fayza and Marzi had escaped with the woman they knew as Consuela. In the days since they had been forced to stay at the Mission. It was not safe to try to leave with the Berglund enclave police looking for them - the killing of the security guard in the Berglund estate was the excuse for what Father Delgado informed them was an "unprecedented" effort to find them. "Usually Berglund just sends a few thugs to try and scare us," he'd told them.
Because of this they'd been forced to disguise themselves as nuns among the two dozen or so who lived with Father Delgado and his two deacons. Consuela had blended in best, often praying by herself or with the other nuns. Marzi and Fayza only joined them when it was necessary, having been taught the proper prayers and mannerisms. Because of Fayza's complexion, and it's similarities to Hispanicc complexion, she'd taken the extra step of learning some Spanish to use in every-day conversation should someone be watching.
Today was supposed to be their final escape. News had come of the coup d'etat in Cranstonville and the resulting chaos, and now it was certain that the next step in the local Underground Railroad could be reached. Kelvintowne was the "conservative" Wiccan enclave on Berglund's northern border and it's population disliked Berglund and abhored Illian. During the weeks that'd passed Fayza had learned there had already been a little violence when Berglund's "raiders", looking for some "harmless fun" with the Kelvintowners' daughters, had come under fire from the armed men of the community. Now that there was no worry of being turned over for the killing of Berglund's security man, they could continue on.
From there they would go on to the Amish enclave at Durgensburg, where a contact would get them to the Alliance Consulate in the local metropolis of New Bergen. And then they would be home free.
Aside from recovering from her ordeal, Fayza had also found herself worried about Dani. What had happened to her? Did they try to kidnap her too? She was distraught about all the possible fates of her friend.
She was seated now with Marzi in a secluded room. It was sparse for appearances, and there was in fact very little for them to do but sit and talk. Marzi had spelled out her life - her teenage years of wanderlust after leaving Trill. She'd ended up broke in the Sphere, and to get money she'd been forced to work in an Orion-run strip club, first as a waitress, then a dancer, and finally as a prostitute. By that point she'd become a literal slave, and Oloparatho had made that official when he forced her to follow him to Gilead, where her path had crossed with Fayza.
Fayza had then explained her life. Her mother's decision to convert to Christianity, her estrangment from her devout Muslim father, and her career as a naval engineer - including her friendship with Dani, whom Fayza at times suspected wanted to be "more than friends".
Suddenly a shout came from below. Fayza and Marzi ran out of their rooms, just to meet some of the nuns as they ran in the opposite direction. Deacon Munez looked to them and shouted, "Run! Run to the underground passage! Berglund's security forces are breaking in!"
Aurora had been on her knees praying when she heard Father Delgado shouting at the door. Berglund's men busted in and fanned out through the mission. She jumped too her feet and ran to a corner, shedding her nun clothing for the black sports bra and shorts she wore underneath, acquired from the secret stores in the mission for escapees.
An armed man, wearing the camo of the Berglund Militia, came around the corner. Aurora grabbed his gun and drove her elbow into his throat, recalling her self-defense lessons easily. She pushed him against the wall and used him to balance herself as she brought her legs up, double-kicking his friend and knocking the soldier down, one of her feet having smashed in his airpipe. She regained her footing when her feet came down and pulled the first man she'd attacked into the hall behind the altar. She broke his neck with a single twist and pulled his gun off. Keeping herself low to the ground as she came up to the corner, Aurora peeked out long enough to see the soldier she kicked finally getting up. She raised the rifle she'd seized and fired off a shot that struck him in the throat. He fell gagging. "Flee!" Aurora shouted, hoping the others heard her. "To the passage!"
It was too little too late for some. Aurora could hear frightened screams as the militia soldiers grabbed nuns who'd not gotten into the back of the mission in time. Scowling, she moved back out into the main chapel of the church, ducking in front of a pew and aiming upward to see a light-skinned nun being accosted. Ignoring a couple of bullets that went off near her head, making her left ear ring, Aurora squeezed off a couple of shots to save the nun. One shot went straight into the unarmored neck of an assailant, the other was graced in the ear. Aurora fired a third shot as he brought his gun up, screaming, "Sister Denise, run! To the passage!"
The terrified nun took off. Aurora looked up to see if there were others. As she moved to change her cover, a round went through her right shoulder. The strength of the impact made her twist backward and she fell onto her back. Before she could get up to fight back, a guard came over her, rifle pointed straight at her. "Don't move, bitch! Let go of the gun! Let go!"
Aurora breathed hard and obeyed.
Militia soldiers were right behind them as Fayza and Marzi got into the passage, wearing the sports bra and shorts they'd been given along with Aurora for wear under their discarded nun robes. It was in a backroom, a rope ladder leading down into a mostly dark earthen tunnel about six feet high and only four or so feet wide - only a line of dim lights above provided any kind of illumination.
As Fayza and Marzi climbed down, Deacon Munez followed belatedly. "Hurry! Hurry!" he shouted.
Marzi promptly dropped down when she was a couple of feet off the ground. She landed and began running. Fayza came right after her, and Munez in turn took up the rear.
"How are we going to stop them?" Fayza shouted. "They're going to follow us!"
"No, they're not."
They ran for another second before Fayza could hear an explosion behind them. Another explosion followed, and another, and she could feel some heat on her back.
Minutes passed and the tunnel seemed to grow a bid in width. Finally the explosions stopped behind them. The tunnel had been collapsed.
They were safe. For now, at least...
Aurora had been tended to by her captors, but only just. Her wrists were strapped painfully behind her back and her ankles similarly bound. The nuns had also been restrained, as had Father Delgado.
The chapel of the mission had been cleared out of pews and everyone arranged into the middle of the room. After an hour or so of waiting, a figure came in from the receiving room for the mission. Aurora frowned at seeing Illian Berglund bedecked in a regal uniform. He walked toward them, a deceptively sweet smile on his face. "Ah, Consuela, so good to see you again. Presuming that is your name. I am, you see, most interested in finding out who your employer is." Berglund looked around at the other captives. A couple of the youngest were weeping and praying. "There are only fourteen prisoners here, not counting Consuela. Where are the others? There were at least 40 people living here."
"Escaped sir. Through a shaft in the back. They blew it before we could follow."
Berglund sighed. "Oh, dear. I guess I'll have to bring out equipment to find where the shaft leads."
"Do you think they are foolish enough to exit in this enclave?" Aurora asked him. "They'll be out of your area when they come out. Out of your jurisdiction."
Berglund shrugged. "Oh, not for long."
Aurora stared at him. "What do you mean by that?"
"Why, what do you think? The Gilean Confederacy is dead. Berglund is no longer merely a semi-autonomous enclave. We are an independent state, and I am King Illian the First of the Kingdom of Berglund." He grinned widely. "I have the best militia and security troops within two thousand kilometers. My Kingdom will grow nicely in the next few weeks, you'll see."
"And what do you think the Gilean Army will do? They'll stop you."
"Of course not," Berglund laughed in reply. "They're too busy fighting amongst themselves. Already the fighting has spread to seventeen more worlds, in just a day! Some planets are afraid the Army will take their rights away, others see this as a chance to strike a blow for.... heh heh.... 'good morals'. No, my dear, the Army has far more important things to do than to worry about me. It's not like I'm conquering a planet! I'll be overrunning a bunch of agrarians and small town societies. Half of them, I bet, will invite me in to protect them from the other half."
Berglund walked up to her and pressed a finger on her chest, over her heart. "As for you.... you have committed an act of rebellion against me, your Master... your King. The penalty, well, I'm not sure yet."
A strong fear rose in Aurora's heart. She found herself hoping Berglund was at least intelligent about this. Granted, it meant she would likely be tortured for information before being shot and thrown into a grave, but he'd also be smart enough to let Father Delgado and the mission's nuns go, knowing it would heavily provoke the Catholic nations of the universe to do anything to them.
But Aurora could see he was not so smart. He was looking over the other girls, spotting one with a complexion the same as Aurora's. He pulled the headdress off the girl and used his hand to make her look up. "Lovely girl. A virgin too, I imagine. Sad that this backward faith causes such beautiful women to deny themselves the pleasures their beauty makes possible for them." He clasped his hands behind his back and looked to his assistant. "Get the stocks of dehib. Tonight, we shall re-dedicate this place - this bastion of repression and ignorance - to a new purpose, and these beauties will have a part in that."
"Bastard!" Aurora snarled and glared at him. "Do with me as you will, but let them go! Otherwise you will invite the rage of every Catholic alive!"
"What do I fear from the Catholics of the Multiverse? The British Empire is not Catholic! Nor are the Allied Nations, their war-time ally. No, my dear, the British will never allow an outside party to impinge upon their interests. And no state will risk war against the British and Alliance combined." Berglund's smug grin belied his confidence. "The time has come for the Berglunds to give to their neighbors freedom from superstition and sexual repression. These young things will get that freedom tonight. Perhaps I'll keep you here long enough to join in the festivities." Berglund looked to one of his security people. "Make the announcements, and get my lower tier girls to join in. We can't let these ladies have all the fun, can we?"
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Written by me.
Kalunda, Gilead
17 November 2841
14 January 2163 AST
DAY EIGHT
Dani was screaming orders from the catwalk suspended over the improvised slipway on which the river gunboat Freedom was being constructed. The Freedom was going to be the centerpiece of her fleet, along with her two planned sisters; the Emancipator and the Liberty. They were the biggest boats she could build, using the three largest yard spaces Kalunda had - the pleasure cruiser docks owned technically by the Gilean Pleasure Boat Corporation but now commandeered for her use. They would be the "flag" vessels for the three river groups she had planned and they came equipped with a small command room. They were heavily-armored, only slightly slower than most of the gunboat, and carried two howitzers good for shelling enemy troops and for any possible fights with enemy river boats, should they get some.
Captain d'Hegia was following her, finally wearing her proper uniform. She was herself about to take command of the Woodrow Wilson, the newest of the Abraham Lincoln-class of river gunboat that Dani had designed. Dani would be getting a new trainer, a sixty-eight year old veteran of the Crimson Guard named Dafni Kuresses, a Captain who looked middle-aged due to age-retardation treatments that began a bit too late to preserve her youth. She was a veteran of the "Long March" and of the Battle of East Henley, where she had lost a leg. Though now she had a prosthetic, she was still considered unfit for infantry duty, and so she'd spent most of the last four decades as a reservist, including a stint in the Flotilla where she'd finally earned a reservists' commission. For now Kuresses was out training some teenage recruits on a pleasure yacht requisitioned for the purpose.
"We need to make sure the fleet is ready, as soon as possible," Dani remarked to d'Hegia, who nodded enthusiastically. "I've heard the al-Farani and the Amazons have their own river ships, a large amount of them. We need the numbers and firepower to make sure they don't try to outflank our defenses by river landings into the city itself. So.... hey, you there! Don't warp the metal dammit! Am I going to have to come down there and do that myself?!"
"You shouldn't worry so much, Admiral. The ships will be fine."
"I damn well will worry," Dani snapped back. "It was hard enough to convince the King, Minister d'Kellius and her sister, and Jhay...." Dani caught herself. "...Marshal itl dhin Intuit that the cost of these ships was worth it. The last thing I need is a bad welding job or loose bolt to cause one to sink to the bottom of the river."
Captain d'Hegia nodded. "I see. But, you may cause a mistake if you continue to harrass the workers. Let the foremen see to the work, they know what has to be done."
Dani sighed, resting her clenched hands on the catwalk. "Okay, you win. Anything else?"
"You must sign more requisition orders. And there is the matter of Junia Portuni."
Dani nodded. A small fire had broken out on the Tubman and might have reached the small arms ammunition if young Guardswoman Portuni - a twenty year old girl with cute freckles and light skin - had not had the presence of mind to grab the ammo box by box to carry it away, getting several burns in the process. Dani still had to sign the paperwork for her to be granted a promotion and a commendation. "I'll get to it later."
"And there are requistion orders to be filled out..."
"I'll do it later..."
"And brevet commissions..." Captain d'Hegia smiled at Dani's glowering face when the older woman turned to her. "And the authorizations for new commands, including my own. The paperwork must be done, sir, even in our situation. You should leave these people to their jobs."
Sighing, Dani nodded. "Fine, you win. I want to go see how the process is going on fitting the Liberty's 150mm guns and then we'll go to the office."
In her office, Dani quickly lost interest in the paperwork. After some consideration she picked up her phone and called Jhayka to see what was going on. One of her assistants answered. "Is the Marshal busy?" Dani asked, even though the question was ridiculous; Jhayka was always busy.
"Yes. We've...."
Suddenly there was a thundering outside. Dani jumped from her chair. "Thank you for your time," she said to the person on the other side before hanging up. More thundering came from outside, and Dani knew that another assault had begun.
Kalunda, Gilead
17 November 2841
14 January 2163 AST
DAY EIGHT
Dani was screaming orders from the catwalk suspended over the improvised slipway on which the river gunboat Freedom was being constructed. The Freedom was going to be the centerpiece of her fleet, along with her two planned sisters; the Emancipator and the Liberty. They were the biggest boats she could build, using the three largest yard spaces Kalunda had - the pleasure cruiser docks owned technically by the Gilean Pleasure Boat Corporation but now commandeered for her use. They would be the "flag" vessels for the three river groups she had planned and they came equipped with a small command room. They were heavily-armored, only slightly slower than most of the gunboat, and carried two howitzers good for shelling enemy troops and for any possible fights with enemy river boats, should they get some.
Captain d'Hegia was following her, finally wearing her proper uniform. She was herself about to take command of the Woodrow Wilson, the newest of the Abraham Lincoln-class of river gunboat that Dani had designed. Dani would be getting a new trainer, a sixty-eight year old veteran of the Crimson Guard named Dafni Kuresses, a Captain who looked middle-aged due to age-retardation treatments that began a bit too late to preserve her youth. She was a veteran of the "Long March" and of the Battle of East Henley, where she had lost a leg. Though now she had a prosthetic, she was still considered unfit for infantry duty, and so she'd spent most of the last four decades as a reservist, including a stint in the Flotilla where she'd finally earned a reservists' commission. For now Kuresses was out training some teenage recruits on a pleasure yacht requisitioned for the purpose.
"We need to make sure the fleet is ready, as soon as possible," Dani remarked to d'Hegia, who nodded enthusiastically. "I've heard the al-Farani and the Amazons have their own river ships, a large amount of them. We need the numbers and firepower to make sure they don't try to outflank our defenses by river landings into the city itself. So.... hey, you there! Don't warp the metal dammit! Am I going to have to come down there and do that myself?!"
"You shouldn't worry so much, Admiral. The ships will be fine."
"I damn well will worry," Dani snapped back. "It was hard enough to convince the King, Minister d'Kellius and her sister, and Jhay...." Dani caught herself. "...Marshal itl dhin Intuit that the cost of these ships was worth it. The last thing I need is a bad welding job or loose bolt to cause one to sink to the bottom of the river."
Captain d'Hegia nodded. "I see. But, you may cause a mistake if you continue to harrass the workers. Let the foremen see to the work, they know what has to be done."
Dani sighed, resting her clenched hands on the catwalk. "Okay, you win. Anything else?"
"You must sign more requisition orders. And there is the matter of Junia Portuni."
Dani nodded. A small fire had broken out on the Tubman and might have reached the small arms ammunition if young Guardswoman Portuni - a twenty year old girl with cute freckles and light skin - had not had the presence of mind to grab the ammo box by box to carry it away, getting several burns in the process. Dani still had to sign the paperwork for her to be granted a promotion and a commendation. "I'll get to it later."
"And there are requistion orders to be filled out..."
"I'll do it later..."
"And brevet commissions..." Captain d'Hegia smiled at Dani's glowering face when the older woman turned to her. "And the authorizations for new commands, including my own. The paperwork must be done, sir, even in our situation. You should leave these people to their jobs."
Sighing, Dani nodded. "Fine, you win. I want to go see how the process is going on fitting the Liberty's 150mm guns and then we'll go to the office."
In her office, Dani quickly lost interest in the paperwork. After some consideration she picked up her phone and called Jhayka to see what was going on. One of her assistants answered. "Is the Marshal busy?" Dani asked, even though the question was ridiculous; Jhayka was always busy.
"Yes. We've...."
Suddenly there was a thundering outside. Dani jumped from her chair. "Thank you for your time," she said to the person on the other side before hanging up. More thundering came from outside, and Dani knew that another assault had begun.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The first part - the Dispatch from Mr. Doorn - was written by Chris Purnell (Marina's co-writer for "Operation Heinrich") from the POV of a commentator from his TGG power. The second part is obviously Marina.
Dispatch from Barthold Doorn, 25.07.3290 (DAY THREE)
Kalunda, Gilead
Trapped in the sybaritic city-state of Kalunda, deep in a primitive zone of the world Gilead given over to total barbarism, with a savage army of slavers and rapists poised to conquer, I relate this account of my travels and traivals, in the hope that it will accomplish something before it is too late...
Taloran Star Empire
T.I.S. In'ghara and Rasitak
55 Chertain IY 617
Day Eight
“This is unbelievable.”
Nobody was really going to answer the All-Highest of the Taloran Star Empire when she made a comment like that. Several people at the table did shift slightly. The majority of them, being female, were in fact much taller than the short and slight figure of Saverana II, Ruler over Queens who master other Queens, Great Queen of Grenya Colenta, Queen of Ras'merin, of Dasyr, Ilhan, Trilune, Uruka, Ferashako, Erasano, Ghastimid, and Huerva, Sovereign of the Northern Tribes, Protector of the Quesadi Cities, etc, etc, until through the long list one at last came to the ancient title of the house: Countess of Ta'ertan March. A wastrel stretch of scrub along the Great Divide Desert which had produced the family which would shape the history of the whole Taloran species.
They were also almost always very, nearly unnaturally short, Saverana II herself measuring only five foot eleven inches (as usual it didn't count the ears—Taloran females with their ears counted could easily reach seven feet), toward the very end of the lower range for Taloran Females beyond which one had to have a serious disorder to end up. Saverana II had never particularly liked this, and typically set with a special cushion in her chair, and had a tendency to wear heavy clog shoes that served to add an inch or two to her height. It was a minor eccentricity, the larger one being that they were currently on the Imperial Yacht observing the annual Fleet Problem, the grand naval manoeuvres which posed the most difficult training challenge to the whole of the navy. It also meant that, at least, there were a large number of military advisors around.
Finally, Saverana herself could not stand the silence anymore. “We ask you to speak freely on the matter, seeing as all of us are of noble blood and this matter concerns one of our own.”
That was like tossing a shark into a tank full of fish.
“The Princess,” and everyone in the room could by the tone almost immediately substitute the word 'pervert' instead, though speaking freely around Her Serene Majesty did not give someone the liberty to say such a thing openly, “has gone and created an international incident,” the Archduchess of Ilastivak growled out in a tone most unbecoming of her fine, blue-haired figure and stately Admiral's uniform befitting her position as Chief Inspector of the Naval Artillery, the title still given to the person who's job was to oversee all aspects of weapons procurement and testing for the Starfleet. Not, of course, a normal part of the cabinet, Saverana had simply gathered together a group of people she trusted—and she loved naval officers—for advice when the matter had come up while she was away from Talora Prime.
“Now, there's no need to consider the incident purely on the merits of who caused it,” the Naval Minister—who had much more authority as a member of the actual cabinet, and so Saverana listened more intently—began. His name was Omhvid Ferish and he was a dapper, rather short fellow with considerable experience in the naval bureaucracy which had been built up primarily along the maxim of what 'Whatever the Countess of Kriesle said, is equally valid to the word according to the Prophet Eibermon', an attitude which attempting to change had proven less useful than simply trying to carefully manage, as was the case with most Taloran long traditions.
At least the High Lord of the Privy Seal and the Queen's Cup-Bearer were both there. Together with the Naval Minister she had three proper advisors, plus, of course, her confidante the Archduchess Leluno, who was even more valuable.
“How do We consider what the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it hath done, then? She acted on her honour, she says; was she bound to such an act?”
“On her own word, yes,” the High Lord of the Privy Seal answered. A rather tall old man of white hair his sense of honour was quite acute. “Your Majesty, whatever the poor moral repute of the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it may be, that she is honesty and fortright in her deals is not to be disputed. If she gave her word she would keep it, and we should not expect duplicitousness of someone simply because they are cursed with indiscretion.”
Saverana nodded faintly, a neigh-imperceptible gesture. Her eyes didn't blink or move, as she'd been trained to avoid such perceptions, and even her ears were rather stiff, revealing little of her inner thoughts.
“Your Majesty, have you had an opportunity to seen the reports in the Habsburg media?” Rylasa Franh, the Queen's Cup-Bearer, asked delicately.
“No, We have not. Are they more substantiative than those in Our own people's reports?” They had already been read, after all, and had proven to be just a dizzying collection of rumours and half-innuendo, most of which Saverana assumed to be entirely inaccurate as a matter of course. No individual of higher sensibilities and breeding paid much attention to the media, even when they printed statements of questionable validity about the nobility, because they simply didn't matter much.
“Ah, no, Your Majesty,” Rylasa's ears dropped a bit. “But they're from another source, some sort of professional commentator from the Habsburg states; he is also in Kalunda at the moment. His report doesn't directly mention whether or not the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it's claims are correct or not but his account of events corroborates within the limits of its detail.”
“That is something, at least,” the Archduchess Leluno interjected. “Your Majesty, I would respectively suggest that our duty remains to accept the Princess' account, as long as there is so much as any evidence of truth in it, which we have, until such time as an appropriate inquest can be held under our laws.”
“We certainly do not find that very inappropriate,” Saverana began rather roundaboutly, sitting rigidly upright as she looked among the mostly silent Lords of the Admiralty who wondered why precisely they were even here. Though there was of course a reason.. “At any rate, Archduchess, We would like to hear your thoughts on the specific request of the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it.”
“Intervention is of course unacceptable,” there were nods all around, “but insomuch as she as been acting only to save the lives of those she is honour-bound to protect we can secure her quick removal from the area by also evacuating this..” A wave of her hands and frown.
Rylasa interjected gently, though she herself was reading off a copy of the dispatch from Jhayka: “Commander Danielle Verdes, Alliance of Democratic Nations Navy, Your Grace.”
“Yes, thank you, along with the Princess. As for the issue of her taking up the defense of Kalunda, what she did was quite normal, and her ties there can be broken simply be recalling her to active service long enough to issue the appropriate orders.”
Saverana stiffly nodded once to acknowledge the argument. “That can be done. The coup—and its failure--unacceptably complicates the matter, regardless, so that we cannot really cooperate with the government of Gilead in regard to the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it's requests. There is no government to refer to that they may be asked to bring the situation under control, let alone for the sake of our intervention—which the British make impossible. Nothing can be done it seems, in fact, save to send forces to insure the immediate evacuation of our citizens. We should detail a full taskgroup to that, after informing the various embassies of the other nations—not an actual intervention, we just go, secure the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it and her retainers, along with all other Taloran subjects trapped in the violence, and return them to our territory in the new universe.”
“We can cut the orders for such a force immediately,” Admiral Asjhi Rival answered, her read eyes slightly downturned before Her Serene Majesty though she was probably the most experienced among them here, militarily. “It will not be hard to evacuate the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it, I believe, for the forces in that region do not have any modern weaponry. The expedition can be organized out of the exploratory forces and on its way as soon as the diplomatic notes have been sent; transit time will not be long.”
“It would be unwise to send the force before we've alered the other powers that we're conducting an evacuation of Our subjects from the Gilean Confederacy; we can muster it, but do not send it beyond the borders of our territory until our intent has been confirmed, so as to assuage the British that we have no intent of interfering, and merely to secure the safety of the various Talorans caught in this unfortunate situation.”
The High Lord of the Privy Seal bowed his head. “I shall inform the Ergacatum, Your Majesty.”
“Excellent, then, it appears this unusual usual has been dealt with as decisively as We might hope. This meeting is adjourned.”
Dispatch from Barthold Doorn, 25.07.3290 (DAY THREE)
Kalunda, Gilead
Trapped in the sybaritic city-state of Kalunda, deep in a primitive zone of the world Gilead given over to total barbarism, with a savage army of slavers and rapists poised to conquer, I relate this account of my travels and traivals, in the hope that it will accomplish something before it is too late...
Notwithstanding their cruel and rapacious reputation, the Normans of the primitive city-state of Ar did possess some of the usual customs of hospitality cultivated by barbarous peoples. I had been invited to visit the city by a Norman merchant, one Señor Williams, to prevent a counterpoint to the colorful and decadent hedonism of the Kalundans. The leader of the Normans, it turned out, was eager to obtain some measure of a hearing on what he considered the merits of the state of barbarism to which the Norman peoples. That the effort at advocacy tended to condemn his people with his own words, by displaying fully the depths of perversion inherent in the twisted cultural system that had been created by their ancestors, I carefully left unsaid.
After the interview was concluded, yours truly and my recording team were given a tour of the city, including the pits of despair that housed slaves to be auctioned, and the arena in which the Norman blood-lust was carefully stoked with gladiatorial combats. My hosts were inordinately proud of both abominations, in the cheerfully ignorant way that a savage headhunter might have displayed his trophy to the Hollandian authorities. The great walls of the city, astoundingly and absurdly high and thick to match the demented ideal given in the Norman religious book, were however a splendidly impressive sight to behold. I held invitation to a Norman banquet that night, and beheld the full panoply of scantily clad slave-girls dancing by the bonfire, oaken tables piled high with exotic fruits and rude slabs of meats, the alcohol-fuelled boasting of the warriors, and exhibitions of strength and talent from the youths.
My team and I had finished our programming the next morning when we were shocked to hear the sounds of a great bombardment on the city, launched, we were told later, by a Taloran princess. Whether she treacherously violated the peace of the city for some inscrutable alien end, or to rescue a member of her party from the Normans, I know not. The immediate result was that we were obliged to head for the other end of the city, and sanctuary with the merchant Williams. He was gracious enough in providing shelter from the fighting and bombardment, which we passed without incident in a few games of cards. It was clear, however, that our return to Kalunda was infeasible given the circumstances, and so Williams offered to put us up at a local tavern for the night while we planned an alternative route.
It was at this point that we were confounded in our efforts to leave the city by the Norman authorities, initially as a precaution to avoid details of their response to the attack from leaving the city. This state of affairs persisted for a couple of days, time which I used to more thoroughly document the history and barbarous customs of the Normans, and the features of the city of Ar. The prospect of creating a full scale holograph simulation of the city to accompany my reports had caught my fancy, which I indulged for the curiosity of my readers. The leadership of Ar remained distant, and I was made to understand that our presence was increasingly unwelcome, but that no reprieve in being allowed to depart would be forthcoming. I noticed on my visits in the city a general tension and coldness among the inhabitants, as though a vague dread and anticipation had seized ahold of the Norman population.
We learned of the impending siege of Kalunda by way of two somewhat overage Norman reservists sent to the tavern room to place us in detention along with the other foreigners in the city. They readily admitted that the consequences of their actions were not foreseeable, and indeed confirmed that the detention was a rash gesture prompted by fear over the Gilead government's possible response to the fighting. After some more discussion about the broader implication of their actions, they proved willing to overlook our presence in exchange for our remaining anti-biotic stash and a large bribe in the local gold currency. Indeed, they were kind enough to provide a lift in their battered diesel lorry to the residence of Señor Williams, whom I hoped would be sympathetic to our cause and might aid in our escape from the city. Indeed, far more than I had hoped, our host was prepared to help not just ourselves but several other foreigners who had secreted to his house when the detentions had begun.
He supplied us with his own lorry, as well as sets of what passed for Norman uniforms as disguises, and documents establishing our status as volunteers for the army coming up to Kalunda. We left his house as a group, shortly ahead of a Norman convoy; we heard gunshots coming from the direction of the house, and I fear our gallant host was killed in the struggle for his effort. Using documents provided by Williams, and no small amount of bluff, we were able to get out of the city and drive through the roadblocks set up by the Norman rearguard troops. As we approached the march formations of the Norman army, the scrutiny of the Norman detachments became notably more difficult to assuage. At last we were forced to abandon the lorry, and made out through the rainforest, around the Norman formations, to reach the perilous safety of Kalunda.
Fortunately one of our number, a Monsieur de la Tassigny, resident from the French Empire in Gilead, had experience with the lands of this region and was formidable guide. For my part, some time spent in the regiments of the Army proved most useful, despite the onset of a comfortable middle age. If our military excels at anything, you may be very well assured that the march is foremost among them, and one does not easily forget the comfortable rhythms of old service. My crew was composed of fitter fellows, and had little trouble keeping up with the pace, but several of the ladies in our party had difficulty doing so. Ultimately it proved necessary to stop along the way several times, sweltering in the green lushness of hanging vines and leafy canopy, and surrounded by barbarous foes and unknown threats. We pressed on, however, with the menfolk volunteering in turns to aid the ladies, pressing them on and risking their health and ours, with little water, to spare them the certain fate which waited should they fall under Norman power.
It was with utmost relief that we staggered into the outskirts of the military patrols of Kalunda exhausted and mostly dehydrated, but quite ahead of the Norman columns. The slovenly discipline of the savage, playing at modern warfare, was as likely our salvation as the determined efforts of M. de la Tassigny, though all of our party owes him a deep debt of gratitude. The authorities in Kalunda have proven less capricious than their counterparts in Ar, and though no less barbarous in their own way, are clearly more honorable. The threatened siege has materialized of late, preventing regular communication between the city and the civilized world, as well as our own escape to a safer destination. This dispatch, along with the names and status of our party of refugees from Ar, will be sent out in a breakthrough attempt to be made by the Kalundan forces towards the city of Eastport, where there is reason to expect Gilean authorities to be. One can only hope that the central government, so utterly negligent of its duties otherwise, will be motivated to end the barbarism and savagery that has taken hold of this primitive society reservation.
Taloran Star Empire
T.I.S. In'ghara and Rasitak
55 Chertain IY 617
Day Eight
“This is unbelievable.”
Nobody was really going to answer the All-Highest of the Taloran Star Empire when she made a comment like that. Several people at the table did shift slightly. The majority of them, being female, were in fact much taller than the short and slight figure of Saverana II, Ruler over Queens who master other Queens, Great Queen of Grenya Colenta, Queen of Ras'merin, of Dasyr, Ilhan, Trilune, Uruka, Ferashako, Erasano, Ghastimid, and Huerva, Sovereign of the Northern Tribes, Protector of the Quesadi Cities, etc, etc, until through the long list one at last came to the ancient title of the house: Countess of Ta'ertan March. A wastrel stretch of scrub along the Great Divide Desert which had produced the family which would shape the history of the whole Taloran species.
They were also almost always very, nearly unnaturally short, Saverana II herself measuring only five foot eleven inches (as usual it didn't count the ears—Taloran females with their ears counted could easily reach seven feet), toward the very end of the lower range for Taloran Females beyond which one had to have a serious disorder to end up. Saverana II had never particularly liked this, and typically set with a special cushion in her chair, and had a tendency to wear heavy clog shoes that served to add an inch or two to her height. It was a minor eccentricity, the larger one being that they were currently on the Imperial Yacht observing the annual Fleet Problem, the grand naval manoeuvres which posed the most difficult training challenge to the whole of the navy. It also meant that, at least, there were a large number of military advisors around.
Finally, Saverana herself could not stand the silence anymore. “We ask you to speak freely on the matter, seeing as all of us are of noble blood and this matter concerns one of our own.”
That was like tossing a shark into a tank full of fish.
“The Princess,” and everyone in the room could by the tone almost immediately substitute the word 'pervert' instead, though speaking freely around Her Serene Majesty did not give someone the liberty to say such a thing openly, “has gone and created an international incident,” the Archduchess of Ilastivak growled out in a tone most unbecoming of her fine, blue-haired figure and stately Admiral's uniform befitting her position as Chief Inspector of the Naval Artillery, the title still given to the person who's job was to oversee all aspects of weapons procurement and testing for the Starfleet. Not, of course, a normal part of the cabinet, Saverana had simply gathered together a group of people she trusted—and she loved naval officers—for advice when the matter had come up while she was away from Talora Prime.
“Now, there's no need to consider the incident purely on the merits of who caused it,” the Naval Minister—who had much more authority as a member of the actual cabinet, and so Saverana listened more intently—began. His name was Omhvid Ferish and he was a dapper, rather short fellow with considerable experience in the naval bureaucracy which had been built up primarily along the maxim of what 'Whatever the Countess of Kriesle said, is equally valid to the word according to the Prophet Eibermon', an attitude which attempting to change had proven less useful than simply trying to carefully manage, as was the case with most Taloran long traditions.
At least the High Lord of the Privy Seal and the Queen's Cup-Bearer were both there. Together with the Naval Minister she had three proper advisors, plus, of course, her confidante the Archduchess Leluno, who was even more valuable.
“How do We consider what the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it hath done, then? She acted on her honour, she says; was she bound to such an act?”
“On her own word, yes,” the High Lord of the Privy Seal answered. A rather tall old man of white hair his sense of honour was quite acute. “Your Majesty, whatever the poor moral repute of the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it may be, that she is honesty and fortright in her deals is not to be disputed. If she gave her word she would keep it, and we should not expect duplicitousness of someone simply because they are cursed with indiscretion.”
Saverana nodded faintly, a neigh-imperceptible gesture. Her eyes didn't blink or move, as she'd been trained to avoid such perceptions, and even her ears were rather stiff, revealing little of her inner thoughts.
“Your Majesty, have you had an opportunity to seen the reports in the Habsburg media?” Rylasa Franh, the Queen's Cup-Bearer, asked delicately.
“No, We have not. Are they more substantiative than those in Our own people's reports?” They had already been read, after all, and had proven to be just a dizzying collection of rumours and half-innuendo, most of which Saverana assumed to be entirely inaccurate as a matter of course. No individual of higher sensibilities and breeding paid much attention to the media, even when they printed statements of questionable validity about the nobility, because they simply didn't matter much.
“Ah, no, Your Majesty,” Rylasa's ears dropped a bit. “But they're from another source, some sort of professional commentator from the Habsburg states; he is also in Kalunda at the moment. His report doesn't directly mention whether or not the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it's claims are correct or not but his account of events corroborates within the limits of its detail.”
“That is something, at least,” the Archduchess Leluno interjected. “Your Majesty, I would respectively suggest that our duty remains to accept the Princess' account, as long as there is so much as any evidence of truth in it, which we have, until such time as an appropriate inquest can be held under our laws.”
“We certainly do not find that very inappropriate,” Saverana began rather roundaboutly, sitting rigidly upright as she looked among the mostly silent Lords of the Admiralty who wondered why precisely they were even here. Though there was of course a reason.. “At any rate, Archduchess, We would like to hear your thoughts on the specific request of the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it.”
“Intervention is of course unacceptable,” there were nods all around, “but insomuch as she as been acting only to save the lives of those she is honour-bound to protect we can secure her quick removal from the area by also evacuating this..” A wave of her hands and frown.
Rylasa interjected gently, though she herself was reading off a copy of the dispatch from Jhayka: “Commander Danielle Verdes, Alliance of Democratic Nations Navy, Your Grace.”
“Yes, thank you, along with the Princess. As for the issue of her taking up the defense of Kalunda, what she did was quite normal, and her ties there can be broken simply be recalling her to active service long enough to issue the appropriate orders.”
