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A Fire in the Bush

Pelasgia

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And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
Exodus 3:2

Kalina City, Central Himyar†
OOC: The characters seen here are already established in my main internal RP, "The Lion and the Eagle". For further clarity, see that RP from around
on.

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." These were the only words with which Constantine Mukumbi could describe his reaction to the changing of the guard that had taken place before his eyes over the last few days, since the Pelasgians, in their infinite magnanimity, had decided to make their imperial domination of his homeland ever slightly less flagrant, replacing the thugs of General Security and Aegis with the thugs of the Far Southern Company's PMC subsidiary—"Himyari Security Solutions", if memory served. To the Central Himyaris, however, the foreign troops already went by another monicker: Bluecoats, in reference to the blue clothes that they often wore under their khaki plate carriers and equipment. Blue was, after all, the colour of the PFSC*,
*Pelasgian Far Southern Company (also abbreviated PEAN, from its Pelasgian initials)

As a squad of these bluecoats neatly arranged themselves in rows in their provisional assembly point outside Kalina City's central railway station, Julius Ngoy instinctively spat on the ground. "What are they even supposed to be here for, boss? The Reds are done for, and the mercs are gone as well."

"New Ncuna City seems to think it prudent to keep them here for a few years, until we can be certain that the Reds aren't coming back," came the passionless, mechanical reply for Mukumbi. His eyes as dark as his skin, he looked on the as the bluecoats turned in unison at their officer's order, and then started for the train station, to be taken to the country's inland regions. Behind them followed three times as many non-Pelasgian auxiliaries, ranging from unmistakably Nethian Central Himyari natives to exotic Scanian, Toyouese, and even Urudoah soldiers of fortune. In the corner of his eye, Mukumbi caught Ngoy staring at him. Of course he knows I don't believe that bullshit, he thought to himself. But what difference does it make? The Pelasgians practically pay our government's wages—fuck, they pay my wage too. They say "Jump!", and President Kinuani will ask "How high?" Good thing we got rid of the Engells...

For his part, Julius Ngoy knew perfectly well what his superior was thinking—and yet, he could not bear to see him keep that anger inside him. Deep down, quiet and stoic as he tried to appear, Constantine Mukumbi was a proud man, and one who was not at all happy to see his country whored out to the latest colonial master from abroad. Himyari or not, the foreigner always came to Central Himyar to take and never to give—and what little he gave came with a bill a thousand times more expensive than the benefit given. It was for this reason that the detective never seemed quite happy when a new piece of equipment "gifted" to the CHPS* arrived, or when some new rail line built by one of the Pelasgian corporate groups that had poured into the country like rats was announced—he knew the price tag of the "gift" in question would be much heavier.

*Central Himyari Police Service

"Right then," Detective Mukumbi said, breaking the silence that had remained between the two men for a few moments at this point. "Let's get on with it: we're on duty. The fun part of arresting and extraditing Pegasus and Koressios bastards is done—now we have to go back to policing this open-air sewer of a city."

Ngoy nodded and turned to follow his superior and mentor into the car—but no sooner had he turned than he saw his shadow grow a hundred times longer and darker from a blinding light behind his back, the same back which he felt scorched as if it were touching the very surface of the Sun. The sound of glass shuttering all around followed as the two Central Himyari policemen fell to the ground—and the whole square shook and roared as the facade of Kalina City Central Station exploded into a flaming, shuttered ruin.

"Bomb!" Ngoy cried out, turning around pistol in hand; Mukumbi had done the same just an instant earlier, and, after verifying that there were no active threats, the two men checked each other for wounds."God is watching over us!" Ngoy added, upon making sure that they were both unharmed.

