[b]Joint Base Sevan Lake, Armenia[/b]

It was an hour into the morning, according to the watch on Haroud Abbasian's wrist. He rode in a white bus traveling down a lonely paved road through a forest, duffel bag stuffed awkwardly between his legs. He had donned his worn olive battledress the previous morning on his way to the train, and hadn't had a chance to change since. All of his worldly possessions were in the bag in front of him: the rest he had left at his parents' house in Shusha. He had told them of his decision to rejoin a week before the train from Stepanakert left, and that was that. No further discussion. They were less than happy, of course, but Abbasian had made his commitment. Beside him, another man sat silently in much the same way. Maybe he was pondering the same things. Nobody spoke on the drive through the dark night. The atmosphere was not unlike a prison bus: the bus itself was actually most likely surplus from the correctional facilities, and Abbasian noticed some screws bordering the windows that may or may not have once been used to hold bars in. It wasn't a palatable thought, so nobody particularly focused on it. Instead, the soldiers like Abbasian sat in the hard, ancient seats and looked at the ceiling or out the windows. They were on their way to the Armenian Army's Officer Candidate School.

Abbasian watched the faint forest speed by the window. The bus rattled as it passed over potholes and bumps in the road: the people responded in turn by being jumped up and down in their seats. He had been awake for almost a full twentyfour hours, almost. The night was beginning to take him in. Many of the others were asleep already: across the bus was a pair of Sergeants who had quite literally fallen asleep on each other. Abbasian felt his heavy eyes close, brought down by the sheer weight of exhaustion. Within seconds, he was asleep. But not for long. Instantly, the bus jolted to a standstill. The former Corporal, unprepared for the stop, almost flew straight into the back of the seat in front of him. The lights on the ceiling turned on, and the instructor who had, until now, sat wordlessly in the front had stood up. He was shouting at the top of his lungs. "Get the fuck off the bus! Let's fucking go! Go, go, go! Grab your shit, Candidates!" Behind them, a second bus's instructor was screaming the same thing. Abbasian was in a haze: he saw the front of the bus scramble to get off, making haphazard attempts to stumble over into the hallway. People ran into each other on their way off the bus, while the instructor continued roaring: "You're not fast enough, Candidates! Get the fuck out! I want to see you [i]move[/i], you lazy fucks!"

Abbasian fell out into the alley, clutching his bag with a whiteknuckled deathgrip. Sitting near the back of the bus, he was thrust into the line of people all trying to get off. It was chaos, plain and simple. Nobody could function with the sudden environment put down on them. The Candidates slowly shambled their way towards the exit at the insistence of the instructor, whereupon they were unceremoniously pushed onto the hard asphalt and told to collect their bags that had escaped them. Abbasian went behind his seatmate, holding onto the ceiling's handrail as he dragged his feet to the door. The instructor, obviously not amused, grabbed Abbasian by the shoulders and howled: "Why the fuck are you so slow, shitbag?" A clearly rhetorical question that the instructor wanted no answer to, as he proceeded to throw Abbasian into a ditch by the side of the road. The former Corporal landed with a dull thud, and his bag landed on top of him. With a groan, he rolled over to face up and blindly grope for his duffelbag. The world was spinning. At the corner of his vision was Abbasian's seatmate: a darker-skinned man with a full beard and hair that slightly bordered on unacceptably long. His Corporal badge shone in the glare of the buses' headlights, and he offered a hand. Abbasian blinked, staring the man unsmilingly in the eyes. Abbasian's seatmate's expression never changed from a neutral, blank slate. The Corporal took his hand.

"Formation! Formation!" the instructors cried. "Two columns, [i]move[/i]!"

The gaggle of Candidates were taking longer than the instructors liked, as evidenced by the audio haze of screaming and shouting. The dark forest seemed more alive than ever, with the Candidates learning their lesson within two minutes and assembling into a makeshift formation. Their backs were lit by the headlights; their shadows towering tall along the road. In front of them, five kilometers down the road, were the gates to OCS. The instructors jogged to the front of the formation, cupped their hands, and bellowed: "Run, Candidates, run!"