Saverana stiffly nodded once to acknowledge the argument. “That can be done. The coup—and its failure--unacceptably complicates the matter, regardless, so that we cannot really cooperate with the government of Gilead in regard to the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it's requests. There is no government to refer to that they may be asked to bring the situation under control, let alone for the sake of our intervention—which the British make impossible. Nothing can be done it seems, in fact, save to send forces to insure the immediate evacuation of our citizens. We should detail a full taskgroup to that, after informing the various embassies of the other nations—not an actual intervention, we just go, secure the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it and her retainers, along with all other Taloran subjects trapped in the violence, and return them to our territory in the new universe.”
“We can cut the orders for such a force immediately,” Admiral Asjhi Rival answered, her read eyes slightly downturned before Her Serene Majesty though she was probably the most experienced among them here, militarily. “It will not be hard to evacuate the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it, I believe, for the forces in that region do not have any modern weaponry. The expedition can be organized out of the exploratory forces and on its way as soon as the diplomatic notes have been sent; transit time will not be long.”
“It would be unwise to send the force before we've alered the other powers that we're conducting an evacuation of Our subjects from the Gilean Confederacy; we can muster it, but do not send it beyond the borders of our territory until our intent has been confirmed, so as to assuage the British that we have no intent of interfering, and merely to secure the safety of the various Talorans caught in this unfortunate situation.”
The High Lord of the Privy Seal bowed his head. “I shall inform the Ergacatum, Your Majesty.”
“Excellent, then, it appears this unusual usual has been dealt with as decisively as We might hope. This meeting is adjourned.”
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
This first post is by Marina, then the next is by me and Marina.
Gilead, Kalunda
DAY EIGHT
In mid-afternoon the allies against Kalunda arranged their attacks. They attacked without warning. They attacked on every sector of the front. They attacked across gaps of not greater than one hundred meters. The artillery opened fire only after the men going over the top across no-man's land had been taken under the fire of the defenders, and by that point, they were nearly upon the enemy. The guns were, this time, concentrated well behind the Kalundan lines to disrupt the moving forward of their reserves, and quickly every section of the Kalundan lines was fully involved.
Jhayka was silently observing the developments, and the situation in the Kalundan command post deep under the palace was very tense. Their defenses along the outer trenches of the Fileya Line defenses were at once sorely taxed, and the attackers managed to get across without being so severely butchered as they had been during the general assault of five days prior. Very soon they were pushing into the trenches, the lead elements braving the remains of the defences which had been savaged those five days earlier, but yet also very extensively repaired.
Through the wire, the mines and the pits, pressing home again massed grenades and heavy machine-gun fire. Yet even as the artillery crashed down over them, the shrapnel shells burst above their heads, and pitted their formations, the situation was different than it had been before. The al-Farani and the Amazons and the tribal contingents had now been bloodied. They did not break under the massive machine-gun and artillery fire now, but held their formations and pushed on in the attack against the Kalundan trenches. This meant that there were hundreds of thousands of attackers, hitting at all points of the line.
Jhayka remained silent, dealing with the administrivia of the battlefield before at last making a soft comment aided by the pointing of a long finger. “There, along the south-eastern bank of the river. That's their tank force concentrated, isn't it?”
A moment's analysis was allowed. “It is, Marshal,” the staffer reported. “All of it that's left, unless they've brought in further reinforcements.”
“Then they're planning to break through once their forces have carried the trenches and the ambush points, and sweep through to our rear to roll up the defences..” Jhayka's eyes narrowed. “And they'll be able to.”
“Should we commit the reserves, Marshal?” Her Chief of Staff asked.
“No-not the Guard nor the front-line reserves.”
“The situation is very tense.”
“I know it, but.. Hmm.” Gray eyes looked back over the map of the developing situation. There was a long uncomfortable silence, uncomfortabled because the rest of the staff was concerned at her apparent lack of indecision.
In the trenches the Normans had pushed their way in, and their allies followed at many sectors of the fronts. The dozen nations involved in the fighting against Kalunda pushed home their battle at close-quarters where they were better at fighting than the Kalundans in their prepared defensive positions who could put up such an intense contest as the allies pressed forward but now their enemies would find themselves able to fight more fiercely, and more ably from their knowledge.
At this the recouse to steel was clear and the battle was joined with bayonet, grenade, and entrenching-tool. For as long as they could the machine-guns were fought, wreaking a horrible toll through the advancing allied forces, those who had survived the artillery, now. Yet 150 guns had to cover the whole of the front, and they simply couldn't do enough despite their power.
Theretofore did Jhayka make her decision. There was an opportunity here, but it wasn't an opportunity to hold the line. “Have the river charges and the buried furel tanks prepared,” she ordered softly, halting the speculation. “And order the Crimson Guard to deploy according to plan AR-15 in the front-line trenches of the Taradrua Line. I also want the Assault Gun and Tank regiments and the mountain howitzers deployed there.”
“The orders to the respective units will be prepared and sent at once, Sir.”
“We're evacuating the Fileya Line?” One of the officers interjected, though, almost incredulous. “But we've scarcely made..”
“Silence. I'm aware that we could hold it for longer,” Jhayka replied. “And perhaps even win. But the cost would be to great in both lives and ammunition, for to little gain. There is nothing important inside of the lines of defense until they have breached the last, the Eibermoni line; we are just giving up empty soil and for that we have an excellent opportunity to lure them forward.”
“Understood.” They did understand, too, for they had seen the destruction of the 3rd and it was obvious from it what Jhayka was talking about. They had learned not to assault prepared positions... But a pursuit? That would be the question.
“Shall we make any other effort to cover the retreat?”
“No. Let them rally by the example of the Crimson Guard in the Taradrua line. They are simply to retreat as quickly as possible. There is an element of risk in that, but it's necessary for this.”
“Yes, Sir.” They went back to work, but weren't really reassured. Perhaps not indecisive, but is withdrawing right?
Only Jhayka knew better. They couldn't really hold the lines now that the Normans had learned the lesson of taking the time to prepare proper siege works, not without many, many more modern weapons or troops. Now the lines really served a sole function, to delay the enemy as long as possible... And a second, closely related function: To kill as many as possible before they inevitably had to be abandoned.
The Ubar Park and the al-Farani Emir watched in silence, but even so a desperately intense silence, through their binoculars at the scene beyond them which was laid out in such mad glory. The smoke, the fire, the crashing of shells deep to the Kalunda rear, the Kalundan counterbattery fire smashing down around their troops-and the flags! The banners of the Emirate and of the Norman Empire, advancing together in the front rank. The men around them watched tensely as those flags disappeared and then rose again. They rose over the trenches of the Fileya line, one after the other, as the regiments carried them to victory and drove the Kalundans out, hand-to-hand. Through the smoke, the Kalundan army retreated back toward the city, and some of their aides, retainers and sycophants all around them began to openly cheer that victory had finally come to them after such casualties. Soon, their cheers resolved into a pleading message to the leaders of their cause:
“Pursue them, Lords! Pursue! Do not settle with one trench-clear them all! Tonight we shall make slaves of the women of Kalunda!”
The two men looked cautiously to each other. They had paid the price of trying to press ahead with vigour alone against these defences which the alien woman had arranged to be constructed. Yet...
“It is the Will of Allah that we carry them on this day,” the Emir said at their retreat. “Why else to they cede their sacred soil?”
“Perhaps not the next trench, though,” the Ubar Park replied. He had more and bloodier experience with modern war, after all.
An aide approached and saluted; at the same time, one of the Emir's men approached him, bowing very flamboyantly.
“Ubar! The Magistrice sends her regards. She says that her forces have carried the enemy trench along every section of the fronts and sends to you to say that she intends to carry home the attack unless both yourself and His Highness the Emir object.”
Ubar Park frowned, and looked back to the lines, where he could see by the flags the progress of the advance. It was clear that pretty much the same had been delivered to the Emir by his servant.
“If even the Magistrice, that heathen bitch, is willing to press the attack, then certainly the Sons of the Prophet should also press the attack. I am in concurrence,” the Emir declared proudly.
As a triumvirate for the purposes of the alliance, the Ubar had been overruled, and he did not want his allies butchered. Besides, he might be passing up an excellent opportunity to finish this siege if he declined. It would have to be risked. “Very well. The army of Ar also shall advance to the next line. But we must make our decision about whether to press beyond it only once it has been taken also.”
“Agreed,” the Emir conceded readily, and it was done. The attack pressed forward beyond the Fileya Line and against the Taradrua Line.
There was a terrible visage of a defeated army. The Kalundans retreated hastily as the Normans, the al-Farani, the Amazons and the others pressed on and took the whole of the Front Line trench. Then they pushed on to occupy the communications trench, and beyond it, even in turn the reserve trench. By that time the Kalundans were in general retreat and the orders for the armies to continue their general attack were issued. The tanks and the reserves were held back should there be a second success here to be exploited: The first victory was so total that they had not be necessary, and nobody expected that kind of success again, save for the court flunkies perhaps-and also perhaps the religiousness of the al-Farani made them a bit overconfident.
But it was no matter. They carried ahead to maintain surprise and shock in their pursuit, to sweep over the next line as the afternoon wore away. Jhayka stood silent and watched the battle unfold. This was not a contest of honour but of positioning for mechanized slaughter. It did not take long at all for the Normans and their allies to vaguely “organize” themselves and press the attack.
The machine-guns of the Crimson Guard opened up. The Kalundan artillery shifted fire. The howitzers and the main guns of the tanks and the assault guns opened fire as well, adding another 360 pieces, though light, into the fray. They fired down into prepared kill zones on the perfectly cleared, graded, one kilometer distance between the last trench of the Fileya Line and the Front Line trench of the Taradrua Line. The machine-guns were joined by mortars on rapid-fire, including some of the main line forces which had been trucked back and were already set up.
Rifles followed, the Crimson Guard proving themselves good shots in the prepared positions of the firing parapets of the trenches, those girls handling their assault rifles well in the calm and bloody game of the mass slaughter of the attacking forces across no-man's land. The determination of the allies to bring about total victory, to sack and destroy Kalunda, was suddenly faced with massed gunfire at every point of the line.
They were unprepared for it, they were facing a fire concentrated along a shorter distance than the longer Fileya Line, and they were completely unprotected from it. The sudden defensive resistance, so much greater than what they had previously suffered under, halted their offensive dead. The men pushed out of the Fileya Line's reserve trench, advanced, and simply died. They kept coming, and they kept dying, under the continuous chatter of machine-guns and the firing of rifles and the roar of the artillery. The gunboats on the river were adding their guns to the fray as well, such that there were at least another two-dozen involved in the action from the river against the four banks, and the flamethrowers as usual kept the Normans and Amazons from advancing to close to the shore.
Many of the shells being used now were white phosporous. This was intentionally to panic and terrify the unprotected troops, and because of their unprotected state, to also inflict particularly hideous wounding casualties on them. This, combined with the shrapnel, created a rather hellish state in the field as great numbers of men were swatted down by a single shell. The allied forces tried to attack onward anyway by sheer grit. All they succeeded in doing was piling up bodies.
Yet the waves pushed onward. The Norman artillery was finally directed to smash at the barriers in front of the Taradrua line with High Explosive; it was a delay which cost the men greatly, because their sheer bravery men that they carried forward with such rapidity that the fire finally had to be checked to protect them from their own guns. Of this meant that they just walked into minefields and wire, trap-holes and abbatois, though the last had been most effectually smashed by the artillery (on the other hand, it had also absorbed damage, and in some places the barrier of abbatois was still intact by the paucity of the barrage).
Braving the enemy's massive machinegun fire, the allies pushed right up to the verge of the Taradrua line in many cases. It seemed like they might really put the issue in doubt at cold steel once again. They attacked with raw courage and altogether very little else, and in the minutes it took to cross over those thousand meters to the Taradrua Line they had suffered unbelievable casualties. Yet that courage was sufficient for very great acts. They thrust themselves forward, and countless of those brave warriors lost their limbs or their lives to the mines and the traps and the defense wire. Still others behind them continued to fall in hideous numbers from the stuttering of the machine-guns.
These attackers rushed forward under the guidance of their commanders, order lost, coming on like the waves of the ocean which broke at the dike of the Taradrua Line, and there lapped like waves at its base with threatening menace. The full strength of the allies was committed to the attack and they used every bit of their bravery in the face of those prepared defences to force the issue into doubt. Mind over matter; Will over machine-gun fire-and yet the Will might carry the day!
In the trenches the women and girls of the Crimson Guard fought as hard as they could, but they were badly outnumbered, even in their prepared positions, and if the Normans and the allies carried forward and got into the trenches of the Taradrua line, it seemed that the ghost would certainly be up, and the whole of the city of Kalunda lost to the horrors of the sack which the allies seemed to promise.
Yet this did not happen. Gradually officers and NCOs from the much-depleted Crimson Guard ranks returned to their units and directed them with a renewed vigour. The sight of the burning corpses of the enemy-dead or dying-from the white phosporous and the flamethrowers along the river did not phase them, nor did the inevitable order to “DON YOUR GAS MASKS” when Jhayka again authorized the use of chlorine gas. They stood their ground and fought, even when the battlefield became a bizarre modernist portrait of Hell.
This time, however, the Normans had a counter-the most primitive of masks, using simple filters of felt soaked in horse urine and charcoal--and the order did not have the dramatic effect that it had before. What it did do, however, was slow down the enemy attack. Slow it down, and stagger it with a blow it didn't recover from, for the regulars pulled off the Fileya Line had rallied and joined the Crimson Guard at the trenches, and the officers and NCO's of the Crimson Guard who had now returned had been themselves aiding the officers and NCO's of the militia in reorganizing their units, and those were coming up fast to the lines as well, a few held back once they'd rallied as local reserves against the still-pressing danger of a breakthrough, reorganizing the defence in depth for the sake of the city.
As the Normans and their allies recovered from the initial success of the gas, they pushed home a second effort at the Kalundan front-line trench of the Taradrua Line. Initially, proud and encouraged that they had something to stop the hideous 'Killing Air' of the Kalundans, which they held in fear from the attack against the Amazons on the Third Day, they rushed forward in great courage again. Negotiating the minefields, they pushed up toward the wire and the remnants of the abbatois, grenades and hatchets ready for the bloody close-quarters work in the trenches.
The fire against them was redoubled in intensity from before-literally. And from there it only increased as more and more of the rallied regiments from the Fileya Line joined in the fight, increasing the number of rifles along any particular sector of the front greatly. They were halted dead by that fire. It had been hideous before; now it was intolerable, after the casualties they had taken and the exhaustion of the long advance. Before it had really had a chance to gain momentum, the second allied push on the Kalundan defenses had been stopped cold. All the while, the artillery rained down, and more often than not sentenced men to burn to death under the hideous Willy Pete, instead of merely shattering their bellies and loosing their innards to the ground as the Shrapnel did at its worst. There was something visceral about fire, made all the more horrible when it was against unprotected, helpless soldiers like the allies out in the no-man's land between the Fileya and Taradrua lines, yet it would have to be endured to advance, or even survive; the first they could not do, and the second depended on the choices of their leaders.
The Ubar Park had feared this result. All the successes of the easy conquest of the Kalundan front lines had been wiped away for nothing, unless they carried the second system of fortifications as well. At the least, they appeared to be close to breaking through, and so he, possessing the vast majority of the armoured forces of the besiegers, gave the order himself.
“Send forward both the reserves and the armoured brigade,” he ordered. “When they arrive we'll make a second push to carry through the next line and then halt and finish clearing it out.” They were still having problems with groups of wounded Kalundans in the front lines who hadn't made it out, fighting to the death and shooting rear-echelon men in the back. And of course the Kalundans hadn't assigned any female units to the front lines, it seemed, so there were no female prisoners to pass around to his men, just like the last time. A frustrating thing, particularly for those who fought for the status of their own pleasure slave more than anything else, but the Ubar thought of it only in the prosaic terms of keeping his men happy. Unsuccessful Ubars could lead very short lives, and his reputation was entirely caught up in this war.
“At once!” The courtiers still sounded pleased, even though the attack wasn't working.
Such as they are. The Ubar turned grimly back to watching the plight of his men, as horrible as it was. He could not stand to watch it, and he could not stand to turn away. Sheer bile, and even if they won, so much more to come. Truly, how to modern nations stand this sort of slaughter for years, even with their great numbers? I thought them effete, like the Kalundans, but now I am not so sure. Oh well; the civil war still offers us many opportunities, the moment we can just finish off this city and the damned alien.
That damned alien watched his reinforcements go forward and smiled coldly. She was, after all, an engineer. She waited, as the slaughter continued all around, and those reserves pushed up forward, the Normans and their allies surging forward across the Fileya Line which they had taken, and the tanks following, crossing the trenches easily even as the men had to slow down to descend them, advance through the maze, and ascend again.
She kept a close view in on one of the screens, glancing from it from time to time, until she saw the reinforcements fully involved in crossing the Fileya Line. It was time, then. “Order the mines blown. Detonate the incendiaries.”
The orders were given through fibre-optic cables underground from a forward command post manned by officers of the pioneer regiments, which received the instructions from Jhayka's command centre and activated the necessary controls. In the end it came down to a button being pushed: a certain portly and middle-aged Habsburg officer, holding the rank of Brigadier in the Kalundan Army, therefore had the opportunity to make his first contribution to the defence other than supervising the digging of trenches and marching of second-rate militia forces. After all, it was so easy, and he really couldn't resist appropriating it for himself.. A trail of lights flashed in succession yellow, and then one after the other, green. A second bank below that, representing the incendiaries, did the same.
He pressed the button.
Four mines, each of 3,500 tonnes of explosive force in high-end and rather unstable chemical weapons, detonated. They were emplaced along the banks of the river, at the edges off the Fileya Line. Huge columns of dirt and mud and dirty water and steam and smoke rose thousands of meters into the air. The craters produced were hundreds of meters in diameter and dozens deep. The shock of their detonations was locally comparable to a major earthquake. Dust rapidly spread across the entire field.
The Norman armoured force advancing along the river was seriously attrited. More than a dozen tanks were destroyed outright and many other seriously damaged or disabled, and the force was almost split in two by the blast, with many trapped on the other side of the Fileya Line.
More fatally, the craters had, as they were intended to, opened the trenches of the Fileya Line to the river. For around a kilometer and a half, each section of the trenches abutting the river on the shallow, soggy, muddy ground there-more Passchendaele than anything else-was now opened to the river and could be flooded to some depth or another by its waters before they rose with the terrain to heights which would remain dry.
There, however, Jhayka had something else prepared. Tanks of oil and gasoline and diesel had been buried in the construction of the Fileya Line. She had only done it here, at the first line, because she expected the Normans to learn their lessons rapidly from this. Yet here she had prepared charges for them to overrun and then be destroyed by them. The mines at the river-banks were only part of it. Inland, small charges blew this tanks along the Fileya Line open. As they exploded in this fashion their contents ignited, and burning fuel oil and gasoline plunged out into the trenches of the Fileya Line, naturally running downhill, so that countless of the Norman and allied reinforcements were trapped between water rushing in from the river and flaming oil and gasoline pouring down in a river of fire toward the water.
On the high ground in the extreme centre of both lines, the reinforcements passed through undamaged, as there had been neither the time nor the ability due to the terrain to booby-trap those areas properly. But closer to the river the Amazons, the Normans, their allies, they were all being burned alive or drowned, those who had survived the concussive shock of the mine explosions, that was. Men rushed to escape from the trenches as they were consumed by the moving flames or drowned in a torrent of muddy water from the river.
Smoke rose up all along the line, and the Ubar Park could no longer see the magnitude of his failure. Jhayka could see everything, of course, being inside the haze of smoke and dust, and saw the success of the detonations-and heard them to the point of pain in her fine ears, and felt them. She turned at once to the task of concentrating the reserves in the very center of the lines.
The attacks, now being carried out mostly by ineffectual Norman allied tribals and by the Norman reserve units which followed them in with the other lines of the offensive blocked, soon faced all the defensive fire that had stopped the last assault, including chlorine gas, but now also some phosgene as well. This worked much better against the primitive masks of the attackers, and the combination of chlorine and phosgene with that old defensive fire-soon increased even more as the reinforcements added their numbers to the trenches-finished the matter.
The Norman tanks along the river first tried a local offensive to support the allied soldiers trappped in no-man's line by the water behind them. They found out, however, that Jhayka had already shifted her anti-tank units to meet them, and though they briefly crossed the Kalundan front-line trenches they had soon lost another dozen of their number in sharp, hot actions at point-blank range by howitzers and medium tanks fighting hull-down and by the same tactics as in the last assault, men firing anti-tank missiles into them at point-blank from concealment, and satchel charges.
As this attack petered out, the attacks in the center of the north and south sectors of the line, as divided by the river, also came to their natural limit. They, despite the redoubled fire and the phosgene, pushed to the wire. They never got beyond it. Hung up on it, the Kalundan defenders were given all the time they needed to rake them with machine-gun and rifle fire to an extremity. Those who got through the wire were faced with volleys of defensive grenades and aimed fire from the rifles of the Kalundan Army at neigh-point-blank range. Few made it through, and the few of those who survived ended up prisoners.
The burning oil reached the water, and they churned together and the oil rose and burned on the surface, re-ignited by the flow following it on. Soon slicks of burning oil filled the trenches near the water even as it was put out by shovel and bulldozer further inland from the river by impromptu efforts of the allies to open up avenues to their men who were forward. No longer to aide the offensive, but now to aide their retreat.
Ubar Park turned away disgusted, and tossed his binoculars into the dirt. “The demoness!” He snarled.
The al-Farani Emir smiled indulgently. “Perhaps aliens are djinni, Ubar, but it does not matter; they are also slaves of Allah, and Allah willed our defeat today. We shall still be victorious.”
The Ubar was not worried about winning here; he was still confident of that. He was worried about the thoughts of those under him, who only by violence and threat had already been compelled into this war, which had proven bloody beyond the imagination of them all. Even, it seemed, those who had opposed it in the first place. So much to learn in this new war, and so little time to learn it in if we are to take the city, he thought bleakly, and then another thought occurred to him. It shall leave us little glory, or spoils, but it might bring us victory.. He stopped before he arrived in the great pavilions which housed his slave girls, and went back to issue another set of orders.
Overhead, the sun was setting, and it was casting on the ground hues to match burning oil, the sight especially rich with so much dust in the air as to make the red and orange hues especially intense. Jhayka ascended to the surface, to the palace, to look at it. She had always liked the sunsets of worlds with orange suns, unlike the green of Talora Prime's twin stars. Sheets of black smoke rose to the sky. It was an unreal scene, beautiful and hellish all at once.
A few flashes in the sky. She scarcely registered them when the impacts surrounded in the city, some very close, and they were followed by intense explosions, the whistling of the shells overhead coming in just moments later, to late for warning, as they crashed down indiscriminately into the city. Her fine ears caught the wail of the sirens, to loud for comfort even in the palace grounds. More shells fell, and the sirens wailed here. Jhayka stook, stoically, watching, for a good minute.
“Well, what do you expect from the savages?” She asked to herself, and went below, to give one more order that night-the order which would send the civilians into the tunnels and the bomb-shelters and the underground of fortified basements and deep caves until the siege was over. Or they died there.
The firing of the artillery continued through the night, and as long as the Normans indiscriminately bombarded the city, the guns in the Kalundan trenches kept up a stern fire on the allied forces caught between the water and fire in the Fileya Line and the Kalundan fire ahead, until only the wounded were left out there, and everyone else had died or somehow managed to retreat sideways and back through the open central portions of the trench. It was not very chivalrous, but nor were the Norman actions, and all of that, also, was a part of modern war.
Gilead, Kalunda
DAY EIGHT
In mid-afternoon the allies against Kalunda arranged their attacks. They attacked without warning. They attacked on every sector of the front. They attacked across gaps of not greater than one hundred meters. The artillery opened fire only after the men going over the top across no-man's land had been taken under the fire of the defenders, and by that point, they were nearly upon the enemy. The guns were, this time, concentrated well behind the Kalundan lines to disrupt the moving forward of their reserves, and quickly every section of the Kalundan lines was fully involved.
Jhayka was silently observing the developments, and the situation in the Kalundan command post deep under the palace was very tense. Their defenses along the outer trenches of the Fileya Line defenses were at once sorely taxed, and the attackers managed to get across without being so severely butchered as they had been during the general assault of five days prior. Very soon they were pushing into the trenches, the lead elements braving the remains of the defences which had been savaged those five days earlier, but yet also very extensively repaired.
Through the wire, the mines and the pits, pressing home again massed grenades and heavy machine-gun fire. Yet even as the artillery crashed down over them, the shrapnel shells burst above their heads, and pitted their formations, the situation was different than it had been before. The al-Farani and the Amazons and the tribal contingents had now been bloodied. They did not break under the massive machine-gun and artillery fire now, but held their formations and pushed on in the attack against the Kalundan trenches. This meant that there were hundreds of thousands of attackers, hitting at all points of the line.
Jhayka remained silent, dealing with the administrivia of the battlefield before at last making a soft comment aided by the pointing of a long finger. “There, along the south-eastern bank of the river. That's their tank force concentrated, isn't it?”
A moment's analysis was allowed. “It is, Marshal,” the staffer reported. “All of it that's left, unless they've brought in further reinforcements.”
“Then they're planning to break through once their forces have carried the trenches and the ambush points, and sweep through to our rear to roll up the defences..” Jhayka's eyes narrowed. “And they'll be able to.”
“Should we commit the reserves, Marshal?” Her Chief of Staff asked.
“No-not the Guard nor the front-line reserves.”
“The situation is very tense.”
“I know it, but.. Hmm.” Gray eyes looked back over the map of the developing situation. There was a long uncomfortable silence, uncomfortabled because the rest of the staff was concerned at her apparent lack of indecision.
In the trenches the Normans had pushed their way in, and their allies followed at many sectors of the fronts. The dozen nations involved in the fighting against Kalunda pushed home their battle at close-quarters where they were better at fighting than the Kalundans in their prepared defensive positions who could put up such an intense contest as the allies pressed forward but now their enemies would find themselves able to fight more fiercely, and more ably from their knowledge.
At this the recouse to steel was clear and the battle was joined with bayonet, grenade, and entrenching-tool. For as long as they could the machine-guns were fought, wreaking a horrible toll through the advancing allied forces, those who had survived the artillery, now. Yet 150 guns had to cover the whole of the front, and they simply couldn't do enough despite their power.
Theretofore did Jhayka make her decision. There was an opportunity here, but it wasn't an opportunity to hold the line. “Have the river charges and the buried furel tanks prepared,” she ordered softly, halting the speculation. “And order the Crimson Guard to deploy according to plan AR-15 in the front-line trenches of the Taradrua Line. I also want the Assault Gun and Tank regiments and the mountain howitzers deployed there.”
“The orders to the respective units will be prepared and sent at once, Sir.”
“We're evacuating the Fileya Line?” One of the officers interjected, though, almost incredulous. “But we've scarcely made..”
“Silence. I'm aware that we could hold it for longer,” Jhayka replied. “And perhaps even win. But the cost would be to great in both lives and ammunition, for to little gain. There is nothing important inside of the lines of defense until they have breached the last, the Eibermoni line; we are just giving up empty soil and for that we have an excellent opportunity to lure them forward.”
“Understood.” They did understand, too, for they had seen the destruction of the 3rd and it was obvious from it what Jhayka was talking about. They had learned not to assault prepared positions... But a pursuit? That would be the question.
“Shall we make any other effort to cover the retreat?”
“No. Let them rally by the example of the Crimson Guard in the Taradrua line. They are simply to retreat as quickly as possible. There is an element of risk in that, but it's necessary for this.”
“Yes, Sir.” They went back to work, but weren't really reassured. Perhaps not indecisive, but is withdrawing right?
Only Jhayka knew better. They couldn't really hold the lines now that the Normans had learned the lesson of taking the time to prepare proper siege works, not without many, many more modern weapons or troops. Now the lines really served a sole function, to delay the enemy as long as possible... And a second, closely related function: To kill as many as possible before they inevitably had to be abandoned.
The Ubar Park and the al-Farani Emir watched in silence, but even so a desperately intense silence, through their binoculars at the scene beyond them which was laid out in such mad glory. The smoke, the fire, the crashing of shells deep to the Kalunda rear, the Kalundan counterbattery fire smashing down around their troops-and the flags! The banners of the Emirate and of the Norman Empire, advancing together in the front rank. The men around them watched tensely as those flags disappeared and then rose again. They rose over the trenches of the Fileya line, one after the other, as the regiments carried them to victory and drove the Kalundans out, hand-to-hand. Through the smoke, the Kalundan army retreated back toward the city, and some of their aides, retainers and sycophants all around them began to openly cheer that victory had finally come to them after such casualties. Soon, their cheers resolved into a pleading message to the leaders of their cause:
“Pursue them, Lords! Pursue! Do not settle with one trench-clear them all! Tonight we shall make slaves of the women of Kalunda!”
The two men looked cautiously to each other. They had paid the price of trying to press ahead with vigour alone against these defences which the alien woman had arranged to be constructed. Yet...
“It is the Will of Allah that we carry them on this day,” the Emir said at their retreat. “Why else to they cede their sacred soil?”
“Perhaps not the next trench, though,” the Ubar Park replied. He had more and bloodier experience with modern war, after all.
An aide approached and saluted; at the same time, one of the Emir's men approached him, bowing very flamboyantly.
“Ubar! The Magistrice sends her regards. She says that her forces have carried the enemy trench along every section of the fronts and sends to you to say that she intends to carry home the attack unless both yourself and His Highness the Emir object.”
Ubar Park frowned, and looked back to the lines, where he could see by the flags the progress of the advance. It was clear that pretty much the same had been delivered to the Emir by his servant.
“If even the Magistrice, that heathen bitch, is willing to press the attack, then certainly the Sons of the Prophet should also press the attack. I am in concurrence,” the Emir declared proudly.
As a triumvirate for the purposes of the alliance, the Ubar had been overruled, and he did not want his allies butchered. Besides, he might be passing up an excellent opportunity to finish this siege if he declined. It would have to be risked. “Very well. The army of Ar also shall advance to the next line. But we must make our decision about whether to press beyond it only once it has been taken also.”
“Agreed,” the Emir conceded readily, and it was done. The attack pressed forward beyond the Fileya Line and against the Taradrua Line.
There was a terrible visage of a defeated army. The Kalundans retreated hastily as the Normans, the al-Farani, the Amazons and the others pressed on and took the whole of the Front Line trench. Then they pushed on to occupy the communications trench, and beyond it, even in turn the reserve trench. By that time the Kalundans were in general retreat and the orders for the armies to continue their general attack were issued. The tanks and the reserves were held back should there be a second success here to be exploited: The first victory was so total that they had not be necessary, and nobody expected that kind of success again, save for the court flunkies perhaps-and also perhaps the religiousness of the al-Farani made them a bit overconfident.
But it was no matter. They carried ahead to maintain surprise and shock in their pursuit, to sweep over the next line as the afternoon wore away. Jhayka stood silent and watched the battle unfold. This was not a contest of honour but of positioning for mechanized slaughter. It did not take long at all for the Normans and their allies to vaguely “organize” themselves and press the attack.
The machine-guns of the Crimson Guard opened up. The Kalundan artillery shifted fire. The howitzers and the main guns of the tanks and the assault guns opened fire as well, adding another 360 pieces, though light, into the fray. They fired down into prepared kill zones on the perfectly cleared, graded, one kilometer distance between the last trench of the Fileya Line and the Front Line trench of the Taradrua Line. The machine-guns were joined by mortars on rapid-fire, including some of the main line forces which had been trucked back and were already set up.
Rifles followed, the Crimson Guard proving themselves good shots in the prepared positions of the firing parapets of the trenches, those girls handling their assault rifles well in the calm and bloody game of the mass slaughter of the attacking forces across no-man's land. The determination of the allies to bring about total victory, to sack and destroy Kalunda, was suddenly faced with massed gunfire at every point of the line.
They were unprepared for it, they were facing a fire concentrated along a shorter distance than the longer Fileya Line, and they were completely unprotected from it. The sudden defensive resistance, so much greater than what they had previously suffered under, halted their offensive dead. The men pushed out of the Fileya Line's reserve trench, advanced, and simply died. They kept coming, and they kept dying, under the continuous chatter of machine-guns and the firing of rifles and the roar of the artillery. The gunboats on the river were adding their guns to the fray as well, such that there were at least another two-dozen involved in the action from the river against the four banks, and the flamethrowers as usual kept the Normans and Amazons from advancing to close to the shore.
Many of the shells being used now were white phosporous. This was intentionally to panic and terrify the unprotected troops, and because of their unprotected state, to also inflict particularly hideous wounding casualties on them. This, combined with the shrapnel, created a rather hellish state in the field as great numbers of men were swatted down by a single shell. The allied forces tried to attack onward anyway by sheer grit. All they succeeded in doing was piling up bodies.
Yet the waves pushed onward. The Norman artillery was finally directed to smash at the barriers in front of the Taradrua line with High Explosive; it was a delay which cost the men greatly, because their sheer bravery men that they carried forward with such rapidity that the fire finally had to be checked to protect them from their own guns. Of this meant that they just walked into minefields and wire, trap-holes and abbatois, though the last had been most effectually smashed by the artillery (on the other hand, it had also absorbed damage, and in some places the barrier of abbatois was still intact by the paucity of the barrage).
Braving the enemy's massive machinegun fire, the allies pushed right up to the verge of the Taradrua line in many cases. It seemed like they might really put the issue in doubt at cold steel once again. They attacked with raw courage and altogether very little else, and in the minutes it took to cross over those thousand meters to the Taradrua Line they had suffered unbelievable casualties. Yet that courage was sufficient for very great acts. They thrust themselves forward, and countless of those brave warriors lost their limbs or their lives to the mines and the traps and the defense wire. Still others behind them continued to fall in hideous numbers from the stuttering of the machine-guns.
These attackers rushed forward under the guidance of their commanders, order lost, coming on like the waves of the ocean which broke at the dike of the Taradrua Line, and there lapped like waves at its base with threatening menace. The full strength of the allies was committed to the attack and they used every bit of their bravery in the face of those prepared defences to force the issue into doubt. Mind over matter; Will over machine-gun fire-and yet the Will might carry the day!
In the trenches the women and girls of the Crimson Guard fought as hard as they could, but they were badly outnumbered, even in their prepared positions, and if the Normans and the allies carried forward and got into the trenches of the Taradrua line, it seemed that the ghost would certainly be up, and the whole of the city of Kalunda lost to the horrors of the sack which the allies seemed to promise.
Yet this did not happen. Gradually officers and NCOs from the much-depleted Crimson Guard ranks returned to their units and directed them with a renewed vigour. The sight of the burning corpses of the enemy-dead or dying-from the white phosporous and the flamethrowers along the river did not phase them, nor did the inevitable order to “DON YOUR GAS MASKS” when Jhayka again authorized the use of chlorine gas. They stood their ground and fought, even when the battlefield became a bizarre modernist portrait of Hell.
This time, however, the Normans had a counter-the most primitive of masks, using simple filters of felt soaked in horse urine and charcoal--and the order did not have the dramatic effect that it had before. What it did do, however, was slow down the enemy attack. Slow it down, and stagger it with a blow it didn't recover from, for the regulars pulled off the Fileya Line had rallied and joined the Crimson Guard at the trenches, and the officers and NCO's of the Crimson Guard who had now returned had been themselves aiding the officers and NCO's of the militia in reorganizing their units, and those were coming up fast to the lines as well, a few held back once they'd rallied as local reserves against the still-pressing danger of a breakthrough, reorganizing the defence in depth for the sake of the city.