Mukumbi raised his pistol anew and shook his head. "God had nothing to do with this." Sligthly crouched, he started for the station, checking on random civilians who lied the square, most of them alive, but many injured and a few dead. "Call for backup! We need half the ambulances in the city!" the detective barked, before pausing in front of the point where the Pelasgian mercenaries had previously stood: it was the epicentre of the blast, that much was certain, for only a crater remained. And on the far end of the gaping whole in the middle of the square, close to the charred and broken facade of the otherwise largely intact station, the blackened fragments of the bluecoats' bodies remained, some with remnants of their torn namesake uniforms; beside these were the equally mangled remains of the auxiliaries who had been following the into the station. "Fuck me," Constantine Mukumbi said out loud as he holstered his pistol. "New Ncuna City was right—but not in the way they wanted to be."



Tsavo District, Central Himyar


Robert Banza was a happy man. The son of a poor fisherman making his living on the banks of lake Tsavo, one of southern Himyar's two largest inland lakes, he had not had a particularly easy life. Disease had taken six of his siblings even before childbirth had taken his mother; education had been scarce at best, and of healthcare or modern comforts Robert did not even know. It was almost a miracle that he had even landed his job as a Border Guard—steady government jobs, especially those with the authority to extort bribes from others and protect oneself and one's family from other's extortion—were a valuable good in Central Himyar, and they were only reserved for those who were in cahoots with the local lackeys of whichever party dominated the country's sham of a democracy at that point in time. Police jobs were better than Army jobs too—for the Army dealt with rebels, terrorists and enemies, who had guns to shoot back, while the cops needed only concern themselves with unarmed strikers and the like. Poachers and smugglers and other such scum abounded, but it was only recently that the CHPS had started to pretend to care. Their foreign advisors expected results, and since the foreign aid from which the CHPS's bosses drew their bribes depended on those results... "Business is business," as the saying went.

At any rate, and fortunately for Robert Banza, there were various postings a member of the CHPS' Border Guard Directorate could be assigned to. The western border was glorified customs duty at the port—plenty of bribes, almost no danger, but prying foreign eyes and a lot of government oversight; in short, bad business. The southern border lied next to @Serenierre, a serious country by all accounts, and thus one which again begot much oversight from superiors. The north was next to the failed state that was the so-called Himyari People's Republic, meaning that it was a land of opportunity; unfortunately, this Wild West of a frontier was were most terrorists, rebels and other criminals chose to make their way into the country, so it was also the only place were Border Guards actually needed to use their military-grade equipment—sometimes to the death. The Eastern Border was by far the easiest and calmest, being mostly peaceful thanks to @Azraq's harsh border security and the relative prosperity of the towns on the coast of lakes Tsavo and Kalamba (and their namesake cities).

Being a native of that region, Robert would normally have been legally required to be assigned to a different region, in order to minimize corruption and to dissolve tribal loyalties... however, this was overlooked, as were many other legal requirements, due to the manner in which Robert got his position: his father had saved the local Regional Customs Director from drowning when the boat he had been on had sunk in Lake Tsavo. To show his gratitude, the Director offered Robert's father any favour he wished... and there was only one favour the man with four daughters to marry and only one remaining son to help him gather a dowry could think of. Though today such an arrangment would appear impossible, those were different days—days before the previous dictatorship had fallen, when Central Himyar did not even have to pretend to live up to international standards against corruption in the police force.

"I am grandfathered in," Robert would always joke when asked about his joining the force when he could barely read. That he was. It was this line that Robert repeated to his colleague, David Yumba, as the two of them patrolled the country's eastern coastline on a
gifted to the country as part of a foreign aid package sent by the Pelasgians (and a jobs programme for Pegasus' factory in the industrial heartland near Aspropol, no doubt). It was a good deal, in the long run—cars like these helped keep the rare earth deposits needed for Pegasus and other European car manufacturers' supply lines open and cheap, by making sure that Central Himyari law (if such a thing existed) was enforced. Mostly, that meant breaking up strikes and keeping bandits at bay. "Over here, I only have to worry about cigarette smugglers—and I always let others do the fine math. That way, nobody can blame me if we get caught overcharging offenders."