Abbasian and his newfound partner shouldered their bags, feeling the weight drag them to the ground. Motivated by fear and adrenaline, they picked up their feet. Behind them, the instructors seemed to run faster. The Candidates, many of them out of shape, were easily surpassed by an instructor who was setting the pace. Others continued shouting at them for their lack of athleticism. Their megaphones carried their booming voices through the night, shaking the trees and instilling the deepest primal anxiety possible in the fresh Candidates. Abbasian's train of thought led him to believe that running faster would get him out of the way of their infinite wrath, so he pushed himself into speeding up despite the massive weight on his back. Behind him, his partner struggled to keep up. Abbasian's legs moved on autopilot: after a few kilometers he simply couldn't feel them anymore. Yet his sides ached, cramped and twisted, and his breathing was shallow and struggling. Others in the formation were wheezing - some violently - from the speed and the distance. It was there that Abbasian realized that this was a death march, or at least as close as the instructors could legally get to it. It was like basic training, of course. It was designed to break a man. And break men it did: at least one Candidate was vomiting onto himself and the road as he sprinted past the five kilometer point. They were on the home stretch, for now. As they approached, the gate to OCS appeared. It was almost like returning home.

The run was just the beginning. The instructors kept the pace going past the gate, directing them into a large grounds of asphalt in front of the main building's entrance. When the Candidates reached the assembly area, they were instructed to form up again. Remembering the events of a half hour ago, the Candidates - many fearful of another physical reprisal - formed without incident. Then, they were instructed to drop their bags on the floor while the instructors jogged to a small portable wooden podium that had been placed at the entrance. One of them, wearing his battledress with the instructor's gold cord and black beret, climbed on to address the crowd in front of him. Silence fell upon the Candidates for the first time: the only sounds heard were the exhausted breathing of the ones who were particularly hard hit by the run. Nobody moved or dare look away from the instructor on the podium. Their eyes were fixated on the man's godly posture and status. And it was true: for the next eight weeks, the instructors were gods on Earth. They had the power to overrule any divine order that came their way. Each and every Candidate now belonged to them. It was the kind of control that dictators in poverty-stricken African countries yearned for all provided legitimately and without strings by the Armenian government. They said that Hell was a place on Earth, and the stories perpetuated from the place confirmed that Hell took the form of Officer Candidate School.

"Good morning, Candidates!" boomed the instructor with a sheepish grin and a Western accent. "I trust you are awake and ready for the day now?"

He surveyed the motley group of Soldiers assembled beneath him, and shook his head. "Don't answer that, Candidates. I know you're ready! Let me be the first to introduce you to the Armenian Army's Officer Candidate School. You have been selected to attend based on your demonstrated capabilities! It is here where we take you, crush you up into a little ball, and meld you into the ideal warrior leader that this nation deserves! I hope you enjoyed your little warmup today, because this is going to be your life for the next eight weeks. I don't want to give too much away, now: I must save that for your briefings. Today will be inprocessing day. You will register into our system so that you will transition in with little difficulty. Then, the fun begins! Enjoy yourselves, Candidates, but not too much!"

His laugh seemed diabolical to Abbasian. The instructor stepped down from the platform and into the midst of uniformed figures standing in front of the entrance. They all bore the instructor's cord, and they stood ready to facilitate the welcome. The Candidates were instructed to collapse their formation: the square of Candidates fell into a tightly-knit marching group. The former Corporal and his seatmate became shoulder-to-shoulder in the midst of a hundred other sweaty, tired Candidates. The order to march soon came clearly over the air, issued from an unseen officer with a megaphone. The mass of Candidates began moving towards their new gear, bunks, and briefings. The day from there on out was dominated by the hectic schedule. The Candidates, however fearful of another physical punishment, were complacent. They sat and suffered through the agonizing wait. But nothing came. And then they went to bed, climbing into the bunk beds in the concrete barracks to spend their first night at Officer Candidate School. Abbasian and his partner from the bus were assigned to the same room along with two other Candidates, and they spent the night staring at the ceiling as they tried to sleep. Nobody talked: Abbasian hardly even knew his partner's name. They were more than mildly concerned about reprimand, of course. The time for socialization was later. For now, they waited. The game had begun.