As the Normans and their allies recovered from the initial success of the gas, they pushed home a second effort at the Kalundan front-line trench of the Taradrua Line. Initially, proud and encouraged that they had something to stop the hideous 'Killing Air' of the Kalundans, which they held in fear from the attack against the Amazons on the Third Day, they rushed forward in great courage again. Negotiating the minefields, they pushed up toward the wire and the remnants of the abbatois, grenades and hatchets ready for the bloody close-quarters work in the trenches.
The fire against them was redoubled in intensity from before-literally. And from there it only increased as more and more of the rallied regiments from the Fileya Line joined in the fight, increasing the number of rifles along any particular sector of the front greatly. They were halted dead by that fire. It had been hideous before; now it was intolerable, after the casualties they had taken and the exhaustion of the long advance. Before it had really had a chance to gain momentum, the second allied push on the Kalundan defenses had been stopped cold. All the while, the artillery rained down, and more often than not sentenced men to burn to death under the hideous Willy Pete, instead of merely shattering their bellies and loosing their innards to the ground as the Shrapnel did at its worst. There was something visceral about fire, made all the more horrible when it was against unprotected, helpless soldiers like the allies out in the no-man's land between the Fileya and Taradrua lines, yet it would have to be endured to advance, or even survive; the first they could not do, and the second depended on the choices of their leaders.
The Ubar Park had feared this result. All the successes of the easy conquest of the Kalundan front lines had been wiped away for nothing, unless they carried the second system of fortifications as well. At the least, they appeared to be close to breaking through, and so he, possessing the vast majority of the armoured forces of the besiegers, gave the order himself.
“Send forward both the reserves and the armoured brigade,” he ordered. “When they arrive we'll make a second push to carry through the next line and then halt and finish clearing it out.” They were still having problems with groups of wounded Kalundans in the front lines who hadn't made it out, fighting to the death and shooting rear-echelon men in the back. And of course the Kalundans hadn't assigned any female units to the front lines, it seemed, so there were no female prisoners to pass around to his men, just like the last time. A frustrating thing, particularly for those who fought for the status of their own pleasure slave more than anything else, but the Ubar thought of it only in the prosaic terms of keeping his men happy. Unsuccessful Ubars could lead very short lives, and his reputation was entirely caught up in this war.
“At once!” The courtiers still sounded pleased, even though the attack wasn't working.
Such as they are. The Ubar turned grimly back to watching the plight of his men, as horrible as it was. He could not stand to watch it, and he could not stand to turn away. Sheer bile, and even if they won, so much more to come. Truly, how to modern nations stand this sort of slaughter for years, even with their great numbers? I thought them effete, like the Kalundans, but now I am not so sure. Oh well; the civil war still offers us many opportunities, the moment we can just finish off this city and the damned alien.
That damned alien watched his reinforcements go forward and smiled coldly. She was, after all, an engineer. She waited, as the slaughter continued all around, and those reserves pushed up forward, the Normans and their allies surging forward across the Fileya Line which they had taken, and the tanks following, crossing the trenches easily even as the men had to slow down to descend them, advance through the maze, and ascend again.
She kept a close view in on one of the screens, glancing from it from time to time, until she saw the reinforcements fully involved in crossing the Fileya Line. It was time, then. “Order the mines blown. Detonate the incendiaries.”
The orders were given through fibre-optic cables underground from a forward command post manned by officers of the pioneer regiments, which received the instructions from Jhayka's command centre and activated the necessary controls. In the end it came down to a button being pushed: a certain portly and middle-aged Habsburg officer, holding the rank of Brigadier in the Kalundan Army, therefore had the opportunity to make his first contribution to the defence other than supervising the digging of trenches and marching of second-rate militia forces. After all, it was so easy, and he really couldn't resist appropriating it for himself.. A trail of lights flashed in succession yellow, and then one after the other, green. A second bank below that, representing the incendiaries, did the same.
He pressed the button.
Four mines, each of 3,500 tonnes of explosive force in high-end and rather unstable chemical weapons, detonated. They were emplaced along the banks of the river, at the edges off the Fileya Line. Huge columns of dirt and mud and dirty water and steam and smoke rose thousands of meters into the air. The craters produced were hundreds of meters in diameter and dozens deep. The shock of their detonations was locally comparable to a major earthquake. Dust rapidly spread across the entire field.
The Norman armoured force advancing along the river was seriously attrited. More than a dozen tanks were destroyed outright and many other seriously damaged or disabled, and the force was almost split in two by the blast, with many trapped on the other side of the Fileya Line.
More fatally, the craters had, as they were intended to, opened the trenches of the Fileya Line to the river. For around a kilometer and a half, each section of the trenches abutting the river on the shallow, soggy, muddy ground there-more Passchendaele than anything else-was now opened to the river and could be flooded to some depth or another by its waters before they rose with the terrain to heights which would remain dry.
There, however, Jhayka had something else prepared. Tanks of oil and gasoline and diesel had been buried in the construction of the Fileya Line. She had only done it here, at the first line, because she expected the Normans to learn their lessons rapidly from this. Yet here she had prepared charges for them to overrun and then be destroyed by them. The mines at the river-banks were only part of it. Inland, small charges blew this tanks along the Fileya Line open. As they exploded in this fashion their contents ignited, and burning fuel oil and gasoline plunged out into the trenches of the Fileya Line, naturally running downhill, so that countless of the Norman and allied reinforcements were trapped between water rushing in from the river and flaming oil and gasoline pouring down in a river of fire toward the water.
On the high ground in the extreme centre of both lines, the reinforcements passed through undamaged, as there had been neither the time nor the ability due to the terrain to booby-trap those areas properly. But closer to the river the Amazons, the Normans, their allies, they were all being burned alive or drowned, those who had survived the concussive shock of the mine explosions, that was. Men rushed to escape from the trenches as they were consumed by the moving flames or drowned in a torrent of muddy water from the river.
Smoke rose up all along the line, and the Ubar Park could no longer see the magnitude of his failure. Jhayka could see everything, of course, being inside the haze of smoke and dust, and saw the success of the detonations-and heard them to the point of pain in her fine ears, and felt them. She turned at once to the task of concentrating the reserves in the very center of the lines.
The attacks, now being carried out mostly by ineffectual Norman allied tribals and by the Norman reserve units which followed them in with the other lines of the offensive blocked, soon faced all the defensive fire that had stopped the last assault, including chlorine gas, but now also some phosgene as well. This worked much better against the primitive masks of the attackers, and the combination of chlorine and phosgene with that old defensive fire-soon increased even more as the reinforcements added their numbers to the trenches-finished the matter.
The Norman tanks along the river first tried a local offensive to support the allied soldiers trappped in no-man's line by the water behind them. They found out, however, that Jhayka had already shifted her anti-tank units to meet them, and though they briefly crossed the Kalundan front-line trenches they had soon lost another dozen of their number in sharp, hot actions at point-blank range by howitzers and medium tanks fighting hull-down and by the same tactics as in the last assault, men firing anti-tank missiles into them at point-blank from concealment, and satchel charges.
As this attack petered out, the attacks in the center of the north and south sectors of the line, as divided by the river, also came to their natural limit. They, despite the redoubled fire and the phosgene, pushed to the wire. They never got beyond it. Hung up on it, the Kalundan defenders were given all the time they needed to rake them with machine-gun and rifle fire to an extremity. Those who got through the wire were faced with volleys of defensive grenades and aimed fire from the rifles of the Kalundan Army at neigh-point-blank range. Few made it through, and the few of those who survived ended up prisoners.
The burning oil reached the water, and they churned together and the oil rose and burned on the surface, re-ignited by the flow following it on. Soon slicks of burning oil filled the trenches near the water even as it was put out by shovel and bulldozer further inland from the river by impromptu efforts of the allies to open up avenues to their men who were forward. No longer to aide the offensive, but now to aide their retreat.
Ubar Park turned away disgusted, and tossed his binoculars into the dirt. “The demoness!” He snarled.
The al-Farani Emir smiled indulgently. “Perhaps aliens are djinni, Ubar, but it does not matter; they are also slaves of Allah, and Allah willed our defeat today. We shall still be victorious.”
The Ubar was not worried about winning here; he was still confident of that. He was worried about the thoughts of those under him, who only by violence and threat had already been compelled into this war, which had proven bloody beyond the imagination of them all. Even, it seemed, those who had opposed it in the first place. So much to learn in this new war, and so little time to learn it in if we are to take the city, he thought bleakly, and then another thought occurred to him. It shall leave us little glory, or spoils, but it might bring us victory.. He stopped before he arrived in the great pavilions which housed his slave girls, and went back to issue another set of orders.
Overhead, the sun was setting, and it was casting on the ground hues to match burning oil, the sight especially rich with so much dust in the air as to make the red and orange hues especially intense. Jhayka ascended to the surface, to the palace, to look at it. She had always liked the sunsets of worlds with orange suns, unlike the green of Talora Prime's twin stars. Sheets of black smoke rose to the sky. It was an unreal scene, beautiful and hellish all at once.
A few flashes in the sky. She scarcely registered them when the impacts surrounded in the city, some very close, and they were followed by intense explosions, the whistling of the shells overhead coming in just moments later, to late for warning, as they crashed down indiscriminately into the city. Her fine ears caught the wail of the sirens, to loud for comfort even in the palace grounds. More shells fell, and the sirens wailed here. Jhayka stook, stoically, watching, for a good minute.
“Well, what do you expect from the savages?” She asked to herself, and went below, to give one more order that night-the order which would send the civilians into the tunnels and the bomb-shelters and the underground of fortified basements and deep caves until the siege was over. Or they died there.
The firing of the artillery continued through the night, and as long as the Normans indiscriminately bombarded the city, the guns in the Kalundan trenches kept up a stern fire on the allied forces caught between the water and fire in the Fileya Line and the Kalundan fire ahead, until only the wounded were left out there, and everyone else had died or somehow managed to retreat sideways and back through the open central portions of the trench. It was not very chivalrous, but nor were the Norman actions, and all of that, also, was a part of modern war.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Gilead, Kalunda
DAY NINE
The leaders and commanders of Kalunda had filed out of the underground conference room in the palace command center, save for Amber d'Kellius, who was getting her papers together in front of her. She looked up in time to see Dani Verdes and Princess - Marshall - Jhayka walk out together. A look crossed her face at seeing them and Amber forced herself to think of other things.
A shadow came over her. Her sister, Sarina, was standing above her, in uniform. "You look like you could use a drink."
"Booze is rationed. I'd rather save it until we need it."
"You mean so that you can booze yourself up for the day you're putting your gun into your mouth, surrounded hopelessly by Normans?" Sarina noticed the withering glare of her older sister. "Dark humor is starting to become everyone's favorite kind. Everyone's getting obsessed with death.... or worse. I caught a couple of the enlistees talking about how long they'll last in Norman conditioning before they break."
"That's not the kind of thinking we need in people," Amber replied sternly. "You're the head of the Crimson Guard now. It's up to you to keep morale up."
"Amber, it lets them blow off steam. They're committed to winning or dying, but I'd rather them talk frankly about it than say nothing, get all worked up worrying about it, and then freak out when they're on the field." Sarina sat down opposite her sister. "You're looking rather upset."
"Shouldn't I be with everything that's going on?"
"Sister.... dear.... you could never keep a secret from me, even when we were little." Sarina looked over to the door. "It's Miss Verdes, of course. And why shouldn't it be? Tall, dark, so pretty and sensual looking. I bet she's wild in bed too. Hispanics with that kind of walk and those kinds of eyes usually are."
"I'm not having this conversation, Sarina."
"I wonder what she sees in the Marshal." Sarina looked to Amber. "No offense to the Marshal, but she's so somber and uptight that she just doesn't fit in. Her people are real tightasses. Just like you used to be."
"Princess Jhayka's saved her life at least twice now. She risked everything to save Dani from Norman torture." Amber still looked at the door. "And Dani's risked everything to find her friend. She's rebounded from what they did to her and is now helping us fight back. She's tough, smart, really strong-willed."
"Maybe that's why she and Jhayka get along so much."
"No, that's not it. Not that alone." Amber looked at her sister. "She wants.... a lover. A wife, really."
"So?"
"She wants a wife, Sarina," Amber remarked. "Not in the way that your loveslave Joanna is to her husband."
"Ah, monogamy. I never understood how they did that." Sarina smirked. "Diversity in partners helps keep things fresh, I've found."
Sighing, Amber retorted, "I bet that's why some of the tech worlders think we're barbarians too. We don't 'get' the concept of monogamy and sticking to one partner."
"Like I care. We're not going to change our ways because of some stuffy church-goers who think we're all unnatural or whatever." Sarina looked at her sister closely.
"Our ways?" Amber slapped a hand on the table. "Sister, our ways are a joke. Our ways are from a sex resort. That's what Kalunda was built to be. A place for men to go to get laid by submissive women and for submissive women to live out fantasies of that. That's where we got the whole lie about women being naturally submissive, about the benefits of conditioning, and it's the conditioning that Kalundan women turn to each other. The men couldn't keep up with them so all of our women satiated themselves, got fixes for their sex addictions, with each other. Mother broke that, I broke that, and now the system's gone, but we're still carrying on this whole idea that even a married woman shouldn't feel bad if she goes out with another woman. Like I said, it's no wonder that we're thought of as barbarians. And it's no wonder nobody gives a damn about us, we're just another bunch of hedonists who got just smart enough to decide we liked technology and we love our homes."
Amber continued before Sarina had a chance to speak. "It's all so stupid, Sarina. Maybe I should have woken up to that years ago. Yes, I rose above the system, but deep down I loved Kalunda so much that I found it easy to fall back into it's habits, even if they were stupid. Hell, all of us did. Julio's the only one who's stayed above it all, and Kevem's learning from him. They're the future of Kalunda. Meanwhile we raise our daughters and we tell them that there's nothing wrong with some of the old ways, even when they're direct results of the enslavement of our mothers. Even we've gotten into that." Amber leveled a look at her sister. "We, Kalundan women, are a bunch of sluts."
Sarina listened to her sister's screed. She'd never heard Amber act so agitated in years, many years indeed. But when Amber called herself and Sarina "sluts" Sarina finally gave a response. "If that's your opinion, Amber, that's fine. Me? I see nothing wrong with it, and I'll continue to live as I want to live, and you can damn well stay out of my sex life. If you want to go back to being the good chaste techworlder girl, be my God damned guest. Just remember that the only reason you're doing it is because you're suddenly in love again and with someone who doesn't approve of our ways. That's all this is."
Amber matched her sister's glare. It was true. Seeing and talking to Dani had made her think of her own past. She'd heard the scorn and disappointment in Dani's voice that night and it'd reminded her so much of her own attitude, years ago, before the grief over her lost daughter drove her back into the bad habits of Kalundan women. "Maybe you're true. Maybe I'm feeling this way because I love Danielle and I want to be what she wants in a soulmate. But that's how I feel, and I'm not going to change that."
"If you know what she wants, go to her."
"I did before."
"You went to her as you'd go to a Kalundan woman. Go to her as a tech-worlder. Tell her that she means something to you and that you want to be what she wants." Sarina stood up from the table. "Or don't. Go internalize it and lose her when she and the Princess get together. Or maybe you could just get over it, see that it's not what you really want, and get on with your life. Either way, it's your call." With that, Sarina walked out of the room, leaving Amber to her thoughts.
After the briefing, Dani returned to her room and invited Jhayka in for a drink. She closed the door behind her and immediately shedded her outer uniform. After hanging it up she was left only in a Kalundan strapless green silk brassiere - a band that covered her breasts from the bottom to halfway up her cleavage - and a thigh-length undergarment. Afterward she went to go get a drink for Jhayka from her bar. "Let me get you a drink," she said while Jhayka eased into a seat at the bar. "Then I'll go get a robe."
"No, no, that's quite alright, I'll let you get dressed first," Jhayka answered modestly, and it was clear enough she meant it. Funny, to, since she'd seen all of Danielle twice before, and had even joked about it that once, but she could still be astonishingly stiff at times, not like she really couldn't stand it herself but rather like she genuinely thought she was doing Danielle a favor by not expecting to see her naked, as a formality if nothing else. It showed that there were still some mental barriers which had to be overcome. They were, in the soul, very close, but in the mindset of the body and social behavior, there were still gaps. Yet at least Jhayka was charmingly polite about it, almost demure.
Dani nodded, not saying anything else. In a way she'd hoped Jhayka would give her some indication she didn't mind seeing her like that, some kind of sign that their closeness was starting to get over the barriers of formality that the Talorans kept. But that was nothing to be really concerned about, and Dani slipped off to the bedroom to retrieve a robe. She came back out wearing a white robe that she'd tied at her waist. Perhaps a bit purposely - if unconsciously - Dani had left it just loose enough so that her cleavage was a bit visible between the edges of the robe. She went back to the bar and took out more of the port she and Jhayka liked. "I'd preserve this a bit more if I didn't think we're going to be seeing less of each other as this goes on. I figure that by next week I'll have enough boats that I'll have to transfer to a river command, and I might very well have to stay on the boat for a bit. I'm thinking of flying my flag from the Liberty." Looking at Jhayka, Dani then asked, "Want me to get your uniform jacket and hang it up?"
"No. You're not my servant," Jhayka answered automatically, and then smiled at the words as she started to remove her own jacket and set it aside wearily. "Thank you, though. You're right; we may not be seeing much of each other. Especially if the relief force tries to push up the river. You might have to head down-river to help them through. I'm still not sure where it will come from, actually, you know.. We've not heard anything from East Port in some time, and I assume there's been some difficulty in gaining control of the situation there. It may take Colonel Arshon another week to organize a relief expedition from that direction.. Perhaps the Gilean navy will come first." She stretched out, a langruous gesture, and her smile was very gentle. She clearly seemed more relaxed in Dani's company, at least, and drank the port with some real enjoyment.
"Just tell me where to go and we'll get there." Dani sipped at her port, enjoying the taste. "Though right now I'm more worried about what kind of boats the other side might have. And if they have anything they can transport to the upper river to hit us from the west instead of the east. I know there's no canals between the upper Henley and the Higgins, but that doesn't mean they can't hitch small boats to vehicles and take them that way. If they got a small, fast enough force into the city's middle with those boats they could cause a bit of havoc." She sat beside Jhayka at the bar, watching her take another drink of the port.
"Well, we could put a chain across the river," Jhayka answered after a moment's thought, and then added: "I recall that one can put a chain across a constricted body of water as a block, for in ancient times there was a great chain covering the mouth of the harbour of the city of Valeria, when it was still only the capital of the Grenyan dynasty and not the whole of the world." She sipped her port again. "There would probably need to be some sort of hydraulic mechanism to move it out of the way for your squadron, of course."
"I'd much prefer taking their fleet out, maybe even boarding and seizing some of their boats. If things look bad, we could get more non-combatants out that way." Dani nursed her port for a moment. "If they have boats they'll try something, I'm sure of it. After their last two attacks, they have to, because if this keeps up, by the time they get to the Eibermoni Line they'll be too low on troops." After saying that she took a sip, trying to get the visions of devastation out of her head.
"I'm aware of that. The other lines aren't nearly as extensive, though, and, honestly, we're not going to contest them so much," Jhayka answered, and then gave a small smile. "That is a very big secret, incidentally. But I plan to withdraw from each line after a token defense, for the most part--with three exceptions, which will be distinct actions and may even all take place at the Eibermoni Line, or more like the Valera and Eibermoni Lines." She gestured with a hand outside, to where the sound of artillery thudded dimly here and there, random shelling of the city by the Normans. They had so far avoided targeting the palace, presumably because they wanted it intact for sacking even if they were terror-bombarding the rest of the city. "The whole point of the interior lines is really to force the Normans to take their time building up attack trenches to cover their troops from our fire, and jumping off points. It'll certainly take them five days before they can try another assault on the Taradrua Line; and then I'll just let them have it. The same for the In'ghara Line. If they reach the Eibermoni Line before we're relieved, that's where we'll stand, stand until they've broken through.. And by then, every single building in the city will be a fortress. The real war will come when it's street-to-street. All the bloodshed out there has been very impressive, but it will be an order of magnitude more horrible when it's street-to-street in the city."
Dani listened and felt some horror at the idea. She had never been a historian, but in her own lifetime there had been a number of vicious urban battles. The Battles for Basra in the Euro-Iranian War in the 40s, Dalkyra on Bajor in '53, Yuvama on Orion in '56, and dozens of such battles in the Plymouth and Dominion Wars. She remembered the news reports and a shiver traveled down her spine. "The whole city will be ruined," Dani said, not taking a drink with tears starting to form in her green eyes as she thought of Kalunda ruined as Dalkyra and Yuvama had been. "I... I remember the pictures of Dalkyra after our forces shelled it to rubble to take out the Cardassian hold-outs. Kalunda... Kalunda's so beautiful, it hurts to think of this city getting destroyed like that. And all the people here...."
Jhayka laughed bitterly. "Please forgive me, Danielle, but I knew this from the start. There will not be a single building standing in this city when the dust settles, win or lose--even the palace will be ruined, despite the Normans' best efforts--because I will blow it up if it's not simply smashed in the attack rather than let them have an intact building. Already the shelling will be doing damage, and it will just get worse under constant barrage." She abruptly downed the rest of the port in a single vicious gulp, and spoke in a low whisper. "Danielle.. My dear... This is the very heart of Hell we're in. I've been in conflicts which turned cities into the likes of your Dalkyra, I am sure. Don't worry though. The majority of the people will survive in the tunnels as long as the siege doesn't last so long that we run out of food." She sat the glass down. "This is part of what I am. Please don't hate me for it--nor cry over it. There is nothing we can do... And this is the only way anyone here will have a future. The last one standing will win it all."
"Damn them all," Dani muttered. "Damn...." She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Dani looked to Jhayka, then set her glass down and got off her chair. "I'll go see who it is." Walked up to the door, Dani felt her robe slip a bit from the sash being too loose, so she began tightening it as she opened the door.
"Of course, dear," Jhayka answered, and poured herself another class--cheap stuff, this time. She could afford being a little tipsy, after all, she knew the Normans wouldn't attack for several more days. Siege warfare could be quite predictable at times.
She'd not intended it, but the sight of tightenin her robe sash had an effect upon the person on the other side. Her caller was Amber, who looked at her with some intensity. "Yes Minister?" Dani asked, though Amber was rather casually dressed, with a robe like Dani's that was open enough that Dani could see they were wearing a similar set of undergarments, save Amber's was blue.
"Please, call me Amber." Amber smiled sheepishly. "Listen, last time we talked privately, I... I screwed up."
Dani didn't know if Jhayka was looking or not, but she kept her eyes on Amber. "Oh, well, don't feel too bad. I was a bit irritated then about other things."
"Yes, well, I wanted to talk to you."
Dani looked at her, her curiosity growing. "About?"
"Danielle... can I call you Dani?"
"Okay, sure."
Amber bit into her lip, summoning her strength. "Dani, when we talked last time, you got me to thinking... a lot. And I've realized that you were right about a lot of things, and that what you're looking for is what I'm looking for too."
A little feeling in Dani's gut made her curious, and worried, as to where Amber was going with this. "Do you want to come in and get a drink, I've got...."
Before Dani could finish her sentence with "I've got Jhayka in here...", Amber brought a hand up. "It's not a drink I want, Dani... it's you."
Oh no, Dani thought. Take that back now, Amber. I know Jhayka heard you!
Jhayka just didn't move a muscle, looking at the wall with her dead-fish eyes, silent, and raised her glass and took a silent, measured sip from her glass, though her delicate long fingers were trembling around the glass, to be sure, and she wasn't really sure of what would happen next; it was certainly a very uncomfortable moment and.. Dani, I care about you so much.. Went through her mind with a trace of a shudder.
"You want me?", Dani calmly asked. "I, well, I've already told you..."
"Not like that," Amber said. "I want you... to... be with me. As a lover, as a soulmate. Just like what you wanted. I'll, I'll do that for you. I'll learn to be a good wife in your fashion, to be faithful to you, to never touch another person so long as we're together. Seeing you, Dani, has made me realize what I want in life, and I want you. Please... I love you, Dani. I love you." Amber went forward, as if to let Dani kiss her on the lips.
Amber's words made Dani's heart tear. But I don't love you!, she wanted to protest, but she didn't have the heart for it. But neither did she want to kiss Amber. She did, however, take Amber's hand. "Amber, please. This, well, this isn't a good time..."
"Oh Dani, whether we win or lose this doesn't matter. Just... I love you, and I want to be with you until the end, no matter how that goes!" Amber held Dani's hands gently. "I understand if you don't want to spend tonight with me, I really do, but please, at least give me some sign that you feel the same way." Amber put her lips to Dani's mouth, giving a small kiss by nuzzling Dani's lower lip between hers'. She felt excited, hoping that Dani would invite her in for the night.
Oh Amber, no! No! I didn't want to do this to you! Dani wanted to take Amber steps back in time, stop her from having just said that, but it was impossible to.
Jhayka heard the noise of their lips kissing after those words, easily, with her ears swiveled to focus in on the conversation.. It was to much to bear. It was just to much. With what I feel for her..!? All confused all of a sudden. After all we've been through?! It hurt, it hurt surprisingly intense, for all that it might have been wisdom to ignore her, to even encourage them, to turn away.. Her heart wouldn't let her. Jhayka's hand abruptly tightened, and the glass shattered in it, quite audibly. Jhayka didn't even whimper as the glass cut at her hand before she dropped it, but she did breath out one word, quite audibly though still seeming to be a whisper. "Dani."
The noise of breaking glass made Dani turn. Before she could speak, Jhayka's voice came out, almost inaudibly, calling for her. Amber's jaw dropped as Dani immediately left her behind, running back into the room. She looked at the wet bar and saw Jhayka sitting there, her glass broken and cuts on her hand. "Jhayka, oh my God, are you okay?!"
Amber had followed closely behind. Seeing Jhayka there, she froze quite stiffly. Her heart threatened to cave out from under her. They're together. Oh no, they're already together! What have I done?! What have I DONE?! She watched, distraight, as Dani yanked up a cloth and went to bind Jhayka's cut.
"You shouldn't have," Jhayka said hoarsely. "I'll be fine. It's just a few minor cuts, and I've suffered much worse, even recently. Just.. A momentary lapse in control." The words were very measured, though she offered a little smile to Danielle, faint and... Dare it be said, relieved. Then she turned slowly, allowing Danielle to do as she wished with her hand, as though she really didn't care, and looked on to Amber, perfectly composed. "Please, forgive me, Minister. I was just... Somewhat surprised by what I heard, that's all. I meant no offense to you, and I certainly didn't mean to imply anything by that... Brief indiscretion of my temper."
Watching Dani lovingly attend to Jhayka's wound, most of Jhayka's words barely registered to Amber. She was too late. Dani and Jhayka were together, or so her soul wailed in despair. Fighting tears Amber replied, "It's.... it's.... fine..." Her voice was a weak stammer, a broken and humiliated heart having robbed her of any kind of strength. Her belly hurt, nauseating her with disgust at such an abject humiliation. "I, well, I'm sorry I interrupted you two. I... Please, have a good night." She turned and went down the hall. Before she could get to the end to make the turn back down to her suite, Amber began to cry.
If Amber could have told by the deeply flexed down ears of the Taloran, had she known what that meant, she would have learned that Jhayka was absolutely mortified, not angry, but quite embarassed, as she asked hesitantly of Dani... "Her advances were.. Unwanted.. Yes?" And her voice left no doubt of what answer she hoped to have from that; she couldn't hide that, even if her face was still quite calm.
Dani looked at Jhayka directly, hearing the tone in her voice. Her heart quickened pace as she realized what this incident had revealed about the both of them, not to mention poor Amber. "Yes. I... I didn't get a chance to stop her..." Dani looked at Jhayka's expression, and could sense the sheer embarrassment. She blushed, red flowing to her cheeks from her own embarrassment. "I'm sorry about this. All of this." She finished bandaging Jhayka's hand, not sure of what to say about the clear nature of Jhayka's mood.
Jhayka reached out with her bandaged hand, then, and proved herself apt, at least, in wrapping it around Danielle and hugging her abruptly up against herself as she sat on the stool. "Well, I seem to be the shorter one at the moment," her voice echoed in a gentle tone, as her eyes looked out toward the city she could not see. "There's a stream, out beyond the manor I grew up in. In Chertain--and this is the fifty-sixth day of the month of Chertain--I would go there, because the eels were running to spawn up the creeks from the sea. And I would fish for eels with a fishing-spear, throughout the long day, and then, when I had strung them all up, I would lay back and look up to the sky and wonder would I would travel there--it was my only time alone, and I spent it dreaming of strange and wild places. In those days, I did not even know that humans existed, Dani. But now you seem to be what I was looking for, as a child on those Chertain days. You'll go with me to that creek someday, won't you?"
Dani held in her breath for a few moments, understanding what Jhayka was saying without having to say so. Her expression softened and she brought her arms up around Jhayka to make the embrace mutual. Carefully, softly, and very happily, she said, "Yes. Yes I will." Smiling, she tightened her hold a little.
Jhayka smiled, and leaned against Danielle, like a willow bent somewhat in the wind, her body light for its size.
Amber stormed into her rooms, her broken heart and her humiliation having driven her to depression she'd not felt since her daughter's death. She didn't remove her clothes, as she usually did when going to sleep, and got into her bed. A look to her nightstand and she reached her hand out to grab the framed picture of her and her daughter Saria when Saria was just fourteen. She looked at her beautiful, lost little girl, held the picture close to her chest and heart, and began to cry and wail until she fell asleep.
DAY NINE
The leaders and commanders of Kalunda had filed out of the underground conference room in the palace command center, save for Amber d'Kellius, who was getting her papers together in front of her. She looked up in time to see Dani Verdes and Princess - Marshall - Jhayka walk out together. A look crossed her face at seeing them and Amber forced herself to think of other things.
A shadow came over her. Her sister, Sarina, was standing above her, in uniform. "You look like you could use a drink."
"Booze is rationed. I'd rather save it until we need it."
"You mean so that you can booze yourself up for the day you're putting your gun into your mouth, surrounded hopelessly by Normans?" Sarina noticed the withering glare of her older sister. "Dark humor is starting to become everyone's favorite kind. Everyone's getting obsessed with death.... or worse. I caught a couple of the enlistees talking about how long they'll last in Norman conditioning before they break."
"That's not the kind of thinking we need in people," Amber replied sternly. "You're the head of the Crimson Guard now. It's up to you to keep morale up."
"Amber, it lets them blow off steam. They're committed to winning or dying, but I'd rather them talk frankly about it than say nothing, get all worked up worrying about it, and then freak out when they're on the field." Sarina sat down opposite her sister. "You're looking rather upset."
"Shouldn't I be with everything that's going on?"
"Sister.... dear.... you could never keep a secret from me, even when we were little." Sarina looked over to the door. "It's Miss Verdes, of course. And why shouldn't it be? Tall, dark, so pretty and sensual looking. I bet she's wild in bed too. Hispanics with that kind of walk and those kinds of eyes usually are."
"I'm not having this conversation, Sarina."
"I wonder what she sees in the Marshal." Sarina looked to Amber. "No offense to the Marshal, but she's so somber and uptight that she just doesn't fit in. Her people are real tightasses. Just like you used to be."
"Princess Jhayka's saved her life at least twice now. She risked everything to save Dani from Norman torture." Amber still looked at the door. "And Dani's risked everything to find her friend. She's rebounded from what they did to her and is now helping us fight back. She's tough, smart, really strong-willed."
"Maybe that's why she and Jhayka get along so much."
"No, that's not it. Not that alone." Amber looked at her sister. "She wants.... a lover. A wife, really."
"So?"
"She wants a wife, Sarina," Amber remarked. "Not in the way that your loveslave Joanna is to her husband."
"Ah, monogamy. I never understood how they did that." Sarina smirked. "Diversity in partners helps keep things fresh, I've found."
Sighing, Amber retorted, "I bet that's why some of the tech worlders think we're barbarians too. We don't 'get' the concept of monogamy and sticking to one partner."
"Like I care. We're not going to change our ways because of some stuffy church-goers who think we're all unnatural or whatever." Sarina looked at her sister closely.
"Our ways?" Amber slapped a hand on the table. "Sister, our ways are a joke. Our ways are from a sex resort. That's what Kalunda was built to be. A place for men to go to get laid by submissive women and for submissive women to live out fantasies of that. That's where we got the whole lie about women being naturally submissive, about the benefits of conditioning, and it's the conditioning that Kalundan women turn to each other. The men couldn't keep up with them so all of our women satiated themselves, got fixes for their sex addictions, with each other. Mother broke that, I broke that, and now the system's gone, but we're still carrying on this whole idea that even a married woman shouldn't feel bad if she goes out with another woman. Like I said, it's no wonder that we're thought of as barbarians. And it's no wonder nobody gives a damn about us, we're just another bunch of hedonists who got just smart enough to decide we liked technology and we love our homes."
Amber continued before Sarina had a chance to speak. "It's all so stupid, Sarina. Maybe I should have woken up to that years ago. Yes, I rose above the system, but deep down I loved Kalunda so much that I found it easy to fall back into it's habits, even if they were stupid. Hell, all of us did. Julio's the only one who's stayed above it all, and Kevem's learning from him. They're the future of Kalunda. Meanwhile we raise our daughters and we tell them that there's nothing wrong with some of the old ways, even when they're direct results of the enslavement of our mothers. Even we've gotten into that." Amber leveled a look at her sister. "We, Kalundan women, are a bunch of sluts."
Sarina listened to her sister's screed. She'd never heard Amber act so agitated in years, many years indeed. But when Amber called herself and Sarina "sluts" Sarina finally gave a response. "If that's your opinion, Amber, that's fine. Me? I see nothing wrong with it, and I'll continue to live as I want to live, and you can damn well stay out of my sex life. If you want to go back to being the good chaste techworlder girl, be my God damned guest. Just remember that the only reason you're doing it is because you're suddenly in love again and with someone who doesn't approve of our ways. That's all this is."
Amber matched her sister's glare. It was true. Seeing and talking to Dani had made her think of her own past. She'd heard the scorn and disappointment in Dani's voice that night and it'd reminded her so much of her own attitude, years ago, before the grief over her lost daughter drove her back into the bad habits of Kalundan women. "Maybe you're true. Maybe I'm feeling this way because I love Danielle and I want to be what she wants in a soulmate. But that's how I feel, and I'm not going to change that."
"If you know what she wants, go to her."
"I did before."
"You went to her as you'd go to a Kalundan woman. Go to her as a tech-worlder. Tell her that she means something to you and that you want to be what she wants." Sarina stood up from the table. "Or don't. Go internalize it and lose her when she and the Princess get together. Or maybe you could just get over it, see that it's not what you really want, and get on with your life. Either way, it's your call." With that, Sarina walked out of the room, leaving Amber to her thoughts.
After the briefing, Dani returned to her room and invited Jhayka in for a drink. She closed the door behind her and immediately shedded her outer uniform. After hanging it up she was left only in a Kalundan strapless green silk brassiere - a band that covered her breasts from the bottom to halfway up her cleavage - and a thigh-length undergarment. Afterward she went to go get a drink for Jhayka from her bar. "Let me get you a drink," she said while Jhayka eased into a seat at the bar. "Then I'll go get a robe."
