North Wind

[Caelia]

Port of Stary Krym, South-Eastern Kyiv, departure of the 1st Guards Airborne Division

"Hey Leytenant, Leytenant!"

"Stop fucking shouting, idiot! Now what do you want Kovalev?"

"Why are we getting on a ship anyways? Aren't we Airborne?"

"..."

"And where are we going? How are we supposed to know what to pack if they won't tell us where we are going?"

"You got the packing list, right?"

"Yeah."

"You followed it?"

"Yeah but-"

"Then there's no problem."

"Why do I need to pack my winter AND summer uniforms though? If we are going north, it's cold. If we go south, it's hot. So where am I going to need both?"

"...You really are stupid, Efreitor."

Though the Poruchyk was loathe to admit it even he did not know where the division was being deployed. WHY they were on an a ship was easy enough to figure out though, where ever they were going they weren't planning to enter by air or even by sea as these were no amphibious assault ships. It was easily forgotten Airborne Division has a smaller cargo load than any other comparable unit in the KPA which made it ideal for rapid deployment even by land or sea. If this was a combat mission it probably meant the target was to far to directly assault from the air and they were being deployed to some forward base. As for the nonsensical packing directions they had been given where a simple trick, no one reading them would be able to divine the divisions intended destination based on the kind of equipment they were bringing.

Totally unknown to the 1st AD's men they were not even alone on this expedition. At other ports hurried preparations were underway loafing naval infantry, SAMs and even combat aircraft. Anyone observing the frantic preparations in their entirety would have no doubt, this was an invasion force and it was about to depart.

 

[Thaumantica]

Hammersmith Harbor, Great Engellex, Alice & The Pioneer

Her heart skipped a beat the first time she laid eyes on the Pioneer: her ship, Cantigny's ship, the Empire's ship. In its gargantuan size and sleek design, the carrier and its accompanying fleet rose above that terrible sea of blue in such a heartwarming way. Beyond the Cantigian fleet The seaside was busy with the coming and going of Imperial vessels, military and otherwise, letting out baritone horns in such a charming and goosebump inducing fashion.

Above them all, the Crimson banners streamed overhead for the Crimson Queen of Cantignia, returning to Hammersmith Harbor, her proper Engellexic home, as the fully armed H.H.S. Pioneer docked in sight of several thousand bright eyed dreamers and a few cursing skeptics. Unlike Dulwich, or most of Engellex for that matter, the people of Hammersmith were intimately familiar with Alice's many Cannie quirks.

Alice daintily stepped off the Pioneer to a steady but hardly overwhelming cheer, gladly welcoming the sight of the Imperial Engellexic flags which had so merrily occupied her youth, though now seemed rare and obscure in the crimson painted friendly confines of now distant Cantignia. Her gloved fingers formed a thin V-Shape to accept both a cigarette and a light from Lord Herschell, Alice's personal bodyguard and commander of her Foxwood Footguard, which morphed the crowds cheer to an entirely overwhelming gasp. Mothers covered the eyes of their children, and husbands covered the eyes of their inquisitive wives as the twenty-three year old brunette, of green eye and scarlet dress, puffed sex and independence freely in to their oh so precious Engellexic air.

As she approached her motorcade, the shocking streams emitting from her petite red lips sent a distinct unease and curiosity through and through the vast city of Hammersmith, Engellex. No one dared protest her defiance, but the urge had surely struck an impatient few, who did not wait to see the rest of their Cannie couisins arrive.

In dock at the harbor, the crew of the H.H.S. Pioneer remained aboard in contrast with typical Can-Engellexic customs, which would have them boozing and on the youths galavant about the biggest city in Engellex. Instead Admiral Burberry kept the crew aboard for the evening, ordering drill after drill all throughout the night until sunrise the next morning. Their drills were of an intense but supportive nature, drawing up fresh battleplans to support a force they were not yet entirely familiar with. Burberry had truly been saddened to see darling Alice go, her dazzling effect on the Pioneer crew had been emboldening and inspiring for a group of men and women straddling the opposite side of Europe.

"Commence Battle Drill Upsilon, iteration thirteen!" Admiral Burberry called out over the intercoms at 1300 Engellexic time, roughly midnight from where the crew was used to, which sent the sleeping beast of the Pioneer back in to operational mode ; responding to and pretending to engage fictional enemies only hundreds of meters away from their ancestral homeland. In peace, the preparation for war had again become cruelty for the H.H.S. Pioneer.

 

[Caelia]

Base RUFF, Bantyr

1st Guards Airborne Division Leytenant Serhiy Kozak was not a happy man. He had finally learned his destination, and it was Bantyr in the middle of winter. The men of the Airborne were Kyiv's elite soldiers. Today though they had reduced to dock workers as they worked frantically to offload their equipment to the Engellic base. Command still demanded strict OPSEC and so the base was beginning to resemble a forest canopy as they erected an ever growing forest of camouflage netting to conceal their activities from prying eyes. Typically they had run out of winter nets long before they had set up enough and had continued with green summer nets. When they had exhausted those they continued with a generous supply of blue tarpaulins discovered inside one of the bases hangars.

He could not fault their engineers and intel units though, their preparations had been superb. Once the canopy of nets stretched over a huge portion of the base the engineers had liberally laid tinsel, cut in different lengths tailored to different radar frequencies. Illuminated it would behave much the same as an aircraft's chaff and overwhelm the signatures of men and equipment concealed under the nets. Between the nets and chaff their activities would be almost impossible for any observer, in the air or space, to discern beyond their simple presence.

Radio preparations were equally meticulous. Total radio silence was being enforced on base, only the division commanders had access to a secure SATCOM terminal that could keep them in touch with home. Counter intuitively the majority of communications with Kyiv were not being handled by specialized military equipment but over commercial internet, the navy had covertly spliced into an undersea fiber optics cable and laid a new connection to the base. From there they could seamlessly blend into the mass of civilian traffic and evade ELINT listeners. A secure channel had been established routing their messages to a server in Breotonia rented by a Military Intelligence shell company, from there to server farm in Danzig owned by a Franken born Rus entrepreneur/purveyor of questionable content and from there to the Kyivan embassy to danzig. Messages both ways were encrypted/decrypted by custom made hardware. As a final fallback the force had been assigned a large cache of one-time-use pads that could be used to decrypt orders from Kyiv transmitted on number stations.

Serhiy knew though that simply concealing their radio signature would only encourage the enemies wild fantasies. Instead they had brought all the equipment needed to create the radio footprint of a completely nonexistent unit. Supporting this deception the engineers (aided by any Efreiters or Soldats unlucky enough to be caught idle) were erecting decoys that, once the netting and tarps had been removed, would create the impression of a very different force on base.

There was little time to ponder the finer points of deception though for the 1st Guards Airborne. Reinforcements were now arriving by sea and air non-stop. The division had gone in early in part to ensure there would be someone to prepare the Engellic base for Kyivan OPs and to help unload and prepare for action the heavier equipment that was following them.