"At least you can drive!" David joked at him, as Robert sped into a turn and drifted. "Fuck, did you learn to turn like that on a fishing boat?"

The two men shared a laugh—only for a ripple of gunfire to interrupt them. A hail of bullets landed straight into David Yumba, killing in an instant. One of the rounds grazed Robert's right shoulder, causing him to swerve right and to crush his vehicle into the side of the newly paved road. His heart racing so fast he could feel every vein in his face, the short but wide-shouldered Nethian pulled out his service pistol, almost ignoring the pain in of his bleeding shoulder wound. Rushing out of the car, he took cover behind the driver's side door, before radioing in for backup.

"Dispatch!" he shouted. "I am near Exit 117 of Tsavo Highway toward Johnstown, taking fire! My partner's dead, assailants have automatic weapons! Advise!"

A ripple of gunfire burrowed its way into the car, bursting two of its tires; the vehicle's white exterior was now blood-red on two spots: outside the window from where David had been shot, and at the spot where Robert's shoulder touched the opposite door. Still ignoring the pain, Robert kept shouting into his radio. "Dispatch! Need backu-

A single shot silenced the lone Border Guard officer, finding him dead in the forehead. As he collapsed on the ground, the muffled radio chatter from the opposite side of the radio still relayed commands and asked him for updates. No response would ever come from the officer.
 
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Pelasgia

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Mbaraki Township, Tsavo District, Central Himyar

Mbaraki was a fortress. Not so much a town or even a local administrative centre for the fertile highland that surrounded it, but a fortress. Standing near the border of Central Himyar and the the Azraqi city of Waw, it had been built atop thickly-forested mountainous terrain centuries before the first Gallo-Germanian colonists had set foot in what was today Central Himyar. Home to the Mbaraki Kingdom of ancient legend, the Township's environs were still littered with the ruins of the stone structures that had been overgrown and left to decay since that Kingdom had fallen—not to the Engells' rifles or even to neighbouring Kizingo's spears, but to disease and the gradual decay that must inevitable swallow all human civilisations. Legend had it that Mbaraki was cursed, having paid the price of the abuses its rulers had committeed against the surrounding tribes, when the "Tiburans of Southern Himyar" (as the Pelasgians had nicknamed them) had enslaved and dominated everyone and everything to the west of Lake Tsavo and to the north of Lake Kalamba. And yet, for Central Himyaris, Mbaraki had, with centuries' worth of hindsight, become a symbol of what they had once been. Time having washed away the old hatreds and rivalries of the land, as it always does, all that was left was admiration for Central Himyar's most important indigenous civilisation—and a hope for what their country could, perhaps, once again be, if it were to free itself of the foreigners and their corrupt lackeys.

Gazing upon the foggy-shrouded peaks of Mbarakinyo as the tall hill upon which the ancient city had been constructed was called, Christopher Matondo tried to picture the stone towers and walls of Old Mbaraki. The hilltop was mostly deserted, the few inhabitants of the Township's heart having instead opted for the fertile foothills, leaving the peak to its new occupant: Fort Mbaraki, the Central Himyari National Army's regional headquarters for Tsavo District and the whole northern half of the country's eastern border. The base had been constructed with foreign help and knowhow (first Engell, then Pelasgian), but it was Central Himyari soldiers from the other end of the country who mostly peopled it, alongside a mid-sized battalion of Pelasgian paratroopers and three times as many mercenaries. It was here that Matondo, himself ironically a man of the still surviving Kizingo, hoped to mark his movement's first victory against the foreign-backed government and its goons.

"Kizingo will take Mbaraki after all," joked Matondo's second-in-command, Henry Tchicaya, also a native of Kizongo.

"No," answered the self-proclaimed General. "Central Himyar will liberate Mbaraki. The brother wars are over: It is the foreign occupier whom we must fight." With these words, Christopher Matondo put his beret back on and turned around, heading for his underground command centre, from where he would coordinate the assault upon Fort Mbaraki. He was joined by six other men, all of whom formed the Supreme Council of the Central Himyari National Liberation Movement (CHNLM, nicknamed the "Fighting Cranes" after the country's national symbol), of which the General was the primus inter pares, holding the tie-breaking vote and the title of Commander-in-Chief.

