Lake Rwenbezi War

[Gunnland]

Palm Sunday
​

Over Lake Rwenbezi
Between Port Stanley and Loago

​

Helicopter gunships swung low over Lake Rwenbezi heading east, their rotors creating choppy whitecaps beneath them. RRF Schwarzhabicht helicopters followed them, Reiver Light Infantry soldiers legs hanging out of them so that they looked like mechanical cockroaches. Colonel Callum Marlow hoped a storm would not roll in that afternoon. A fifty-fifty.

The aerial assault was mostly for the cameras, but it would hit League of Loagan Communist forces near the Azraq-Loago border from the south. Most of the 6,000 RLI troops were on trucks trundling through Azraq, north of Lake Rwenbezi. If all went to according to plan, the RLI would have a foothold in western Loago to fight the LLC. If not... well, Marlow didn't want to think about having to use his reserves so soon.

They wouldn't expect it in Holy Week. Just like in '79, when we hit the snails on Palm Sunday and they never recovered. Colonel Marlow was relieved not to be in Chinde with all the bigwigs for the 50th Anniversary of Independence: the snails' countess, the Gunnish princeling, the fat black prime minister woman. Ian Smith dead and the men of '79 forgotten. What had independence been for?

And what is this shit for? Colonel Marlow wasn't sure why Prime Minister Butler had decided to risk war with Loago at this moment. Comrade Georges had been in effective control of northern Port Stanley for decades. Sure, there had been some unpleasant spat between pro-government and anti-government Fante militias in Oriel, but then again the blacks were always fighting each other for whatever reasons. Mud Town had sent some toys down and then sent Hika Qiltu packing. But Marlow wondered if the real reasons weren't hidden behind the big concrete walls to the east, in that great cement fist rammed up eastern Himyar's ass. And this gave him pause.

The truth would out. For a while at least, it would be time for shooting communists and flesh-eating RANU pygmies and Loagans. His three favorite things.

 

[Gunnland]

Phase 1, 43 (marginal PS defeat)
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Nungwi, Mabwawa Coast, Loago
5:00am, Holy Monday​

He had underestimated the Burukovas. The cyclonic storms on Lake Rwenbezi came early, grounding helicopters and tossing a few of them into the lake. A multimillion-talent mistake. Some idiot lieutenant had used HallojMaps to calculate travel time through Azraq, leaving convoys of trucks stranded in the mud four hours from the rendezvous points. At one point it looked like thousands of Stanleans were going to be cut down in a military disaster that would go down in the history of Himyar.

At least that hadn't happened. Colonel Marlow realized his plan, to coordinate a running attack southwards over the Azraqi border in conjunction with helicopters flying over the lake to strike from the south, was far too ambitious. He could not simply scale-up RLI counterinsurgency tactics. I should have massed the helicopters and the main force in Azraq. But the politics of everything was so uncertain, and the Fante regulars trusted the Azraqis even less than their white officers. Weak excuses. Now so many are dead. Several hundred.

In an ideal world, the sheer size and force of the attack would have sent the Burukovas running from Filabusi and Hounde, and the RLI in control of the northwest Mabwawa Coast, the main force threatening Umtali with a secure perimeter guarding the roads down from the Alfajiri Mountains.

In this clusterfuck of a world, the RLI had successfully secured only two border villages, Nungwi and Kendwa, neither of which had Burukova garrisons. We shot a few fucking border guards. Firefights were still raging in the uplands near Hounde. Stranded paratroopers, expecting backup from the main force that never came, had retreated from Filabusi. The ones that survived.

In an ideal world Colonel Marlow would have had a base of operations, a place for helicopters to land, preliminary fortifications, all being built already while his fighters pushed the Burukovas over the Amanji River. Instead he was going to have to spend weeks clearing out this theater. And call in Fante tribal fighters. He grimaced. And more medics. Lots more medics. Instead of a forward base, the priority was a field hospital triage. If the Burukovas regrouped quickly, a day of heavy casualties would turn into a slaughter.

He picked up the phone to tell Prime Minister Butler what kind of victory she could claim.

 

[Ebria]

Phase 1, response

Filabusi, Mabwawa Coast, Loago
9:30 am, Holy Monday​

Lev Burukova, a short but very agitated middle aged man was fuming. Not only did the Natalians destroy his allies, the Rhinos, but now the generalised offensive towards the interior were pushing the communists to the west and now, just to make things more and more complicated, the Stanleyans decided to invade Loago. His faithful friend and the commander of the militia protecting the lands of the Syndicate, Zare Borisov has advised him to prepare for something. Far too much has Port Stanley stood silent and now they started a hostile rhetoric against what he called the legitimate government of Loago, the communist led Democratic Republic. He did follow the advice of Borisov and told Masimba to bring some of the equipment he had to the west as the rhetoric coming from Chidne was becoming more and more belicose.

Now, he was walking through the main hospital in Filabusi, once a modern clinic of 350 beds, today a rundown hospital probably taking care of 900 or so people, receiving wounded both from the east and now from the north too. Besides him was Borisov.

"It it important that we do not show ourselves as overly aggressive," Lev said. "Sir, I must insist. If we counterattack now, we could break the Stanleyans and show them that there is no chance in hell for them to set food in Loago..." argued Zare Borisov, but he was interrupted by a hand gesture of Lev and the arrival of Masimba, who saluted. "Any attack over the border would annoy the Azraqi who would probably then send a real army to fight us, not a token force to just support the Mai Mai. As of yet, the front is stable enough so that we don't need to start negotiations with Maseru. We can still overcome," Lev said. "Now, with an external enemy, we can really unite the Loagans under the red banner of the Democratic Republic of Loago and present the FTU and the NUG as foreign imposed puppets," he mumbled.

Both Borisov and Masimba stood quiet as Lev was walking through the wounded at the hospital, shaking the hands of some of them, thanking others and expressing his condolences to others.

"I want the RPGs and the Pelasgian SAMs to stay around the coast, should the Stanleyans attack again," said Lev as he returned to the two soldiers. "How many technicals do you still have?" he asked Masimba. "I think I could man up around 50 out of the original 100, or so, but I would be a bit for a stretch," the seasoned warrior said. "We still have some mortars around, they can be used. I want you, Masimba to let Comrade Punda lead a counter attack to retake the border villages of Nungwi and Kendwa. I don't want to see any Stanleyan setting foot on Loago itself. Send him with the technicals. Borisov will man a mortar bombardment as a welcoming gift for the invaders. I don't care if the villages disappear from the map, but the most important thing is to not cross the border into Azraq. Under no circumstance. Not even if Octavia Butler herself is wounded and limping she tries to cross the border... Once she crosses is is safe. I don't want to annoy the northerners, especially now. Tell Punda that after he takes them, he is to fortify the border to his best. Borisov, you will help with that. In the meantime, Masimba, I want you to go to the mountains to be sure that the front doesn't break there," said Lev as the other two soldiers saluted and left. He then sighed annoyed. His soldiers managed to keep of the Stanleyans, but it was very much a stalemate, he could see that as he was surrounded by wounded and dying men, and those were the ones that managed to get to Filabusi, God knows how many others died or are dying between the city and the border.