[b]Bosporus Strait, Istanbul[/b]

It was like history had been turned on its head. Independent Istanbul had thrown out the Turkish military only three months earlier and proclaimed independence. The city's militia - consisting of ethnic Turks and minorities alike who believed in independence - had secured the borders in the establishment of this citystate. The Turkish government was in shambles after the death of the Sultan. Politically, their power had dwindled. The only thing left was military force. And their military had been forced out by less-than-savory measures, of course. Militias ramped up violent killings and kidnappings in the months before the Ottoman Empire's collapse. The Turkish had fled to their evacuation points in the chaos following carbombs at their mostly ceremonial barracks and parade grounds, militias hounding their trails and making sure that they didn't come back. It was a tremendous shaming rout for the Ottomans: another salt in their gaping wound. Their former capital, seized by a liberal revolt demanding citystate status. Their stated rationale was that they no longer belonged in a Turkic state, owing to their diversity. The Turks, seeing Istanbul as the rightful center of their empire, found themselves unable to cope. The remains of their government were exiled after a standoff in the Parliament, and had taken up shop in Ankara. But the threat of the Turks loomed on the horizon, as the new Turkish state prepared its counteroffensive. They would go down swinging, trying to reclaim what the Greeks stole from them.

The MV [i]Breadwinner of Rize[/i] sailed through the Straits cautiously. While Armenia had expressed positive relations with Istanbul, the city was quite lawless. The Merchant Mariners were posted to their stations: 12.7mm guns overlooking the hull, men with rifles hunkered down behind steel plates welded to the rails. A pair of 23mm antiaircraft guns on the bow and stern were angled parallel with the deck to deal with far-off targets. No air power to worry about here. Mattresses had been pushed to the railings to deter grappling hook attacks, and sharpshooters trained by the Army were ready to take out a target that tried to climb aboard. Of course, Captain Vartanesian was less worried about the Istanbul criminal elements than he had been about Russian pirates operating out of Volgograd, but the Merchant Marine's advisory was clear: he needed to take precautions. Besides, the city was ready for war. The rumor mill was articulating stories of Turkish troops, fueled by vengeance and rage, preparing for a petty counterattack on Istanbul. They had lost their colonies and pulled back to Turkey proper. They had been humiliated at Ethiopia. If anything, they wanted their capital back. But for now, Istanbul awaited its next challenge. For now, Armenian and Georgian vessels were allowed through the Bosporus as part of an ongoing trade agreement: a emboldening opportunity for Armenia and its place in the world. The [i]Breadwinner[/i] was selected to be the first Armenian ship to circumnavigate the globe.

Captain Vartanesian felt like it was a great honor. He would be the first Armenian ship commander to sail the globe. To his knowledge, nothing like that had ever happened before. Armenia was never a nautical nation. It had only gained the capability through the capture of the Rize and Trabzon ports. Captain Vartanesian had been a shipowner, chartered under a civilian Ottoman shipping company before the war, and had defected with his crew to Armenia. He now ran his own business, shipping back and forth between Armenia and Poland. As a pioneer of the Armenian nautical scene, Vartanesian was becoming widely respected amongst his peers. Not a bad place for someone who had dropped out of law school in 1955. A board of mariners had convened to say that he would be the one to break out of the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Alone, under Vartanesian's supervision, the [i]Breadwinner[/i] traveled through the straits without much fanfare. Gaggles of Istanbul Armenians would congregate on either side of the canal to watch in a muted interest, while the rest of the city went about its business. The tension was everpresent. From the bridge, Captain Vartanesian could see Istanbul militias setting up flak cannons on flat rooftops. Mortars were being adjusted downrange to the east. But the [i]Breadwinner[/i] sailed through without incident, even if something in the Captain's gut told him that the Armenians wouldn't be seeing the last of Istanbul for a while. The Greeks were approaching from the west: the Turks from the east. No official peace treaty was signed. Istanbul fell squarely between their claimed territories. Everyone knew what was going to happen.

But alas, it was not the concern for Captain Vartanesian. The crew breathed a silent sigh of relief as the ship exited the Bosporus and sailed through the Sea of Marmara. The sun glittered off of the diamond-colored seas, shining a shimmering orange up at the sailors. They unbuckled their helmets and lowered their rifles. A pair of dolphins played in the ship's wake. Two Greek patrol boats sailed in to escort, flanking the [i]Breadwinner[/i] on both sides. Captain Vartanesian was expecting them - a thin smile gracing his pale lips - and responded positively to their hails. The Turkish Navy was busy steaming back and forth the coastline, transporting troops back home and being harassed by Cypriot aircraft. They offered no threat to what was now Greek waters. The Greek Navy - mostly privateers at this point - had locked down shipping lanes in the east Mediterranean. The [i]Breadwinner[/i] was offered full transit rights of them, with a Greek escort for most of the ride. Their stopping points in the immediate future: Cyprus, followed by Crete, followed by a peaceful commercial visit to Italy. Each time the [i]Breadwinner[/i] docked, the crew would visit the port and the businessmen onboard would trade with the local firms. The ship's cargo holds were loaded with containers carrying Armenian goods: mostly cultural things like perfumes, foodstuffs, and gifts. The voyage was meant to build relationships. The sentimental sharing of Armenian culture was decided to be the way to do it.