That night, once the sun had finally set on the foggy hilltops of Mbaraki Township, a sudden flurry of mortars roused the Fort's garrison from their sleep. The Fighting Cranes' artillery was far from standardized, being a hodgepodge of weaponry taken from various defunct rebel groups, raided PMC and Army facilities, smuggled in from foreign wars in Hajr and Al-Maghrab, or even illegally purchased from corrupt officials in @Azraq or funneled to the group's predecessors by Pelasgian intelligence while it was still trying to weaken the PMCs; likewise, many of the men manning these disparate, often outdated and small caliber guns, were volunteers, not professional soldiers. Nevertheless, the Fighting Cranes' rebel troops had had some training by men seasoned from the recent years' conflicts in the war-torn country; and they were numerous enough that, with enough guns pointed at the hilltop from all directions, they were bound to hit their mark sooner or later. And so, the hilltop under Fort Mbaraki shook and quaked, while the ground itself cracked open as artillery shells exploded all over its surface, wrecking structures and slaying men left and right. The defenders cowered in their hovels like crying children, many of them having scarcely had a chance to grip their rifles.

Then, a minute or two after the barrage had stopped, came the assault proper: a rebel force the size of a division rushed up the mountaintop. This was Christopher Matondo's masterplan: a crude copy of a creeping barrage, adjusted to account for the limitations of the equipment and personnel that he had at his disposal. For the first few instants, it seemed to be working, even as the shaken defenders roused themselves and manned the defensive perimeter, shooting down at the advancing rebels. The government troops had been selected for loyalty, not skill, and now that they were finally fighting a battle against a committed opponent, they seemed on the breaking point; just when the Fighting Cranes were on the verge of breaking through the southeastern wall and entering the base, however, things changed. Precision artillery fire started ripping through the attackers' ranks, and more precise shots rained death on them from further west on the line.

The Pelasgian paratroopers, along with the more skilled PMC troops and a battalion-sized formation of Central Himyaris who had been given proper Pelasgian training and were equipped to like standards (known as the 525th Model Infantry Regiment), had taken to the fight. In truth, those elements of the defending force had not been left in shock by the attack, as they had actual obeyed the Government's readiness orders and they had taken care to maintain heightened defensive readiness. Thus, when the unknown assailant finally did come, they were ready to meet him, first by taking cover in prepared shelters, and then by rushing out to meet the attackers in an orderly fashion. The segment of the attacking force assigned to their sector had advanced with all the others at first, but it had then found itself stuck in a minefield, being confined into a deathzone of prepared defenses and fortifications. Thus, having made short work of the leading attackers in their sector and forcing the rest to flee, the elite of Fort Mbaraki's defenders was freed to reinforce other parts of the defensive perimeter, wheeling around the flank of the attacking Fighting Cranes and catching them by surprise. The firefight lasted for hours, but as dawn approached, the rebels were forced to withdraw back down the now half-burning mountain. Their lines having cleared the danger-close zone for air support, the close attack propeller aircraft of the Central Himyari Air Force (assisted by half a dozen Pelasgian jets stationed in New Ncuna City) rained fire down on the attackers as they fled back into the forest and their tunnels.

Nominally, the Government had carried the day; but for the Fighting Cranes' Commander-in-Chief, the day was still a strategic victory, even if it had been a nominal defeat. "We have shown the world, and our compatriots, that the Government can only win by relying on foreign strength," he explained to his colleagues on the Supreme Council. "Eventually, as more and more of the country rises to join our cause, and as more and more of the so-called 'National' Army defects to our side, the Foreigners will have to commit ever more resources and men to keep us down. There will come a point where the profits they reap from controlling our country are no longer worth the costs—and when that day comes, we will have won."