 

[Gunnland]

Our Lady of the Lake Abbey School
Near Kendwa, Loago
​

Sergeant Amadu Kasawura always teased Lieutenant Michael Cameron Ogilvie, the young square-jawed Gunnish officer straight out of officer candidate school who thought some action in Himyar would help his career back home. Kasawura was a veteran of the endless bush wars in the north, decorated with more than scars. War had made him rich. But Fante never rose into the officer ranks; that was for white boys wet behind the ears unaccustomed to the smell of war. It was Kasawura's job to babysit Ogilvie. The platoon knelt on both sides of the the roadside, and looked up at the low Fergusine abbey school on the hill with its arcades and squat brick tower. Kasawura's breath smelled like Leopard beer. He could not exactly refuse the assignment Colonel Marlow had skipped the chain of command to give him. Lieutenant Ogilvie put down his binoculars. He was pale.

"It's a girl's school."

"Unfortunately on a strategic location, sir."​

"They're just children."

"They're just Nethians."​

"This is beneath a soldier."

"In the global war against communism?"​

"I cannot do this."

"Did you see the skirts they wear?"
​

Raising the binoculars, Ogilvie saw the Loagan girls' skinny black legs sticking out from the blue and green tartan of the Campbell Gunns. He fell silent. Every Gunnishman and especially every Cameron knew the story of how the Campbells had raised their great black dogs, coin dubh, up from puppies on the milk of MacGregor Cameron women, the better to track and hunt and kill every last living MacGregor. Which they did. Kasawura had been teasing, but saw that he had awakened something bitter in the young white man. It has always been this way, everywhere. Since Mycallesus and even long before Mycallesus. Ogilvie nodded and Kasawura gave the move out sign.

Not long afterwards, the two men were pressed together behind a van, amid staccato gunfire, women and girls screaming, and the smell of burning hair. Ogilvie was crying. He doesn't even know to save his tears for the girls who survive, Kasawura thought wryly. The lieutenant was shouting, pointing to a group of teaching sisters in white habits emerging from the door, behind the mother superior with a white flag. They looked so clean amidst the whole mess.

"I can't shoot a sister!"

"Even if it would be a mercy?"​

Kasawura's eyes bulged comically and his laugh bared his big pink tongue. He lobbed a few white phosphorous grenade over the van, and the nuns' surrender party became a firestorm.

An hour later Kasawura found Ogilvie kneeling in shock before the blaze of the chapel. He could see the path of tears through the soot on the young man's face. Probably worst of all to him, the blessed sacrament was singed. But for once Kasawura decided not to revel in this anguish. Instead he handed Ogilvie an Eiffellandian-made Seiff camera.

"Why would we...?"

"Colonel Marlow's orders, sir."​

"He wants evidence of this?"

"Yes sir. Of what the communists did."​

 

[Gunnland]

Phase 2, 87 (decisive PS victory)
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Nungwi, Loago
Holy Thursday
​

As soon as Colonel Marlow fully realized how overcomplicated and overambitious his plan of attack was, his fortune changed, and it was Lev Burukova's turn to be overambitious, throwing scores of gunwagons against little Nungwi and Kendwa, and firing hundreds of mortar shells at the villages that were mostly already destroyed. If the RLI was prepared for anything, it was guerillas in pickup trucks. The RANU would never risk an open confrontation like this against the RLI with "technicals," and only used them for hit-and-run operations. Maybe the Burukovas aren't working as closely with the Uprising as the communists are, Marlow wondered. Remembering their training, disciplined RLI units dug in and hit the technicals with their old Burgundian-made Carl Gustaf recoilless rifles. Most of the Burukova mortar shells sailed harmlessly overhead. RLI soldiers began moving slowly among the scores of smoldering Burukova technicals, cutting down the gunwagons' crews.

The Battle of Nungwi would long be remembered, happily or unhappily, as the engagement that guaranteed Port Stanley would be engaged in a long war in Loago. The Burukova attempt to deliver a quick death blow to the disorganized RLI backfired spectacularly. Colonel Marlow smiled as he scanned the plains to the south with his binoculars.

As the Schwarzhabicht helicopters thwack-thwack-thwacked overhead, laden with air-to-ground missiles to pursue the routed technicals and machine guns to cut down the mortars, Colonel Marlow faced a decision. He knew Prime Minister Butler and the government in Chinde was alarmed by the botched initial phase of the invasion, worried the Burukovas would resist fiercely, and concerned it was only a matter of time before the Loagan national unity government in Maseru declared war and made things even worse. We can say we smashed them and taught them a lesson. If we leave now, this will look like a brilliant strike on the Burukovas. The world will never know the weaknesses they exposed in our plan. Besides, the men may be too exhausted to regroup and press forward to Hounde and Filabusi...

"MacGregor! MacGregor!" Marlow looked to see a young Gunnish lieutenant, screaming like a madman, leading Fante troops to right the unburnt technicals and drive them in pursuit of the Burukovas. He spotted Amadu Kasawura pulling a dead fighter out of the cab of one of the gunwagons; he could see the black teeth of the sasabonsam from a hundred yards. The colonel remembered what the sergeant had said about Lieutenant Ogilvie, when the old profiteer radioed Marlow to complain he couldn't capture and sell the schoolgirls ("There are still Azraqis who pay, and the border is just there.") before razing the school. Sergeant Kasawura said that Lieutenant Ogilvie had spent the entire day after the massacre curled in a fetal position after an admittedly unpleasant assignment clearing away an abbey school near the neighboring vision. "He's gone mad. Shellshock? Beserk? War will tell." So it did.

This was how the counter-attack down the road to Filabusi began, without the colonel giving any orders, with stark-mad Ogilvie. The soldiers were tired but hungrier to taste a real victory. Marlow had the presence of mind to order his rearguard regiment to turn move east, into the uplands, to carry out an assault on Hounde. With any luck the RLI could pacify both cities by Holy Saturday, secure a commanding position on the north Mabwawa coast, and regroup for an assault on its main city, Umtali.