the [i]Breadwinner of Rize[/i] slipped through the Dardanelles without incident as the sun set on the Mediterranean. Cyprus would be the first port call the next day. While Armenians were no strangers to the Cypriots - indeed, rumors of Armenian military forces based in Cyprus had been abound the past few months -, it was the first time any of these sailors had stepped foot in a Mediterranean land. The excitement was palatable on the ship. They could hardly wait.

[b]Yerevan, Armenia[/b]

The outskirts of the city were bare, the urbanization not having taken full hold yet. For the most parts, empty lots and industrial sheds or warehouses sparsely popped out of the Hrazdan River's banks. The city center's tallest buildings were silhouettes on the horizon: all dwarfed by the half-built Yerevan flak tower on the west bank. The one point of interest, however, was the north/south highway that snaked south to Nakhchivan and the lower Armenian provinces. It was clearly well-worn, built in the 1940s by Ottoman engineers for the purpose of traveling across their dominion. The two-lane road, divided by a grassy median with little to no modern conveniences, was cracked and littered with potholes. The chaos of the revolution had left no concern for the management of infrastructure: the Ministry of Transportation was merely a formality on paper without much funding or even a permanent office space. A new building in downtown Yerevan, erected within the prior months, had solved the latter concern. The Parliamentary vote on the National Recovery Agency's highway plan had allotted millions of newly taxed dram to the MoT. The NRA had begun aggressively hiring civil and infrastructure engineers - oftentimes military engineers just getting out of their conscription period - to survey and plan for roadways and infrastructural improvements. They now employed several thousand laborers to make that plan happen. And today was the first day of work. They had 150 kilometers of roadway to build in the initial stages.

Several newly-painted yellow construction vehicles lined the roadway. The existing lanes were being resurfaced, one lane at a time in a staggered method to allow traffic to traverse - albeit at a limited rate. Four more lanes were being added while in the city: a startling jump forwards from what had been established in Ottoman times. This was to support the predicted ownership of private automobiles as the availability of them and standards of living increased. The Ministry of War had also requested that these highways be capable of supporting military operations, meaning that the highways were to be used as a defense tool as well. The six-land road tapered down to four at the outskirts of the city, narrowing to three on the larger routes inbetween. Two-lane roads would be less-traveled, commonly known as parkways. They would be built around major cities like beltways, or as bypasses between major highway units. But the road about to be built was planned to be a major renovation and expansion. The ceremonies were over: Assanian's speech had rallied the nation to support the project. It would bring new jobs, new income, and new prosperity, he proclaimed. Now, thousands of men awaited the order to begin. The sun, rising over the horizon, cast its orange lights upon the workers. A watch clicked to six. A whistle blew. Engines started, equipment rumbled to life. The workday had begun.

The men walked to their jobs, toolboxes and tools slung over their shoulders in satchel bags. Clad in dingy jeans and flannel with some having stripped off their top layer to reveal striped blue telnyashkas, they donned yellow hardhats and climbed aboard their vehicles. To pave new roads, the land in front of them would need to be flattened. Advanced surveyors had determined the necessary courses of action, and bulldozers were busy filling in ditches and scraping down hills to ensure a uniform path for the lanes. Roadworkers had traveled to the potholes needed filling with hoses and mixers filled with asphalt. While it was dry out, water and debris was removed from wherever there was a need before asphalt was filled in. Crews would then cut a square out of the pavement to ensure even sides for the repair before filling the pothole with asphalt. A steamroller would come along and compact the fresh fix before they moved onto the next one. It was a hard day's work under the beating summer sun. The men were drenched in salty sweat. It dripped off their hair into their eyes and mouths, stinging along the way. Progress was slow, yet steady. It would take time to build the roads, for sure. By the end of the first day as the sun began to set, most everyone knew this. The whistle blew eight hours later as their day ended. Another rotation arrived from the nearby worker's camp to take over for the evening. After them, a graveyard shift. And then the cycle would start again.

For the men laboring away, nothing could be better. They had a job. They had money. They were doing their patriotic duty. For them, it was their sacrifice that President Assanian so often talked about. Almost each and every single one of them held the earnest belief that their work was shaping their nascent nation.