It was thus that the Central Himyari National Liberation Movement announced its existence to the people of Central Himyar and of the world. From this point on, its attacks would only get more brazen and more ferocious. In New Ncuna City, the Government and the political class was suddenly gripped with a fear that had never touched it during the years of the Communist Insurgency—and even the pacified, moderated Communist Party itself was now afraid. Who were these "Fighting Cranes"? What did they want? Certainly, it did not seem possible to buy them off...
 

Pelasgia

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Liwidi Township, Kalamba District, Central Himyar

A deep trench run through the fields of Liwidi, dividing the countrside from the town proper like a scar cutting through the flesh of the country. To the south of the trench, toward the sparser vegetation and the slightly flatter terrain of the lakeshore, lied strewen about hundreds, even thousands of corpses, along with blown-out pickup trucks. To its north lied the half-ruined buildings that made up Liwidi, a town of (formerly) of some fifty thousand souls in the southern half of the country's east. Its population having been mostly evacuated, the town now remained an empty shell, used as a base (and as cover) by the forces of the Central Himyari National Army (CHNA) in their battle against "General" Matondo's Fighting Cranes.

"We've won," proclaimed Colonel Isidore Lamamba. He gazed out into the field, observing the ruins of the attackers' First Shock Army—the Fight Cranes' main force in the country's southeast. "We've kept Matondo and his gang from reaching the natural gas fields to Kalamba's north, and from besieging Kalamba City." Of course, literally speaking, the Colonel was right: The Fighting Cranes had suffered grievous losses during their outright attack against the National Army, and the limitations of their capabilities against a regular military (even as poorly constituted as the CHNA) had become apparent. At the same time... the scenes soldiers digging mass graves to the north of the trench were hardly the stuff of victory.

"If this is what our victory will look like, we are ruined," commented Lazarus Mbangi, the Colonel's adjutant. "We've lost a villages' worth of men—if this was continues thusly, there will be nobody left in Central Himyar by the end of it." The sound of fighter jets flying overhead shook the ground, as the 115 Combat Wing of the Imperial Pelasgian Air Force made one more pass overhead, in case another insurgent assault was forthcoming. Behind the Pelasgian jets trailed the rotor-powered ground assault aircraft of the Central Himyari military, the so-called "Himyari Bees", whose pass had a much less preventative object in mind: to hunt for remnants of the insurgent force and to rain death on them as they retreated.

"They say a whole new brigade's worth of Model Regiments are coming inland following training in Kalina City," the Colonel answered. "Add to that the Pelasgian Expeditionary Force en route by train as we speak, and the more than ten thousand mercenaries... Our best hope is for this war to end quickly and decisively. I have some hope that these new forces can help us with that, along with the fresh equipment we should be getting." A blast followed Lamamba's words, as the ground assault aircraft made a pass over a rural road, where they had spotted a convoy of retreating Fighting Cranes on technicals—the fireblast as they unleashed their payload on the fleeing men below shined in the distance.

"Perhaps,"Mbangi conceded. "But then, we are not the only ones receiving support... Deira (@Natal), ever consumed by the delusion that its empire was 'good' and 'loved' has made overtures to our enemies; the Deirans will not cease until our state is ruined and our independence undone, if only to prove to the world that we are lesser men, unfit for freedom." No sooner had Mbangi finished his sentence than a line of white jet smoke rose from the treeline, striking one of the rotor planes and causing it crush into the surrounding vegetation, burning: a MANPAD, albeit a crude one only fit for such easy pickings. "Who's to say they haven't already started to funnel weapons to the insurgents. And what if @Azraq, next door, decides to weight in... Some in Jugol dream less of perpetuating their current kleptocracy and more of modernising. If that were to come about, they could become a regional power for southern Himyar as Pelasgia is for the north, and we would be directly in their back yard."