 

[Ebria]

Phase 2, response
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Filabusi - Umtali Road
Holy Friday, 0130 am

The SUV was driving as fast as possible on the dirt road connecting Filabusi to Umtali. The counter-attack was a complete disaster. Borisov ordered nearly all of the technicals and depleted nearly all of the mortar shells in a complete catastrophe. Nearly all his counter-attack force was wiped out and the Stanleyans moved on, pursuing the routing militiamen have literally captured Filabusi and Hounde with the local showing only a symbolic resistance. It is a disaster, though Lev, but he then turned to Borisov who was in the back of the car. "We need to protect Umtali... The whole opium production is there... if we manage to fend off the Stanleyans now, it will buy us time to negotiate with Maseru," he said. "The Wala cunt left us..." Borisov mumbled, "Masimba..." he further explained as Lev Burukova made a grimace. "He said he will lead the defence of Hounde..." said Burukova as he sighed. "And yet he left the city with no defence, taking his fighters in the mountains. While it might be possible for him to still be with us, I highly doubt it..." growled Zare Borisov.

"Once we reach the city, I want the whole northern approach mined as fast as possible. I want us to be ready to defend it with everything we have. The Pelasgians have us some Anti-Air weapons that we haven't used. I want you to be ready to shoot down any helicopter approaches, but if you see armoured cars coming to the city, don't be afraid to use them. Evacuate all our guys, I want them in Umtali, " yelled Lev to cover the noise of the engine roaring at maximum as the car was driving towards the regional capital. I need to win more time... a week would be best, he thought.

10 km east of Hounde, Alfajiri Mountains

Masimba grunted as the corpsman looked at his wound. "You are very lucky, commander. Its just a fleshwound," the medic said. "Yet it hurts like hell," he growled. It's impossible for this to be the way the Democratic Republic to die... to see the 60 year long dream of the LLC, set up by the first Masimba... So close to victory and now, back to square one, he thought. He decided to be more intelligent than Lev Burukova. After seeing the RLI fight for Nungwi, it was clear to him that any sort of regular army tactics will be disastrous. No, he needed to return to what he knew best, become a guerrilla.

As the Burukova counter-offensive was taking place and the militiamen were massacred, Masimba ordered his men to not join in, but rather booby trap everything they could in Hounde, and then randomly leaving some mines in the forests going into the mountains. Of course, there were only a few, less than 30 actually and they were sloppily positioned, some not even covered by dirt to hide them. There put there as a psychological deterrent to make the Stanleyans believe that the slopes are mined so they won't follow him. Now, his plan was to meet up with the RANU and wait for the Stanleyans to make their next move and attack Umtali. As long as they would start elongating their supply lines inside Loago, that is when he wanted to start harassing them. In the meantime, he needed to lick his wounds and reorganise.

 

[Gunnland]

Hounde, Loago
​

There was a makeshift couch, a tigerskin draped over sandbags. On it sprawled a woman in a pornographer's idea of a guerilla uniform, tied in front to reveal her midriff and push up her breasts, with a guenon in a gold collar on her shoulders. She was lithe and dark, like a lazy panther. She nuzzled the taxidermy tiger's mouth, fangs out in a frozen roar, against her bald head. Occasionally she would open her own mouth like this, and a woman would hand-feed igbin (a morsel of giant land snail) between her pink gums and white teeth. Even more denuded than her mistress, the serving-woman wore strips of white cloth that accented her tan, though she was clearly a white woman. When not feeding igbin, she would gently fan the couch with a palm frond. From time to time the guenon with the gold collar would jump down from the couch to shit in a pot in the hands of a black man who sat cross-legged in front of his mistress, his forehead touching the floor. Both of these silent half-naked attendants, the white palm-frond woman and the Damawali monkey-chamberpot man, were cabinet ministers in the Butler government of the Commonwealth of Port Stanley. Salammbô desired to feel every last drop of her power.

Across the room was a half-caste man in fatigues, eating a bowl of human flesh. Not so bad if you knew how to prepare it, with plenty of spices to mask the smell. If you grew up where warthog rectum (traditionally prepared with an eyeball stuck in it) is a great delicacy, perhaps you too would eat your fellow man from time to time. George had just told his luxuriating lover that he and his 500 RANU fighters, the northern speartip of what was left of the communist insurgency, expected an attack from the Stanleans in Hounde. He smiled when he said this, but his regal partner was distressed.

"Disappear into the forests, Georges, like Masimba did. Let the white germs hunt our ghosts."

He rose and looked out the window, which afforded a view of the River Amani flowing in the valley below. Part of him wanted to take her on the couch, to feel her discover the power within him, which she so loved. Salammbô reminded him of Anwanyu when she was young. But he resisted.

"We didn't lose a hundred fighters in Mashrabiya at his alcázar..." He meant the prostrate Al-Khazari. "...and march into these mountains not to fight. And we didn't take her..." Salammbô laughed and leaned back openmouthed for another igbin from Adelaide. "...to be your pet germ. They must come here to fight us, where we want them."

George Battle had spent decades hoodwinking witch-men and training politicians, nursing the resentment of young men and stoking the anger of , shooting down RLI helicopters and butterflying Fante rivals with his machete. It would all come down to tomorrow, he expected. He wondered how Callum Marlow would taste.

 

[Gunnland]

Phase 2, 92 (decisive PS victory)
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Umtali, Loago
Holy Saturday
​

Umtali was won at the Battle of Nungwi, the rout turning into a running battle where everything seemed to go right for the Stanleans. By the morning of Holy Saturday, the majority of the technicals "retreating" into the city were gunwagonscaptured by zealous RLI platoons. As Sergeant Kasawura sped through the city streets, the Lieutenant Ogilvie hunched down and pointed the truckbed-mounted 12.7x108mm CONARM machine gun up towards the rooftops. It went, "fftht-fftht-fftht-fftht-fftht. Fftht-fftht-fftht-fftht-fftht," sawing down surprised Burukova fighters. In this way there were hardly any SAMs left by the time the helicopter assault began.

***

Hounde, Loago
Easter Sunday
​

The several dozen surviving RANU fighters walked single-file up into the Alfajiri Mountains, towards Safiri. Many, maybe most of them, carried poles on their shoulders, suspending hammocks full of wounded comrades. Cruelly, many of them had been injured in the booby traps of their erstwhile ally Masimba. Their leader, George Battle, barely clung to life in his.

At the head of the line, Salammbô lounged in her own hammock litter, hers a purpose-built tipoye. Not because she was injured; because it improved the morale of the Fante soldiers to see a white woman and a Damawali man treated like slaves, instead of vice-versa. She played absentmindedly with her monkey and occasionally gave Adelaide a slap of encouragement with her kiboko, a coachwhip made from hippopotamus hide. Not as strong as Marta was, but more docile, the chieftess thought. But mostly she thought about whether to continue into the Fante lands where the RANU fighters could disperse and go into hiding, or order the men to turn south to combine with the National Unity Government forces. She did not know whether the Loagans and Natalians would welcome her help, or use her and George as bargaining chips.