"No, no, that's quite alright, I'll let you get dressed first," Jhayka answered modestly, and it was clear enough she meant it. Funny, to, since she'd seen all of Danielle twice before, and had even joked about it that once, but she could still be astonishingly stiff at times, not like she really couldn't stand it herself but rather like she genuinely thought she was doing Danielle a favor by not expecting to see her naked, as a formality if nothing else. It showed that there were still some mental barriers which had to be overcome. They were, in the soul, very close, but in the mindset of the body and social behavior, there were still gaps. Yet at least Jhayka was charmingly polite about it, almost demure.
Dani nodded, not saying anything else. In a way she'd hoped Jhayka would give her some indication she didn't mind seeing her like that, some kind of sign that their closeness was starting to get over the barriers of formality that the Talorans kept. But that was nothing to be really concerned about, and Dani slipped off to the bedroom to retrieve a robe. She came back out wearing a white robe that she'd tied at her waist. Perhaps a bit purposely - if unconsciously - Dani had left it just loose enough so that her cleavage was a bit visible between the edges of the robe. She went back to the bar and took out more of the port she and Jhayka liked. "I'd preserve this a bit more if I didn't think we're going to be seeing less of each other as this goes on. I figure that by next week I'll have enough boats that I'll have to transfer to a river command, and I might very well have to stay on the boat for a bit. I'm thinking of flying my flag from the Liberty." Looking at Jhayka, Dani then asked, "Want me to get your uniform jacket and hang it up?"
"No. You're not my servant," Jhayka answered automatically, and then smiled at the words as she started to remove her own jacket and set it aside wearily. "Thank you, though. You're right; we may not be seeing much of each other. Especially if the relief force tries to push up the river. You might have to head down-river to help them through. I'm still not sure where it will come from, actually, you know.. We've not heard anything from East Port in some time, and I assume there's been some difficulty in gaining control of the situation there. It may take Colonel Arshon another week to organize a relief expedition from that direction.. Perhaps the Gilean navy will come first." She stretched out, a langruous gesture, and her smile was very gentle. She clearly seemed more relaxed in Dani's company, at least, and drank the port with some real enjoyment.
"Just tell me where to go and we'll get there." Dani sipped at her port, enjoying the taste. "Though right now I'm more worried about what kind of boats the other side might have. And if they have anything they can transport to the upper river to hit us from the west instead of the east. I know there's no canals between the upper Henley and the Higgins, but that doesn't mean they can't hitch small boats to vehicles and take them that way. If they got a small, fast enough force into the city's middle with those boats they could cause a bit of havoc." She sat beside Jhayka at the bar, watching her take another drink of the port.
"Well, we could put a chain across the river," Jhayka answered after a moment's thought, and then added: "I recall that one can put a chain across a constricted body of water as a block, for in ancient times there was a great chain covering the mouth of the harbour of the city of Valeria, when it was still only the capital of the Grenyan dynasty and not the whole of the world." She sipped her port again. "There would probably need to be some sort of hydraulic mechanism to move it out of the way for your squadron, of course."
"I'd much prefer taking their fleet out, maybe even boarding and seizing some of their boats. If things look bad, we could get more non-combatants out that way." Dani nursed her port for a moment. "If they have boats they'll try something, I'm sure of it. After their last two attacks, they have to, because if this keeps up, by the time they get to the Eibermoni Line they'll be too low on troops." After saying that she took a sip, trying to get the visions of devastation out of her head.
"I'm aware of that. The other lines aren't nearly as extensive, though, and, honestly, we're not going to contest them so much," Jhayka answered, and then gave a small smile. "That is a very big secret, incidentally. But I plan to withdraw from each line after a token defense, for the most part--with three exceptions, which will be distinct actions and may even all take place at the Eibermoni Line, or more like the Valera and Eibermoni Lines." She gestured with a hand outside, to where the sound of artillery thudded dimly here and there, random shelling of the city by the Normans. They had so far avoided targeting the palace, presumably because they wanted it intact for sacking even if they were terror-bombarding the rest of the city. "The whole point of the interior lines is really to force the Normans to take their time building up attack trenches to cover their troops from our fire, and jumping off points. It'll certainly take them five days before they can try another assault on the Taradrua Line; and then I'll just let them have it. The same for the In'ghara Line. If they reach the Eibermoni Line before we're relieved, that's where we'll stand, stand until they've broken through.. And by then, every single building in the city will be a fortress. The real war will come when it's street-to-street. All the bloodshed out there has been very impressive, but it will be an order of magnitude more horrible when it's street-to-street in the city."
Dani listened and felt some horror at the idea. She had never been a historian, but in her own lifetime there had been a number of vicious urban battles. The Battles for Basra in the Euro-Iranian War in the 40s, Dalkyra on Bajor in '53, Yuvama on Orion in '56, and dozens of such battles in the Plymouth and Dominion Wars. She remembered the news reports and a shiver traveled down her spine. "The whole city will be ruined," Dani said, not taking a drink with tears starting to form in her green eyes as she thought of Kalunda ruined as Dalkyra and Yuvama had been. "I... I remember the pictures of Dalkyra after our forces shelled it to rubble to take out the Cardassian hold-outs. Kalunda... Kalunda's so beautiful, it hurts to think of this city getting destroyed like that. And all the people here...."
Jhayka laughed bitterly. "Please forgive me, Danielle, but I knew this from the start. There will not be a single building standing in this city when the dust settles, win or lose--even the palace will be ruined, despite the Normans' best efforts--because I will blow it up if it's not simply smashed in the attack rather than let them have an intact building. Already the shelling will be doing damage, and it will just get worse under constant barrage." She abruptly downed the rest of the port in a single vicious gulp, and spoke in a low whisper. "Danielle.. My dear... This is the very heart of Hell we're in. I've been in conflicts which turned cities into the likes of your Dalkyra, I am sure. Don't worry though. The majority of the people will survive in the tunnels as long as the siege doesn't last so long that we run out of food." She sat the glass down. "This is part of what I am. Please don't hate me for it--nor cry over it. There is nothing we can do... And this is the only way anyone here will have a future. The last one standing will win it all."
"Damn them all," Dani muttered. "Damn...." She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Dani looked to Jhayka, then set her glass down and got off her chair. "I'll go see who it is." Walked up to the door, Dani felt her robe slip a bit from the sash being too loose, so she began tightening it as she opened the door.
"Of course, dear," Jhayka answered, and poured herself another class--cheap stuff, this time. She could afford being a little tipsy, after all, she knew the Normans wouldn't attack for several more days. Siege warfare could be quite predictable at times.
She'd not intended it, but the sight of tightenin her robe sash had an effect upon the person on the other side. Her caller was Amber, who looked at her with some intensity. "Yes Minister?" Dani asked, though Amber was rather casually dressed, with a robe like Dani's that was open enough that Dani could see they were wearing a similar set of undergarments, save Amber's was blue.
"Please, call me Amber." Amber smiled sheepishly. "Listen, last time we talked privately, I... I screwed up."
Dani didn't know if Jhayka was looking or not, but she kept her eyes on Amber. "Oh, well, don't feel too bad. I was a bit irritated then about other things."
"Yes, well, I wanted to talk to you."
Dani looked at her, her curiosity growing. "About?"
"Danielle... can I call you Dani?"
"Okay, sure."
Amber bit into her lip, summoning her strength. "Dani, when we talked last time, you got me to thinking... a lot. And I've realized that you were right about a lot of things, and that what you're looking for is what I'm looking for too."
A little feeling in Dani's gut made her curious, and worried, as to where Amber was going with this. "Do you want to come in and get a drink, I've got...."
Before Dani could finish her sentence with "I've got Jhayka in here...", Amber brought a hand up. "It's not a drink I want, Dani... it's you."
Oh no, Dani thought. Take that back now, Amber. I know Jhayka heard you!
Jhayka just didn't move a muscle, looking at the wall with her dead-fish eyes, silent, and raised her glass and took a silent, measured sip from her glass, though her delicate long fingers were trembling around the glass, to be sure, and she wasn't really sure of what would happen next; it was certainly a very uncomfortable moment and.. Dani, I care about you so much.. Went through her mind with a trace of a shudder.
"You want me?", Dani calmly asked. "I, well, I've already told you..."
"Not like that," Amber said. "I want you... to... be with me. As a lover, as a soulmate. Just like what you wanted. I'll, I'll do that for you. I'll learn to be a good wife in your fashion, to be faithful to you, to never touch another person so long as we're together. Seeing you, Dani, has made me realize what I want in life, and I want you. Please... I love you, Dani. I love you." Amber went forward, as if to let Dani kiss her on the lips.
Amber's words made Dani's heart tear. But I don't love you!, she wanted to protest, but she didn't have the heart for it. But neither did she want to kiss Amber. She did, however, take Amber's hand. "Amber, please. This, well, this isn't a good time..."
"Oh Dani, whether we win or lose this doesn't matter. Just... I love you, and I want to be with you until the end, no matter how that goes!" Amber held Dani's hands gently. "I understand if you don't want to spend tonight with me, I really do, but please, at least give me some sign that you feel the same way." Amber put her lips to Dani's mouth, giving a small kiss by nuzzling Dani's lower lip between hers'. She felt excited, hoping that Dani would invite her in for the night.
Oh Amber, no! No! I didn't want to do this to you! Dani wanted to take Amber steps back in time, stop her from having just said that, but it was impossible to.
Jhayka heard the noise of their lips kissing after those words, easily, with her ears swiveled to focus in on the conversation.. It was to much to bear. It was just to much. With what I feel for her..!? All confused all of a sudden. After all we've been through?! It hurt, it hurt surprisingly intense, for all that it might have been wisdom to ignore her, to even encourage them, to turn away.. Her heart wouldn't let her. Jhayka's hand abruptly tightened, and the glass shattered in it, quite audibly. Jhayka didn't even whimper as the glass cut at her hand before she dropped it, but she did breath out one word, quite audibly though still seeming to be a whisper. "Dani."
The noise of breaking glass made Dani turn. Before she could speak, Jhayka's voice came out, almost inaudibly, calling for her. Amber's jaw dropped as Dani immediately left her behind, running back into the room. She looked at the wet bar and saw Jhayka sitting there, her glass broken and cuts on her hand. "Jhayka, oh my God, are you okay?!"
Amber had followed closely behind. Seeing Jhayka there, she froze quite stiffly. Her heart threatened to cave out from under her. They're together. Oh no, they're already together! What have I done?! What have I DONE?! She watched, distraight, as Dani yanked up a cloth and went to bind Jhayka's cut.
"You shouldn't have," Jhayka said hoarsely. "I'll be fine. It's just a few minor cuts, and I've suffered much worse, even recently. Just.. A momentary lapse in control." The words were very measured, though she offered a little smile to Danielle, faint and... Dare it be said, relieved. Then she turned slowly, allowing Danielle to do as she wished with her hand, as though she really didn't care, and looked on to Amber, perfectly composed. "Please, forgive me, Minister. I was just... Somewhat surprised by what I heard, that's all. I meant no offense to you, and I certainly didn't mean to imply anything by that... Brief indiscretion of my temper."
Watching Dani lovingly attend to Jhayka's wound, most of Jhayka's words barely registered to Amber. She was too late. Dani and Jhayka were together, or so her soul wailed in despair. Fighting tears Amber replied, "It's.... it's.... fine..." Her voice was a weak stammer, a broken and humiliated heart having robbed her of any kind of strength. Her belly hurt, nauseating her with disgust at such an abject humiliation. "I, well, I'm sorry I interrupted you two. I... Please, have a good night." She turned and went down the hall. Before she could get to the end to make the turn back down to her suite, Amber began to cry.
If Amber could have told by the deeply flexed down ears of the Taloran, had she known what that meant, she would have learned that Jhayka was absolutely mortified, not angry, but quite embarassed, as she asked hesitantly of Dani... "Her advances were.. Unwanted.. Yes?" And her voice left no doubt of what answer she hoped to have from that; she couldn't hide that, even if her face was still quite calm.
Dani looked at Jhayka directly, hearing the tone in her voice. Her heart quickened pace as she realized what this incident had revealed about the both of them, not to mention poor Amber. "Yes. I... I didn't get a chance to stop her..." Dani looked at Jhayka's expression, and could sense the sheer embarrassment. She blushed, red flowing to her cheeks from her own embarrassment. "I'm sorry about this. All of this." She finished bandaging Jhayka's hand, not sure of what to say about the clear nature of Jhayka's mood.
Jhayka reached out with her bandaged hand, then, and proved herself apt, at least, in wrapping it around Danielle and hugging her abruptly up against herself as she sat on the stool. "Well, I seem to be the shorter one at the moment," her voice echoed in a gentle tone, as her eyes looked out toward the city she could not see. "There's a stream, out beyond the manor I grew up in. In Chertain--and this is the fifty-sixth day of the month of Chertain--I would go there, because the eels were running to spawn up the creeks from the sea. And I would fish for eels with a fishing-spear, throughout the long day, and then, when I had strung them all up, I would lay back and look up to the sky and wonder would I would travel there--it was my only time alone, and I spent it dreaming of strange and wild places. In those days, I did not even know that humans existed, Dani. But now you seem to be what I was looking for, as a child on those Chertain days. You'll go with me to that creek someday, won't you?"
Dani held in her breath for a few moments, understanding what Jhayka was saying without having to say so. Her expression softened and she brought her arms up around Jhayka to make the embrace mutual. Carefully, softly, and very happily, she said, "Yes. Yes I will." Smiling, she tightened her hold a little.
Jhayka smiled, and leaned against Danielle, like a willow bent somewhat in the wind, her body light for its size.
Amber stormed into her rooms, her broken heart and her humiliation having driven her to depression she'd not felt since her daughter's death. She didn't remove her clothes, as she usually did when going to sleep, and got into her bed. A look to her nightstand and she reached her hand out to grab the framed picture of her and her daughter Saria when Saria was just fourteen. She looked at her beautiful, lost little girl, held the picture close to her chest and heart, and began to cry and wail until she fell asleep.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY TEN
Julio looked up from the desk he was seated at to Amber, who stood in front of him with a rigidly-straight spine and blank expression. In his hands he held something he never thought he would see. "Why now?", Julio asked. "This is such short notice...."
"I want to get a transfer to a frontline command with the Guard. In fact, Your Majesty, I was going to recommend the formation of a battalion in the Guard for behind-the-lines raiding. We could land by boat and attack enemy supply lines from the forest."
"That's a death sentence."
"Perhaps so, but death for Kalunda is glorious."
An angry look crossed Julio's face. "What the Hell has gotten into you, Amber?"
Amber didn't give a reply. "Sir, I feel I will serve better by giving my experience in cross-country movement to the Guard for the purpose of disrupting enemy supply. I'm from outside the city, it's what I do best. Here I am just a glorified bureaucrat."
"Sara would never forgive me if I let you go off and get yourself killed."
"I do not intend to die, Majesty," Amber said, a half-lie. "But I believe this is the only way I can truly serve Kalunda."
Julio studied her intently. He could see she seemed tired, and worse than that, she was clearly troubled. He sighed and put the notice on the desk. "I'll consider it. Give me a list of replacements to your current post by tonight. Then we'll talk about your raiding unit with the others. You're dismissed, Colonel."
The use of her last formal, non-ceremonial rank in the Crimson Guard made Amber nod briskly. She stomped out.
Julio's instincts were telling him something was wrong. He would have to bring the matter up with Sarina and see what had gotten into her sister.
It was only a few hours later when Amber would receive a knock on her door. A gentle, tentative thing, from someone not used to knocking on doors but having had to learn over these past weeks. Tall, with her flamboyant bright blue hair and red eyes, the Taloran awaited, seeming a bit gawky and gangly compared to graceful Jhayka, though, when she moved, she was just as graceful and didn't have a hint of awkwardness in her step. She was, of course, Ilavna Lashila, and at the moment she was dressed as her usual flamboyant self, baggy, short-cut pantaloons that showed part of her shins and spread widely, in bright red, offset to the deep black of her voluminous blouse which was crossed by a silver sash, and of course high riding boots. She composed herself, knocking a second time to be sure, and then folded her hands up behind herself, six-fingered and wrapped together, as she held herself erect, upright, and waited. This was a mission more than just what Jhayka had sent her on, for; someone needed help, after all.
After putting in her resignation as Minister of the Palace, Amber had returned to her room, removed her uniform, and gone looking through the old pictures of her with her daughter Saria, laying the picture book out on her bed and laying on her belly. It had been after she lost Saria that Amber had "reverted", had gone back to the lifestyle of most Kalundan women, but all these years later it was clear that it had done nothing for her. To add to this pain was her humiliation. She'd been so foolish to do what she did the previous night, as desperate as she was for someone, not realizing at all that she was chasing nothing.
There was a knock at her door. Amber frowned and went to the door, assuming it was her sister since, well, who else would it be? "Sarina," she said as she opened the door, "you're not going to change my mind."
"If you say so, than Sarina shall not," Ilavna said with a gentle smile. "May I come in, Amber?" There was no point for formality here, just the gentle question of a rather awkward girl who had found her place in the priesthood after her days of living in the shadow of the great old palace where her family served Jhayka's. "I'd like to speak with you if you're willing to hear me out."
Amber froze in place for a moment, not quite caring at the moment that she was in her undergarments and how the Taloran priestess might consider that. "I guess my humiliation continues. Fine, fine, come on in, come in to this stupid harlot's room," she said in complete sincerity to her ongoing emotional self-immolation. She moved back and let Illavna into her room, closing the door behind. "I think I have a bathrobe in my closet if you want me to cover up. Though, you're not into women, are you? No temptation here."
"I'm quite straight. Which seems to be a real detriment to friendships; at least if I understand things, anyway." Ilavna flashed a faintly embarassed smile to Amber as she moved to stand inside, not sitting, of course, since she'd not been offered a seat. "Please don't find this humiliating, though. I'm quite discrete, and, well, anyway.. I'm mostly here to listen. And don't worry about covering up, either. Though I imagine we have a somewhat prudish reputation to outsiders, we just have our own customs, that's all; same-sex communal bathing is the norm for Talorans."
"It is that way for us too. Go ahead, find a seat." Amber walked out into the center of the room and flopped onto the edge of her bed. "I take it your Princess told you about last night and how I made a complete and utter fool of myself."
"Not quite. She told me that you were making an, ah, Jhastu iras dhin er er vastanai. Sacrifice of the ever-lonely heart. Though it doesn't really translate the connotations well.." Ilavna moved to sit on the bed as well, remaining close to Amber and frowning a bit as she thought. "Well, Her Highness found out about your volunteering for those guard missions. You know I led the trench raid in the pre-dawn of the fifth day, right?" Ilavna looked up, with a rather terrible expression on her face, for the memories were very unpleasant.
"So I'd heard. You were quite brave out there. A regular warrior-priestess, like something the Amazons would respect." Amber smirked at that. "It's been a long time since I was in a fight, and it wasn't like that at all." Back came the memories of East Henley Valley, the feeling of cold steel in her hands, her red silk suit the color of blood as the Normans came at her. She had been to Sara's right, both her hands gripping the pike that she broke mere moments into that fight after driving it through two different ranks of rushing Normans. And then the sword in her hands, the gleam and flash of the steel in the sun as she drove it time and time again into the warm guts of the Norman men that came against her. "As you've probably heard, I was with Sara Proctor and Tessa Stuart on the Allied Left at East Henley, right up in the front ranks when the Normans hit us. We weren't the Crimson Guard back then, but the Royal Janissaries. Much different from battle these days. More personal and, in it's way, far more vicious."
Amber looked over to the side, prompting Illavna to do the same, and there on a rack was her ceremonial officer's sword, as sharp as ever. "I know how to move fast in the country, and I know how to fight close quarters. The missions I want to lead my girls on are the kind of thing I'll be good at, and it'll drive the Normans nuts." Amber looked back at Illavna. It was clear she wasn't about to bring up the matter of her heart, not at this point.
"They're learning too fast. We're already running trench-raids on them nightly, now, on a smaller scale--and they're sending them back against us. Her Highness knows every trick in the book of modern warfare, but each time she uses one the Normans and their allies immediately copy it," Ilavna answered with a sigh. "Frankly, it is very depressing for me. I don't like to fight at all, though I have found that if you obey the book on matters you are mostly seen through against this sort of enemy. They are good copycats, but not innovators. My concern is that they will already be prepared for what you are trying to do, and you'll end up suffering a fate worse than death." She frowned, then, and looked to the sword a second time. "I can't help but feel, for some odd reason, not just in observation but otherwise, that you are much more like Jhayka than either of the two of you realize."
"Oh? In what way do you mean that?" A brief surge of jealousy welled up in Amber and she forced herself to repress it.
Ilavna's gaze swept down to the bed tellingly, and caught the picture-book. It confirmed what she felt very strongly from Amber in this moment with her abilities, and her red eyes swept up again with a sad smile. "You have both suffered very grievous losses of someone quite close to you. Honourable, given to a few indiscretions perhaps, but fundamentally good and noble; you love your blades; and yet.. You share that same blood-tinged sadness. Tell me about her?"
Amber saw where Illavna had been looking. "Tell you about my daughter Saria?" Her voice was deceptively strong when she'd said that.
"If you would be willing to, yes, please--I should like to hear about her," Ilavna answered very gently, smiling, her ears attentive.
Amber picked up the picture book and held it in her lap. "I had Saria right after East Henley." A sad smile came across her face. "Her father was a man from one of the Wiccan cultures there, a man I took as a lover in the months before the battle. He was.... killed in the battle. I didn't know enough to tell him I was going to have his baby when he died, and I've regretted that since."
"When Saria was born, Kalunda was just starting to rebuild after the first sack and Luvis' rule as the Norman puppet king here. I was in the Crimson Guard and serving as Julio's bodyguard. I named her after Sara Proctor, who had saved my life a number of times... who saved us all, really."
Amber sniffled, recalling those long ago memories of becoming a mother. "I barely knew what to do. I had to learn everything, and I tried my best. I could tell early on that Saria was going to be beautiful when she grew up. She had dark hair that could shine like nothing I'd ever seen... blue eyes full of love and devotion... I wasn't going to let her fall into the trap that our city's women have been in for centuries. I raised her like I thought she should be raised. I encouraged her to be different from the other girls her age, to care more for the future, and for her country, than for the pleasures that a lot of the upper class girls indulged in. Looking back I don't think she was even interested in women, going even further than I had in breaking that cycle."
Ilavna listened attentively, as she did, it broke her heart more thoroughly than anything else in this sad siege. She was part of a huge family, after all, and that family was closely related with the going-ons of many other families; she couldn't imagine raising a child herself, it seemed like an impossible task, beyond the capacity of a sentient being, even though their biology might be different than her's. And Amber had really tried her best to raise the girl right; which made what she sensed had happened all the more tragic. It brought about a great deal of sympathy, and at some point as Amber talked she dared to slip an arm around the woman's shoulders and murmur.. "So much stronger than I, then, or all my people," with a look in her eyes which, as inscrutable as they were, nonetheless seemed quite sad, though she added. "Please, do go on."
Amber fought down the tears. "When Saria came of age, she refused a coming of age ceremony. All the girls in the palace that were her age had one, but she didn't. She didn't think it necessary. I was.... so proud of her." Amber pointed to a picture showing her, Saria, and a handsome man standing with the ocean in the background. The picture was from the waist up, and the only person wearing a top was Saria. "We took her on a birthday trip down the rivers to the sea, went scuba diving off the eastern coast. The man - Nithan - was my lover at the time. I tried to find her a father but.. I couldn't quite find a Kalundan man who understood why I was raising her like that. Our people have been set in our ways for so long that even after Julio declared absoltue and continued emancipation, a lot of Kalundans - both men and women - still believe in the old ways, that women are naturally sexual and submissive. God, I remember all the fights I had with the men I was dating, all of them insisting I was hurting Saria by trying to make her deny her 'nature'. Fools, all of them. For a long time it seemed to me that out of all Kalundan men, only my father and Julio understood how wrong that was."
"Well, there was one other. Carlis was the son of Luvis, a pretender to the throne who the Normans installed during the Troubles. Luvis was Julio's brother and uncle - Sabine was their common mother, but Luvis' father was Julio's grandfather, but since Julio was the son of the heir, well, you get the picture. Carlis was designated as Julio's heir early, and Julio has never allowed another woman to come close to him, none but Sara. Since he was mostly raised by Julio Carlis came to think of women in the same way Julio did, which was good, and he and Saria were close friends growing up." Amber looked toward Illavna sadly. "Finally the time came and Carlis was expected to father an heir. The only problem was that Carlis.... didn't like women. The only woman he felt comfortable with was Saria."
"I knew Carlis didn't love her. He couldn't, his nature wouldn't let him. But I'd raised Saria too well. She was devoted to Kalunda, to the Royal Family, and she felt it was the right thing to do. An honorable thing, to bear the next heir. So she and Carlis conceived a child, Prince Kevem." Amber wiped her eyes. "Oh, if only I'd stopped her. There was a complication in the eighth month. Even after all those years we hadn't yet gotten the money to finish upgrading our medical infrastructure, and East Port had the closest major hospital. We put her on the train, and I stayed with her the whole time... but it was too late." Amber suddenly broke down in crying. "They took Kevem out.... by C-section. Saria.... they didn't save her. I lost my baby girl.... I lost my beautiful girl..."
There was a brutal sense of irony in the whole development which punched Ilavna straight through. Here was the girl who had been raised independent and equal, with the opportunity of the universe before her, ending up only to die in childbirth in a way which should have, it seemed, long been banished. It seemed to bespeak of the fundamental tragedy of the whole madness of the primitive zone, and Ilavna, not so well trained as Jhayka, had her eyes water heavily, though she made no other sound--this was considered tears to a Taloran, though, who biologically could not fully cry in the human sense. "You were betrayed by the modern world that you gave her over to, in hopes that she would have a full life..." Ilavna hugged the elder woman gently against her, recalling her rigorous theological teaching. Here she was as the counsellor and guide for an alien woman who had never adopted her religion, but such was also duty, and in this moment, still more. "Pour out your heart, Amber. It's a burden, don't try to deny it, but let yourself express the loss you've suffered."
"She was my little girl! She was the future!" Amber's sobs continued between sentences. "She was going to... change everything! Lead us away from this... this...." She couldn't quite finish her sentence. "Why did it have to be her?!"
"I was raised to be a slave. I would turn 21, I would be made a slave of the nation, and be conditioned to be 'natural'. I fought back, I overcame the conditioning, but that was what I was raised to be anyway! But Saria? She was the daughter of a new Kalunda, a better one! She didn't have to be a slave, driven by conditioning to need sex and to feel pain without it. She didn't have to overcome conditioning to be normal! Why did she have to die? She was the future!" Amber swept an arm out toward the door. "Those girls? They got raised almost the same. They're not slaves anymore, but they don't see anything wrong with all the trappings from it! They have sex with one another at whim, they keep multiple lovers, they play games pretending to be slaves like their mothers were and act like it's fun to be a sex-addicted slave. Saria never did that! But she's gone, and they're all here, raising their kids to be the same! It'll never end!"
So it was then that her feelings were revealed. Kalunda was still mired in it's past. It's sons and daughters were raised with the contradiction - the past was wrong, yet the manners of it were not. Women were no longer slaves, but they still acted like the slaves of the past had - they practiced sex with multiple partners, they still had the old slave rituals, and sometimes they even sought to emulate the conditioning because it was pleasurable when not at full intensity. Everything that Amber had worked for had not come to pass.
"When Saria died, I stopped caring," Amber further confessed. "I still had Sarina, but she was fully grown, she chose her own way. So I just.... went through the motions. I stayed with Julio, I helped him, and I started living like everyone else. I convinced myself that I'd been wrong when I was younger, that there was nothing wrong with any of it. That the pleasure was good, it felt good, I used to think it would let me heal from Saria. But it's also so... so useless. I'm not saying my people are totally irreedemable, and even with their vices they'll fight to the end to protect our homeland, but it's just so petty. These girls fuck around.... they don't know anything better in life than pleasure, devotion to Kalunda, and hatred of the Normans. There's nothing else here."
"But devotion to Kalunda and the hatred of the Normans are both valid," Ilavna replied, ever so gently. She stretched out, slightly, and smiled a fond sadness. "Your daughter is gone to beyond us, Amber. But those girls out there--it is not their fault they are not raised by women so determined and steadfast as yourself. You must give them opportunity, and there is hope for giving them that opportunity, if Kalunda still stands at the end of the day. You must find some way to firm them up, to gift to your society the attitudes which it did manage, after all, to produce inside of you, and in doing so to end the cycle. There are ways that this may be done; let them be done by you, in the dedication of your life to the memory of your daughter. I cannot think of any higher memorial for her, nor to any person, than to see to it that their own beliefs are not compromised but rather taught heroically to the next generation."
"I've tried, priestess, I've tried for years. But devotion to Kalunda hasn't kept me from being alone, and the pleasure's always been a delusion. That's.... that's why I went to Dani, to Miss Verdes last night. I knew she felt like I did, and I had fallen in love with her for what she's done. She made me realize the hollowness of it all." Amber sniffled. "I should have known about them, I should have. And.... I kissed her, and I know the Princess heard it. I've made such a fool of myself..."
"It's alright. Her Highess wouldn't be offended by such a thing. I..." Ilavna smiled sheepishly, a rather abrupt gesture as she asked a very blunt question. "Do you think they've actually slept with each other, Amber?"
The question threw Amber a bit off. "Well, um... I can't be completely sure. I'd thought then.... I mean.... Dani was mostly undressed and putting on a robe last night when she answered the door. And they seemed a bit awkward... but it looked like they were just having drinks." Amber looked at Illavna. "Why do you ask? You are Princess Jhayka's confessor, I thought? I would figure she'd tell you."
"I know they're not yet. Her Highness will tell me when she starts sinning with Danielle--which I also know to be absolutely inevitable, so I'm treating the matter rather prosaically," Ilavna noted with a wry sort of smile. "I just wanted to say that you didn't bother either of them as much as you bothered yourself. That, and, though they seem to be very close, I do not think that's the end to your hopes of happiness with someone, Amber. Not at all. You just need to accept that it probably wasn't Danielle who's going to offer what you're looking for. It's... A painful thing, but I think the human word for your response is 'melodramatic'; if something doesn't happen you need to remember that there was probably a reason for it, and hope that in the future something better shall come along in turn. I think you put too much into Danielle, thinking of her as the exemplar of all you want to believe in, and have forgotten that Danielle is, by my understanding of humans of the outside, a rather typical sort of person in many of their cultures and societies. Which is actually probably part of the reason Her Highness likes her so much."
Amber nodded slowly. "I suppose that you are right." She looked back down at the picture book. "I feel sorry for Kevem. I... Looking back now, I never got as close to him as I should have. He made me think of Saria too much, and it made me hurt. I'm going to have to change that before... anything happens." She looked to Illavna. "Your Princess is very fortunate to have someone like you along with her. Someone to talk with frankly, to give her a chance to relieve her conscious. I hope that if she and Dani do get together, they will both continue to turn to you. I think I may start to as well. Perhaps later you can even explain your faith to me. It sounds, to me, to be more understanding of the failings of a person than the other religions I know of."
"Confession exists because we know that people will violate the strictures of our faith. Alone among human faiths does christianity also have this mechanism, though only parts of it; and there are various aspects in which we take issue with the Christian view of the Almighty. Of course I am very tolerant of Her Highness; she is a good person, and I don't doubt that she'll receive her reward, yet it will require some sacrifices on her part in the end." Ilavna stretched out somewhat, and then looked seriously to Amber. "I'd like you to live long enough for me to explain the details of our faith to you. You will reconsider your course..?"
Amber nodded slowly. "I will. I promise."
DAY TEN
Julio looked up from the desk he was seated at to Amber, who stood in front of him with a rigidly-straight spine and blank expression. In his hands he held something he never thought he would see. "Why now?", Julio asked. "This is such short notice...."
"I want to get a transfer to a frontline command with the Guard. In fact, Your Majesty, I was going to recommend the formation of a battalion in the Guard for behind-the-lines raiding. We could land by boat and attack enemy supply lines from the forest."
"That's a death sentence."
"Perhaps so, but death for Kalunda is glorious."
An angry look crossed Julio's face. "What the Hell has gotten into you, Amber?"
Amber didn't give a reply. "Sir, I feel I will serve better by giving my experience in cross-country movement to the Guard for the purpose of disrupting enemy supply. I'm from outside the city, it's what I do best. Here I am just a glorified bureaucrat."
"Sara would never forgive me if I let you go off and get yourself killed."
"I do not intend to die, Majesty," Amber said, a half-lie. "But I believe this is the only way I can truly serve Kalunda."
Julio studied her intently. He could see she seemed tired, and worse than that, she was clearly troubled. He sighed and put the notice on the desk. "I'll consider it. Give me a list of replacements to your current post by tonight. Then we'll talk about your raiding unit with the others. You're dismissed, Colonel."
The use of her last formal, non-ceremonial rank in the Crimson Guard made Amber nod briskly. She stomped out.
Julio's instincts were telling him something was wrong. He would have to bring the matter up with Sarina and see what had gotten into her sister.
It was only a few hours later when Amber would receive a knock on her door. A gentle, tentative thing, from someone not used to knocking on doors but having had to learn over these past weeks. Tall, with her flamboyant bright blue hair and red eyes, the Taloran awaited, seeming a bit gawky and gangly compared to graceful Jhayka, though, when she moved, she was just as graceful and didn't have a hint of awkwardness in her step. She was, of course, Ilavna Lashila, and at the moment she was dressed as her usual flamboyant self, baggy, short-cut pantaloons that showed part of her shins and spread widely, in bright red, offset to the deep black of her voluminous blouse which was crossed by a silver sash, and of course high riding boots. She composed herself, knocking a second time to be sure, and then folded her hands up behind herself, six-fingered and wrapped together, as she held herself erect, upright, and waited. This was a mission more than just what Jhayka had sent her on, for; someone needed help, after all.
After putting in her resignation as Minister of the Palace, Amber had returned to her room, removed her uniform, and gone looking through the old pictures of her with her daughter Saria, laying the picture book out on her bed and laying on her belly. It had been after she lost Saria that Amber had "reverted", had gone back to the lifestyle of most Kalundan women, but all these years later it was clear that it had done nothing for her. To add to this pain was her humiliation. She'd been so foolish to do what she did the previous night, as desperate as she was for someone, not realizing at all that she was chasing nothing.
There was a knock at her door. Amber frowned and went to the door, assuming it was her sister since, well, who else would it be? "Sarina," she said as she opened the door, "you're not going to change my mind."
"If you say so, than Sarina shall not," Ilavna said with a gentle smile. "May I come in, Amber?" There was no point for formality here, just the gentle question of a rather awkward girl who had found her place in the priesthood after her days of living in the shadow of the great old palace where her family served Jhayka's. "I'd like to speak with you if you're willing to hear me out."
Amber froze in place for a moment, not quite caring at the moment that she was in her undergarments and how the Taloran priestess might consider that. "I guess my humiliation continues. Fine, fine, come on in, come in to this stupid harlot's room," she said in complete sincerity to her ongoing emotional self-immolation. She moved back and let Illavna into her room, closing the door behind. "I think I have a bathrobe in my closet if you want me to cover up. Though, you're not into women, are you? No temptation here."