The Colonel crossed his arms and nodded. "Perhaps," he echoed his subordinate's words. "But there's nothing we can do about that. The only thing we can do is our job: winning this war."




Urbo Ushangi, New Voi District, Central Himyar


For the month or so that the war had been raging, the CHNA had mostly been a passive force, primarily engaged in defensive operations. This, in a certain way, made sense, for the CHNA already controlled most urban centres and regions of significance, meaning that the Fighting Cranes had to come to them—and because it gave time to the Pelasgians to train new Model Regiments in the country's western coastal regions, which were solidly under government control, while also bringing in more troops, mercenaries and materiel to support the Government. The one exception to this strategy, however, had been the Special Mobile Reserve (SMR), a force whose name had next to nothing to do with its actual character: enlisted in peacetime (that is, before the start of the Tsavo-Kalamba Insurgency) to support local law enforcement and military troops with training and policing, the SMR was not a "reserve" but a collection of foreign mercenary troops; likewise, though it was mobile, it was not more so than any traditional force, save for one aspect: its integrated arms approach to combat, which made extensive use of air support and vehicles; and, finally, it was not a special force per se, though its tactics certainly differed from those of the CHNA.

As such, while the rest of the National Army awaited the Fighting Cranes' assaults and focused on holding on to the territory that it held, using its firepower to wear down the rebels' poorly supplied forces, the SMR took another approach: it went on the offensive. Through the country's inland East and North, where governmental authority had been weak even scene the Deiran Colonial days, the insurgents had seized towns and villages, turning them into the foundations of a true supply line. It therefore fell to the SMR to recapture those towns, in order to deprive the Fighting Cranes of the logistical backbone which they could use to gradually transform their forces into a real army. Moreover, the very essence of this objective necessitated swiftness and decisiveness: the SMR had to assault such places quickly and to take them through overwhelming force. It certainly helped that the forces left behind to defend them were demoralized and poorly trained and equipped, often fleeing at the first sign of serious opposition, at the sight of an armoured vehicle or at the sound of a jet. All of this came to a head, however, in the regional city of Urbo Ushangi, home to some two-hundred thousand people and the only major urban centre of national importance to have (mostly) come under rebel control.

Rebel rule had been cruel to Urbo Ushangi: the corruption of the government had given way to the open rapaciousness of the disparate groups that made up the Fighting Cranes; foreigners had fled en masse, but for many who stayed behind, all it took was a denunciation as a "collaborator" to have unspeakable horrors committed upon one and one's family. Many used this to settle scores or amass fortunes... and though "General" Matondo had outright forbidden such practices, both he and the Fighting Cranes' Supreme Council had little actual control over the forces that operated in the country's north, who more like allies than subordinates. To make matters worse, the town was critical to the Fighting Cranes' strategy of attempting to surround and cut off Kalamba and Tsavo, particularly since the failure of the General's own northward attack in the Kalamba Campaign. Therefore, the rebel high command could not afford to alienate the insurgents controlling Urbo Ushangi, even at the risk of alienating the local populace.

The Government of Central Himyar had been more than glad to broadcast news of this horrid treatment, convincing some and falling of the deaf, cynical ears of others. It was the international community that such propaganda was mostly concerned with—for within the country, New Ncuna City instead broadcasted that "Urbo Ushangi would be retaken swiftly and without a single drop of loyal Central Himyari blood being shed." That it would, for the Government (at the advice of the Pelasgian military advisors, no doubt) had here decided to use the SMR, to demonstrate to both the Fighting Cranes and the still ambivalent people that it had a whole separate army at its disposal, which it could freely use whenever it wanted.

