Fire in the Archipelago

[Pelasgia]

Hagios Georgios, Caria
16/04/2022 | 05:45

The calm waves of a mid-spring morrow broke on the sandy shores of Hagios Georgios island. Above the water, a lazy sun rose on a barely lit sky, dawn having not yet properly broken. In the distance, some thirty or so kilometers out, a howling shriek pierced the eerie silence, otherwise punctured by the intermittent sound of the waves.

The sound’s originator, a

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fighter jet flew over the sea at medium altitude, having launched from its mothership, the mighty aircraft carrier PP Lycaonia of the Pelasgian First Fleet. Plenty of Pelasgian fighters had sortied around Hagios Georgios over the last few days, veering well into Carian territorial waters. This specific fighter, numbered 9-41, was no exception—only this one was heading straight for the island itself.

Certainly, the Pelasgians had the stated objective of harassing the Carian forces stationed on and around the island, which is why they would constantly send out groups of such fighters to violate Carian airspace. But, for all their bravado, they would never send a fighter directly over foreign territory, especially in such a delicate situation. Unfortunately for them, MA-06N 9-41 had one fatal flaw that its sister planes did not: due to insufficient repairs on its navigation equipment when it was rushed back into service, the aircraft’s systems slightly overshot the course set by the pilot. The first flight had shown no sign of this, in part because the pilot was new and far too inexperienced to detect it; but the problem had since gotten worse, thanks to continuous simulated dogfights with the Carians’ more advanced airplanes—and now, unbeknownst to the sole pilot, it was leading the fighter straight to Hagios Georgios. The policy of radio silence to avoid alerting the Carians until the last minute for further pressure meant that the pilot had no way of knowing where he was headed.

On the ground, the plane had been detected long before its shrieking cry sounded over the skies near the southernmost island in the Carian Kingdom. A single team of four servicemen—all conscripts—and a commander tracked its motions inside the Carian air defence station on an elevated point near the island’s northern tip. The bunker, hastily built by men of the Royal Engineers shipped south all the way from the Serbovian border, was not particularly spacious or comfortable. It was, however, well concealed and more than adequately equipped to detect and display the movements of MA-06N 9-41 as it approached the island at high speed.

“We should alert command!” said one of the conscripts in a semi-panicked voice.

“No time,” answered the commander, his dark brown eyes fixing on the screen. “They’ll be within bombing range of the island in a matter of minutes.”

Another serviceman verified the plane’s trajectory. “They’re heading straight for Livadeia Airbase.”

The commander took a deep breath before addressing his men. “Shoot it down.”

Everyone in the room froze—but they knew it had to be done.

But a few seconds later, MA-06N 9-41’s pilot received a loud pinging notification of having been locked onto. He tried his best to deploy flares and to evade, but it was to no avail: within a few seconds, the jet had been reduced to a pile of debris and flames. The pilot had been lucky to escape with his life, having ejected just in time. Yet, he knew, from the moment he activated his SOS beacon, that being rescued would be the least of his concerns.

--

Hagios Georgios, Caria
16/04/2022 | 06:30

Giorgos rubbed his eyes one more time. Dawn had barely broken on this arid, barely habitable island, and already he had been roused by an alarm and sent to the coast to help reinforce defences.

“Don’t dig the trench so far ahead! The sea will flood it!” he shouted, trying his best to monitor the works in between helping the ordinary servicemen carry around sandbags and other construction materials.

As he handed the last sandbag from a crate to the soldier next to him, his tired, half-closed eyes focused on the rectangular olive-green hunk of steel overlooking the coast where his unit were working. Suddenly, almost as if one of the Meridian’s notorious quick sea storms had erupted, the shrieking howl of a missile pierced the air.

Giorgos barely had a moment to fall to the ground, before the shriek gave way to a boom—an explosion so massive it shook the ground, devouring the TY3-A SAM system and half the cliffside it had been positioned on with it.

“Is everybody alright?” Lieutenant Glafkidis, Giorgos’ superior, shouted.