She had grown accustomed to blood and death, to men groaning and gasping for air. And once he was injured, George Battle no longer interested her very much, she realized. The real shame, Salammbô thought, was losing her tigerskin and stock of igbin.

***

Umtali, Loago
Easter Sunday
​

The red-yellow-green horizontal stripes of the Stanlean tricolor could be seen everywhere in Umtali. Callum Marlow knelt down in the front pew of thechurch, thanking Allah for victory. Why did he pray secretly to the God-Who-Is-One-and-Not-Three in a Catholic church? Suffice it to say that he thought this was the secret teaching of Christianity, and that Hajaris have had a weird influence on religious beliefs in eastern Himyar.

He also prayed for forgiveness. If he had not planned such a complicated initial assault, many men would not have died. A simple attack over the Azraqi border would have sufficed to destroy the stupid and poorly-equipped Burukovas. Had Marlow simplified his assault, he thought, the red, yellow, and green would be flying all the way down the Mabwawa coast by now.

 

[Ebria]

Phase 3, response
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Amani River Gorges

Masimba was carefully watching from one of the cliffs the gorges of the Amani River. The main force of the Stanleyans have attacked and taken Umtali and if the news were real, Lev Burukova was by now in a military convoy to Maseru where he would probably be executed or something...

The National Army of Loago together with the Natalians were probably a day away and with the Stanleyans not showing any will to retreat at all, hostilities will be starting between them too, thought Masimba. As of now, he heard nothing from Zare Borisov or from Comrade Pondo, so he thought that the LLC regime has all but crashed. But now, he still had an ally left even if they were as battered as they were, if not worse: RANU. Salammbo and Comrade Georges have managed to met with LLC guerrillas, and as he was wounded, Georges has been taken to Solenzo.

As the Stanleyans moved into the gorge to reach Solenzo, here was where Masimba would meet them. His men managed to save three mortars so he ordered them to be manned, while he set his men up the cliffs, first to wait for the Stanleyans to enter deep into the Valley and then to catch them in ambush.

Maseru

General Peter Mariano Perez of the Natalian Expeditionary Army Corps was in a meeting together with PM Moyo Kamara and the other commanders of the newly proclaimed National Army of Loago. He was following the clock while presenting the map of the situation in Loago to the others.

"The ultimatum will expire in less than an hour. If we will just let them ignore it, then we will be seen as weak and everyone will come an take a slice of this Loagan pizza..." commented Perez. "I still don't know what to say, the war might further escalate," said Moyo Kamara as he looked at the updated map, showing the purple coloured Stanleyan region of control as covering the whole of the old Burukova yellow.

Perez made a pause, looked again at the clock and then continued, "If you accept their presence there, you show that the sovereignty of Loago is moot. Hundreds died, not only Loagans, but Natalians too, only for you to be ready to surrender everything now..." he said frowning. "Of course they didn't, but the Stanleyans are led by Fante Muslims. Do you know who else is Fante and Muslim? The Whole North of Loago!" responded Kamara angrily. "What if they will join them? What if they rebel?" he asked, with a slight desperation in his voice.

"Why didn't they do it already then? Because they know, how shitty Port Stanley as a country is and how Azraq has now reverted to an absolute monarchy where everyone who isn't Dawamalian is a second class citizen in all but in name! They know that! What has Maseru offered them? Full autonomy. Azraq won't give them that, Port Stanley even less. But the power of keeping Loago united stands in the power of the National Army to reaffirm the sovereignty of the Republic of Loago and the legitimate National Unity Government! How can this country be seen as respectable, if Stanleyans occupy some of its most important cities in the deep west and Maseru just shrugs? It needs a strong response," said Perez.

"What of the rebels?" asked Kamara regaining some composure. "We'll finish them off. Give the National Army and the NADF just a few more days and probably in 2 weeks time Stanleyans will be running back into their dens," responded Perez. "We need to be sure that they don't reach the Twiga Plain and that the Post Delegationists don't attack us from behind," said Kamara. "If you want, for the moment we can stop at the Twiga Plain and attack the Mabwawa Coast only after we are sure that there is no commie guerrilla buffer between us and them. But in the meantime, the war will become aerial again. Once the ultimatum expires, the National Loagan Airforce and the NAAF will start attacking Stanleyan positions around Hounde, Umtali and Filabusi. In the mean time, someone should placate the PDists," said Perez, looking at Kamara.

 

[Gunnland]

Near Solenzo, Loago
​

Several hours before meeting Masimba, Salammbô had al-Khazari tied to a tree and cut his heart out. One of the witch-men would prepare it to heal Georges. Salammbô obviously did not believe this remedy would avail him, but she knew that many a sangoma, envious of the Thaumantic-educated chieftesses like Salammbô, sent their men to fight for the RANU. If the old ways would make them follow her, so be it. She decided not to sacrifice Adelaide, though. If I escape this war-torn shithole alive, she may be useful. Perhaps for ransom. Perhaps not. Salammbô took great pleasure in the fact her prisoner had much wider hips and larger buttocks than her; the irony of a white 'Hottentot Venus' was delicious to her.

Adelaide realized she was enjoying her adventure, though she could do without the blistered feet and the occasional ear-splitting gunfire. There was a nobility to the RANU struggle, a no-holds-barred fight against white colonialism. She now saw how chieftesses like Anwanyu and Octavia made self-serving compromises with white supremacy and the Damawali elites in Oriel. The RANU defended the old customs and the entire spirit world that fascinated Adelaide. And it was not only the anthropologist in her that loved Salammbô, she knew. She plays the games that Julian outgrew somehow. Adelaide was powerfully attracted to strong women.

Bulawayo, Loago
​

Robert Gunn had simply asked Cornelius Holden Ndjoba for permission to pursue Georges and Salammbô into Fante-held territory. It seemed right to speak to the Mai Mai leader first, before making contact with his Azraqi liaison whom he hoped would help with the manhunt, Colonel Geesi Yasir Tahiil. His ten companions, now rested and apportioned a third humvee, were trailing the RLI forces that would attack Solenzo in the morning. Now he learned why Colonel Marlow sent Amadu Kasawura to fly with him to Bulawayo. The freshly promoted Fante soldier wore a lieutenant's uniform and an eyepatch. Does this make him the first and only Fante officer in the whole RLI? Kasawura started growling his proposal.

"Tomorrow, I believe, we will destroy what is left of the RANU-LLC near Solenzo, and that will complete our mission in Loago. Meanwhile it seems that Maseru has mustered the political will to fight a war with Port Stanley, which is far more than they ever showed for fighting the communists or the Burukovas. Instead of thank-you cards, they send threats. Perhaps empty ones."