"I'm quite straight. Which seems to be a real detriment to friendships; at least if I understand things, anyway." Ilavna flashed a faintly embarassed smile to Amber as she moved to stand inside, not sitting, of course, since she'd not been offered a seat. "Please don't find this humiliating, though. I'm quite discrete, and, well, anyway.. I'm mostly here to listen. And don't worry about covering up, either. Though I imagine we have a somewhat prudish reputation to outsiders, we just have our own customs, that's all; same-sex communal bathing is the norm for Talorans."
"It is that way for us too. Go ahead, find a seat." Amber walked out into the center of the room and flopped onto the edge of her bed. "I take it your Princess told you about last night and how I made a complete and utter fool of myself."
"Not quite. She told me that you were making an, ah, Jhastu iras dhin er er vastanai. Sacrifice of the ever-lonely heart. Though it doesn't really translate the connotations well.." Ilavna moved to sit on the bed as well, remaining close to Amber and frowning a bit as she thought. "Well, Her Highness found out about your volunteering for those guard missions. You know I led the trench raid in the pre-dawn of the fifth day, right?" Ilavna looked up, with a rather terrible expression on her face, for the memories were very unpleasant.
"So I'd heard. You were quite brave out there. A regular warrior-priestess, like something the Amazons would respect." Amber smirked at that. "It's been a long time since I was in a fight, and it wasn't like that at all." Back came the memories of East Henley Valley, the feeling of cold steel in her hands, her red silk suit the color of blood as the Normans came at her. She had been to Sara's right, both her hands gripping the pike that she broke mere moments into that fight after driving it through two different ranks of rushing Normans. And then the sword in her hands, the gleam and flash of the steel in the sun as she drove it time and time again into the warm guts of the Norman men that came against her. "As you've probably heard, I was with Sara Proctor and Tessa Stuart on the Allied Left at East Henley, right up in the front ranks when the Normans hit us. We weren't the Crimson Guard back then, but the Royal Janissaries. Much different from battle these days. More personal and, in it's way, far more vicious."
Amber looked over to the side, prompting Illavna to do the same, and there on a rack was her ceremonial officer's sword, as sharp as ever. "I know how to move fast in the country, and I know how to fight close quarters. The missions I want to lead my girls on are the kind of thing I'll be good at, and it'll drive the Normans nuts." Amber looked back at Illavna. It was clear she wasn't about to bring up the matter of her heart, not at this point.
"They're learning too fast. We're already running trench-raids on them nightly, now, on a smaller scale--and they're sending them back against us. Her Highness knows every trick in the book of modern warfare, but each time she uses one the Normans and their allies immediately copy it," Ilavna answered with a sigh. "Frankly, it is very depressing for me. I don't like to fight at all, though I have found that if you obey the book on matters you are mostly seen through against this sort of enemy. They are good copycats, but not innovators. My concern is that they will already be prepared for what you are trying to do, and you'll end up suffering a fate worse than death." She frowned, then, and looked to the sword a second time. "I can't help but feel, for some odd reason, not just in observation but otherwise, that you are much more like Jhayka than either of the two of you realize."
"Oh? In what way do you mean that?" A brief surge of jealousy welled up in Amber and she forced herself to repress it.
Ilavna's gaze swept down to the bed tellingly, and caught the picture-book. It confirmed what she felt very strongly from Amber in this moment with her abilities, and her red eyes swept up again with a sad smile. "You have both suffered very grievous losses of someone quite close to you. Honourable, given to a few indiscretions perhaps, but fundamentally good and noble; you love your blades; and yet.. You share that same blood-tinged sadness. Tell me about her?"
Amber saw where Illavna had been looking. "Tell you about my daughter Saria?" Her voice was deceptively strong when she'd said that.
"If you would be willing to, yes, please--I should like to hear about her," Ilavna answered very gently, smiling, her ears attentive.
Amber picked up the picture book and held it in her lap. "I had Saria right after East Henley." A sad smile came across her face. "Her father was a man from one of the Wiccan cultures there, a man I took as a lover in the months before the battle. He was.... killed in the battle. I didn't know enough to tell him I was going to have his baby when he died, and I've regretted that since."
"When Saria was born, Kalunda was just starting to rebuild after the first sack and Luvis' rule as the Norman puppet king here. I was in the Crimson Guard and serving as Julio's bodyguard. I named her after Sara Proctor, who had saved my life a number of times... who saved us all, really."
Amber sniffled, recalling those long ago memories of becoming a mother. "I barely knew what to do. I had to learn everything, and I tried my best. I could tell early on that Saria was going to be beautiful when she grew up. She had dark hair that could shine like nothing I'd ever seen... blue eyes full of love and devotion... I wasn't going to let her fall into the trap that our city's women have been in for centuries. I raised her like I thought she should be raised. I encouraged her to be different from the other girls her age, to care more for the future, and for her country, than for the pleasures that a lot of the upper class girls indulged in. Looking back I don't think she was even interested in women, going even further than I had in breaking that cycle."
Ilavna listened attentively, as she did, it broke her heart more thoroughly than anything else in this sad siege. She was part of a huge family, after all, and that family was closely related with the going-ons of many other families; she couldn't imagine raising a child herself, it seemed like an impossible task, beyond the capacity of a sentient being, even though their biology might be different than her's. And Amber had really tried her best to raise the girl right; which made what she sensed had happened all the more tragic. It brought about a great deal of sympathy, and at some point as Amber talked she dared to slip an arm around the woman's shoulders and murmur.. "So much stronger than I, then, or all my people," with a look in her eyes which, as inscrutable as they were, nonetheless seemed quite sad, though she added. "Please, do go on."
Amber fought down the tears. "When Saria came of age, she refused a coming of age ceremony. All the girls in the palace that were her age had one, but she didn't. She didn't think it necessary. I was.... so proud of her." Amber pointed to a picture showing her, Saria, and a handsome man standing with the ocean in the background. The picture was from the waist up, and the only person wearing a top was Saria. "We took her on a birthday trip down the rivers to the sea, went scuba diving off the eastern coast. The man - Nithan - was my lover at the time. I tried to find her a father but.. I couldn't quite find a Kalundan man who understood why I was raising her like that. Our people have been set in our ways for so long that even after Julio declared absoltue and continued emancipation, a lot of Kalundans - both men and women - still believe in the old ways, that women are naturally sexual and submissive. God, I remember all the fights I had with the men I was dating, all of them insisting I was hurting Saria by trying to make her deny her 'nature'. Fools, all of them. For a long time it seemed to me that out of all Kalundan men, only my father and Julio understood how wrong that was."
"Well, there was one other. Carlis was the son of Luvis, a pretender to the throne who the Normans installed during the Troubles. Luvis was Julio's brother and uncle - Sabine was their common mother, but Luvis' father was Julio's grandfather, but since Julio was the son of the heir, well, you get the picture. Carlis was designated as Julio's heir early, and Julio has never allowed another woman to come close to him, none but Sara. Since he was mostly raised by Julio Carlis came to think of women in the same way Julio did, which was good, and he and Saria were close friends growing up." Amber looked toward Illavna sadly. "Finally the time came and Carlis was expected to father an heir. The only problem was that Carlis.... didn't like women. The only woman he felt comfortable with was Saria."
"I knew Carlis didn't love her. He couldn't, his nature wouldn't let him. But I'd raised Saria too well. She was devoted to Kalunda, to the Royal Family, and she felt it was the right thing to do. An honorable thing, to bear the next heir. So she and Carlis conceived a child, Prince Kevem." Amber wiped her eyes. "Oh, if only I'd stopped her. There was a complication in the eighth month. Even after all those years we hadn't yet gotten the money to finish upgrading our medical infrastructure, and East Port had the closest major hospital. We put her on the train, and I stayed with her the whole time... but it was too late." Amber suddenly broke down in crying. "They took Kevem out.... by C-section. Saria.... they didn't save her. I lost my baby girl.... I lost my beautiful girl..."
There was a brutal sense of irony in the whole development which punched Ilavna straight through. Here was the girl who had been raised independent and equal, with the opportunity of the universe before her, ending up only to die in childbirth in a way which should have, it seemed, long been banished. It seemed to bespeak of the fundamental tragedy of the whole madness of the primitive zone, and Ilavna, not so well trained as Jhayka, had her eyes water heavily, though she made no other sound--this was considered tears to a Taloran, though, who biologically could not fully cry in the human sense. "You were betrayed by the modern world that you gave her over to, in hopes that she would have a full life..." Ilavna hugged the elder woman gently against her, recalling her rigorous theological teaching. Here she was as the counsellor and guide for an alien woman who had never adopted her religion, but such was also duty, and in this moment, still more. "Pour out your heart, Amber. It's a burden, don't try to deny it, but let yourself express the loss you've suffered."
"She was my little girl! She was the future!" Amber's sobs continued between sentences. "She was going to... change everything! Lead us away from this... this...." She couldn't quite finish her sentence. "Why did it have to be her?!"
"I was raised to be a slave. I would turn 21, I would be made a slave of the nation, and be conditioned to be 'natural'. I fought back, I overcame the conditioning, but that was what I was raised to be anyway! But Saria? She was the daughter of a new Kalunda, a better one! She didn't have to be a slave, driven by conditioning to need sex and to feel pain without it. She didn't have to overcome conditioning to be normal! Why did she have to die? She was the future!" Amber swept an arm out toward the door. "Those girls? They got raised almost the same. They're not slaves anymore, but they don't see anything wrong with all the trappings from it! They have sex with one another at whim, they keep multiple lovers, they play games pretending to be slaves like their mothers were and act like it's fun to be a sex-addicted slave. Saria never did that! But she's gone, and they're all here, raising their kids to be the same! It'll never end!"
So it was then that her feelings were revealed. Kalunda was still mired in it's past. It's sons and daughters were raised with the contradiction - the past was wrong, yet the manners of it were not. Women were no longer slaves, but they still acted like the slaves of the past had - they practiced sex with multiple partners, they still had the old slave rituals, and sometimes they even sought to emulate the conditioning because it was pleasurable when not at full intensity. Everything that Amber had worked for had not come to pass.
"When Saria died, I stopped caring," Amber further confessed. "I still had Sarina, but she was fully grown, she chose her own way. So I just.... went through the motions. I stayed with Julio, I helped him, and I started living like everyone else. I convinced myself that I'd been wrong when I was younger, that there was nothing wrong with any of it. That the pleasure was good, it felt good, I used to think it would let me heal from Saria. But it's also so... so useless. I'm not saying my people are totally irreedemable, and even with their vices they'll fight to the end to protect our homeland, but it's just so petty. These girls fuck around.... they don't know anything better in life than pleasure, devotion to Kalunda, and hatred of the Normans. There's nothing else here."
"But devotion to Kalunda and the hatred of the Normans are both valid," Ilavna replied, ever so gently. She stretched out, slightly, and smiled a fond sadness. "Your daughter is gone to beyond us, Amber. But those girls out there--it is not their fault they are not raised by women so determined and steadfast as yourself. You must give them opportunity, and there is hope for giving them that opportunity, if Kalunda still stands at the end of the day. You must find some way to firm them up, to gift to your society the attitudes which it did manage, after all, to produce inside of you, and in doing so to end the cycle. There are ways that this may be done; let them be done by you, in the dedication of your life to the memory of your daughter. I cannot think of any higher memorial for her, nor to any person, than to see to it that their own beliefs are not compromised but rather taught heroically to the next generation."
"I've tried, priestess, I've tried for years. But devotion to Kalunda hasn't kept me from being alone, and the pleasure's always been a delusion. That's.... that's why I went to Dani, to Miss Verdes last night. I knew she felt like I did, and I had fallen in love with her for what she's done. She made me realize the hollowness of it all." Amber sniffled. "I should have known about them, I should have. And.... I kissed her, and I know the Princess heard it. I've made such a fool of myself..."
"It's alright. Her Highess wouldn't be offended by such a thing. I..." Ilavna smiled sheepishly, a rather abrupt gesture as she asked a very blunt question. "Do you think they've actually slept with each other, Amber?"
The question threw Amber a bit off. "Well, um... I can't be completely sure. I'd thought then.... I mean.... Dani was mostly undressed and putting on a robe last night when she answered the door. And they seemed a bit awkward... but it looked like they were just having drinks." Amber looked at Illavna. "Why do you ask? You are Princess Jhayka's confessor, I thought? I would figure she'd tell you."
"I know they're not yet. Her Highness will tell me when she starts sinning with Danielle--which I also know to be absolutely inevitable, so I'm treating the matter rather prosaically," Ilavna noted with a wry sort of smile. "I just wanted to say that you didn't bother either of them as much as you bothered yourself. That, and, though they seem to be very close, I do not think that's the end to your hopes of happiness with someone, Amber. Not at all. You just need to accept that it probably wasn't Danielle who's going to offer what you're looking for. It's... A painful thing, but I think the human word for your response is 'melodramatic'; if something doesn't happen you need to remember that there was probably a reason for it, and hope that in the future something better shall come along in turn. I think you put too much into Danielle, thinking of her as the exemplar of all you want to believe in, and have forgotten that Danielle is, by my understanding of humans of the outside, a rather typical sort of person in many of their cultures and societies. Which is actually probably part of the reason Her Highness likes her so much."
Amber nodded slowly. "I suppose that you are right." She looked back down at the picture book. "I feel sorry for Kevem. I... Looking back now, I never got as close to him as I should have. He made me think of Saria too much, and it made me hurt. I'm going to have to change that before... anything happens." She looked to Illavna. "Your Princess is very fortunate to have someone like you along with her. Someone to talk with frankly, to give her a chance to relieve her conscious. I hope that if she and Dani do get together, they will both continue to turn to you. I think I may start to as well. Perhaps later you can even explain your faith to me. It sounds, to me, to be more understanding of the failings of a person than the other religions I know of."
"Confession exists because we know that people will violate the strictures of our faith. Alone among human faiths does christianity also have this mechanism, though only parts of it; and there are various aspects in which we take issue with the Christian view of the Almighty. Of course I am very tolerant of Her Highness; she is a good person, and I don't doubt that she'll receive her reward, yet it will require some sacrifices on her part in the end." Ilavna stretched out somewhat, and then looked seriously to Amber. "I'd like you to live long enough for me to explain the details of our faith to you. You will reconsider your course..?"
Amber nodded slowly. "I will. I promise."
Last edited by Steve on 2006-03-26 02:26pm, edited 1 time in total.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
This was written by Marina.
East Port, Gilead
DAY TEN
Smoke rose into the sky over East Port. The city was in many places burning, and now and again the sound of one of the heavy guns of the General Faeria or the Gilean Navy ships in the harbour firing could be heard, and the flash of light and immense impact of the shot told across the city. At least a third of East Port was rubble. A few more primitive gun cars had been constructed, and these had been used to good effect in the past five days of counteroffensive since the General Faeria had arrived. The ships on patrol of the Gilean wet-navy had returned and had rallied under the instructions of the coup leaders, remaining loyal to their commanders and not the civilian government, to do their utmost to suppress the primitive regions, since they could not easily provide any support to the forces of the military junta in the tech zones thanks to geographical factors of the conflict.
Columns of troops marched through the city behind tanks, which often fired point-blank into the enemy or used flamethrowers to clear out pockets of strong resistance. Most of the resistance had been driven into the central portion of the city, since between the railroad tracks and the harbour the outer regions of the city were easily taken with the support of the heavy guns. They had also, of course, suffered the most heavily from the intensity of that kind of fire and there were few buildings on the outskirts standing. The General Faeria was now pushing into the city on the tracks running through the streets to the various businesses and the old marshalling yard in the centre of the town which had been replaced by one (which Colonel Arshon now held) on the outskirts which was much larger, and fortunately had good repair facilities.
The Normans and their allies had, however, fortified many heavy concrete buildings in the centre of the city and were holding here, using modern weapons and copious supplies of ammunition from the warehouses, some it ironically that which Jhayka had ordered for the defence of Kalunda but wasn't delivered in time. The fighting in the city was continuous, and artillery and machine-guns were always sounding in the background, along with the crack of riflery. Banners whipped in the stiff sea-breeze, the only thing that kept the stench of death and cordite from completely overwhelming all, and marked points of control here and there in a most archaic fashion.
Smoke-stained and sweaty to the bone, wearing a crisp jumpsuit bearing the crest of the Lesser Intu'it, and lots of body armour, Colonel Arshon marched forward cautiously at the Palazzo di Independencia toward her counterparts. The statue of a frontiersman erected in the middle of the broad circle was undamaged, though the base was pitted by machine-gun fire and the crater from an RPG blast. It spoke of many lost dreams of the fallen ideals of Gilead.
An Admiral and her guard were approaching from the south-west out of the vehicles they had just arrived in. She was certainly the commander of the Gilean forces here and looked rather overwhelmed at the overall condition of the city. Two more were arriving, however. One was a dapper Britisher with broad sideburns and actually riding on a camel and followed by a coterie of slouch-hatted Australians holding massive hunting rifles and flanked by a Sikh. He was Maxwell Baden-Hendersen and he had organized many of the emigres and adventurers in the city into a fighting force to oppose the Normans, with typical eccentric British flair. The fourth at the meeting was Ivan Stepanov Gottrop, a Russian of dubious ancestry, flamboyantly mustachioed and commanding a group of Slavic Marines. They'd come up from the Castraff Consulate which, along with the Consulate in Kalunda, formed a great deal of their perfidious chain of dealings in Gilead, nominally for the purpose of rescuing slaves—which they at least did in fact do.
The four of them with their parties came to a stop around the north side of the statue, where Baden-Hendersen dismounted. “A Good day to you all,” he said, saluting offhand with his riding crop. “It seems that our forces have at last converged, which is altogether quite well and good, but I understand there's another matter put to our attention, hmm?”
At least we have snipers in all the surrounding buildings to cover this, Colonel Arshon thought. It was ever so amateurish, but then, she was—with the exception of Gottrop, who was probably actually a spy—the only one of the with any military experience on land. Maxwell Baden-Hendersen had served, but not in combat. “Yes. The leader of the Amazon sector of the city is coming for a parley. I'll note they haven't actively been involved in the fighting.”
“Doesn't matter. They're causing all sorts of trouble at Kalunda,” Ivan Stepanov commented dourly. “Though, I grant, their fortified compounds are directly in the way of our best route of advance into the city centre.”
“Exactly the problem,” Admiral Frisia said with a sigh. “I believe, Colonel Arshon, that you have some sort of plan there?”
“Yes. If we can bring them over to our side then we can cut through down one of the sidings between their buildings with the General Faeria and have her pop out in the centre of the enemy defences in the middle of the city without warning. We can enfilade them and hit them from every direction and have this finished up in a few days.”
“And we better, too,” Maxwell added with incredible cheerfulness, considering the situation—of course, he was in mufti and appeared equally incredibly relaxed about the whole urban combat—and his own part in it, which was more than noteworthy. A lot of the minor states' peoples had rallied to him, along with most of the foreigners. The rest fell in with whatever force their geographical relationship in the city dictated they fight with, and so the four commanders of four distinct groups had naturally been formed.
“What about the suburban holdouts?” Ivan Stepanov pressed.
“We can use gun cars to demolish them, the General Faeria is better used for the armoured push into the city centre,” Arshon answered at once.
“Very well then. The sooner we get this done, the better.” A nasty look. “The sooner we get started for Kalunda the better.”
“Admiral Frisia, any objections?”
“No, they are after all Gilean citizens,” a sharp look around to remind the rest of them that they weren't, “and they haven't fought us so as far as we're concerned we'll talk with them. The political decisions can be made later once all the facts have been established and the situation stabilized. For now we just need the allies and the manpower and position that they provide. Especially, ladies and gentlemen, since I'd remind you all that a major force of the Normans and their allies, thought to be at least one hundred and seventy thousand strong and perhaps close to two hundred thousand, is mustering from all of the villages and the tribal areas and small states between here and Kalunda, plus Norman reinforcements from their distant territories and some initial contingents from the further states, such as the Stirlins, and this force is moving to bolster those of their number already fighting in East Port. If we can defeat the combatants here then we can start toward Kalunda and hit this force while it's still strung out in line of march rather than massed for a fixed engagement. In that way we stand a much better chance of breaking through to the city and decisively defeating the rebel forces in the field.”
“Very well said ma'am,” Maxwell looked as chipper as before. “Let's get this show on with, clear up the city and then be about dispatching the rest of the barbs.”
“I am not worried about the ability of the Russian Consulate in Kalunda to hold, persay, but if there have been offences against our subjects the better to quickly discover them,” the irrasicible Russian consented.
“Colonel?” Admiral Frisia looked to her.
“I'm a bit worried about the composition of the Norman forces in a relief advance, and how we might face them, but it is of paramount importance that we try to force through the relief of Kalunda, so, yes, it's an agreeable plan. But for it, we certainly need the aide of these Amazons, whatever the sympathies of the rest of their people.”
“Then we'll deal with that now,” Admiral Frisia answered, and she brought up a comm-link. “Let the Amazon party through.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral. We're allowing them through the checkpoints now..”
The four waited in an amiable and rather weird silence as artillery blasts and gunfire echoed through the smokey sky over the city.
Ahead, coming into the Palazzo di Independencia was an Amazonian Matriarch and her savaged train of followers, coming forward in barbaric pomp and solemnity, with flags and banners and armed retainers in a mix of armour and scandalous leather garb. The four commanders awaited her, but she was not a humble suppliant before their power. Instead, she presented herself with a flourish. She was in her late thirties, with fine long black hair and strong brown eyes, skin finely tanned and body firmly muscular, of a height of about five and three-fourths feet.
“I am the Matriarch of the East Port Amazons; my name is Thais daughter of Alia, and I have come to make common cause with you. Do not worry about introductions—I am with my sources, and I know your names.”
“Well, good then, Matriarch Thais,” Colonel Arshon answered. “We're all soldiers here, not politicians,” even though that wasn't true before, it was now mostly true, “so let's get get straight down to the matter of it. The Normans and their allies are holed up in the city centre, and the path to victory is through your district. Now, so far you have been neutral, but as we aim to victory, we want to know if you shall let us pass, or fight us; or fight with us. You must understand that we would really rather see you all fighting if you are to remain in your quarters, for we don't have much trust of you on account of the behaviour of your Magistrice toward Kalunda.”
The Matriarch, to their surprise, spat thrice in clear and genuine anger upon the ground, and rose with her eyes blazing. “We were allowed to vote on this decision? Was it unaminous? No! They have allied us to our mortal enemies, and I will have nothing of it here in East Port. We will not aide the Normans; just treat us like the equals that we are, and as allies, not enemies. And when this war is done, replace the Magistrice with myself. I shall prevent such a calumny against our people as this treaty from ever happening again, you have my word.”
“Well, we shall need an administrator,” Admiral Frisia answered tentatively, and that she had spoken rather than the men pleased the Matriarch. “I cannot promise, however, that there will be no changes expected of your people, Matriarch Thais.”
“I intend to make changes anyway,” she answered, seeming, it was, to blinded by her hatred for the Normans to much consider that statement, so much the better for it. She explained, a moment later, a deeply personal reason: “My mother's sister suffered a fate of death and things worse than it when the Normans were ascendant, and she raised me well to hate them. I will deal with the collaborators.”
Colonel Arshon and Admiral Frisia shared a thin smile of people who understood how precisely outclassed the Matriarch was, for all of her noble sentiment of vengeance, or at least so blinded by it that she did not care. It would have to be used, and the situation was to critical for anything else.
“On my authority and honour,” Admiral Frisia answered, “You shall be Magistrice when this war is finished,” she promised, accepting all the consequences of what that would mean for the sake of her now-desperate cause.
“Then under the Goddess I swear to allow you to pass through, and when you do, we shall fall in with you and attack also. We have modern arms, and we're prepared to use them.”
“Good. The first attack will be made by the General Faeria. You may accompany the armoured train when she passes through your territory to the inner city marshalling yard to enfilade the Norman positions, and attack under the support of her guns,” Colonel Arshon explained.
“Mark off certain buildings for your non-combatants to be placed in, securely, when our forces pass through, ma'am,” the last coming as an indulgent drawl toward the woman was anything but from Maxwell Baden-Hendersen.
He got a glare for his effort from the Amazon, who looked to the two women for confirmation instead.
“That would be wise,” Colonel Arshon replied rather cynically, and added, with equal cynicism: “You know how even the best of men are.”
The Matriarch gave a vicious little laugh. “True enough, cousin-in-arms, Colonel Arshon. I hope that your own Magistrice back in Kalunda is holding firm against the treason of my own, and against the savagery of the men she defends.” They hypocrisy of such a statement in the face of Amazon customs was, of course, lost.
“Of Her Highness' ability to hold, I no longer have any doubts,” Colonel Arshon replied, and she meant it, considering what Jhayka had pulled off in Ar.
“Then I should meet her myself, sometime, and congratulate her for it,” Thais replied, her smile more pleasant. “Let me designate to you the safe-houses you wish, then, and then I shall send messengers to have the necessary preparations made in our quarter. Everything will, I am confident, be ready by dawn tomorrow. Shall we attack at dawn, then?”
The four looked among each other each, and found nobody in disagreement to the proposal. Admiral Frisia spoke for them all. “We attack at dawn, Matriarch.”
East Port, Gilead
DAY TEN
Smoke rose into the sky over East Port. The city was in many places burning, and now and again the sound of one of the heavy guns of the General Faeria or the Gilean Navy ships in the harbour firing could be heard, and the flash of light and immense impact of the shot told across the city. At least a third of East Port was rubble. A few more primitive gun cars had been constructed, and these had been used to good effect in the past five days of counteroffensive since the General Faeria had arrived. The ships on patrol of the Gilean wet-navy had returned and had rallied under the instructions of the coup leaders, remaining loyal to their commanders and not the civilian government, to do their utmost to suppress the primitive regions, since they could not easily provide any support to the forces of the military junta in the tech zones thanks to geographical factors of the conflict.
Columns of troops marched through the city behind tanks, which often fired point-blank into the enemy or used flamethrowers to clear out pockets of strong resistance. Most of the resistance had been driven into the central portion of the city, since between the railroad tracks and the harbour the outer regions of the city were easily taken with the support of the heavy guns. They had also, of course, suffered the most heavily from the intensity of that kind of fire and there were few buildings on the outskirts standing. The General Faeria was now pushing into the city on the tracks running through the streets to the various businesses and the old marshalling yard in the centre of the town which had been replaced by one (which Colonel Arshon now held) on the outskirts which was much larger, and fortunately had good repair facilities.
The Normans and their allies had, however, fortified many heavy concrete buildings in the centre of the city and were holding here, using modern weapons and copious supplies of ammunition from the warehouses, some it ironically that which Jhayka had ordered for the defence of Kalunda but wasn't delivered in time. The fighting in the city was continuous, and artillery and machine-guns were always sounding in the background, along with the crack of riflery. Banners whipped in the stiff sea-breeze, the only thing that kept the stench of death and cordite from completely overwhelming all, and marked points of control here and there in a most archaic fashion.
Smoke-stained and sweaty to the bone, wearing a crisp jumpsuit bearing the crest of the Lesser Intu'it, and lots of body armour, Colonel Arshon marched forward cautiously at the Palazzo di Independencia toward her counterparts. The statue of a frontiersman erected in the middle of the broad circle was undamaged, though the base was pitted by machine-gun fire and the crater from an RPG blast. It spoke of many lost dreams of the fallen ideals of Gilead.
An Admiral and her guard were approaching from the south-west out of the vehicles they had just arrived in. She was certainly the commander of the Gilean forces here and looked rather overwhelmed at the overall condition of the city. Two more were arriving, however. One was a dapper Britisher with broad sideburns and actually riding on a camel and followed by a coterie of slouch-hatted Australians holding massive hunting rifles and flanked by a Sikh. He was Maxwell Baden-Hendersen and he had organized many of the emigres and adventurers in the city into a fighting force to oppose the Normans, with typical eccentric British flair. The fourth at the meeting was Ivan Stepanov Gottrop, a Russian of dubious ancestry, flamboyantly mustachioed and commanding a group of Slavic Marines. They'd come up from the Castraff Consulate which, along with the Consulate in Kalunda, formed a great deal of their perfidious chain of dealings in Gilead, nominally for the purpose of rescuing slaves—which they at least did in fact do.
The four of them with their parties came to a stop around the north side of the statue, where Baden-Hendersen dismounted. “A Good day to you all,” he said, saluting offhand with his riding crop. “It seems that our forces have at last converged, which is altogether quite well and good, but I understand there's another matter put to our attention, hmm?”
At least we have snipers in all the surrounding buildings to cover this, Colonel Arshon thought. It was ever so amateurish, but then, she was—with the exception of Gottrop, who was probably actually a spy—the only one of the with any military experience on land. Maxwell Baden-Hendersen had served, but not in combat. “Yes. The leader of the Amazon sector of the city is coming for a parley. I'll note they haven't actively been involved in the fighting.”
“Doesn't matter. They're causing all sorts of trouble at Kalunda,” Ivan Stepanov commented dourly. “Though, I grant, their fortified compounds are directly in the way of our best route of advance into the city centre.”
“Exactly the problem,” Admiral Frisia said with a sigh. “I believe, Colonel Arshon, that you have some sort of plan there?”
“Yes. If we can bring them over to our side then we can cut through down one of the sidings between their buildings with the General Faeria and have her pop out in the centre of the enemy defences in the middle of the city without warning. We can enfilade them and hit them from every direction and have this finished up in a few days.”
“And we better, too,” Maxwell added with incredible cheerfulness, considering the situation—of course, he was in mufti and appeared equally incredibly relaxed about the whole urban combat—and his own part in it, which was more than noteworthy. A lot of the minor states' peoples had rallied to him, along with most of the foreigners. The rest fell in with whatever force their geographical relationship in the city dictated they fight with, and so the four commanders of four distinct groups had naturally been formed.
“What about the suburban holdouts?” Ivan Stepanov pressed.
“We can use gun cars to demolish them, the General Faeria is better used for the armoured push into the city centre,” Arshon answered at once.
“Very well then. The sooner we get this done, the better.” A nasty look. “The sooner we get started for Kalunda the better.”
“Admiral Frisia, any objections?”
“No, they are after all Gilean citizens,” a sharp look around to remind the rest of them that they weren't, “and they haven't fought us so as far as we're concerned we'll talk with them. The political decisions can be made later once all the facts have been established and the situation stabilized. For now we just need the allies and the manpower and position that they provide. Especially, ladies and gentlemen, since I'd remind you all that a major force of the Normans and their allies, thought to be at least one hundred and seventy thousand strong and perhaps close to two hundred thousand, is mustering from all of the villages and the tribal areas and small states between here and Kalunda, plus Norman reinforcements from their distant territories and some initial contingents from the further states, such as the Stirlins, and this force is moving to bolster those of their number already fighting in East Port. If we can defeat the combatants here then we can start toward Kalunda and hit this force while it's still strung out in line of march rather than massed for a fixed engagement. In that way we stand a much better chance of breaking through to the city and decisively defeating the rebel forces in the field.”
“Very well said ma'am,” Maxwell looked as chipper as before. “Let's get this show on with, clear up the city and then be about dispatching the rest of the barbs.”
“I am not worried about the ability of the Russian Consulate in Kalunda to hold, persay, but if there have been offences against our subjects the better to quickly discover them,” the irrasicible Russian consented.
“Colonel?” Admiral Frisia looked to her.
“I'm a bit worried about the composition of the Norman forces in a relief advance, and how we might face them, but it is of paramount importance that we try to force through the relief of Kalunda, so, yes, it's an agreeable plan. But for it, we certainly need the aide of these Amazons, whatever the sympathies of the rest of their people.”
“Then we'll deal with that now,” Admiral Frisia answered, and she brought up a comm-link. “Let the Amazon party through.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral. We're allowing them through the checkpoints now..”
The four waited in an amiable and rather weird silence as artillery blasts and gunfire echoed through the smokey sky over the city.
Ahead, coming into the Palazzo di Independencia was an Amazonian Matriarch and her savaged train of followers, coming forward in barbaric pomp and solemnity, with flags and banners and armed retainers in a mix of armour and scandalous leather garb. The four commanders awaited her, but she was not a humble suppliant before their power. Instead, she presented herself with a flourish. She was in her late thirties, with fine long black hair and strong brown eyes, skin finely tanned and body firmly muscular, of a height of about five and three-fourths feet.
“I am the Matriarch of the East Port Amazons; my name is Thais daughter of Alia, and I have come to make common cause with you. Do not worry about introductions—I am with my sources, and I know your names.”
“Well, good then, Matriarch Thais,” Colonel Arshon answered. “We're all soldiers here, not politicians,” even though that wasn't true before, it was now mostly true, “so let's get get straight down to the matter of it. The Normans and their allies are holed up in the city centre, and the path to victory is through your district. Now, so far you have been neutral, but as we aim to victory, we want to know if you shall let us pass, or fight us; or fight with us. You must understand that we would really rather see you all fighting if you are to remain in your quarters, for we don't have much trust of you on account of the behaviour of your Magistrice toward Kalunda.”
The Matriarch, to their surprise, spat thrice in clear and genuine anger upon the ground, and rose with her eyes blazing. “We were allowed to vote on this decision? Was it unaminous? No! They have allied us to our mortal enemies, and I will have nothing of it here in East Port. We will not aide the Normans; just treat us like the equals that we are, and as allies, not enemies. And when this war is done, replace the Magistrice with myself. I shall prevent such a calumny against our people as this treaty from ever happening again, you have my word.”
“Well, we shall need an administrator,” Admiral Frisia answered tentatively, and that she had spoken rather than the men pleased the Matriarch. “I cannot promise, however, that there will be no changes expected of your people, Matriarch Thais.”
“I intend to make changes anyway,” she answered, seeming, it was, to blinded by her hatred for the Normans to much consider that statement, so much the better for it. She explained, a moment later, a deeply personal reason: “My mother's sister suffered a fate of death and things worse than it when the Normans were ascendant, and she raised me well to hate them. I will deal with the collaborators.”
Colonel Arshon and Admiral Frisia shared a thin smile of people who understood how precisely outclassed the Matriarch was, for all of her noble sentiment of vengeance, or at least so blinded by it that she did not care. It would have to be used, and the situation was to critical for anything else.
“On my authority and honour,” Admiral Frisia answered, “You shall be Magistrice when this war is finished,” she promised, accepting all the consequences of what that would mean for the sake of her now-desperate cause.
“Then under the Goddess I swear to allow you to pass through, and when you do, we shall fall in with you and attack also. We have modern arms, and we're prepared to use them.”
“Good. The first attack will be made by the General Faeria. You may accompany the armoured train when she passes through your territory to the inner city marshalling yard to enfilade the Norman positions, and attack under the support of her guns,” Colonel Arshon explained.
“Mark off certain buildings for your non-combatants to be placed in, securely, when our forces pass through, ma'am,” the last coming as an indulgent drawl toward the woman was anything but from Maxwell Baden-Hendersen.
He got a glare for his effort from the Amazon, who looked to the two women for confirmation instead.
“That would be wise,” Colonel Arshon replied rather cynically, and added, with equal cynicism: “You know how even the best of men are.”
The Matriarch gave a vicious little laugh. “True enough, cousin-in-arms, Colonel Arshon. I hope that your own Magistrice back in Kalunda is holding firm against the treason of my own, and against the savagery of the men she defends.” They hypocrisy of such a statement in the face of Amazon customs was, of course, lost.