Upon hearing these news, the rebels dug-in and they awaited a traditional assault: trenches were dug, barricades placed, and IEDs dotted the roads around the city. Still, no traditional assault came. Then, three nights later, as the defenders had started to glow complacent, caring more to pillage the city's stores than to man its outskirts, an alarm was sounded: an assault was inbound from the north. The whole of the rebel force massed and prepared to repel the foreign hired guns... only to find that the attack had evaporated when it reached the frontline, at the very edge of the defensive perimeter. No sooner had the rebels turned back than news came from the south and the east of two more assaults—again, the defenders rushed to the fore, and again they found that their enemy had disengaged. Thus the pattern repeated itself for the rest of the night, and then for the next day, and for three days and nights later—until, finally, exhausted and disoriented, the Fighting Cranes holding Urbo Ushangi were split evenly between those in a veritable state of paranoia and those who had concluded that the attack would never actually materialise.

It was the very next night, as the paranoid struggled to sleep and the complacent struggled to remain awake that the attack finally came—and it came from all sides at once. Though less than half than the defensive force in size, at merely three thousand men, the SMR had the mobility and the means to magnify its attacking potential: aircraft struck enemy forces within the city and pinned down sectors that the SMR ground troops were not directly attacking, preventing them from reinforcing those that did come under land-based assault; armoured vehicles rapidly punched through defensive lines and fortifications, sending panicked defenders back into their own IED minefields; helicopters redeployed troops rapidly, and drones reconnoitered the region or rained death upon unsuspecting defenders; and, of course, the more modern and well-trained troops of the SMR made short work of the rebel levies wherever they met them in battle.

By the end of the day, the Fighting Cranes' garrison had either fled Urbo Ushangi through corridors left to them by the SMR or surrendered. Indeed, many of those fleeing would later been hunted down by aircraft, including the Himyari Bees of the Central Himyari National Air Force; whereas those captured would be deported toward the coast, to be interned in special camps built by for the Government by the Pelasgian Far Southern Company (PSFC) to house captured insurgents (who were not formally recognised as prisoners of war due to being unlawful combatants). The PSFC itself had much reason to celebrate, for it was mostly its own troops (formerly of General Security and Aegis) who made up the SMR; and with some four thousand rebel troops captured, and almost as many broken or killed, Urbo Ushangi had been the Fighting Cranes' greatest defeat to date.

For many, it seemed that the Tsavo-Kalamba Insurgency was on the brink of fizzling out; and it was the desperation resulting from this apparent oncoming defeat that led the rebel leadership to seek any and all foreign help... including from former enemies.
 

Pelasgia

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PELASGIAN EMPIRE
MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

SUPREME MILITARY COMMAND OF THE INTERIOR AND THE EXARCHATES (A.S.D.E.EX.)
SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND (D.E.P.)

[TOP SECRET]

OPERATION “MARLIN” - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Propontis, ██ December 2022

STATUS:
SUBMITTED TO ASDEEX LEADER FOR APPROVAL
APPROVED

Location: ███████████, Kalamba District, Central Himyar
Date & Time: ██/12/2022, ██:00
Units Involved:
  • Imperial Pelasgian Armed Forces: XI Amphibious Raider Wing; I Mountain Raider Wing; I Airborne Raider Wing
  • Pelasgian Far Southern Company: 3rd Special Operations Grouping “Sacred Band”
  • Central Himyari National Army: 5 Commando; 2nd Marine Raider Company
[...]

Mission Summary: Friendly forces split into three primary groupings: XI ARW and I MRW joined with 5 CMD and 2nd MRC to form “NET”. 3 SOG and I ARW to form “HARPOON”. NET to enter operations area covertly at cords. […] via combination of low-profile, fast moving naval craft and on-foot land transportation, linking up at […]. Once NET in position, HARPOON to begin airborne approach within pre-cleared safe area at [redacted] hours. While HARPOON en route, NET to begin two-pronged diversion attack behind enemy lines, close to centre of enemy position, making it apparent to OPFOR that it is targeting MARLIN. Once enemy begins evacuation of MARLIN toward pre-planned escape route to border with █████, NET to allow sufficient respite for MARLIN to escape tightly, while delaying force behind MARLIN is pinned severely, rendering them incapable of offering substantial support to MARLIN’s convoy. In the meantime, HARPOON to have proceeded to INTERCEPTION POINT, setting up two-layered ambush to prevent MARLIN from reaching border with █████. HARPOON to attack MARLIN’s convoy at first instance and attempt to apprehend MARLIN; if apprehension attempt fails or first layer is penetrated, second layer of ambush to neutralize MARLIN and all escorting OPFOR personnel. Once HARPOON engages, NET to gradually disengage to avoid enemy counterattack. Following end of ambush, HARPOON to disengage and move to secondary safe zone for extraction.