Kasawura shrugged.

"We are eager to teach the Loagans and Natalians a lesson..."

'We' meant Colonel Marlow, and the white officers who had traditionally been supported by the Azraqi regime. And also men like Kasawura, opportunist RLI soldiers that were not accustomed to leave any spoils of war on the table. They would be in no mood to leave opium-rich Umtali, for instance. Octavia Butler had good reasons to fear the army, but perhaps even she underestimated that her army had a mind of its own. Anyway, Chinde was far away.

"...we Mafewo Fante have not been united with our Fante brothers since the migrations of centuries ago, when you left us behind in the marshes of the Rwenbezi to be ruled by whites and Damawali slavers."

Kasawura chuckled and wagged his finger.

"But the whites don't call the shots in Chinde no more. If the Mai Mai and the RLI join forces, and prepare a campaign against Maseru, there will be none strong enough to stop us now."

Robert Gunn raised his eyebrows and looked at the Harton Military Academy alumnus across the table.

 

[Ebria]

Phase 4, 30 (LLC victory)
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Near Solenzo

Masimba was right when he thought that the easy battles the Stanleyans won against the Burukovan militia made them a bit too cocky. Led by Ogilvie, they have pushed into the gorge with the intention of reaching Solenzo as fast as possible. Around 1500 soldiers put in a convoy made of humvees as the first and last vehicles and trucks to transport the troops in the middle, were driving along the dirt path along the Amani river, with the high cliffs of the Alfajiri Mountains on the sides and the lush foliage of the rain forest, brought back to life now that the rivers were energised by the start of the wet season.

Masimba had only 3 mortars, some RPGs and machine guns, but he knew that the Stanleyans were expecting inexperienced kids and old people to fight them, as they did in Umtali and Filabusi. No, this time it was the LLC's People's Liberation Army, the same one that occupied over half of Loago, first time in 1956, second time last summer and now, as he was looking confidently at the unsuspecting Stanleyans, he was imagining that 2019 will finally be the year where what the communists called the Great People's War, will come to an end, and he was imagining himself, as the 3rd Masimba, finally parading with his soldiers in Maseru.

As the Stanleyan convoy started going over a curve where the river and the cliffs were so close that no maneuver was possible, Masimba ordered the mortars to start firing. His orders were at first to have the mortars fire in the back of the convoy, to push them further in the gorge. Then, the RPG fired and disabled the last of the vehicles blocking the path and then the mortars changed their target, this time to the front vehicles. As the convoy stopped, machine guns from the cliffs started firing down towards the Stanleyan soldiers. In the whole chaos, the soldiers from the trucks disperse to find cover, yelling and shouting at each other. Masimba was a good shooter, but he could observe that his comrades were wasting too much ammunition on it all, but he decided to not stop the attack.

After about half an hour of chaotic firing back from the Stanleyans, mortars firing down, with decent accuracy, many RPGs misfiring, and the machine guns raining bullets down the valley, the Stanleyans started to maneouver to turn the vehicles around. They drove into the river, and turned in it, as the Amani was just a mountain stream at this point. The first truck got stuck in the rocks of the riverbed and was hit by a mortar, but the next ones were more successful. The humvees and the armoured vehicles stood behind to cover the retreat.

As they managed to leave, Masimba ordered his men to stop shooting. He decided to leave the corpses be, as a very... ominous welcoming sign for the Stanleyans the next time they will try to break into Solenzo, but ordered his men to push the destroyed vehicles into what would be a barricade.

Bulawayo

Cornelius Holden Ndjoba was not impressed by the Stanleyan delegation. As much as the white people built their nations around the idea that similar tribes must stick together, the proper Fante always saw the Mafewo Fante as weaker, not even wanting to have anything to do with them, foreign. The fact that Kasawura brought the subject as being a Mafewo Fante and Fante thing, amused him a little, but his face remained frozen. He then turned towards the Gunnishman.

"What position do you hold officially in Stanleyan politics, Mr Gunn?" he asked, and made a short pause, but before Robert Gunn could have had any chance to respond, he continued. "The Fante Tribal Union, is the successor of the old Kodogou Empire, which was conquered by the Mweneluaga and afterwards by the Virunians. We have fought three revolts against the colonial regime until in the 50s we have conquered half of Loago and defeated the commies and won our independence. Tell me, why would we, right now when the PM, Moyo Kamara is announcing an era of a Loago of Communities and of decentralisation, should we risk a war against the National Army and the NADF?"

The then made a pause to think for a few seconds and continued. "The RLI is formed mainly by white people, how could we be sure that in a few years time, the RLI won't organise a coup to bring back white rule? Your country is small, Mr. Kasawura," he said, ignoring Robert Gunn. "... and the RLI had defeated only the Burukova militia. Do you know who was in the Burukova Militia? Old men, kids, lame men and cowards who didn't follow Masimba when he left Umtali to restart the People's War. The RLI defeated the old, the juvenile, the lame and cowards. We will see how it will perform in the battle with the true enemy, the LLC's People's Liberation Army. Until it will prove to me that it can stand a fight not only against the LLC, but against the National Army and the NADF, which are no joke, consider both of you luck that I don't arrest you and send you to Maseru," he said, pausing again.

"But should the RLI prove itself a strong fighting force, let's say that the Mai Mai is always open to Avenues of betterment for the Fante people," he concluded.

 

[Gunnland]

Bulawayo, Loago
​

There was no talking to Ndjoba. Intelligence that the Mai Mai were eager to fight and subdue Maseru was wrong. This Ndjoba was suddenly trustful of the Kamara government. Some rebel leader, Robert thought. Arrest me for what? But he was not eager to be imprisoned in Himyar again. Amadu Kasawura was fuming at having been called "Mister," not a day after he was promoted to lieutenant. I should not have come here with a white man.

Solenzo, Loago
​

The Gunn-Kasawura mission to Bulawayo was not the only Stanlean mission to operate on faulty intelligence. Lieutenant Ogilvie thought he was pursuing a few wounded RANU fighters, shooting down the ones that the helicopters left behind. Then all hell broke loose in the Amani River Gorges. Almost a third of his force, dead, almost five hundred men, and a dozen of the big open-top troop carrying trucks, which were particularly difficult to maneuver, lost. Kasawura would have sent a recon team to the gorges. The Gunnish lieutenant blamed himself for not being more careful. The convoy limped back towards Hounde.