“Of Her Highness' ability to hold, I no longer have any doubts,” Colonel Arshon replied, and she meant it, considering what Jhayka had pulled off in Ar.
“Then I should meet her myself, sometime, and congratulate her for it,” Thais replied, her smile more pleasant. “Let me designate to you the safe-houses you wish, then, and then I shall send messengers to have the necessary preparations made in our quarter. Everything will, I am confident, be ready by dawn tomorrow. Shall we attack at dawn, then?”
The four looked among each other each, and found nobody in disagreement to the proposal. Admiral Frisia spoke for them all. “We attack at dawn, Matriarch.”
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Written by Marina.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY THIRTEEN
“I wish you success on your mission,” Jhayka smiled brightly to the Amazonian Brigadier, as her rank would be translated to their Kalundan equivalents. She was still recovering from gas, but could make it across the lines well enough, and an Amazonian guard had come forward to receive her after some Crimson Guard had been sent out under a flag of truce earlier that day and said they wished to send Amazon prisoners back to the Amazonians to save them from their own men. The story had been bought.
“I will do my utmost, as I swear upon Diana our Goddess,” the warrioress answered, and smiled as well, the two clasping arms before the Amazon turned away and made her way out through the misty silence near the river, where there was little action from the enemy due to the omnipresent threat of Danielle's gunboats.
Jhayka watched them go and then headed back to her command post. It was lucky the Amazon had finally recovered. They would be needing her help soon enough, and, anyway, they'd have had to wait until the next day before sending her back if her calculations were right. The Normans should attack today, and for that reason, Jhayka made haste, her staff car dodging the occasional shell crashing down from the now constant artillery fire from the enemy.
It had also increased in frequency as the Normans or their allies, or both, were able to acquire more pieces, and some long range katyushas which kept the city under a very heavy if inaccurate fire. The civilians were now all underground, and they needed to be, for large blocks of the city were closed off. Only the palace had not been direct targeted, for obvious symbolic reasons, and also likely political ones (or perhaps simple issues of spoil), yet a few stray rounds and rockets had landed around it, and one on it. The fire crews, including the backup and impressed crews, performed splendidly under the constant hardship.
Jhayka herself had not at first intended to move underground, but after that miss that hit the palace, Julio had the day before commanded them to go underground, all of them, for the sake of the Kingdom. She reluctantly obeyed, and once again found herself in quarters adjacent to Danielle's and Ilavna's, though much smaller than before, just a single room, which in this case she shared a bathroom with Ilavna, a common enough occurrence. The portable steam bath, which could re-use water almost endlessly, was proving a gift directly from the heavens in keeping them nicely clean. Jhayka, in response to moving underground, nonetheless insisted, and Julio consented, that she be allowed to make her rounds of the city, which she already had in the early morning, cheering on the medical personnel and the firefighters, observing the conversion of buildings into fortified strongpoints, and meeting with the families trapped underground in the tunnels for their own safety.
So she would do, until she was no longer able, on the account of death or enemy action cutting her off or cutting off to much of the city. She also visited the troops, as always, and tried to visit the wounded as well. Now she was sleeping very little, and pushing herself very hard. The relaxed atmosphere of the early siege was beginning to fade under the bombardment of the Norman guns. Everyone knew they were cut off now, and nobody had an idea when relief might arrive.
As she was returning from sending her Amazonian captives on their daring mission of plot and conspiracy, the Norman artillery ceased firing on the city.
“Double speed,” Jhayka snapped to the young Crimson Guard girl driving the car, which promptly accelerated recklessly as she brought up the mic of her commo unit. “Prepare for an attack on all sectors.”
“Acknowledged,” central control answered quite grimly.
The Norman artillery opened up again. It was on the front-line trenches of the Taradrua Line, and it was as rapid as they could make it. They're learning, Jhayka thought quite grimly.
And they were. The artillery barrage was very short: Fifteen minutes. Then they shifted back to the rear areas of the Taradrua Line while simultaneously hitting the front line with high-angle weapons, pasting it with rockets and slamming it with countless mortars. The fire was still fairly dispersed across the whole line, but now this portion of the barrage lasted for only five minutes. It was much less time than the Normans had used in their previous barrages, though at the same time there was actually a barrage unlike during the seizure of the Fileya Line. They were obviously trying to achieve a best-of-both-worlds effect; unfortunately for them the barrage was still to long for that, even though the infantry attack followed the instant the mortars ceased to pound the trenches.
Jhayka raced in to the command post in the greatest of haste, coming to a stop against a table (hard enough to hurt) to look and msee that the Normans were taking advantage of the lighter mine and wire defences of the Taradrua Line and had already made excellent progress. Moreover, they all had gas masks which seemed to give them a protection against inhalation agents. That was actually good news—but only in terms of long term strategy, for it meant that what she had planned next could be used on the In'ghara Line, keeping the Normans as far away from the city as she could.
That said, she had no actual intention to try to hold the Taradrua line now. What she would do is make sure that the Normans paid an incredibly heavy price for it, that they suffered very badly. The length of their barragre guaranteed it. Though the trenches had been knocked up for once, they were also fully alert and aware as they manned the lines. A vigorous fusiliade had chopped through the lead Norman ranks over and over again, rolling back and forth across the field as VT fuzed artillery rained down shrapnel over their heads.
They had to attack fast to survive the kind of fire that they were under, and this, at least, the Normans were more than willing and capable of doing. They quickly brought to the fight to point-blank range, and though the thin rows of wire held up the Normans for some time at point-blank into the murderous machine-gun and rifle fire and the artillery and mortars raining down behind them on their comrades trying to come up to support them, the Norman units—mirrored by their allies at every point of the line in this general offensive—blasted holes in the wire with bangalore torpedoes or simply cut it, and pushed home their assault.
The Norman attack was indeed flawless on the Taradrua Line. They had filed in the Fileya Line enough to block the river from continuing to get in, and used bulldozers to good effect in creating crossing points. They'd buried most of their dead in other sections of the trenches even as they opened up advanced trenches, just like they had for their successful assault on the Fileya Line. Now they were learning the painful lessons and had taken them to heart. Siege warfare was a step-by-step process. None of the commanders of the allied armies believed they'd get farther than the Taradrua Line today, at last, having learned their lesson about being overambitious, as well. Though not perfect, this attack was decently planned and ably executed, and it showed.
Kalunda's enemies still suffered heavily to breach the line, though, and the front-line troops held along enough against the Normans and their allies in the vicious hand-to-hand combat which ensued whenever they broke through that the allied forces were concentrating their reserves to break through the weak points, not expecting to be victorious over the line in any other way than by a methodical imitation of the old human tactics of the Brusilov Offense.
Even as the two sides clashed at point of bayonet, Jhayka formulated her plan for withdrawal. She ordered the defenders of the line to Hold, and then prepared the local reserves for intervention, a tactic which on the Taradrua Line which would be more effacious than the Fileya Line, thanks to it being shorter. Then she waited for the Normans and their allies to commit their reserves to the assault.
Inevitably, this they did, determined to take the Taradrua Line, at the least, as the casualties again rose into the thousands of troops from every major contingent, and the same from the smaller ones put together. Once the allied reserves were advancing to hit them, Jhayka ordered her local reserves forward. They arrived with bayonet, rifle, and grenade, and attacked with the vigour of fresh troops fighting for their homeland.
Quickly the Normans and their allies suffered reverses along the line, and the initial attacking forces were driven back out of the trenches even as the concentrated assault columns approached them. These columns—scarcely such in truth, though they had greath depth and momentum, but they were spread out against the threat of the artillery—despite their posture and preparations, still suffered under the vigorous Kalundan fire directed down upon them.
With the current allied forces reeling and in no shape to counterattack until the concentrated assault waves had carried out their own attacks, Jhayka now ordered that all units on the Taradrua Line retreat. The last to go were the heavy weapons, along with snipers to slow down the attackers once they realized what had happened. The slacking of the fire of the heavy weapons, until then continuing to fire with the maximum rapidity into the advancing allied assault columns, told them that something had changed, and the defeated initial waves rallied and attacked.
Against this, the snipers held the line long enough to let the heavy weapons be evacuated, though many were cut off and killed (some brutally) or captured. Others of those cut off made their way back to the Kalundan lines, even as late as three days later. They had done their job, though. The heavy weapons were preserve, and those weapons themselves had savaged the Norman and allied attackers. They had paid a very heavy price for the Taradrua Line, and the Kalundans had suffered incredibly light casualties in comparison.
The second night in the bunkers below the palace came soon enough, and an exhausted Jhayka sought out the sleep which had escaped her over the past days as the artillery rained down. She doubted the morning would be pleasant, and so the longer she held it off the better. Gradually, with tiredness, thoughts of duty faded away, and in the end the last thing that Jhayka thought of was not the situation the next morning and what must be done then, but rather of Danielle, beautiful Danielle..
After midnight it was official. The siege had lasted two weeks, and Kalunda still held. There was no relief in sight, but the Normans still had four defensive lines to assault, and beyond that, feverish efforts continued to turn the city proper into a Gilean Stalingrad. There could be no surrender, only work, killing, and death. The Normans and their allies did not offer mercy to the surrendered, only horrors worth than death, and the Kalundans knew it well.
As for Jhayka, well, she was as mortal as the rest of them, but also an enigma. She was fighting for a foreign monarch, and a foreign cause, when she might have used swiftness and guile to escape the siege and leave the Kalundans to their fate. When she engineered a breakout attempt, she sent foreign civilians rather than herself on her own armoured train, and ordered its commander not to attempt to return until she could return with a relief force. What compelled her to do this?
She was raised in a hard school, to be sure, to standards to make any citizen of a republic, given a middle-class childhood, flinch in shock and think of manifest child abuse. From an age equivalent to that of a human five year old she had been regularly forced to stand in cold water, and remain standing in it until she could make her body stop shivering. She had broken her legs each four times and both arms a total of seven times in vigorous sparring, Rostok riding, and jousting, and suffered three broken ribs, before she had gone to the military academy. She had lived on a diet scarcely enough for her caloric needs, and strictly plain. She had been taught to glory in competition, to draw a sword swiftly enough to make the first strike, and unflinchingly lead her social lessers from the front, just as she stood above them in Taloran society, even if that meant leading them directly into their deaths and her own.
That such a person, then subjected to the further rigours of the military academy and to specialist pioneer school, could laconically face death, and even worry more about her love life (without it distracting once from her duties, which always came first) in the midst of death and her own potential death and that of the person she loved, than of the situation around her, about which she seemed to have no worries whatsoever, might be allowed if she were fighting in defense of her Sovereign Empress and Nation.
But why for this foreign, neo-barbarian King?
The vigorous training was incidental. This was a stand of honour, and therefore, all the other considerations were incidental. A Taloran noble was honourable, and for the sake of her honour, the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it would not let the alien flag of Kalunda been ripped down by the grasping hands of the enemy until they had first also ripped down her life and sent her soul for judgement. It was well and truly war to the knife.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY THIRTEEN
“I wish you success on your mission,” Jhayka smiled brightly to the Amazonian Brigadier, as her rank would be translated to their Kalundan equivalents. She was still recovering from gas, but could make it across the lines well enough, and an Amazonian guard had come forward to receive her after some Crimson Guard had been sent out under a flag of truce earlier that day and said they wished to send Amazon prisoners back to the Amazonians to save them from their own men. The story had been bought.
“I will do my utmost, as I swear upon Diana our Goddess,” the warrioress answered, and smiled as well, the two clasping arms before the Amazon turned away and made her way out through the misty silence near the river, where there was little action from the enemy due to the omnipresent threat of Danielle's gunboats.
Jhayka watched them go and then headed back to her command post. It was lucky the Amazon had finally recovered. They would be needing her help soon enough, and, anyway, they'd have had to wait until the next day before sending her back if her calculations were right. The Normans should attack today, and for that reason, Jhayka made haste, her staff car dodging the occasional shell crashing down from the now constant artillery fire from the enemy.
It had also increased in frequency as the Normans or their allies, or both, were able to acquire more pieces, and some long range katyushas which kept the city under a very heavy if inaccurate fire. The civilians were now all underground, and they needed to be, for large blocks of the city were closed off. Only the palace had not been direct targeted, for obvious symbolic reasons, and also likely political ones (or perhaps simple issues of spoil), yet a few stray rounds and rockets had landed around it, and one on it. The fire crews, including the backup and impressed crews, performed splendidly under the constant hardship.
Jhayka herself had not at first intended to move underground, but after that miss that hit the palace, Julio had the day before commanded them to go underground, all of them, for the sake of the Kingdom. She reluctantly obeyed, and once again found herself in quarters adjacent to Danielle's and Ilavna's, though much smaller than before, just a single room, which in this case she shared a bathroom with Ilavna, a common enough occurrence. The portable steam bath, which could re-use water almost endlessly, was proving a gift directly from the heavens in keeping them nicely clean. Jhayka, in response to moving underground, nonetheless insisted, and Julio consented, that she be allowed to make her rounds of the city, which she already had in the early morning, cheering on the medical personnel and the firefighters, observing the conversion of buildings into fortified strongpoints, and meeting with the families trapped underground in the tunnels for their own safety.
So she would do, until she was no longer able, on the account of death or enemy action cutting her off or cutting off to much of the city. She also visited the troops, as always, and tried to visit the wounded as well. Now she was sleeping very little, and pushing herself very hard. The relaxed atmosphere of the early siege was beginning to fade under the bombardment of the Norman guns. Everyone knew they were cut off now, and nobody had an idea when relief might arrive.
As she was returning from sending her Amazonian captives on their daring mission of plot and conspiracy, the Norman artillery ceased firing on the city.
“Double speed,” Jhayka snapped to the young Crimson Guard girl driving the car, which promptly accelerated recklessly as she brought up the mic of her commo unit. “Prepare for an attack on all sectors.”
“Acknowledged,” central control answered quite grimly.
The Norman artillery opened up again. It was on the front-line trenches of the Taradrua Line, and it was as rapid as they could make it. They're learning, Jhayka thought quite grimly.
And they were. The artillery barrage was very short: Fifteen minutes. Then they shifted back to the rear areas of the Taradrua Line while simultaneously hitting the front line with high-angle weapons, pasting it with rockets and slamming it with countless mortars. The fire was still fairly dispersed across the whole line, but now this portion of the barrage lasted for only five minutes. It was much less time than the Normans had used in their previous barrages, though at the same time there was actually a barrage unlike during the seizure of the Fileya Line. They were obviously trying to achieve a best-of-both-worlds effect; unfortunately for them the barrage was still to long for that, even though the infantry attack followed the instant the mortars ceased to pound the trenches.
Jhayka raced in to the command post in the greatest of haste, coming to a stop against a table (hard enough to hurt) to look and msee that the Normans were taking advantage of the lighter mine and wire defences of the Taradrua Line and had already made excellent progress. Moreover, they all had gas masks which seemed to give them a protection against inhalation agents. That was actually good news—but only in terms of long term strategy, for it meant that what she had planned next could be used on the In'ghara Line, keeping the Normans as far away from the city as she could.
That said, she had no actual intention to try to hold the Taradrua line now. What she would do is make sure that the Normans paid an incredibly heavy price for it, that they suffered very badly. The length of their barragre guaranteed it. Though the trenches had been knocked up for once, they were also fully alert and aware as they manned the lines. A vigorous fusiliade had chopped through the lead Norman ranks over and over again, rolling back and forth across the field as VT fuzed artillery rained down shrapnel over their heads.
They had to attack fast to survive the kind of fire that they were under, and this, at least, the Normans were more than willing and capable of doing. They quickly brought to the fight to point-blank range, and though the thin rows of wire held up the Normans for some time at point-blank into the murderous machine-gun and rifle fire and the artillery and mortars raining down behind them on their comrades trying to come up to support them, the Norman units—mirrored by their allies at every point of the line in this general offensive—blasted holes in the wire with bangalore torpedoes or simply cut it, and pushed home their assault.
The Norman attack was indeed flawless on the Taradrua Line. They had filed in the Fileya Line enough to block the river from continuing to get in, and used bulldozers to good effect in creating crossing points. They'd buried most of their dead in other sections of the trenches even as they opened up advanced trenches, just like they had for their successful assault on the Fileya Line. Now they were learning the painful lessons and had taken them to heart. Siege warfare was a step-by-step process. None of the commanders of the allied armies believed they'd get farther than the Taradrua Line today, at last, having learned their lesson about being overambitious, as well. Though not perfect, this attack was decently planned and ably executed, and it showed.
Kalunda's enemies still suffered heavily to breach the line, though, and the front-line troops held along enough against the Normans and their allies in the vicious hand-to-hand combat which ensued whenever they broke through that the allied forces were concentrating their reserves to break through the weak points, not expecting to be victorious over the line in any other way than by a methodical imitation of the old human tactics of the Brusilov Offense.
Even as the two sides clashed at point of bayonet, Jhayka formulated her plan for withdrawal. She ordered the defenders of the line to Hold, and then prepared the local reserves for intervention, a tactic which on the Taradrua Line which would be more effacious than the Fileya Line, thanks to it being shorter. Then she waited for the Normans and their allies to commit their reserves to the assault.
Inevitably, this they did, determined to take the Taradrua Line, at the least, as the casualties again rose into the thousands of troops from every major contingent, and the same from the smaller ones put together. Once the allied reserves were advancing to hit them, Jhayka ordered her local reserves forward. They arrived with bayonet, rifle, and grenade, and attacked with the vigour of fresh troops fighting for their homeland.
Quickly the Normans and their allies suffered reverses along the line, and the initial attacking forces were driven back out of the trenches even as the concentrated assault columns approached them. These columns—scarcely such in truth, though they had greath depth and momentum, but they were spread out against the threat of the artillery—despite their posture and preparations, still suffered under the vigorous Kalundan fire directed down upon them.
With the current allied forces reeling and in no shape to counterattack until the concentrated assault waves had carried out their own attacks, Jhayka now ordered that all units on the Taradrua Line retreat. The last to go were the heavy weapons, along with snipers to slow down the attackers once they realized what had happened. The slacking of the fire of the heavy weapons, until then continuing to fire with the maximum rapidity into the advancing allied assault columns, told them that something had changed, and the defeated initial waves rallied and attacked.
Against this, the snipers held the line long enough to let the heavy weapons be evacuated, though many were cut off and killed (some brutally) or captured. Others of those cut off made their way back to the Kalundan lines, even as late as three days later. They had done their job, though. The heavy weapons were preserve, and those weapons themselves had savaged the Norman and allied attackers. They had paid a very heavy price for the Taradrua Line, and the Kalundans had suffered incredibly light casualties in comparison.
The second night in the bunkers below the palace came soon enough, and an exhausted Jhayka sought out the sleep which had escaped her over the past days as the artillery rained down. She doubted the morning would be pleasant, and so the longer she held it off the better. Gradually, with tiredness, thoughts of duty faded away, and in the end the last thing that Jhayka thought of was not the situation the next morning and what must be done then, but rather of Danielle, beautiful Danielle..
After midnight it was official. The siege had lasted two weeks, and Kalunda still held. There was no relief in sight, but the Normans still had four defensive lines to assault, and beyond that, feverish efforts continued to turn the city proper into a Gilean Stalingrad. There could be no surrender, only work, killing, and death. The Normans and their allies did not offer mercy to the surrendered, only horrors worth than death, and the Kalundans knew it well.
As for Jhayka, well, she was as mortal as the rest of them, but also an enigma. She was fighting for a foreign monarch, and a foreign cause, when she might have used swiftness and guile to escape the siege and leave the Kalundans to their fate. When she engineered a breakout attempt, she sent foreign civilians rather than herself on her own armoured train, and ordered its commander not to attempt to return until she could return with a relief force. What compelled her to do this?
She was raised in a hard school, to be sure, to standards to make any citizen of a republic, given a middle-class childhood, flinch in shock and think of manifest child abuse. From an age equivalent to that of a human five year old she had been regularly forced to stand in cold water, and remain standing in it until she could make her body stop shivering. She had broken her legs each four times and both arms a total of seven times in vigorous sparring, Rostok riding, and jousting, and suffered three broken ribs, before she had gone to the military academy. She had lived on a diet scarcely enough for her caloric needs, and strictly plain. She had been taught to glory in competition, to draw a sword swiftly enough to make the first strike, and unflinchingly lead her social lessers from the front, just as she stood above them in Taloran society, even if that meant leading them directly into their deaths and her own.
That such a person, then subjected to the further rigours of the military academy and to specialist pioneer school, could laconically face death, and even worry more about her love life (without it distracting once from her duties, which always came first) in the midst of death and her own potential death and that of the person she loved, than of the situation around her, about which she seemed to have no worries whatsoever, might be allowed if she were fighting in defense of her Sovereign Empress and Nation.
But why for this foreign, neo-barbarian King?
The vigorous training was incidental. This was a stand of honour, and therefore, all the other considerations were incidental. A Taloran noble was honourable, and for the sake of her honour, the Princess of the Lesser Intu'it would not let the alien flag of Kalunda been ripped down by the grasping hands of the enemy until they had first also ripped down her life and sent her soul for judgement. It was well and truly war to the knife.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
White Bank, Collinfield, Gilean Confederacy
19 November 2841
16 January 2163 AST
DAY TEN
The planet of Collinfield was one of the top ten in population, with over eight hundred million people in population. The population was incredibly diverse, with Anglo-American, Chinese, Thai, and Armenian populations in abundance, divided amongst large cities, and multiple religious and ideological divides. The planet was thus divided politically, with White Bank as the capital of the planet's largest Wiccan community.
The Federation of Wiccan Lands had brought together it's legislative assembly in light of the crisis. Attending the meeting were emissaries from neighbors, including the Mormon communities of Smithland to the north, the confederated Taoist communes and villages to the north and west, and the FWL's major southern neighbor, the Christian Republic of New Hampton, there attendance being the most surprising as they were typically insular and distrustful of outsiders.
As reports of the coup in Cranstonville were made, the assembly remained deathly quiet. Finally their leader came before them; Stuart Bell, the Federation president, and his wife, a beautiful priestess of Diana named Athene. "My friends, fellow worshipers of the Old Ways, the crisis we are faced with is a danger to us all. It has been centuries since our ancestors fled the brutal conquerers of Devenshire, and we have made a life for ourselves here in that time."
"But now it is all in jeopardy. The military has usurped the legitimate government of the Confederacy. Our nation's representatives are held hostage by them even now. Whether they are acting on behalf of a foreign power or for their own ambition, we cannot allow this to go unanswered. I plead to you, now, that we call up our militia and ask for the support of Captain Gabrielle Lewis, one of our number and the leader of the naval flotilla in this system, so that we might defend our way of life from those who would seek to impose another upon us!"
Bell was answered by cheers, and his wife smiled at him gracefully. He did not return the smile, trying to maintain a serious air. "Our neighbors, though we have had our problems in the past, have also declared for maintaining our traditional freedoms. Let us march toge...."
The door to the assembly chamber burst open. A young Chinese woman ran in, panting and screaming things in Chinese. The emissary of the Taoists looked like he'd been kicked, and all eyes accordingly turned toward him. "She says... she says that our lands have been invaded by the militias from Seville." Listening to her panicked words while the assembly reacted to news that their powerful northern neighbor had attacked, the emissary continued to speak. "They have declared themselves in favor of the coup.... they are demanding that all of our nations submit to the new central authority of the Confederacy... to keep our foreign powers."
The decision was thus taken out of their hands, in more ways than one. Even as this ad hoc coalition of nations rose to oppose attack from the north, an attack from the South by central military troops loyal to the coup developed from the cities of Weatherford and Saint Andrew.
By the 20th of November 2841 Local Calendar, the entire planet of Collinfield - like most planets in the Gilean Confederacy - was torn apart in the growing civil war.
East Port, Gilead
DAY ELEVEN
The boat came to a stop at one of the surviving piers in the city, and a host of Gilean troops headed off. There was fighting in the distance, the attack against the Norman and Allied holdouts continuing.
Stepping off with the troops, in BDUs loaned her by an officer, was Tessa Stuart. Her short red hair was obscured by a combat helmet, and a sidearm was holstered on her belt. She had no identifiable rank insignia, since she wasn't in the military - she was simply an "observor". Here, it would be her responsibility to help coordinate operations and find a way to get contact with Kalunda.
Satellite pictures showed that a defense line around the city had been taken by the Normans, but just one - the entire city was swiftly building up for a vicious defense. Tessa would expect that much from them.
The most troubling thing for her was her inability to get a hold of Sara. Her calls to Illustrious had only revealed that "the Grand Duchess is away on business, may I take a message?", making Tessa feel uneasy. The last thing the situation needed was Sara - now a major political figure in Devenshire - intervening in the war in same way.
A jeep was waiting for her. A driver nodded at her and drove her away, presumably toward barracks where she would wait for confirmation on an appointment to see the commanders of the city. And from there, only God knew what would happen.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY TWELVE
Dani was in her office when the door opened. She looked up and was surprised to see Amber, clad in a new Coastal Flotilla uniform with the rank of Colonel. "Minister?" Dani rose from her seat, feeling very uncomfortable.
Amber shook her head and handed Dani a piece of paper. "I've resigned that position. My commission in the Crimson Guards has been reactivated, and I have been transferred to the Flotilla. I await your command, Admiral."
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm tired of watching my people fight for their lives while I'm tucked away in the palace doing paperwork, Admiral. I want to fight. And I know the river well, so the Flotilla was a natural choice."
Dani bit into her lip. She'd heard some of what happened the morning after Amber's profession of love, but to see her here and now, the intensity in her eyes, brought it closer to her attention. She was afraid that Amber was looking for a way to get herself killed, but it occurred to her that she would've more easily accomplished that by a combat command. She finally nodded. "Very well, Colonel." Dani picked up her wireless keyboard and began typing in an order as Amber waited. "I'm awarding you a brevet commission as Squadron Captain, Amber. You'll fly your flag from the Harry Truman and command it's squadron of four gunboats. Your boats have close support weapons, and your knowledge of the river will help to keep them from accidentally hitting banks and getting beached."
Amber nodded stoically. "Thank you, Madame, for giving me this chance."
Dani flinched - she didn't like the original form of address to officers in the Crimson Guards. "That's 'Sir', Captain. In the Flotilla you refer to a superior officer as 'Sir'."
"Yes Sir," Amber replied. Finally she showed a bit of her whimsical nature by grinning slightly and asking, "Is it such a good idea to have the Flotilla alter protocol in this situation?"
"Not at all," was Dani's reply. "It reinforces the change in their duties and requirements. The new uniforms, the new forms of address, it all works toward the same goal."
Amber nodded appreciably. Meanwhile, Dani received a call from her aide and had him send in the caller. Two people appeared at the door, and Dani recognized them as a Vulcan couple - Sybak and T'Pyra. She crossed her hands at the sight of the ethnographers, who like Dani had been touring the Primitive Zone for their intellectual work They were now wearing, respectively, the uniforms of the River Defense Fleet and the Crimson Guard, applying engineering and construction knowledge of their own - like many Vulcans they had a number of skills - to help hasten the construction in Dani's boatyards. The Vulcans saluted crisply and paid little attention to Amber. It was T'Pyra who spoke, with an almost girlish, yet cold, voice. "Admiral, we anticipate the final completion of the flag boats and their immediate escorts in three days. The Liberty has been further equipped with the added electronics necessary for you to maintain overall control of the boat fleets, as per your request."
"Thank you, Mr. T'Pyra," Dani said, again adhering strongly to her own protocol. "Allow me to introduce you to Squadron Captain Amber Proctor d'Kellius."
The two looked toward her, appraising her swiftly. "Minister d'Kellius, live long and prosper," T'Pyra said, again taking the lead - apparently she and her husband had decided she would take the lead when dealing with Crimson Guard personnel.
"Thank you, and the same to you," Amber replied, "but I am not a Minister. I am merely a... Squadron Captain, as the Admiral has said."
The Vulcans merely nodded.
Dani cleared her throat a bit. "Please, Major T'Pyra, escort the Captain to the Harry Truman."
"Of course, Admiral. Please, this way Sir." The couple led Amber out.
Dani sighed and looked back to her papers. Soon she would head back to the boat that would spirit her across the river and to the underground entrances to the tunnels beneath the palace. There she would participate in meetings well into the night - as was usual - before retiring to her room, again, for some sleep.
19 November 2841
16 January 2163 AST
DAY TEN
The planet of Collinfield was one of the top ten in population, with over eight hundred million people in population. The population was incredibly diverse, with Anglo-American, Chinese, Thai, and Armenian populations in abundance, divided amongst large cities, and multiple religious and ideological divides. The planet was thus divided politically, with White Bank as the capital of the planet's largest Wiccan community.
The Federation of Wiccan Lands had brought together it's legislative assembly in light of the crisis. Attending the meeting were emissaries from neighbors, including the Mormon communities of Smithland to the north, the confederated Taoist communes and villages to the north and west, and the FWL's major southern neighbor, the Christian Republic of New Hampton, there attendance being the most surprising as they were typically insular and distrustful of outsiders.
As reports of the coup in Cranstonville were made, the assembly remained deathly quiet. Finally their leader came before them; Stuart Bell, the Federation president, and his wife, a beautiful priestess of Diana named Athene. "My friends, fellow worshipers of the Old Ways, the crisis we are faced with is a danger to us all. It has been centuries since our ancestors fled the brutal conquerers of Devenshire, and we have made a life for ourselves here in that time."
"But now it is all in jeopardy. The military has usurped the legitimate government of the Confederacy. Our nation's representatives are held hostage by them even now. Whether they are acting on behalf of a foreign power or for their own ambition, we cannot allow this to go unanswered. I plead to you, now, that we call up our militia and ask for the support of Captain Gabrielle Lewis, one of our number and the leader of the naval flotilla in this system, so that we might defend our way of life from those who would seek to impose another upon us!"
Bell was answered by cheers, and his wife smiled at him gracefully. He did not return the smile, trying to maintain a serious air. "Our neighbors, though we have had our problems in the past, have also declared for maintaining our traditional freedoms. Let us march toge...."
The door to the assembly chamber burst open. A young Chinese woman ran in, panting and screaming things in Chinese. The emissary of the Taoists looked like he'd been kicked, and all eyes accordingly turned toward him. "She says... she says that our lands have been invaded by the militias from Seville." Listening to her panicked words while the assembly reacted to news that their powerful northern neighbor had attacked, the emissary continued to speak. "They have declared themselves in favor of the coup.... they are demanding that all of our nations submit to the new central authority of the Confederacy... to keep our foreign powers."
The decision was thus taken out of their hands, in more ways than one. Even as this ad hoc coalition of nations rose to oppose attack from the north, an attack from the South by central military troops loyal to the coup developed from the cities of Weatherford and Saint Andrew.
By the 20th of November 2841 Local Calendar, the entire planet of Collinfield - like most planets in the Gilean Confederacy - was torn apart in the growing civil war.
East Port, Gilead
DAY ELEVEN
The boat came to a stop at one of the surviving piers in the city, and a host of Gilean troops headed off. There was fighting in the distance, the attack against the Norman and Allied holdouts continuing.
Stepping off with the troops, in BDUs loaned her by an officer, was Tessa Stuart. Her short red hair was obscured by a combat helmet, and a sidearm was holstered on her belt. She had no identifiable rank insignia, since she wasn't in the military - she was simply an "observor". Here, it would be her responsibility to help coordinate operations and find a way to get contact with Kalunda.
Satellite pictures showed that a defense line around the city had been taken by the Normans, but just one - the entire city was swiftly building up for a vicious defense. Tessa would expect that much from them.
The most troubling thing for her was her inability to get a hold of Sara. Her calls to Illustrious had only revealed that "the Grand Duchess is away on business, may I take a message?", making Tessa feel uneasy. The last thing the situation needed was Sara - now a major political figure in Devenshire - intervening in the war in same way.
A jeep was waiting for her. A driver nodded at her and drove her away, presumably toward barracks where she would wait for confirmation on an appointment to see the commanders of the city. And from there, only God knew what would happen.
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY TWELVE
Dani was in her office when the door opened. She looked up and was surprised to see Amber, clad in a new Coastal Flotilla uniform with the rank of Colonel. "Minister?" Dani rose from her seat, feeling very uncomfortable.
Amber shook her head and handed Dani a piece of paper. "I've resigned that position. My commission in the Crimson Guards has been reactivated, and I have been transferred to the Flotilla. I await your command, Admiral."
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm tired of watching my people fight for their lives while I'm tucked away in the palace doing paperwork, Admiral. I want to fight. And I know the river well, so the Flotilla was a natural choice."
Dani bit into her lip. She'd heard some of what happened the morning after Amber's profession of love, but to see her here and now, the intensity in her eyes, brought it closer to her attention. She was afraid that Amber was looking for a way to get herself killed, but it occurred to her that she would've more easily accomplished that by a combat command. She finally nodded. "Very well, Colonel." Dani picked up her wireless keyboard and began typing in an order as Amber waited. "I'm awarding you a brevet commission as Squadron Captain, Amber. You'll fly your flag from the Harry Truman and command it's squadron of four gunboats. Your boats have close support weapons, and your knowledge of the river will help to keep them from accidentally hitting banks and getting beached."
Amber nodded stoically. "Thank you, Madame, for giving me this chance."
Dani flinched - she didn't like the original form of address to officers in the Crimson Guards. "That's 'Sir', Captain. In the Flotilla you refer to a superior officer as 'Sir'."
"Yes Sir," Amber replied. Finally she showed a bit of her whimsical nature by grinning slightly and asking, "Is it such a good idea to have the Flotilla alter protocol in this situation?"
"Not at all," was Dani's reply. "It reinforces the change in their duties and requirements. The new uniforms, the new forms of address, it all works toward the same goal."
Amber nodded appreciably. Meanwhile, Dani received a call from her aide and had him send in the caller. Two people appeared at the door, and Dani recognized them as a Vulcan couple - Sybak and T'Pyra. She crossed her hands at the sight of the ethnographers, who like Dani had been touring the Primitive Zone for their intellectual work They were now wearing, respectively, the uniforms of the River Defense Fleet and the Crimson Guard, applying engineering and construction knowledge of their own - like many Vulcans they had a number of skills - to help hasten the construction in Dani's boatyards. The Vulcans saluted crisply and paid little attention to Amber. It was T'Pyra who spoke, with an almost girlish, yet cold, voice. "Admiral, we anticipate the final completion of the flag boats and their immediate escorts in three days. The Liberty has been further equipped with the added electronics necessary for you to maintain overall control of the boat fleets, as per your request."
"Thank you, Mr. T'Pyra," Dani said, again adhering strongly to her own protocol. "Allow me to introduce you to Squadron Captain Amber Proctor d'Kellius."
The two looked toward her, appraising her swiftly. "Minister d'Kellius, live long and prosper," T'Pyra said, again taking the lead - apparently she and her husband had decided she would take the lead when dealing with Crimson Guard personnel.
"Thank you, and the same to you," Amber replied, "but I am not a Minister. I am merely a... Squadron Captain, as the Admiral has said."
The Vulcans merely nodded.
Dani cleared her throat a bit. "Please, Major T'Pyra, escort the Captain to the Harry Truman."
"Of course, Admiral. Please, this way Sir." The couple led Amber out.