Apart from a few pained groans from those thrown to the ground by the impact of the missile, it seemed that “Yes” was the answer.

Meanwhile, somewhere to the south of the island, tens of kilometers away, a Pelasgian submarine was submerging, having delivered a successful hit with

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—a retaliatory strike for the Carians’ downing of MA-06N 9-41. As it dove into the depths below, the leviathan’s radio transponder picked up

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[Pelasgia]

Nauplia, Polity of Naupliotica, Caria
16/04/2022 | 07:30

“You have got to be kidding me!” Anastasios Kalamaras shouted. The tall, pale man—quite atypical for a Carian, really—slammed his fist on the table. “You mean to tell me that your men shot down a Pelasgian fighter jet without even asking for authorisation?”

General Papadakis, the Carian Chief of Staff, gulped before answering. “Sir, with all due respect, there was no time to decide—it was a matter of seconds. We either shot him down, or we risked having our largest air base on the island bombed.”

“Bombed by what, you imbecile?!” Kalamaras barked, slamming the table anew. “By a single fighter jet flying at high altitude?” The Carian Prime Minister had done his military service in the King’s Air Force, so there was no use in trying to bullshit him on the matter. Ventilating loudly for a few instants, he regained his calm and turned to Rear Admiral Politis. “Have you found the pilot at least?”

“Yes sir,” the Admiral answered. “He ejected safely and we’re within range. However, we abandoned our search and rescue efforts when the Pelasgians approached—it appears they have recovered him successfully. We did not want to provoke them by giving the impression that we were trying to capture their pilot before they got to him.”

Kalamaras nodded. “Good. I’m glad to see that at least one branch of the military remembers how to use its brain.”

“We can’t leave this unanswered,” General Papadakis protested. “They bombed the TY3-A battery we had deployed on the island!”

“Then, if anything,” Prime Minister Kalamaras shot back, pointing his finger at the General, “I should thank the Pelasgians for removing your ability to shoot more planes down.”

A soft tap on the table interrupted the two men’s conversation. King John III, that near-septuagenarian monarch with his deep blue eyes and near-rectangular face, had placed his hand one the table, indicating that he wished to speak—a rare occurrence during meetings of the State Council, given that Carian monarchs had long become largely ceremonial in function. When the King did speak, his voice commanded respected, for he was, after all, the Carian state personified and had spent more time dealing with matters of state than anyone in the room had been alive.

“Nobody died,” the King noted, switching his glance between the two bickering men. “That could almost be considered a miracle, given what has so far transpired. If we respond, hostilities will only escalate further—and once blood is drawn on either side, a peaceful settlement will no longer be possible.”

A silence followed the monarch’s remarks, to be only interrupted by the intervention of Foreign Minister Grammatikos. “Your Majesty, Mr. Prime Minister,” Grammatikos said in a respectful tone. “It’s General Papadopoulos, the Director of the Pelasgian Krypteia. He’s calling on the emergency line with a de-escalation plan to propose.”

General Papadakis tried to voice his objection, but a single angry stare from the King was all it took for him to hold his mouth.

“Put him on the line,” the Prime Minister answered, after shooting a glance at the King to verify that he was indeed nodding, as if to offer his consent. “This government is over—might as well make sure we don’t blow the Meridian Sea to bits on the way out.” He paused before reconsidering. “Actually, Grammatikos, you take the call—tell him you have my full authorisation to bind the Carian Government as you see fit. We both know that, once the federal parliament scalps me for this, it’s you they’ll have replace me, in hopes of avoiding a snap election. Might as well get a head start.”

The King removed his hand from the table. The matter was settled.

--

Propontis, Pelasgia
17/04/2022 | 06:45

President Alexios Ioannopoulos sat at the spot that, but a month earlier, had been occupied by none other than Chairman Ioannis Drakos. From the portrait placed behind the Pelasgian leader, the immortal gaze of Marshal Sideris, the first military man to lead Pelasgia following the takeover of the Pragmatist Coalition in 1969, scanned the room where the Politburo met in council.