Umtali, Loago
​

The text message from Kasawura and the radio distress calls from the Battle of the Amani River came at about the same time: a major diplomatic setback combined with a major military defeat, a setback far greater than the helicopters lost on the initial assault. Two major miscalculations. Colonel Marlow held his head in his hands. Why did the communists attack us? He had been sure that Masimba would disappear into the forest, with combined NUG-Natalian forces assembling in the south. After all, the communist commander had abandoned the RANU force to be slaughtered by the RLI between Hounde and Solenzo. But the bastard recalculated and decided to ambush my least experienced regimental commander. He was going to have to regroup his forces into three regiments now, with almost 1,000 men dead and wounded since the beginning of the war. And worst of all, the ultimatum from the National Army is about to expire. Marlow wondered if they could join the LLC. If Ndjoba has been won over by Moyo Kamara, why not Masimba too? He took a deep breath. This was paranoid thinking. The whole goddamn country was not going to unite against the RLI. And if they do, we'll whip their black asses back to Maseru.

He made a phone call to the RAF in Fort Smith to keep an eye on the RADAR, and scramble jets if necessary once the ultimatum expired, to fly over the lake storms. He wished the RLI had captured more of the Burukovas' Pelasgian SAMs. Probably the non-coms like Kasawura pilfered the lot of them. He ordered 1,000 reservists to be called in from Fort Smith. Fante militiamen. Less trustworthy, but still he hoped they could be ferried into Filabusi without too much trouble from the lake storms.

When Kasawura got back, he was going to give him command of one regiment to attack the LLC-held town of Toma. Less geographically challenging than the mountain outposts. Not only to teach the communist bastards a lesson and avenge the fallen of the Battle of the Amani River, but to split the LLC into two and make them fight an open battle. See how the cowards fare outside of a mountain ambush against a real army. This would also allow the RLI to threaten the towns of the Twiga Plain, so they would have an option to counterattack in case the National Army dared to follow through with their ultimatum.

But they will probably wait until the Azraqi peace conference. Marlow had a letter faxed to Colonel Geesi Yasir Tahiil, claiming that his forces would stand down in anticipation of a negotiated peace and withdrawal, even though this was not strictly true. What it really meant, between the lines, was that the RLI would not attack the National Army until then. The LLC terrorists were fair game. Especially in the town that Marlow saw as the strategic gateway to launch an attack on Wala territory.

 

[Gunnland]

Umtali, Loago
​

The scene was like a Boulanger or a Gêrome, or some 19th-century Burgundian orientalist painter obsessed with white slavery in Himyar. War is good for human traffickers, sometimes very good: in this case the men were eager to sell their captives to slavers that could distribute merchandise far and wide. An auction of five women in a coffle and in various states of undress, four white and one black, on a raised platform while men in kanzu tunics shouted offers. Grasped and turned to show their desirable attributes: the Fante woman's teeth and smooth hands, the long hair of the skinny blonde with bangs, the muscular arms of the one with short blonde hair, the hips and buttocks of the long-haired brunette, the breasts of the strawberry blonde. I joked with Will about being sold to the Azraqis, Sherry thought inwardly, and here I am. She wondered how Adelaide MacLeod Elmert got to be standing next to her, though...

The previous morning.
near Solenzo, Loago​

The big attorney, Smith, was the leader while Robert Gunn was on his ill-fated mission to Bulawayo. It took a while to secure a third humvee, so the ten companions set off a full two hours after Lieutenant Ogilvie's main force defiled to pursue the RANU over the Amani River. They did not hear the ambush, and since the soldiers rushed to Hounde with their wounded, they missed them entirely. In fact, the only way the companions learned of the defeat of the RLI at the Battle of the Amani Gorge was when they heard the swarm of flies, and came upon the corpses piled up in the road, insects swarming to feast on the bloodgrout. The stench was awful.

Smith insisted on giving the white officers a proper burial, on the presumption they were Christians, and burning the Fante soldiers, because he neither knew nor cared that cremation is haram to Muslims. Fr. Keiper said Mass quickly for the dead. Smith made Joachas point their feet east and chant the De profundis, with the notion that the young man was really the King, and the king is a priest. They shooed the flies and lowered the white bodies into the red earth. Not wanting to be ambushed themselves, the others were getting a little squirrely, though Smith had no interest in climbing the steep gradient. So it was agreed that they would sneak up into the cliffs, in teams of two, to see what was happening north in Solenzo: Udomo and Kate, Robin and Sherry, Jude and Thomas.

This is how it happened that the men who picked the pockets of left-behind corpses sneaked up behind the women with sacks, while Jude and Thomas happened to escape, and through their binoculars could see Masimba's men hurriedly packing trucks, on the move from Solenzo. They also saw a thin, regal-looking and bald-headed Fante woman shooing tall white woman with a long thin nose and big brown eyes into the underbrush. Salammbô and Adelaide. But when Jude and Thomas made their way down the cliffs towards the town, they found no trace of the woman. Here is what they saw.

***
​

Salammbô knew it was her chance in the confusion while the RANU and the communists were decamping from Solenzo. Two things had changed. First, only a handful of her fighters, perhaps twenty or thirty, were loyal to her, and she didn't know whether she could trust Masimba. But I'm stuck with him. And there's no hope of reaching the Azraq border now. Second, she had discovered, to her great amusement, that Adelaide was quite devoted to her. Gøthehavn syndrome, don't they call it? Just when she thought that her contempt for the weakness of the whites could not be stronger. There was a better chance that Adelaide would reach Oriel, alive and in the near future, than Salammbô. She pressed a cowrie shell into Adelaide's palm.

"Bring this to the captain of the guards at the alcázar, and await my return there."

Then she hustled her into the bushes, and, unknowingly, into the hands of the men who had grabbed the others.

 

[Gunnland]

Umtali, Loago​

"Must be a few fat zebras there for the old vulture…" The smiling offhand comment by Djiba Sundiata, the sergeant major who had replaced Lieutenant Kasawura in Hounde, made Robert decide to drive to Umtali. Of course Robert knew Kasawura trafficked in drugs, weapons, and humans, but nothing more. Could Kasawura be involved with the men who kidnapped Udomo, Kate, Robin, and Sherry? Had Adelaide been captured by the same men? Two shots in the dark. A real stretch, he knew. “They could have taken them anywhere!” Smith had pointed out. “Bulawayo. Even Dhihaa!" But the doughfaced attorney could say little after losing all four women who had come with them to Loago. Why did we bring four women to Loago with us? Will was crying. For fuck's sake... why did we bring five?

Djiba drove, smiling as ever, as if the brutal bush war was some minor inconvenience that one ought to keep his spirits up through. Robert asked him how he would know where the slavers gathered in Loago. “If I were looking for the slave market…” the Fante sergeant began, as if he were speaking about the grocery store. Smiling. Lord help us, Robert thought.