Dani sighed and looked back to her papers. Soon she would head back to the boat that would spirit her across the river and to the underground entrances to the tunnels beneath the palace. There she would participate in meetings well into the night - as was usual - before retiring to her room, again, for some sleep.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Written by Marina and myself:
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FOURTEEN
After the day's meetings, Dani went to seek out Jhayka. It was getting late, and she wanted very much to see her tonight and talk once again, given she would soon be transferring her lodgings to a small bunk on the Liberty.
Walking through the underground tunnels, Dani remembered the book by Sara Proctor she'd read and the former purpose of some of the chambers here. That this is where the girls of Kalunda, aged 21, where taken after their adulthood rites. Machines were down here, restraint racks with nerve stimulators that were meant for the sole purpose of bombarding the newly-enslaved with sexual stimulation until their bodies became physically addicted to it.
Now there were no signs of the devices. The rooms they were once housed in had been converted to living quarters, or mess halls, or storage rooms. Dani was comforted to know that the lodgings she and the others had been assigned were not part of the old "dungeon" but rather an annex built in the last fifteen years to house the government underground if it was necessary. Now that network was being added to by hasty construction to provide the Kalundans an underground redoubt should the surface of their city be completely occupied by the enemy.
She did, finally, come to Jhayka's small room, not far from the one she would be vacating. She knocked on the door carefully, waiting for a response.
Jhayka opened up the door after a delay. For a surprising change, she was not fully dressed as such; she was wearing short pantaloons, broad leggings to them which cut off halfway down the shin and might be mistaken for a skirt at first glance they were so voluminous, and slippers; with, above that, a sort of short sheer robe which covered her upper body and stretched down over the pantaloons, and was closed only by a belt across the waist. Her pink hair was fully let down and hung crazily, disordered, as her gray eyes looked on to Dani for a moment, and she murmured. "Come in, please," stepping back and opening up the door all the day. Though she seemed fine it was also clear she was rather tired.
At first Dani was a bit stunned. She had never, ever, seen Jhayka so immodestly dressed. Through the blue sheer robe - which looked so lovely on Jhayka - Dani saw the most skin she'd ever seen on Jhayka before. It was an interesting contradiction: Jhayka's build, by human standards, was not attractive at all, but Dani found her nearly irresistable. It was everything she could do to try and reduce the surprise she was showing when Dani entered and looked around the laconically-furnished room, trying to keep her eyes from concentrating too closely on Jhayka. "Not exactly the palatial suites above ground, are they?"
Given the informality and uncharacteristic openness of Jhayka's wear, not to mention for her own comfort, Dani removed her uniform jacket, revealing the strapless red silk bodice underneath that had - before her alterations - been the top piece of the Crimson Guard's River Flotilla uniform. She'd taken to wearing it over the strapless bras available in Kalunda, since it was slightly more modest and the weather wasn't quite right for a full shirt under the uniform jacket. It was flattering still, baring her shoulders and the upper edge of her torso - including her cleavage - despite Dani's best attempts to raise it higher. She looked around for somewhere to set the jacket down, keeping it over her shoulder in the meantime.
"I'm sorry, but I was about to go to sleep and so I'd already put on my night-clothes, as I'm rather tired from handling the situation, which was quite strenuous for me today. Mentally, in particular." Jhayka gestured to one of the chairs over to the right, by the table, even as she moved to the bed. "You'll sit with me, yes?" A smile was offered as she moved to sit on the bed herself, and then looked back up to Danielle. What of her skin as could be seen showed that the pattern of very pale white, faintly gray-green tinted flesh held, it seemed, over the whole of a Taloran body.
Dani took one of the chairs by it's back and pulled it over to the bed to face Jhayka. She sat down, trying to control her blush. "I'm sorry I kept you awake. I... just wanted to see you again. Tomorrow I'm transferring over to the Liberty. I have a small stateroom on it - about half the size of this, really just a bed and a small closet with the door nearby - so I won't be coming back here for a while, I figure. So... I didn't know how long it'd be from tonight before we could talk again."
"I'm not sure, either. But please don't feel bad about keeping me up.. I'm glad to have you here, there's some things that we need to talk about, really, especially since you're going off to take charge of the river squadron.. Though I'm not sure you really need to stay aboard the ships, seeing as how small the theatre of operations is.. But that is not me being realistic." She stretched lazily, and flopped down on the bed, so that her ears drowned in her hair. Even laying like that, it was rather hard to tell that she had breasts, as her bulbous eyes looked up and over to Danielle. "I'm in love with you," she said simply, and perhaps a bit wryly.
Dani felt a warm feeling in her heart at hearing those words. She tried to speak at first, but couldn't, because of how happy they made her feel. She smiled widely and leaned forward, hands together, looking at the Taloran princess stretched out before her on the bed, her appearance inherently something meant to be intimate between them. "You love me, Jhayka?" Dani's voice remained deceptively strong. She was on the verge of delirious happiness. "I... that means a lot to me. May I... May I sit on the edge of the bed beside you?"
"Well, certainly." Jhayka made a little noise then that seemed halfway between a giggle and a laugh with a self-amused look on her face. "I'm not going to stop you, anyway, though you seem to be making quite a lot of that statement I just made..." She stretched out her hands high above her head, stretching her limbs long as far as her eyes rested on Danielle. "I figured it would be best to get that out right now and all."
Dani sat right at the edge of the bed, not daring to lay down beside Jhayka, not wanting to scare her in any way. Still, to see Jhayka stretching out, arms above her head, the moment seemed to have taken on a life of it's own. "Jhayka...." Dani drew in a breath, a joyful smile joined by tears from the conflict of hope and fear in her heart. "I make a lot of it.... because I love you too."
Jhayka visibly shuddered. "I.. I wanted to hear that badly. And yet... Oh, by the Lord, Dani, dearheart.. What are we getting ourselves into? You're so sweet and straightforward, and I like that so much, but what are we compared with all the force of all our peoples? We might not even live out the month and, well.." She took a heavy breath and folded her hands over her stomach. "What do you think? I'm not sure; I've just brought myself pain and suffering in the past and I seem to be aiming toward the same sort of relationship, except with the added dimension of entirely different heritage and, by the Deceiver, completely different genetics. How do we even know that we're thinking of the same thing when we think of love? Yet for a human your loyalty to your friends is exceptional; it's brought us here, and that's a very Taloran thing, if I may say it."
Dani sighed softly. She gently laid back on the bed, putting her hands under her head and looking at Jhayka. "You say you love me, and I say I love you. That is enough for me - I am willing to accept that our thoughts might be slightly different, if only for the fact that we love each other, and there must be some common ground in our beliefs of what love is to make it work." Dani looked at Jhayka's sad, bewildered gray eyes. "Genetics, culture, the past.... I don't see how we can let any of that get in the way. But, if it will make you feel better, Jhayka..." Dani turned, laying on her side and facing Jhayka directly. "When you say you love me, what do you mean by it?"
"Images and analogies, a tangle of things drifting around a centre I can't see.." Jhayka began softly. "I suppose it is rather hard to define love when I can't define it myself!" The exclaimation was soft and yet firm at the same time. "I see warm evenings by the fireplace, a charming laugh at the dinner table--your's--teaching you khasti dancing, and brushing up against you close when we dance.. Reading a book in your lap and laying together under a blanket on cool and mild winter evenings. Spear-fishing under the spring sun for eel, distant cruises to places where nobody cares who we are.. Amused looks exchanged when guests are entertained, a relationship unspoken but forever. A long time passing, in peace, a wonderful sort of feeling of presence. Keeping warm together in bed at night, and bathing together.. The look on your face when you're delighted, and that fine and supple curve of your's, shown best when you're swimming like you were in this city in times of peace.." A sharp inhalation, unsteady, at that. "I see it all between us forever and I want it all. All those things I see feel natural with you, not forced imaginations but things that already were and simply are to be realized. Is the desire to realize them with the person who forms their centre, the consuming light of those dreams, love? To a Taloran it is, anyway."
Jhayka's words brought tears to Dani's eyes. She listened to Jhayka intently, and when she was done, Dani began to speak and do so softly, her heart warm and full of longing. "When I think of love, I think of holding you tight, of laying my head on your chest and hearing your heart beat. I think of moonlit walks down a tropical beach hand-in-hand, the stars twinkling over us, the night breeze from the sea cool and refreshing. I think of quiet moments in the morning, when neither of us wants to be the first to get out of the bed because we enjoy being beside each other so much. I think... of silent moments spent together, of enjoying the things we both like to do and learning the things we each like to do. I think of your eyes and how they show you as you are. They show when you are sad, when you are happy, when you feel cold and when you want me to make you feel warm. I think of your sweet blush, and how fun it is to bring out, and how well it speaks of you." Dani reached for Jhayka, offering her hand to be taken. "I think of us holding hands, enjoying what we share together, what we have for each other, for as long as we live.... and beyond."
Jhayka reached out gently with her hand and took Dani's gently, even as she smiled a rather fond and amused smile. "Dani, love, I know better than that. I know that a Taloran blush looks like a human on the verge of throwing up. The only reason you like it is because you have so much fun in making me blush like that." She said that, but it was more than that. Her eyes were amused, and her ears quivered with that amusement and it was clear she was lightly teasing, in a very fond matter as between two dear hearts, and her own was full of joy, even though it was tinged with sadness at the knowledge of all that stood between them, so that she whispered gently: "You're embarking down a rather hard road, though, to be my lover.."
Dani's smile remained playful as she took Jhayka's tease in stride. She brought her other hand up and clasped Jhayka's gently. "After all I have been through, Jhayka.... I would walk down any road to be with you. I love you, Jhayka, and I want to be with you." One of her hands moved slowly up Jhayka's right arm until it reached her shoulder, which Dani gripped softly. She brought her head ever so closely to Jhayka's, her face drawing closer, as well as her lips, tingling as they were in the desire to press against Jhayka's.
Jhayka stared at Dani for a long moment, holding hands together, and uncertain... She had invited Dani in to gently tell her that it was impossible, but looking into her eyes she found herself unable to do so, to hurt Dani like that in cutting off what they had. "We're already walking down a trial of fire.. But these other difficulties will be harder and longer and... I don't want you to suffer unhappiness at my side..." She fell silent. Looked at Danielle. Kissed her. It was a chaste kiss on the lips, short and gentle brush of lips on lips. Nothing more. Yet the contact was electric and Jhayka shivered again at it as she murmured, softly.. "I say that precisely because I love you, Dani, but.. I can't ask you to stay away from me. I'd break your heart in addition to mine, after all. And I can't do that."
Dani thought her heart would explode at the small, chaste kiss on her lips. She could see Jhayka's conflict, being convinced that their love would be painful and unhappy, but Dani believed otherwise. "I will never be unhappy with you, Jhayka. Never. We will deal with whatever comes however we can, but I will never leave your side, not in my heart."
Tears were continuing to come from Dani's green eyes as they kept an intense look on Jhayka's. Her right hand continued to grip Jhayka's hand, her left moved a little closer to Jhayka's neck. Thinking of no more words to say, Dani kissed Jhayka on the lips. It was not quite as chaste as Jhayka's kiss, her lips coming together and tugging on Jhayka's lower lip, as if to invite her to open her mouth further and let their tongues touch. "Let whatever it is come, Jhayka. Let it come, just so long as we stay together."
Jhayka accepted the kiss against her lips, though the typically stoic Taloran didn't quite react to tugging, more a pleasing suction which itself was almost like a shock of secret sin which at the same time brought electric delight to Jhayka, who couldn't escape the idea that it was just going to follow in the disasters of her previous relationships, indeed, but in the end couldn't help but make the effort. She very gently broke the kiss to whisper in a voice as soft as a light breath of air: "We will. We'll stay together no matter what, for as long as we live. I'll stand by you forever, no matter what the people say." She drew back a bit, but only, with the way her eyes went, to take in Danielle better, a fond look in them. "We'll stand our ground together here, in the heart."
"Yes, yes we will," Dani said happily. She moved her hand up to touch Jhayka's cheek. She could see how tired Jhayka was - she felt tired too - and so she pulled herself closer, pressing her lips to Jhayka's cheek in a pleasing little kiss. "Let's stay together tonight. I mean, let's sleep together, here, in each other's arms, and leave the rest to our dreams."
"Yes..." Jhayka sighed as the third kiss was broken. It was comfortable for her, in that chaste way, and sort of like stealing one away from her parents, even though sleeping together like that... "But let's not forget the covers." A soft smile. "It's very cold down here in the tunnels, and even with an electric blanket it can be rather cold without someone in bed with you.." She pushed off her slippers, and smiled gently, if tiredly, her hair like a pink blanket over the bed.
Dani removed her shoes and uniform, leaving the strapless bra and thigh-length undershorts on, and helped Jhayka pull the blanket over themselves. It was cold for now, but she could feel the heat from Jhayka and drew closer to her, putting her arms around Jhayka as they shared a large pillow. Dani gave her one final kiss, almost as chaste as the first they'd shared, and whispered, "Good night my love."
Jhayka wrapped her arms back around Dani and tucked her head up against the slightly shorter woman's, the blankets warming up over them quickly enough as she leaned back into the pillow and smiled at the kiss. "Goodnight, Dani."
Kalunda, Gilead
DAY FOURTEEN
After the day's meetings, Dani went to seek out Jhayka. It was getting late, and she wanted very much to see her tonight and talk once again, given she would soon be transferring her lodgings to a small bunk on the Liberty.
Walking through the underground tunnels, Dani remembered the book by Sara Proctor she'd read and the former purpose of some of the chambers here. That this is where the girls of Kalunda, aged 21, where taken after their adulthood rites. Machines were down here, restraint racks with nerve stimulators that were meant for the sole purpose of bombarding the newly-enslaved with sexual stimulation until their bodies became physically addicted to it.
Now there were no signs of the devices. The rooms they were once housed in had been converted to living quarters, or mess halls, or storage rooms. Dani was comforted to know that the lodgings she and the others had been assigned were not part of the old "dungeon" but rather an annex built in the last fifteen years to house the government underground if it was necessary. Now that network was being added to by hasty construction to provide the Kalundans an underground redoubt should the surface of their city be completely occupied by the enemy.
She did, finally, come to Jhayka's small room, not far from the one she would be vacating. She knocked on the door carefully, waiting for a response.
Jhayka opened up the door after a delay. For a surprising change, she was not fully dressed as such; she was wearing short pantaloons, broad leggings to them which cut off halfway down the shin and might be mistaken for a skirt at first glance they were so voluminous, and slippers; with, above that, a sort of short sheer robe which covered her upper body and stretched down over the pantaloons, and was closed only by a belt across the waist. Her pink hair was fully let down and hung crazily, disordered, as her gray eyes looked on to Dani for a moment, and she murmured. "Come in, please," stepping back and opening up the door all the day. Though she seemed fine it was also clear she was rather tired.
At first Dani was a bit stunned. She had never, ever, seen Jhayka so immodestly dressed. Through the blue sheer robe - which looked so lovely on Jhayka - Dani saw the most skin she'd ever seen on Jhayka before. It was an interesting contradiction: Jhayka's build, by human standards, was not attractive at all, but Dani found her nearly irresistable. It was everything she could do to try and reduce the surprise she was showing when Dani entered and looked around the laconically-furnished room, trying to keep her eyes from concentrating too closely on Jhayka. "Not exactly the palatial suites above ground, are they?"
Given the informality and uncharacteristic openness of Jhayka's wear, not to mention for her own comfort, Dani removed her uniform jacket, revealing the strapless red silk bodice underneath that had - before her alterations - been the top piece of the Crimson Guard's River Flotilla uniform. She'd taken to wearing it over the strapless bras available in Kalunda, since it was slightly more modest and the weather wasn't quite right for a full shirt under the uniform jacket. It was flattering still, baring her shoulders and the upper edge of her torso - including her cleavage - despite Dani's best attempts to raise it higher. She looked around for somewhere to set the jacket down, keeping it over her shoulder in the meantime.
"I'm sorry, but I was about to go to sleep and so I'd already put on my night-clothes, as I'm rather tired from handling the situation, which was quite strenuous for me today. Mentally, in particular." Jhayka gestured to one of the chairs over to the right, by the table, even as she moved to the bed. "You'll sit with me, yes?" A smile was offered as she moved to sit on the bed herself, and then looked back up to Danielle. What of her skin as could be seen showed that the pattern of very pale white, faintly gray-green tinted flesh held, it seemed, over the whole of a Taloran body.
Dani took one of the chairs by it's back and pulled it over to the bed to face Jhayka. She sat down, trying to control her blush. "I'm sorry I kept you awake. I... just wanted to see you again. Tomorrow I'm transferring over to the Liberty. I have a small stateroom on it - about half the size of this, really just a bed and a small closet with the door nearby - so I won't be coming back here for a while, I figure. So... I didn't know how long it'd be from tonight before we could talk again."
"I'm not sure, either. But please don't feel bad about keeping me up.. I'm glad to have you here, there's some things that we need to talk about, really, especially since you're going off to take charge of the river squadron.. Though I'm not sure you really need to stay aboard the ships, seeing as how small the theatre of operations is.. But that is not me being realistic." She stretched lazily, and flopped down on the bed, so that her ears drowned in her hair. Even laying like that, it was rather hard to tell that she had breasts, as her bulbous eyes looked up and over to Danielle. "I'm in love with you," she said simply, and perhaps a bit wryly.
Dani felt a warm feeling in her heart at hearing those words. She tried to speak at first, but couldn't, because of how happy they made her feel. She smiled widely and leaned forward, hands together, looking at the Taloran princess stretched out before her on the bed, her appearance inherently something meant to be intimate between them. "You love me, Jhayka?" Dani's voice remained deceptively strong. She was on the verge of delirious happiness. "I... that means a lot to me. May I... May I sit on the edge of the bed beside you?"
"Well, certainly." Jhayka made a little noise then that seemed halfway between a giggle and a laugh with a self-amused look on her face. "I'm not going to stop you, anyway, though you seem to be making quite a lot of that statement I just made..." She stretched out her hands high above her head, stretching her limbs long as far as her eyes rested on Danielle. "I figured it would be best to get that out right now and all."
Dani sat right at the edge of the bed, not daring to lay down beside Jhayka, not wanting to scare her in any way. Still, to see Jhayka stretching out, arms above her head, the moment seemed to have taken on a life of it's own. "Jhayka...." Dani drew in a breath, a joyful smile joined by tears from the conflict of hope and fear in her heart. "I make a lot of it.... because I love you too."
Jhayka visibly shuddered. "I.. I wanted to hear that badly. And yet... Oh, by the Lord, Dani, dearheart.. What are we getting ourselves into? You're so sweet and straightforward, and I like that so much, but what are we compared with all the force of all our peoples? We might not even live out the month and, well.." She took a heavy breath and folded her hands over her stomach. "What do you think? I'm not sure; I've just brought myself pain and suffering in the past and I seem to be aiming toward the same sort of relationship, except with the added dimension of entirely different heritage and, by the Deceiver, completely different genetics. How do we even know that we're thinking of the same thing when we think of love? Yet for a human your loyalty to your friends is exceptional; it's brought us here, and that's a very Taloran thing, if I may say it."
Dani sighed softly. She gently laid back on the bed, putting her hands under her head and looking at Jhayka. "You say you love me, and I say I love you. That is enough for me - I am willing to accept that our thoughts might be slightly different, if only for the fact that we love each other, and there must be some common ground in our beliefs of what love is to make it work." Dani looked at Jhayka's sad, bewildered gray eyes. "Genetics, culture, the past.... I don't see how we can let any of that get in the way. But, if it will make you feel better, Jhayka..." Dani turned, laying on her side and facing Jhayka directly. "When you say you love me, what do you mean by it?"
"Images and analogies, a tangle of things drifting around a centre I can't see.." Jhayka began softly. "I suppose it is rather hard to define love when I can't define it myself!" The exclaimation was soft and yet firm at the same time. "I see warm evenings by the fireplace, a charming laugh at the dinner table--your's--teaching you khasti dancing, and brushing up against you close when we dance.. Reading a book in your lap and laying together under a blanket on cool and mild winter evenings. Spear-fishing under the spring sun for eel, distant cruises to places where nobody cares who we are.. Amused looks exchanged when guests are entertained, a relationship unspoken but forever. A long time passing, in peace, a wonderful sort of feeling of presence. Keeping warm together in bed at night, and bathing together.. The look on your face when you're delighted, and that fine and supple curve of your's, shown best when you're swimming like you were in this city in times of peace.." A sharp inhalation, unsteady, at that. "I see it all between us forever and I want it all. All those things I see feel natural with you, not forced imaginations but things that already were and simply are to be realized. Is the desire to realize them with the person who forms their centre, the consuming light of those dreams, love? To a Taloran it is, anyway."
Jhayka's words brought tears to Dani's eyes. She listened to Jhayka intently, and when she was done, Dani began to speak and do so softly, her heart warm and full of longing. "When I think of love, I think of holding you tight, of laying my head on your chest and hearing your heart beat. I think of moonlit walks down a tropical beach hand-in-hand, the stars twinkling over us, the night breeze from the sea cool and refreshing. I think of quiet moments in the morning, when neither of us wants to be the first to get out of the bed because we enjoy being beside each other so much. I think... of silent moments spent together, of enjoying the things we both like to do and learning the things we each like to do. I think of your eyes and how they show you as you are. They show when you are sad, when you are happy, when you feel cold and when you want me to make you feel warm. I think of your sweet blush, and how fun it is to bring out, and how well it speaks of you." Dani reached for Jhayka, offering her hand to be taken. "I think of us holding hands, enjoying what we share together, what we have for each other, for as long as we live.... and beyond."
Jhayka reached out gently with her hand and took Dani's gently, even as she smiled a rather fond and amused smile. "Dani, love, I know better than that. I know that a Taloran blush looks like a human on the verge of throwing up. The only reason you like it is because you have so much fun in making me blush like that." She said that, but it was more than that. Her eyes were amused, and her ears quivered with that amusement and it was clear she was lightly teasing, in a very fond matter as between two dear hearts, and her own was full of joy, even though it was tinged with sadness at the knowledge of all that stood between them, so that she whispered gently: "You're embarking down a rather hard road, though, to be my lover.."
Dani's smile remained playful as she took Jhayka's tease in stride. She brought her other hand up and clasped Jhayka's gently. "After all I have been through, Jhayka.... I would walk down any road to be with you. I love you, Jhayka, and I want to be with you." One of her hands moved slowly up Jhayka's right arm until it reached her shoulder, which Dani gripped softly. She brought her head ever so closely to Jhayka's, her face drawing closer, as well as her lips, tingling as they were in the desire to press against Jhayka's.
Jhayka stared at Dani for a long moment, holding hands together, and uncertain... She had invited Dani in to gently tell her that it was impossible, but looking into her eyes she found herself unable to do so, to hurt Dani like that in cutting off what they had. "We're already walking down a trial of fire.. But these other difficulties will be harder and longer and... I don't want you to suffer unhappiness at my side..." She fell silent. Looked at Danielle. Kissed her. It was a chaste kiss on the lips, short and gentle brush of lips on lips. Nothing more. Yet the contact was electric and Jhayka shivered again at it as she murmured, softly.. "I say that precisely because I love you, Dani, but.. I can't ask you to stay away from me. I'd break your heart in addition to mine, after all. And I can't do that."
Dani thought her heart would explode at the small, chaste kiss on her lips. She could see Jhayka's conflict, being convinced that their love would be painful and unhappy, but Dani believed otherwise. "I will never be unhappy with you, Jhayka. Never. We will deal with whatever comes however we can, but I will never leave your side, not in my heart."
Tears were continuing to come from Dani's green eyes as they kept an intense look on Jhayka's. Her right hand continued to grip Jhayka's hand, her left moved a little closer to Jhayka's neck. Thinking of no more words to say, Dani kissed Jhayka on the lips. It was not quite as chaste as Jhayka's kiss, her lips coming together and tugging on Jhayka's lower lip, as if to invite her to open her mouth further and let their tongues touch. "Let whatever it is come, Jhayka. Let it come, just so long as we stay together."
Jhayka accepted the kiss against her lips, though the typically stoic Taloran didn't quite react to tugging, more a pleasing suction which itself was almost like a shock of secret sin which at the same time brought electric delight to Jhayka, who couldn't escape the idea that it was just going to follow in the disasters of her previous relationships, indeed, but in the end couldn't help but make the effort. She very gently broke the kiss to whisper in a voice as soft as a light breath of air: "We will. We'll stay together no matter what, for as long as we live. I'll stand by you forever, no matter what the people say." She drew back a bit, but only, with the way her eyes went, to take in Danielle better, a fond look in them. "We'll stand our ground together here, in the heart."
"Yes, yes we will," Dani said happily. She moved her hand up to touch Jhayka's cheek. She could see how tired Jhayka was - she felt tired too - and so she pulled herself closer, pressing her lips to Jhayka's cheek in a pleasing little kiss. "Let's stay together tonight. I mean, let's sleep together, here, in each other's arms, and leave the rest to our dreams."
"Yes..." Jhayka sighed as the third kiss was broken. It was comfortable for her, in that chaste way, and sort of like stealing one away from her parents, even though sleeping together like that... "But let's not forget the covers." A soft smile. "It's very cold down here in the tunnels, and even with an electric blanket it can be rather cold without someone in bed with you.." She pushed off her slippers, and smiled gently, if tiredly, her hair like a pink blanket over the bed.
Dani removed her shoes and uniform, leaving the strapless bra and thigh-length undershorts on, and helped Jhayka pull the blanket over themselves. It was cold for now, but she could feel the heat from Jhayka and drew closer to her, putting her arms around Jhayka as they shared a large pillow. Dani gave her one final kiss, almost as chaste as the first they'd shared, and whispered, "Good night my love."
Jhayka wrapped her arms back around Dani and tucked her head up against the slightly shorter woman's, the blankets warming up over them quickly enough as she leaned back into the pillow and smiled at the kiss. "Goodnight, Dani."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Both of these parts were written by Marina.
Taloran Star Empire
T.I.S. Rhun,
Special Military District,
61 Chertain IY 617
DAY FOURTEEN
Brevet Rear Admiral Lady Halsina, the Marchioness of Sapai, thought her commanders quite insane. Stroking through her rather pleasant royal blue hair with a brush, she mused at the orders that she was under, the orange of her eyes reflected back by a deactivated computer screen.
Three dreadnoughts, fourteen destroyers, and a destroyer leader--and I'm the ranking officer now. It was a nice promotion, even if it was provisional on her performance. Necessary to give her seniority over the commander of the Destroyer Flotilla, no less. Yet the whole thing was nonsense.
This is what cruisers are used for? Why send dreadnoughts? Well the answer was it was mostly a rhetorical question. The simple fact was that all their cruisers were overstretched on patrols and they were the closest available force. That, and, of course, dreadnoughts were much more intimidating than cruisers, and very useful against fixed defences if it came to it. They weren't interested in chasing ships, either, just securing the evacuating of Taloran subjects from the region...
A light bark of laughter. "Ah." And a rather impressive threat of shore bombardment to go with that. The recognition of that salient point had come from remembering the hilarious story of religious colonists on one of the human worlds conquered some eighty years back. Taken under fire from orbit—the planet was to primitive to have proper underground shelters and fortifications—they'd tried to surrender to a recon drone, leaving the crew with a huge quandry of how precisely they could accept the surrender.
She stretched out lazily and was preparing to change to settle into her bunk—it wasn't like she was going to get any sleep any time soon, after all—when the comm chimed and she sighed. Naturally.
“Admiral?”
“Karvus?” She hit the activator on the monitor and Acting Captain Karvus Korvus, her former XO and now the nominal commander of the Rhun resolved on the screen.
“I just wanted to let you know that we received a communication from the intelligence services—the Special Directory, actually. They're going ahead of us to try and insert a team onto Gilead to clear the way for extricating the Princess of the Lesser Ta'ert and her reutine.”
“What does the Special Directory have to do with any of this? ...Oh, right, the assasination plot.”
“That's it too, I think,” Karvus answered. “Though I'm not really sure. Of course they didn't bother explaining themselves to a mere navy man.”
“Naturally. It should be Navy Intelligence or the Consular protectorate services or something but I imagine they owe some sort of institutional debt to Her Highness. Or simply want her to remain breathing for a while longer for whatever devious plot her antics have so rudely interrupted.”
A grim nod. “Of course, it should help us, I'd think... If they can coordinate effectively, which is, granted, a rather big if.”
“It won't happen. It'll simply never happen. Oh well. We've got a rather sizeable stick here, even if our orders are to just go in, get everyone, and leave as quickly as possible. Which, fortunately, they are. I don't like the thought of meddling further when we're that far away from support, so it looks like someone has done the maths for once. That, and I suppose if we need to we have a large enough landing force from the sheer size of our crews. Another advantage.” She frowned. “That said, it's going to be noticeablep when Dreadnoughts show up in Gilean space, though I think that is sort of the whole point of this. Someone has decided that it makes more sense to just intimidate the Gilean factions into not playing games with us long enough for us to remove everyone. And nothing says intimidation like a dreadnought blanking out constellations from Low Orbit.”
Karvus grinned. “Well, we can do that harmlessly enough, all right. I suppose we'll just end up in orbit for a couple days at various worrlds while all the evacuations are taking place.”
“Once we get the go order anyway.” They had to receive final authorization to enter Gilean space, of course, though Halsina expected that easily enough. The planet and Confederacy alike was a polluted wasteland and nobody was going to try to defend their sovereignty when it ripped apart like this, not even the unusually lazy British (as they 'd turned out here) when it came to handling this situation.
“Oh, and don't forget, Admiral, we're suppposed to rescue one ADN citizen as well. That order seemed to come from very far up...”
“Danielle Verdes. Commander Danielle Verdes.” Halsina rubbed her head and tried to remember how she had remembered the name when she was this far asleep and it had seemed so trivial at the time. Oh well. “That apparently came from really high up, I get the impression.”
“Hmm. Do you think she's a spy with the Security Directory, Admiral? That could explain their interest..”
“No,” Halsina answered very tiredly, now, and a bit snappishly, though her analysis was valid; this was the pervert they were talking about, after all. “I think that she's the pervert's latest commoner/peasant-anarchist-democrat lover-girl, and she's decided to go for aliens now, too, and so taking her along is the only way we'll get her to leave. And my saying that shows just how tired I am... So now to bed, Captain.”
“Admiral.” He inclined his head respectfully, despite their rather informal relationship.
Halsina turned off the comm and started to strip off her uniform. Bed was the only thing calling at the moment..
Gilean Confederacy,
Gilead Orbit.
A J'u'crea FAC.
62 Chertain IY 617
DAY FIFTEEN
Najhashi Fridalyn had watched Jhayka execute her lover, once, years ago. She had overseen the whole case. She'd been the one who'd sent Jhayka's lover to death, essentially, from her own investigations, and forced Jhayka to live with the results of that, in all of their pain and their agony and the essential mental collapse of the Princess. She had, at least, regained her honour, upheld her duty, and preserved the Imperial compact. The threat to the Empress had been eliminated.
Now she was going to rescue the Princess from herself, as the honour of the Directory and the Empire required such an effort. And, along the way, it appeared she would also end up the saviour of the Princess' new common born—and alien—lover, for the sake of simply being able to extract her. For Najhashi, who had been put in the position of the judicator before, to now find herself on this rescue mission, was the height of irony. Though it was precisely her familarity with the Princess which had seen her forward-assigned here when Jhayka entered the special military district, and then the foreign lands beyond. To gently trail her, and milk her for as much information about the lands she had visited as she could, with a mixture of kindness and reminders of their bloody shared legacy in breaking up the anti-Imperial plot and all its tragic endings.
Najhashi was common-born herself, which made her loathe the communitarians all the more, for she had been raised by her mother well, of solid yeoman stock, and was a determined and absolutely loyal Imperialist. It didn't matter in the Security Directory, save for the high-level positions she would never aspire to in the first place. She preferred covert operations, and in terms of those, the craft she was in had no parallel. At first glance it appeared like a standard J'u'crea assault vessel, but it wasn't. Its missiles had been replaced by a complex filtration system on the drives which, in combination with a huge internal heat-sink, meant the craft could be essentially perfectly stealthy for long periods of time.
And when it couldn't be stealthed because of limitations on how much thermal energy the sink could absorb before overloading... The overload was released intentionally. Very intentionally, and all at once.
“Mratefha?”
“OpLeader?”
“Dump the sink.”
She brought the engines to maximum power, and the four-person crew of the assault craft and the seven special operations forces it was carrying were slammed back into their seats by the abrupt maximum acceleration of thousands of gravities—which, though it did not, obviously, translate into the craft (they'd all be squashed flatter than paste), did turn into a nice six G's or so, more than enough to feel it quite well inside the craft as the inertial compensators strained to overcome the distance.
At the same time, on the outside, the energy released was simply incredible. It was enough to threaten melting the craft, and strained the easy absorption limits of the armour and the exhaust vents, even as it made the fast attack craft briefly radiate as intensely as a dreadnought at full power, or even more. To the sensors which had detected nothing there a milisecond before, it was absolutely blinding.
Moments later, Najhashi cut the engines, and then cut all power to the craft except for the vane-atmospheric steering system. They were in environmentally sealed space suits, and in the brief, blinding flash of their head dump, they had shoved themselves from low orbit of Gilead into the atmosphere, in another blinding flash of light. But now, even as the sensors—whomever controlled them didn't really matter at this point—hyperfocused on the region where the intense pulses of energy had been detected, the J'u'crea was, first of all, already gone. Second of all, it was radiating virtually no energy, easily lost in the background noise of an atmosphere, and was shaped to reflect surface radar detection. Now it was a massive glider the size of a ship, plunging down through the darkside of Gilead toward the primitive zone under Najhashi's confident control.
They plunged through miles of atmosphere, and then she brought the craft up hard—operating it like any Taloran ship, with a direct neural interface to send commands into the computer, giving her a reaction time of the speed of light, for all intents and purposes, as the vessel flung down toward Gilead below, levelled off, and then the engines activated on atmospheric, very low power. They sort of coasted in toward their destination, and having come in over the sea the series of sonic booms would not be heard by anyone else. She shifted the vanes in for the suitable direction for landing as they approached the coast near the mouth of the major river which their maps said passed the city of Kalunda.
Gradually, then, ever so gradually, the assault craft lowered to the sea... And touched it. Skidding along on its vanes and nose grooves like a hydrofoil, it continued to bleed off speed until the hull proper settled into the water and they came to a stop, a kilometer from the shore.
Najhashi got up, disconnected herself from the guidance comp, and glanced around the four-person crew. “Remember. Just submerge and wait, Mratefha, you're in command until I return, of course. Someone come with me to dog the hatch.”
Mratefha gestured to one of the other crewers. “Slavistka, take care of it.”
“Of course, Opleader,” Mratefha, the normal commander of the assault craft, replied promptly as Najhashi headed below to where the seven-person insertion team had already inflated a large puncture-resistant rubber boat at the open to which the waves were lapping and a few spilling in. They pushed it out through the entrance and climbed in one after another, pushing packs containing floatation devices, their armour (to be donned on shore) and weapons and other equipment in before them. Najhashi boarded last, and with a tipped salute to Slavistka, started the extra-quiet engine. The hatch was dogged behind them, and the insertion boat started up toward the estuary of the river as the assault craft sank beneath the waves behind them, to use its anti-gravs on low power to remain submerged until called for, or the specied paramaters were reached.