“We have to strike back at them,” Ioannopoulos proclaimed, so calmly as to give the impression that advocating a regional war was entirely trivial to him. In truth, he had spent the better part of his life preparing for a moment like this—why would one dedicate their being to honing the art of war, if one were not to apply it by leading their troops into combat? And what Pelasgian ruler, from the mythical Pelasgus to the current President, had been anything but a warlord?

With confidence unrivaled, Ioannopoulos put his finger on the table and made himself even more explicit. “We must sink the entire Carian fleet and turn Hagios Georgios into a pile of rubble, if that’s what that it takes.”

Alas, his moment of glory was to be short lived.

“No,” said General Papadopoulos, Director General of the Krypteia, from the back of the room. Next to him, the concurrent Minister of Defence and Chief of the General Staff, General Spantidakis, nodded in agreement. “We will not go to war with Caria, and we will not dye the White Archipelago red with the blood of our brothers.”

Ioannopoulos made a fierce grimace as he countered the challenger. “So do you propose that we just sit by and let the Carians down our jets?”

“The plane veered off course,” said Spantidakis, whose long, sharp nose seemed almost like the tip of the jet itself. “According to maintenance crews on the ship, the repairs they made to the navigation panel most likely failed to fix an underlying issue. The jet had no business being anywhere near where it was shot down—over Carian territorial waters and heading straight for the island.”

Ioannopoulos had many avenues he could take: invoking rank; accusing his subordinates of disloyalty; trying to inspire them as fellow warriors; yet, as he studied the faces of his two subordinates, he knew that the debate had already been decided. After all, he had worn such an expression but a few months earlier. “So,” he said, turning to Ploumidis, “you think the people will accept this?”

“I think the people have already voiced their opinion on letting the blood of their Carian brothers over a rock,” Ploumidis answered. “The Carian public, too, seem to be of a like mind, which is why the plane was probably only shot down in a panic—and why the Carian Navy retreated and allowed us to retrieve the pilot.”

“So it is,” Ioannopoulos thought, shaking his head with a great bitterness going through him. He had prepared all his life for this moment, and yet, when push came to shove, his own people were the ones to deprive him of it. Alas, it was worth one last shot. “Whatever you have planned, do you think the Party will go along with it?”

“I’m sure of it,” Ploumidis said, as the room’s only true politician.

“And what of the People’s Republic?” Ioannopoulos pleaded. “Do you truly think it will survive another leader in so short a time?”

“It is our object that it should not,” Director General Papadopoulos of the Krypteia commented, with an almost burning face as he uttered the hithertofore unthinkable remark. “The Pelasgian People and their State shall survive, as they have done for centuries—but the socialist experiment is at an end. We must finally accept to bury the long-dead corpse of Comrade Sideris, for Pelasgia itself to live.”

The President scanned the room to judge the guards’ reactions, only to see them return his gaze in perfect, disciplined unison. “Krypteia men,” he thought to himself, noticing their uniforms. “That bastard Papadopoulos knew what he was doing when he replaced the guards with his own back when we purged the Hardliners. I shouldn’t have allowed it. A traitor once…”

“We have some papers for you to sign, sir,” Ploumidis explained. Already, his use of the old honorific kyrie (“lord/sir/master”) instead of syntrofe (“comrade”) was telling as to the future of the People’s State.

“I’ll sign whatever you want and then resign when you deem most convenient,” Ioannopoulos said in a defeated tone. “Having the tanks roll into Propontis twice in a year is bad for the stock market.” He laughed at the last remark. “So much for ‘Socialism with Pelasgian characteristics.’”

“We just have one document,” Ploumidis retorted, placing it in front of the President alongside a pen. “It is a Presidential Decree designating General Papadopoulos as your acting successor and then effecting your own resignation. You will leave politics due to health reasons and then retire peacefully to the luxurious island of Despotikon, near Propontis—where the State can easily keep an eye on you.”

“So be it,” Ioannopoulos said, before signing the document. “At least you’re not forcing me into a monastery or a labour camp.”​