He pressed his face against the glass of the speeding humvee and thought about his children, his wife, and his farm. Other leaders lived quiet lives. “Fortuna is a woman,” Machiavelli wrote, “so you have to cuff and maul her to keep her down.” Gunnishmen took his advice, but Machiavelli forgot to add that Fortuna repaid the favor. As you realize, Robert and his friends are always being kidnapped, and there was usually some sick sexual angle, like characters in pulp fiction novels.

Only Will dared to hope that he would find his lover.

***​

They waited outside while Djiba and three of his RLI men walked into the market with djellabas, baggy peaked hoods pulled low over their eyes. Colonel Marlow had sent some counterinsurgency teams to set up a perimeter with snipers, if it came to that.

Djiba emerged some minutes later with a wide smile; at first Robert thought this meant luck. It did, in a way. “Your Miss Adelaide fetched four hundred dahabs despite her chest scar,” he said smilingly as if it was a complement, “Amadu Kasawura was the buyer.” Noticing Will looked a bit surprised, Djiba patted him on the shoulder. “Miss Sherry was not much less than that, I assure you. Because she is young.” He raised a finger. It was as if he thought this would make Will happy.

They began to wonder if there was not only something being lost in translation, or if Sergeant Sundiata was truly deranged. Will blurted out first, "Well what the fuck are we going to do to save them?"

Djiba's smile faded and he looked blankly at the Gunnishmen.

 

[Ebria]

Phase V, 32 (LLC victory)

Toma

The plan was to seize Toma to protect the Northern flank of the Bloody Zebra II offensive. The National Army managed to enter the city, as did the RLI, but then everything went from bad to worse. The LLC, loyal to Masimba counterattacked in the mountains and managed to break the Stanleyans in the city from any friendly unit. Masimba stopped his attack and remained in the mountains as continuing his offensive to retake Toma would have been met with the defence of the joint National Army - Natalian units and that would have been problematic for him too as he had to defend against the Stanleyans from the Mabwawa Coast too.

The commander of the units of the National Army leading the inland offensive and now in Toma, was Andrus Masing. He was a white Loagan of Virunian descent, like half of the people living in the Limestone Coast, around Maseru. He has supported the military regime of Paavo Laht but somehow, instead of being demoted when the NUG was formed, he was promoted, becoming a Lieutenant-General and one of the main commanders of the Security Forces, now reformed into the National Army. Under his command he had a Loagan tank group, officially, but in reality only three tanks were still fully functional after the battle; not that the LLC destroyed them, but the lack of spare parts and oil made it near impossible to use them, and a Natalian Ratel unit, plus infantry. In the north of the city, a Stanleyan mechanised infantry brigade.

The problem was that the Stanleyans were stranded in the city by Masimba successful victory in the morning against their supply lines and officially, the Loagans were hostile too them too. As a city, Toma was built around the St Thomas monastery, built by Virunian jesuit missionaries in the late 19th century. The main boulevard that was situated along a north-south axis, had in the city centre, an opening, into what was the St Thomas Square. Here, when he arrived he saw how the two units met face to face. Not one soul was in the square, on the boulevard, whose name Masing forgot, but everyone just called it the road, as the rest of the city was just a maze of alleys, one the northern side stood the Stanleyans, with the cannons of the IFVs targeting the Loagans and on the south, the Loagan tanks and Natalian Ratels did the same. Only 30 metres, facing eachother. He could have easily given the order to fire and the Stanleyans would have been overwhelmed in time, but he didn't want to risk his vehicles. He also had some different plans.

He took a white rag and entered the square, asking to meet with the Stanleyan commander. "Quite a view, isn't it? Too bad that right now, Umtali and Filabusi are bombed by the NAAF and the LAF. I don't know why you are here, but we might have a chance to be friends," he said.

 

[Gunnland]

Toma, Loago
​

Toma was supposed to be a second chance for the hero of the Battle of Nungwi, after the disaster at the Battle of the Amani River. But once more Masimba got the best of poor Michael Ogilvie, now Captain Ogilvie, the promotion being an attempted confidence boost. He did not know how bad his casualties were -- bad -- but he insisted on staying until they could all get out of Toma safely. That hadn't happened, and the one thing he had been specifically ordered not to do came to pass. A standoff with the National Army in front of him, and the communists behind. Several hundred RLI infantrymen dug in, in the unfamiliar (and largely deserted) northern precincts of Toma, with nowhere to go.

He saluted Lieutenant-General Masing and introduced himself.

***

One day ago, soon after companions tracked down the slavers...
Umtali, Loago
​

When Will objected to Robert's plan, he was told to “get in the fucking car and shut the fuck up” et cetera. Minutes later, Thomas MacIntyre radioed down from a nearby rooftop that Robin and Kate had been loaded into a black EKW sedan with tinted windows. From the look of the earpiece dudes, he guessed it was an opium lord.

A thousand yards away, Sergeant Sundiata stopped him at what looked like a regular RLI checkpoint as Robert Gunn watched from the humvee, soldiers in green fatigues with those NCU KA-47 knockoffs, Sautene E67 rifles. The black window rolled down and a man with a great gold chain and sunglasses handed a stack of crisp Loagan shillings: the customary bribe.

One of the soldiers pulled himself into the car by the man’s chain. Grabbing the wad of bills, he tried to stuff them down the driver’s throat. Djiba stuck his C91 in the car sideways, and with a deafening bang the man in the passenger seat’s brains were smeared over the far window.

There were a few screams from passerby on the streets, but not as many as you might expect. Djiba ambled over to the humvee to report success, still smiling broadly. But what he said next was evidence that some moral sense connected the Fante sergeant to the world of men. “That was good," he said with a big grin, "I hate slavers.”

Robin seemed not too distressed by her ordeal, though she hugged Joachas tightly and buried her face in his sandy hair. But Kate wouldn’t speak to anyone for a long time. On the road to Filabusi, hours later, she finally said, mostly to herself, “This sounds awful, but I was mostly just relieved to have gotten away from Udomo.” Padraig swallowed a lump in his throat in the front seat and made a note to tell Robert.

 

[Gunnland]

Still one day ago, immediately after the foregoing...
Umtali, Loago​

Jude watched the other three women loaded into a large truck, with Kasawura talking to the driver. “Shamo by the look of him,” came Jude’s voice over the radio. As if Jude can tell a Shamo from a Seoran, Robert thought. Djiba learned it was indeed bound north for Azraq by asking a few simple questions. While nobody was looking he had the presence of mind to stick his iBone deep in the front seat. “To track it,” he told Robert later, “I’d better get it back you know.” Big smile.

Will of course wanted to take the truck in the same way they had knocked off the opium dealer’s EKW. Bang, bang. Right away. Sherry out of the hands of those brutes, as quickly as possible. He white-knuckled his SLR2 inside the humvee. And though Robert was tempted to get Adelaide and Udomo out of there as fast as possible, he wanted to wait and see what Kasawura’s plan was.

They would drive north, up the Mabwawa Coast. But first Robert wanted to tie up one loose end, as much as he could.

***​

Several hours later, Colonel Marlow called a staff meeting of his officers, a half dozen of them sat around a circular table. It was paramount for “Captain Ogilvie” – an impromptu promotion – to beat the communists and the National Army to Toma. This would cut the LLC in two, and establish a natural barrier against the advancing NUG forces. Camerons are solid, Robert thought, smiling inwardly. Then the colonel looked at Lieutenant Kasawura, and asked him the question that the Gunn had instructed him to ask. “How did you get to Umtali so quickly?”

“Business.”
“What kind of business?” This time it was the Gunn who asked.
“A pressing and personal kind. What brings you to this city?”

Though his tone suggested he resented the follow-up question, Kasawura was smiling, trying to give an expression of exaggerated mischievousness. Not hard to do with an eyepatch. But his expression changed ever so slightly when Robert challenged his gaze.

“The same.” Robert cocked the hammer back on his HiCap under the table and fired twice into Kasawura's belly.

 

[Gunnland]

Two days ago.
Umtali, Loago​

Kasawura sat propped in crisp white hospital sheets, white gauze wrapped tight around his black belly. The Gunn handed him a Lumin phone. “Tell your driver change of plans. He’s to stop in Filabusi and sell the entire cargo.”

The soldier did as he was told. Robert left.

Then returned and sliced through the bandage with his sgain dubh, and instructed the nurse to let him bleed out. The white sheets turned red.

Some hours after the foregoing...
Filabusi, Loago​

The Filabusi slave market was smaller, so the next afternoon, 15AR had no trouble buying off the buyers. So it was arranged for Djiba, now wearing a fine white kanzu, to buy Sherry and Udomo. He brought her to a fine lakeside villa. There he told Sherry, in his matter-of-fact smiling way, that she was an insurance policy, to be offered to the drunken soldiers who threatened his property.

Robert wanted to know if Sherry would beg for mercy, and if in the process she would reveal if she had any powerful friends. Padraig said she looked awfully comfortable near Solenzo with an SLR2. “Better safe than sorry,” Robert told a sulking Will, “and she won’t know we’ve rescued her last. Nothing bad will happen to her.” Well, depending on how much we need to scare her, the chief thought to himself.

After Djiba’s men hustled out with Sherry and Udomo, hooded and bound, Robert and the others bided their time, disguised in djellabas with cowls pulled over their faces. Then Adelaide was brought up, wrists bound, to the raised platform, and Robert Gunn shouted in his distinctive Gunnish burr, “Forty t-bills for the white lass with Himyar’s favorite derrière.”

Confusion, relief, embarrassment, and frustration appeared on her face at once amid the peals of laughter from the men. Adelaide pulled herself free of the auctioneer’s rope and started clubbing Robert in the chest with loosening hands, crying mostly happy tears, and embraced him. She did not kiss him after he rescued her from George Fogerty in Windhaven. Or from Deoiridh in Chinde. Or when she rescued him near Fort Smith. Now she kissed him furiously, for the first time in a decade.

A missile from the NAAF airstrike hit the building at that moment, sending chunks of cinderblock and debris everywhere, and just like that, Adelaide was holding a dead man.

 

[Thaumantica]

Some Days Ago
Umtali, Loago

Shivering and sweating at the same damn time, Sheryl-Lynn was slipping in and out of illness and anxiety based delirium as she was blindfolded and taken to the property she would be treated as property on. The man who had bought her would use her body as an offering in the same way the Thaumantic Civil Service had, and as the early onset of malaria symptoms began to stack up her morale concerning the original mission collapsed. “I am lower than animal, I am robot!” She declared to the Negro, or was it Captain Reeves?

Sure there were Engellachian private military contractors in Loago, but at a makeshift embassy furloughed after the refugee flow was capped at 30 thousand. That was a skeleton crew collecting the last of their contract money without any genuine danger or responsibility, tax free. Sherry did not even consider spending what physical energy she had left to obtain a phone and wrack her mind to remember the number. The West Engell Republic could not spend any more political capital that they did not have, and the Cussians she was failing to impersonate were remarkably absent from the conflict by choice.

William and the true Gunn were her only hope, and her remaining faith in their plucky spirit would keep her from running alone out into the jungle to die naked and alone.

 

[Gunnland]

Jugol, Azraq
​

Octavia Butler looked out the window at the concentric circles of the Old Walls. She wished that she were back in Chinde, to keep an eye on the Popular Front deputies. But it was impossible for the foreign minister to represent Port Stanley, because Elizabeth Taylor was white. It should have been Udomo, she thought. She hoped the young woman was safe. Salammbô's replacement, missing in the chaos in Loago. Satisfied the RANU had been routed, Octavia was eager to end the war before the RLI was militarily embarrassed again.

Filabusi, Loago
​

"She could still have information," Padraig said languidly. Will was furious. "She could be dying!" Even Kate spoke up in agreement. Padraig laughed, remembering Djiba Sundiata telling him the young woman seemed "very content" with the prospect of brutalization. He imagined the Fante sergeant smiling as he said this. But when he was shown a video, he inwardly came to share Will's concerns for her health. Is she mad? Sherry hadn't incriminated herself. Robert was dead, and nobody, even Smith, could step into the power vacuum and call the shots now. Discrete phone calls had been made. To the queen; James Buchanan; Iain MacDougall; Ambrose Cameron. Robert's influence had declined over the past year. No longer was he the de facto leader of Gunnland, the éminence grise of Windhaven. Still, his death would have seismic effects on Gunnish politics. It will make tomorrow's papers, Smith guessed.

Thomas MacIntyre was dead also. Jude MacReddin and Fr. Gregorius had immediately whisked Prince Joachas out of the country by helicopter, as soon as the lake storms cleared. He would now be in Bal'harm. Robin would not leave his side, of course. Udomo had already left for Oriel, taking Adelaide with her in exchange for Kate. And I'm here cleaning up the mess, Padraig thought, as always. The large attorney was tempted to get in a humvee with Kate (whom he had done a favor in the end) and leave the MacLeod scion to his own devices. But he's probably about to become a chief.

The staged rescue was probably somewhat overdone, considering Sherry's disoriented condition. The uniformed RLI soldiers rushed her to the crowded Filabusi hospital that Burukova and Borisov had walked through only a week and a half earlier. Will informed Padraig that he would be staying with her till she recovered.

Lord, get me out of this country. It was out of his own interest, not Sherry's, that he called to see when they could be helicoptered to Fort Smith, the northern Stanlean city that bore his uncle's family name.