[...]





Unknown location, Kalamba District, Central Himyar

Chrysanthos Stavrou wiped the sweat off his brow and let out a faint, annoyed groan. He had been lying in wait for slightly over half an hour—though, under the heat of the Central Himyari sun, that felt more like three hours and then some. Having been raised in the arid southwestern regions of Pelasgia, Stavrou was accustomed to hot weather—and yet he was sweating three times as much as the man next to him, the pale, sunburnt Captain Adrianos Strategopoulos, who was a native of the mountainous Metaxadon Theme.

“First mission got you stressed, Xenophon?” quipped Strategopoulos—Xenophon was the nickname that the professional Pelasgian soldiers attached to all PFSC mercenaries indiscriminately, in reference to the famous author of the Anabasis.

“I’ve done missions before, karavanas,” the merc responded, using a light pejorative that referred to the karavána, the Pelasgian soldiers’ canteen. “It’s the delay that’s stressing me.” Chrysanthos’ words were accompanied by the distant rumbling of gunfire, which had been coming from the direction of the rebel camp since before the men of HARPOON had even landed.

Strategopoulos thought to conjure a smart, mocking answer—but the sound of gunfire suddenly sounded from far closer, near the point of the first stage of the ambush. “Heads up!” he told his men. “First layer’s made contact!”

Up until that point, the men of HARPOON had maintained radio silence, to avoid being pinged by the rebels—or by whatever foreign equipment they might have acquired. Yet, with guns blazing and gunfire drawing ever near, Captain Papastratos, the commander of the first layer, broke that silence. “They’re past us, making for the bridge to the border! Blow that shit up!”

Strategopoulos complied at once. Just as the jeep carrying the operation’s target, MARLIN, appeared at the edge of his view, he raised up a detonator, which was linked to explosives that had been placed throughout the bridge that led over the nearby stream, to the border crossing with Azraq. When the jeep was about to start its crossing, he activated the detonator—and MARLIN’s vehicle dove face-first into the half-muddy waters below.

“Light him up!” cried Strategopoulos, and a frenzy of gunfire buried itself into the husk of the half-crushed vehicle that now stood buried amidst the shallow stream—the winter had not yet raised the river’s level, and so the ambushers could easily see the handful of men staggering out of the vehicle, picking them off one by one. A couple more vehicles appeared, trying to bring men to their leader’s aid—only for the shoulder-portable anti-vehicle launchers carried by the Pelasgian paratroopers to blow them to bits, now that keeping a low profile was no longer a concern.

Finally, after what had felt like an eternity, the man designated as HARPOON emerged from the jeep. Chrysanthos saw him to be exactly the same as the briefing picture, as he placed the man’s head in his crosshairs. There goes their leader, he thought to himself, and then pulled the trigger. MARLIN, who had just started to turn and run across the stream collapsed into the water, forced forward from the impact of the high-power rifle.

A few more shots followed, ensuring that the General and his companions were dead, before Strategopoulos went to check on the corpse. “Kosmides!” he cried out, after examining the body closely. “Take a few pictures—I’ll let command know we got him.” He turned on his radio and radioed it in. “Command, this is HARPOON One Actual: MARLIN is dead; I repeat, MARLIN is dead. Requesting evac.”

An emotionless, almost mechanical voice sounded from the other end of the line. “Affirmative, HARPOON One Actual. Proceed to predesignated point and await extraction. ETA, 15 minutes.”
 
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