Gunnland
FTR
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.