Najhashi thought back to when she had last actually seen the Princess, for all that she had followered her life ever since, and communicated with her quite often via direct face-to-face communications. But that was nothing like meeting in person. And the last time that had happened had been the death of Lashila. Yet Jhayka had not even really known it was her there. Understandably.
Now she was off to this neo-barb world to save the enigma and the scandal of Talora Prime, at risk of her own life. But that, too, was part of the job. After all, it had come as a directive from the Empress, and to the All-Highest firsly was Najhashi loyal. It was just the question of getting the Princess out, that was the difficulty, not even the risk of death comparable to it: Because Najhashi knew the Princess very well, and knew that she would not be easily convinced to leave, no matter what, when she had set her feet into the ground like this. It might, in fact, be a more impossible task than getting her to kill her lover had been all those bloody years before—especially with the sensationalist rags of newspapers unhelpfully, in all their blind patriotism, turning her into a hero back home.
But I'm ordered to do it, and the Lord Justice protect me, so must I try.
Taloran Star Empire
T.I.S. Rhun,
Special Military District,
61 Chertain IY 617
DAY FOURTEEN
Brevet Rear Admiral Lady Halsina, the Marchioness of Sapai, thought her commanders quite insane. Stroking through her rather pleasant royal blue hair with a brush, she mused at the orders that she was under, the orange of her eyes reflected back by a deactivated computer screen.
Three dreadnoughts, fourteen destroyers, and a destroyer leader--and I'm the ranking officer now. It was a nice promotion, even if it was provisional on her performance. Necessary to give her seniority over the commander of the Destroyer Flotilla, no less. Yet the whole thing was nonsense.
This is what cruisers are used for? Why send dreadnoughts? Well the answer was it was mostly a rhetorical question. The simple fact was that all their cruisers were overstretched on patrols and they were the closest available force. That, and, of course, dreadnoughts were much more intimidating than cruisers, and very useful against fixed defences if it came to it. They weren't interested in chasing ships, either, just securing the evacuating of Taloran subjects from the region...
A light bark of laughter. "Ah." And a rather impressive threat of shore bombardment to go with that. The recognition of that salient point had come from remembering the hilarious story of religious colonists on one of the human worlds conquered some eighty years back. Taken under fire from orbit—the planet was to primitive to have proper underground shelters and fortifications—they'd tried to surrender to a recon drone, leaving the crew with a huge quandry of how precisely they could accept the surrender.
She stretched out lazily and was preparing to change to settle into her bunk—it wasn't like she was going to get any sleep any time soon, after all—when the comm chimed and she sighed. Naturally.
“Admiral?”
“Karvus?” She hit the activator on the monitor and Acting Captain Karvus Korvus, her former XO and now the nominal commander of the Rhun resolved on the screen.
“I just wanted to let you know that we received a communication from the intelligence services—the Special Directory, actually. They're going ahead of us to try and insert a team onto Gilead to clear the way for extricating the Princess of the Lesser Ta'ert and her reutine.”
“What does the Special Directory have to do with any of this? ...Oh, right, the assasination plot.”
“That's it too, I think,” Karvus answered. “Though I'm not really sure. Of course they didn't bother explaining themselves to a mere navy man.”
“Naturally. It should be Navy Intelligence or the Consular protectorate services or something but I imagine they owe some sort of institutional debt to Her Highness. Or simply want her to remain breathing for a while longer for whatever devious plot her antics have so rudely interrupted.”
A grim nod. “Of course, it should help us, I'd think... If they can coordinate effectively, which is, granted, a rather big if.”
“It won't happen. It'll simply never happen. Oh well. We've got a rather sizeable stick here, even if our orders are to just go in, get everyone, and leave as quickly as possible. Which, fortunately, they are. I don't like the thought of meddling further when we're that far away from support, so it looks like someone has done the maths for once. That, and I suppose if we need to we have a large enough landing force from the sheer size of our crews. Another advantage.” She frowned. “That said, it's going to be noticeablep when Dreadnoughts show up in Gilean space, though I think that is sort of the whole point of this. Someone has decided that it makes more sense to just intimidate the Gilean factions into not playing games with us long enough for us to remove everyone. And nothing says intimidation like a dreadnought blanking out constellations from Low Orbit.”
Karvus grinned. “Well, we can do that harmlessly enough, all right. I suppose we'll just end up in orbit for a couple days at various worrlds while all the evacuations are taking place.”
“Once we get the go order anyway.” They had to receive final authorization to enter Gilean space, of course, though Halsina expected that easily enough. The planet and Confederacy alike was a polluted wasteland and nobody was going to try to defend their sovereignty when it ripped apart like this, not even the unusually lazy British (as they 'd turned out here) when it came to handling this situation.
“Oh, and don't forget, Admiral, we're suppposed to rescue one ADN citizen as well. That order seemed to come from very far up...”
“Danielle Verdes. Commander Danielle Verdes.” Halsina rubbed her head and tried to remember how she had remembered the name when she was this far asleep and it had seemed so trivial at the time. Oh well. “That apparently came from really high up, I get the impression.”
“Hmm. Do you think she's a spy with the Security Directory, Admiral? That could explain their interest..”
“No,” Halsina answered very tiredly, now, and a bit snappishly, though her analysis was valid; this was the pervert they were talking about, after all. “I think that she's the pervert's latest commoner/peasant-anarchist-democrat lover-girl, and she's decided to go for aliens now, too, and so taking her along is the only way we'll get her to leave. And my saying that shows just how tired I am... So now to bed, Captain.”
“Admiral.” He inclined his head respectfully, despite their rather informal relationship.
Halsina turned off the comm and started to strip off her uniform. Bed was the only thing calling at the moment..
Gilean Confederacy,
Gilead Orbit.
A J'u'crea FAC.
62 Chertain IY 617
DAY FIFTEEN
Najhashi Fridalyn had watched Jhayka execute her lover, once, years ago. She had overseen the whole case. She'd been the one who'd sent Jhayka's lover to death, essentially, from her own investigations, and forced Jhayka to live with the results of that, in all of their pain and their agony and the essential mental collapse of the Princess. She had, at least, regained her honour, upheld her duty, and preserved the Imperial compact. The threat to the Empress had been eliminated.
Now she was going to rescue the Princess from herself, as the honour of the Directory and the Empire required such an effort. And, along the way, it appeared she would also end up the saviour of the Princess' new common born—and alien—lover, for the sake of simply being able to extract her. For Najhashi, who had been put in the position of the judicator before, to now find herself on this rescue mission, was the height of irony. Though it was precisely her familarity with the Princess which had seen her forward-assigned here when Jhayka entered the special military district, and then the foreign lands beyond. To gently trail her, and milk her for as much information about the lands she had visited as she could, with a mixture of kindness and reminders of their bloody shared legacy in breaking up the anti-Imperial plot and all its tragic endings.
Najhashi was common-born herself, which made her loathe the communitarians all the more, for she had been raised by her mother well, of solid yeoman stock, and was a determined and absolutely loyal Imperialist. It didn't matter in the Security Directory, save for the high-level positions she would never aspire to in the first place. She preferred covert operations, and in terms of those, the craft she was in had no parallel. At first glance it appeared like a standard J'u'crea assault vessel, but it wasn't. Its missiles had been replaced by a complex filtration system on the drives which, in combination with a huge internal heat-sink, meant the craft could be essentially perfectly stealthy for long periods of time.
And when it couldn't be stealthed because of limitations on how much thermal energy the sink could absorb before overloading... The overload was released intentionally. Very intentionally, and all at once.
“Mratefha?”
“OpLeader?”
“Dump the sink.”
She brought the engines to maximum power, and the four-person crew of the assault craft and the seven special operations forces it was carrying were slammed back into their seats by the abrupt maximum acceleration of thousands of gravities—which, though it did not, obviously, translate into the craft (they'd all be squashed flatter than paste), did turn into a nice six G's or so, more than enough to feel it quite well inside the craft as the inertial compensators strained to overcome the distance.
At the same time, on the outside, the energy released was simply incredible. It was enough to threaten melting the craft, and strained the easy absorption limits of the armour and the exhaust vents, even as it made the fast attack craft briefly radiate as intensely as a dreadnought at full power, or even more. To the sensors which had detected nothing there a milisecond before, it was absolutely blinding.
Moments later, Najhashi cut the engines, and then cut all power to the craft except for the vane-atmospheric steering system. They were in environmentally sealed space suits, and in the brief, blinding flash of their head dump, they had shoved themselves from low orbit of Gilead into the atmosphere, in another blinding flash of light. But now, even as the sensors—whomever controlled them didn't really matter at this point—hyperfocused on the region where the intense pulses of energy had been detected, the J'u'crea was, first of all, already gone. Second of all, it was radiating virtually no energy, easily lost in the background noise of an atmosphere, and was shaped to reflect surface radar detection. Now it was a massive glider the size of a ship, plunging down through the darkside of Gilead toward the primitive zone under Najhashi's confident control.
They plunged through miles of atmosphere, and then she brought the craft up hard—operating it like any Taloran ship, with a direct neural interface to send commands into the computer, giving her a reaction time of the speed of light, for all intents and purposes, as the vessel flung down toward Gilead below, levelled off, and then the engines activated on atmospheric, very low power. They sort of coasted in toward their destination, and having come in over the sea the series of sonic booms would not be heard by anyone else. She shifted the vanes in for the suitable direction for landing as they approached the coast near the mouth of the major river which their maps said passed the city of Kalunda.
Gradually, then, ever so gradually, the assault craft lowered to the sea... And touched it. Skidding along on its vanes and nose grooves like a hydrofoil, it continued to bleed off speed until the hull proper settled into the water and they came to a stop, a kilometer from the shore.
Najhashi got up, disconnected herself from the guidance comp, and glanced around the four-person crew. “Remember. Just submerge and wait, Mratefha, you're in command until I return, of course. Someone come with me to dog the hatch.”
Mratefha gestured to one of the other crewers. “Slavistka, take care of it.”
“Of course, Opleader,” Mratefha, the normal commander of the assault craft, replied promptly as Najhashi headed below to where the seven-person insertion team had already inflated a large puncture-resistant rubber boat at the open to which the waves were lapping and a few spilling in. They pushed it out through the entrance and climbed in one after another, pushing packs containing floatation devices, their armour (to be donned on shore) and weapons and other equipment in before them. Najhashi boarded last, and with a tipped salute to Slavistka, started the extra-quiet engine. The hatch was dogged behind them, and the insertion boat started up toward the estuary of the river as the assault craft sank beneath the waves behind them, to use its anti-gravs on low power to remain submerged until called for, or the specied paramaters were reached.
Najhashi thought back to when she had last actually seen the Princess, for all that she had followered her life ever since, and communicated with her quite often via direct face-to-face communications. But that was nothing like meeting in person. And the last time that had happened had been the death of Lashila. Yet Jhayka had not even really known it was her there. Understandably.
Now she was off to this neo-barb world to save the enigma and the scandal of Talora Prime, at risk of her own life. But that, too, was part of the job. After all, it had come as a directive from the Empress, and to the All-Highest firsly was Najhashi loyal. It was just the question of getting the Princess out, that was the difficulty, not even the risk of death comparable to it: Because Najhashi knew the Princess very well, and knew that she would not be easily convinced to leave, no matter what, when she had set her feet into the ground like this. It might, in fact, be a more impossible task than getting her to kill her lover had been all those bloody years before—especially with the sensationalist rags of newspapers unhelpfully, in all their blind patriotism, turning her into a hero back home.
But I'm ordered to do it, and the Lord Justice protect me, so must I try.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Allied Nations 13th Fleet HQ, Magdalena Naval Station, ADN Plymouth Occupation Zone
27 November 2841
24 January 2163 AST
DAY FIFTEEN
In his office, Admiral Javier d'Orvilliers CINC 13th Fleet looked with irritation at the American woman who was his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Helen Duvall. D'Orvilliers was well into his 120s, clearly older and gray-haired, while the eighty-something Duval looked to only be on the cusp of middle age. It did much to reinforce the image that she was much younger and inexperienced than he, and that had grated on their working relationship for the last year, particularly with Admiral O'Bannon's 7th Fleet getting all of the glory of the final victories against New Plymouth. The veteran Frenchman's pride had not let that go and probably never would.
Their conversations tended to be grueling because Admiral Duvall knew French enough that she could converse with d'Orvilliers in his native tongue - which he insisted upon - yet spoke it so badly that d'Orvilliers would occasionally insult her when he couldn't understand her. Fortunately, for the moment, d'Orvilliers had chosen to speak in English, a rarity in the presence of staff.
"Those damned British. They can't mind their own protectorates but they do nothing but gripe when their sphere is infringed upon." D'Orvilliers tossed the PDA with the orders on it to the desk. "Were it my decision, we would be gladly working with these Talorans - monarchists they are - to restore order to those blasted hedonists and their barbarian cliques."
Which I suspect will make sure it's never your decision, Duvall responded in her mind.
"The Talorans have announced to us and to other powers that they are dispatching a small squadron of ships to commence evacuation of Taloran nationals. They're bringing dreadnoughts along, apparently." D'Orvilliers smirked. "So now we're being asked to detach a squadron to do the same, and to make it of equivalent size to the Taloran squadron."
"Three dreadnoughts, fourteen destroyers, and.... a destroyer leader? They have those?"
"I would be damned if I sent a frigate that far just to equal a destroyer leader," d'Orvilliers remarked contemptfully. "I'm gathering a composite squadron and giving the command to Line Admiral MacCallister. The Karol Wojtyla, King George VI, and New Virginia will lead fourteen destroyers and the patrol cruiser Leuctra."
Duvall gave d'Orvilliers a concerned look. "A cruiser to counter a destroyer leader? It might be a Marathon-class ship but that's still a step up."
"I figure it will be useful, to keep tabs on everyone in the area." D'Orvilliers reached for his pack of gitanes to begin smoking. "And with that settled, I would like to know when we're getting those frigate squadrons we were promised."
27 November 2841
24 January 2163 AST
DAY FIFTEEN
In his office, Admiral Javier d'Orvilliers CINC 13th Fleet looked with irritation at the American woman who was his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Helen Duvall. D'Orvilliers was well into his 120s, clearly older and gray-haired, while the eighty-something Duval looked to only be on the cusp of middle age. It did much to reinforce the image that she was much younger and inexperienced than he, and that had grated on their working relationship for the last year, particularly with Admiral O'Bannon's 7th Fleet getting all of the glory of the final victories against New Plymouth. The veteran Frenchman's pride had not let that go and probably never would.
Their conversations tended to be grueling because Admiral Duvall knew French enough that she could converse with d'Orvilliers in his native tongue - which he insisted upon - yet spoke it so badly that d'Orvilliers would occasionally insult her when he couldn't understand her. Fortunately, for the moment, d'Orvilliers had chosen to speak in English, a rarity in the presence of staff.
"Those damned British. They can't mind their own protectorates but they do nothing but gripe when their sphere is infringed upon." D'Orvilliers tossed the PDA with the orders on it to the desk. "Were it my decision, we would be gladly working with these Talorans - monarchists they are - to restore order to those blasted hedonists and their barbarian cliques."
Which I suspect will make sure it's never your decision, Duvall responded in her mind.
"The Talorans have announced to us and to other powers that they are dispatching a small squadron of ships to commence evacuation of Taloran nationals. They're bringing dreadnoughts along, apparently." D'Orvilliers smirked. "So now we're being asked to detach a squadron to do the same, and to make it of equivalent size to the Taloran squadron."
"Three dreadnoughts, fourteen destroyers, and.... a destroyer leader? They have those?"
"I would be damned if I sent a frigate that far just to equal a destroyer leader," d'Orvilliers remarked contemptfully. "I'm gathering a composite squadron and giving the command to Line Admiral MacCallister. The Karol Wojtyla, King George VI, and New Virginia will lead fourteen destroyers and the patrol cruiser Leuctra."
Duvall gave d'Orvilliers a concerned look. "A cruiser to counter a destroyer leader? It might be a Marathon-class ship but that's still a step up."
"I figure it will be useful, to keep tabs on everyone in the area." D'Orvilliers reached for his pack of gitanes to begin smoking. "And with that settled, I would like to know when we're getting those frigate squadrons we were promised."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The Imperial Palace, Novo São Paulo
Mundo de Dom Pedro, Core Province, Hispanic Empire
DAY SIXTEEN
The private study of the Emperor Alejandro I was chosen for this meeting. The young Emperor was in attendance, clad almost informally in buttoned shirt and trousers. His uncle the Prime Minister, Duke Mateo Juan Padilla y Sanchez of Leon, was more formally dressed, as were the Minister of War - Her Grace Anita Maria Montelbano y Nunez, Duchess of Nuevo Guatemala - and the Foreign Secretary, Count Estefan Rodrigo Barillas y Samoza.
"The crisis on Gilead has gained the attentions of the Senate," Duke Mateo stated to the assembled. "And the growing knowledge of the desecration of Our Lady of Fatima has electrified the populace. We may now have our best opportunity to finally throw off the shackles of the isolationists and promote an expansion strategy."
"The only problem is Britain," Count Estefan replied. "Britain maintains her protectorate jealously, knowing the vital nature of the Gilean Hyperspace Junction. How do you deal with Britain?"
"Bah, the British are lazy fools," Alejandro suddenly barked, stepping into the conversation in a way he rarely did. The young monarch was ambitious, much to the delight of the assembled, but they preferred him listening and not speaking. "They have had centuries to clean that wretched place up and what do they do? Hold their noses high and let the problems grow. This isn't even their space, it is ours."
"Well said, Majesty," Duchess Anita replied. "But that alone will not let us win a victory over the Royal Navy, not to mention their allies."
"I cannot say what the French will do, and what promises from Britain might win that slime Bonaparte's support, but I do know that the Alliance will be reluctant to follow Britain into a war meant to maintain a distant imperial outpost." Count Estefan crossed his arms. "The Allied Nations are under new leadership, and President Dale's appointment to replace Iron Boris is a weaker man, one who will not favor the same policies that Umachov did. Without support from the Alliance, the British have only their smaller allies to support them, and I do not see them joining Britain in an imperialist war. But that in of itself might not be enough." Count Estefan leaned forward. "My suggestion is to wait another week, and if nothing has happened... we can turn to Ambassador Amaviscia."
Four sets of eyes leveled on the Foreign Secretary. "You wish us to turn to the extrauniversal Habsburgs?" Duke Mateo asked.
"The Ambassador has already offered us support for evacuation now that the Talorans and Alliance have both declared the use of naval ships for this. The Habsburg Empire is a great power, and from their position at Ragusa they would threaten Britain's favored route to Gilead, as I do not see Britain's allies letting them use hyperspace routes through Devenshire."
"Ah, I see what you mean," the Duchess said as the possibilities occurred to her too. "And the Habsburgs are devoted to the Church, and the atrocity at Our Lady of Fatima and elsewhere in those accursed worlds will give them ample moral justification. If Britain fights, they can sever Britain's independent line to Gilead and allow us time to take it. Once we are in position.... Britain will have no choice but to accept the new situation."
"But what of the Russians? What of Slavia?" Alejandro wagged his finger. "They have become more aggressive as of late, dealing with the Caliphal States as they did, and we know that they have an interest in Gilead as well and agents."
"Contacts with Japan and Germany can easily counter them," Estefan assured the Emperor. "Britain is our only threat, and unless the Alliance joins them it is a weak threat."
Silence reigned for a moment. Alejandro thumped a hand on the table suddenly, making Count Estefan jump a bit. "Very well. We'll give them some time, a week or two, but if they dawdle too long, we will ask the Habsburgs for support in moving into Gilead ourselves."
Mundo de Dom Pedro, Core Province, Hispanic Empire
DAY SIXTEEN
The private study of the Emperor Alejandro I was chosen for this meeting. The young Emperor was in attendance, clad almost informally in buttoned shirt and trousers. His uncle the Prime Minister, Duke Mateo Juan Padilla y Sanchez of Leon, was more formally dressed, as were the Minister of War - Her Grace Anita Maria Montelbano y Nunez, Duchess of Nuevo Guatemala - and the Foreign Secretary, Count Estefan Rodrigo Barillas y Samoza.
"The crisis on Gilead has gained the attentions of the Senate," Duke Mateo stated to the assembled. "And the growing knowledge of the desecration of Our Lady of Fatima has electrified the populace. We may now have our best opportunity to finally throw off the shackles of the isolationists and promote an expansion strategy."
"The only problem is Britain," Count Estefan replied. "Britain maintains her protectorate jealously, knowing the vital nature of the Gilean Hyperspace Junction. How do you deal with Britain?"
"Bah, the British are lazy fools," Alejandro suddenly barked, stepping into the conversation in a way he rarely did. The young monarch was ambitious, much to the delight of the assembled, but they preferred him listening and not speaking. "They have had centuries to clean that wretched place up and what do they do? Hold their noses high and let the problems grow. This isn't even their space, it is ours."
"Well said, Majesty," Duchess Anita replied. "But that alone will not let us win a victory over the Royal Navy, not to mention their allies."
"I cannot say what the French will do, and what promises from Britain might win that slime Bonaparte's support, but I do know that the Alliance will be reluctant to follow Britain into a war meant to maintain a distant imperial outpost." Count Estefan crossed his arms. "The Allied Nations are under new leadership, and President Dale's appointment to replace Iron Boris is a weaker man, one who will not favor the same policies that Umachov did. Without support from the Alliance, the British have only their smaller allies to support them, and I do not see them joining Britain in an imperialist war. But that in of itself might not be enough." Count Estefan leaned forward. "My suggestion is to wait another week, and if nothing has happened... we can turn to Ambassador Amaviscia."
Four sets of eyes leveled on the Foreign Secretary. "You wish us to turn to the extrauniversal Habsburgs?" Duke Mateo asked.
"The Ambassador has already offered us support for evacuation now that the Talorans and Alliance have both declared the use of naval ships for this. The Habsburg Empire is a great power, and from their position at Ragusa they would threaten Britain's favored route to Gilead, as I do not see Britain's allies letting them use hyperspace routes through Devenshire."
"Ah, I see what you mean," the Duchess said as the possibilities occurred to her too. "And the Habsburgs are devoted to the Church, and the atrocity at Our Lady of Fatima and elsewhere in those accursed worlds will give them ample moral justification. If Britain fights, they can sever Britain's independent line to Gilead and allow us time to take it. Once we are in position.... Britain will have no choice but to accept the new situation."
"But what of the Russians? What of Slavia?" Alejandro wagged his finger. "They have become more aggressive as of late, dealing with the Caliphal States as they did, and we know that they have an interest in Gilead as well and agents."
"Contacts with Japan and Germany can easily counter them," Estefan assured the Emperor. "Britain is our only threat, and unless the Alliance joins them it is a weak threat."
Silence reigned for a moment. Alejandro thumped a hand on the table suddenly, making Count Estefan jump a bit. "Very well. We'll give them some time, a week or two, but if they dawdle too long, we will ask the Habsburgs for support in moving into Gilead ourselves."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
402 Queen Elizabeth Street, New London
New Britain, Kingdom of New Britain
DAY SEVENTEEN
It was a beautiful day in the heart of the great metropolis from which His Britannic Majesty's Government ruled the greatest empire amongst the indigenious powers. At the government complex located on 402 Queen Elizabeth St., the replacement for the long-gone 10 Downing Street in the original London on Terra, Sir Alexander Grant was meeting with top members of his wartime coalition Cabinent. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Reginald Gray-Baden, Earl of Preston on Midway, was in attendance, a staunch Liberal opposed to Grant, the unrepentant Tory. The First Lord of the Admiralty was a fellow Tory, Gregory Temple, while the present Minister of War - Madeleine Townsend - was another Liberal.
"This Gilead business has gotten out of hand," Grant said to the assembled cabinent leaders. "Surely there is something that can be done?"
"I wish there were, Sir," Gray-Baden responded in a sour fashion. "But any kind of direct intervention would not just violate our treaty with Gilead, it would undo four centuries of precedent in our behavior toward protectorates and allies."
"Surely we cannot simply remain on the sidelines," Townsend protested. The elderly lady, a former Prime Minister herself and a decades-long matriarch of the Liberals, wagged a finger at her junior the Foreign Secretary. "What has happened on Gilead is simply ghastly, and it looks bad upon the Government to allow one of our allies to behave in such manner."
"Nevertheless, it could tear apart our entire structure of alliances." Now Temple entered the fray. "The Caliph of the New Hedjaz, for instance, has long accepted our advice in his foreign affairs that he may question if given a reason to believe we would force him or a successor to alter his society against their wishes. Certainly our relations with some of our alien territorial protectorates here in the Empire's continugous territory would be harmed, as well as the Bengali Principality. His Majesty's Government simply cannot afford to risk the disassembly of our Empire over one part of it." Temple set his hands down on his lap. "I would propose abandonment of our Gilead interests rather than advocate an illegal intervention."
"It is a civil war, Lord Temple," Grant replied. "Surely this is an extenuating circumstance?"
"Could we not apply the same the next time brief fighting breaks out over the next Caliph? Or if the Bengali Prince's sons struggle for control of the throne." Grey-Baden shook his head. "Prime Minister Sir, I am sorry, but I am afraid we can find no legal justification to intervene, and any government resulting from British intervention would be stained with illegitimacy."
"Prime Minister, you cannot allow this bloodshed and savagery to continue!" Townsend's voice made Temple shiver, causing him to recall a great-grandmother who had been just as shrill in her voice as the old Liberal was now. "The honor of the Government is at stake. If we do not act, it will be said that Britain stood aside and did nothing as misogynists and hedonists raped nuns and desecrated missions and churches! It will be a disgrace that will haunt the British people for the rest of history."
"I am inclined to agree with you, Minister Townsend, but I am afraid that I cannot." Grant sighed and slumped into his seat. "If Britain intervenes, we will be violating a centuries-old treaty with Gilead and undermining everything that prior Governments have built to ensure the maintainance of British power and stability."
"Your choice is final?" Townsend's eyes were full of anger.
"I'm afraid it is, Ma'am."
"Then you leave me no choice." The elderly woman lifted herself out of her chair. "I am resigning from the War Ministry and from this government. Lord Grey-Baden, you must now choose between your position and your loyalty to the Liberal Party, for I intend to go immediately to the Whip to ensure that the Liberal Party withdraws from the coalition government. That is all, gentlemen." At that, she stormed out of the room.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations, Universe Designate HE-1
DAY EIGHTEEN
Within hours of being inaugerated as 4th President of the Allied Nations, Robert Dale found himselt seated in a conference room with Matthew Darlington, his successor as Defense Minister under Mamatmas and a position he would be retaining in Dale's administration, and Foreign Vice-Minister of Ambassadorial Affairs Peter Wells, whom he was preparing to nominate to replace the retiring Boris Umachov.
"Usually we would wait on the full foreign policy briefing," Wells stated as the three men settled into seats, "but the crisis on Gilead is rapidly heating up. Aside from the Alliance and the Taloran Empire, the Hispanics, Catalinians, and Slavs have all announced intentions to dispatch naval forces to cover evacuations. Some of our non-covert sources on New Corsica confirm that the French are about to as well. Having all of these foreign ships from multiple nations, some of them rivals, arriving in Gilead around the same time frame is bound to cause problems."
"I'm quite aware of this," Darlington said from his seat, "but what should we do?"
Wells looked toward Dale. "Mister President, I would like to arrange a meeting between you and the Ambassadors from the Taloran, Slavic, and Hispanic Empires. Our powers seem to be the most involved in these evacuation operations, which can too easily turn into interventions if the wrong things happen. If we set into place an agreement about how to handle the evacuation and any intervention, should something occur to necessitate it, it will ensure things stay much smoother. Otherwise, I'm not sure what might happen."
"Shouldn't we invite Ambassador Shropshire, Minister Wells?" Dale shifted slightly in his seat, starting the slow acclimation to the job now at hand. "Gilead is a British protectorate."
"British involvement in the meeting might be... disruptive, Mister President," Wells confessed. "Their Government is unwilling to intervene and the coalition government is already on the verge of collapse with the Liberal pullout announced yesterday."
"Much of the public still considers the British to be a wartime ally," Dale reminded Wells pointedly. "The last thing we need is to look like we're going behind their back to make arrangements about their protectorates."
Wells thought for a moment before speaking again. "Well, Mister President, I understand your point, but I still strongly recommend against inviting the British Ambassador. He might perceive the entire thing as an insult, being invited to watch as other powers plan what can be considered to be a possible violation of their protectorate on Gilead. Imagine the press reaction if he went public about plans to intervene discussed at the meeting?"
There was a short silence as the new President considered the advice. "I understand, but that's where we'll come in to ensure that the British position is treated properly. If necessary, you can meet personally with Ambassador Shropshire before the conference to lay things out for him." Dale looked over to Darlington. "I want to meet with Chief Admiral O'Connor and Commandant Richards personally tomorrow, get the laydown on what forces we'll have available if we need to send more ships and some Marines into Gilead for whatever reason. When we leave here, I'll have my staff draw up a schedule for the ambassadors' conference. I'd like to have it Wednesday, but I understand if we have to wait until the end of the week, maybe even Saturday. That will be all gentlemen." Dale picked his PDA up from the desk, off for a previously-scheduled meeting with leading Councilmen.
New Britain, Kingdom of New Britain
DAY SEVENTEEN
It was a beautiful day in the heart of the great metropolis from which His Britannic Majesty's Government ruled the greatest empire amongst the indigenious powers. At the government complex located on 402 Queen Elizabeth St., the replacement for the long-gone 10 Downing Street in the original London on Terra, Sir Alexander Grant was meeting with top members of his wartime coalition Cabinent. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Reginald Gray-Baden, Earl of Preston on Midway, was in attendance, a staunch Liberal opposed to Grant, the unrepentant Tory. The First Lord of the Admiralty was a fellow Tory, Gregory Temple, while the present Minister of War - Madeleine Townsend - was another Liberal.
"This Gilead business has gotten out of hand," Grant said to the assembled cabinent leaders. "Surely there is something that can be done?"
"I wish there were, Sir," Gray-Baden responded in a sour fashion. "But any kind of direct intervention would not just violate our treaty with Gilead, it would undo four centuries of precedent in our behavior toward protectorates and allies."
"Surely we cannot simply remain on the sidelines," Townsend protested. The elderly lady, a former Prime Minister herself and a decades-long matriarch of the Liberals, wagged a finger at her junior the Foreign Secretary. "What has happened on Gilead is simply ghastly, and it looks bad upon the Government to allow one of our allies to behave in such manner."
"Nevertheless, it could tear apart our entire structure of alliances." Now Temple entered the fray. "The Caliph of the New Hedjaz, for instance, has long accepted our advice in his foreign affairs that he may question if given a reason to believe we would force him or a successor to alter his society against their wishes. Certainly our relations with some of our alien territorial protectorates here in the Empire's continugous territory would be harmed, as well as the Bengali Principality. His Majesty's Government simply cannot afford to risk the disassembly of our Empire over one part of it." Temple set his hands down on his lap. "I would propose abandonment of our Gilead interests rather than advocate an illegal intervention."
"It is a civil war, Lord Temple," Grant replied. "Surely this is an extenuating circumstance?"
"Could we not apply the same the next time brief fighting breaks out over the next Caliph? Or if the Bengali Prince's sons struggle for control of the throne." Grey-Baden shook his head. "Prime Minister Sir, I am sorry, but I am afraid we can find no legal justification to intervene, and any government resulting from British intervention would be stained with illegitimacy."
"Prime Minister, you cannot allow this bloodshed and savagery to continue!" Townsend's voice made Temple shiver, causing him to recall a great-grandmother who had been just as shrill in her voice as the old Liberal was now. "The honor of the Government is at stake. If we do not act, it will be said that Britain stood aside and did nothing as misogynists and hedonists raped nuns and desecrated missions and churches! It will be a disgrace that will haunt the British people for the rest of history."
"I am inclined to agree with you, Minister Townsend, but I am afraid that I cannot." Grant sighed and slumped into his seat. "If Britain intervenes, we will be violating a centuries-old treaty with Gilead and undermining everything that prior Governments have built to ensure the maintainance of British power and stability."
"Your choice is final?" Townsend's eyes were full of anger.
"I'm afraid it is, Ma'am."
"Then you leave me no choice." The elderly woman lifted herself out of her chair. "I am resigning from the War Ministry and from this government. Lord Grey-Baden, you must now choose between your position and your loyalty to the Liberal Party, for I intend to go immediately to the Whip to ensure that the Liberal Party withdraws from the coalition government. That is all, gentlemen." At that, she stormed out of the room.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations, Universe Designate HE-1
DAY EIGHTEEN
Within hours of being inaugerated as 4th President of the Allied Nations, Robert Dale found himselt seated in a conference room with Matthew Darlington, his successor as Defense Minister under Mamatmas and a position he would be retaining in Dale's administration, and Foreign Vice-Minister of Ambassadorial Affairs Peter Wells, whom he was preparing to nominate to replace the retiring Boris Umachov.
"Usually we would wait on the full foreign policy briefing," Wells stated as the three men settled into seats, "but the crisis on Gilead is rapidly heating up. Aside from the Alliance and the Taloran Empire, the Hispanics, Catalinians, and Slavs have all announced intentions to dispatch naval forces to cover evacuations. Some of our non-covert sources on New Corsica confirm that the French are about to as well. Having all of these foreign ships from multiple nations, some of them rivals, arriving in Gilead around the same time frame is bound to cause problems."
"I'm quite aware of this," Darlington said from his seat, "but what should we do?"
Wells looked toward Dale. "Mister President, I would like to arrange a meeting between you and the Ambassadors from the Taloran, Slavic, and Hispanic Empires. Our powers seem to be the most involved in these evacuation operations, which can too easily turn into interventions if the wrong things happen. If we set into place an agreement about how to handle the evacuation and any intervention, should something occur to necessitate it, it will ensure things stay much smoother. Otherwise, I'm not sure what might happen."
"Shouldn't we invite Ambassador Shropshire, Minister Wells?" Dale shifted slightly in his seat, starting the slow acclimation to the job now at hand. "Gilead is a British protectorate."
"British involvement in the meeting might be... disruptive, Mister President," Wells confessed. "Their Government is unwilling to intervene and the coalition government is already on the verge of collapse with the Liberal pullout announced yesterday."
"Much of the public still considers the British to be a wartime ally," Dale reminded Wells pointedly. "The last thing we need is to look like we're going behind their back to make arrangements about their protectorates."
Wells thought for a moment before speaking again. "Well, Mister President, I understand your point, but I still strongly recommend against inviting the British Ambassador. He might perceive the entire thing as an insult, being invited to watch as other powers plan what can be considered to be a possible violation of their protectorate on Gilead. Imagine the press reaction if he went public about plans to intervene discussed at the meeting?"
There was a short silence as the new President considered the advice. "I understand, but that's where we'll come in to ensure that the British position is treated properly. If necessary, you can meet personally with Ambassador Shropshire before the conference to lay things out for him." Dale looked over to Darlington. "I want to meet with Chief Admiral O'Connor and Commandant Richards personally tomorrow, get the laydown on what forces we'll have available if we need to send more ships and some Marines into Gilead for whatever reason. When we leave here, I'll have my staff draw up a schedule for the ambassadors' conference. I'd like to have it Wednesday, but I understand if we have to wait until the end of the week, maybe even Saturday. That will be all gentlemen." Dale picked his PDA up from the desk, off for a previously-scheduled meeting with leading Councilmen.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED