[b]Batumi, Georgia[/b]

The building that the scouts had hidden in was an old tenement, its facade demolished and its decrepit rooms exposed to the humid summer air. Built in the Turkish style, it was bare grey concrete weathered by the Georgian climate. On the top floor was Gregovyen's marksman team, staring down at Freedom Square almost a half kilometer away. The shouts and protests of the crowd of Georgians reached the Armenians' ears: "Unite! Unite!" A Turkish splinter force had arrived to quell the protest, armed with weapons. Through binoculars, Gregovyen watched as rocks began to be thrown. Molotovs ignited guard towers and remnant soldiers. Soon enough, one command echoed above the chaotic noise: "Fire at will." The Armenians watched in silence as the Turkish guards readied their rifles and, with a moment's hesitation, fire wildly into the crowd. Georgians were cut down in rows, rifles and machineguns raking the ranks of the Guardsmen. Gregovyen's sniper racked the bolt on his rifle and swiveled the bipod to get a clear view of a machinegunner in a tower. The NSS operative held his gloved hand out to push the barrel down and out of the way. The sniper looked at his superior with horror.

"We have to wait. We can't get involved yet. We have to see what they do."

[b]Kyrenia, Cyprus[/b]

The sun shone down upon the docks of Kyrenia as Captain Vartanesian and Harbormaster Kasoudis walked amongst the shipping containers stacked along the side. A dock crane had finished offloading Armenia's goodwill gifts. The two men swapped sea stories, recounting their experiences from the last few years. Particularly amusing to the Armenian was Kasoudis's memory of a Spanish patrol boat that had run aground on the rocks on the southern coast. Kasoudis, a young Coast Guardsman at the time, arrived to help the Spaniards on their way. The Spanish commander was stubborn, however, and refused to let the Cypriots help with repairing his hulls. In a stint of his characteristic passive-aggressiveness, Kasoudis backed off and let the Spanish sort themselves out. They sat on the rocks for a total of nine days before the Spanish captain grudgingly let the Cyprus Coast Guard assist him. It took a grand total of two hours for the locals to dislodge the patrol boat from the rock and another two to patch the hole in the hull. The Spaniards were regarded as egotistical and stubborn by the Cypriots, which resulted in many tense situations at sea. Boardings of merchant ships in the West Mediterranean were common. With the war on and the Spanish Navy on the African coast, fears were that things could get much worse.

"I'm not sure what your countrymen have been doing lately, but I fear your trip around the world might get a bit rough in the Mediterranean. I'm aware you're used to rough dealings, but the Spanish are particularly antsy this time of year," Kasoudis warned, stopping by a van marked with the Kyrenia Port Authority insignia. A worker inside was eating his lunch and listening to the radio. The harbormaster turned his weathered face to Vartanesian. "You might get boarded. You have self-defense weapons and nothing else, correct? They seem to believe that the Strait of Gibraltar is theirs. If they think you're smuggling, you might be detained. Who knows what happens to those captains? You could end up in a Spanish prison somewhere."

"I maintain about two dozen 12.7mm guns, a pair of antiaircraft guns, and small arms for my crew. I've already telegraphed the paperwork to the Spanish. I can almost guarantee that they will be boarding for 'inspections' or the like," Vartanesian agreed. He looked back at the [i]Breadwinner[/i] and eyed the sailors - mostly those on probation for misbehavior in port or at sea - walking the deck. One was working on the aforementioned point-defense machinegun. Two 12.7mm guns mounted together would tear up intruding small boats or, if needed, rake the decks of another large vessel. The antiair guns were designed to shoot down low-flying attack craft or helicopters and did an effective job with 23x152mm shells. The four-barreled guns were perfected by the Poles during their war with Hungary. He had read testimonies from the war about Armenian soldiers hitting Ottoman helicopters almost a kilometer out and shooting them down almost instantly. The Merchant Marine Agency had mandated at least one be on every ship.

"Well, the Spanish are fucking huge. They'll lose paperwork in the cogs of bureaucracy. Except instead of the maritime services losing some eighteen year old kid's recruiting information, it'll be your declaration through customs." Harbormaster Kasoudis shrugged, pulling out a cigarette book from his pocket. He offered one to Vartanesian before lighting them both with a lighter engraved with a Biblical verse in Greek. The Armenian took a long drag before exhaling into the warm air. "I must admit, there are troubles in these waters. I'm no fan of the Spanish. I think they're fucking shitheads. They're building a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, you know? They're cracking down on trade and all of us little guys are going to be fucked because of it. Ethiopia already is, their navy just got smashed. The Mediterranean is going to be different in a few years. Who knows? At this point I'd rather be a fucking Chinese combloc than a Spanish vassal."

Vartanesian looked around with deep resentment in his eyes, adjusted his cover, and took another drag off his cigarette. "I think the Spanish hate us. We fucked over their Ottoman pals with the rest of the post-Imperial states. They hate us, the Kurds, the Georgians, the Greeks. I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to glass the Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, or Palestinians either. To them, we're all China's lackeys. They don't see grey, they see 'us and them.' They see enemies and people who are amiable enough to not be an enemy just yet. What they do sickens me, but we can't say anything. We set off Sotelo's radar just one tiny bit and he sends his armies over to massacre and genocide your entire people. See the Africans? See how they are? See how they live in his state? He's worse than the fucking Turks. He's a fucking madman, he should be stopped. But who are we to stop him?"

"Rome fell," Kasoudis pointed out solemnly. "It fell to uncivilized barbarians. You Armenians felled the great Ottomans. Spain will have an end. Maybe soon, maybe later. Maybe I won't live to see it, maybe my son will be the one to shoot that goddamn devil of a man in the head. But for now we just smile and pretend they're alright. We wait for them to get sick, just like the Turks. Then we cut their goddamn heads off and put them on stakes. Good will triumph over the conquerors. We're the righteous ones. God is looking out for us. Do you believe in miracles? Of course you do. The Armenian people is a miracle. You survived a cleansing unheard of before in the modern world. You took down the oppressor of so many. Everyone else in this shithole of a Balkanized empire looks to you because you are a fucking miracle. I wouldn't be too bold to venture that the Armenians will dismantle the Spanish, but miracles do happen."

Captain Vartanesian nodded, staring at his ship. The vessel he had owned for almost twenty years was battered and beaten, its dull white paint chipping and peeling at the edges. Stains and rust discolored the hull, each one of them with a story to tell. He ran his eyes over some bulletholes sustained during a raid by Russian pirates. But it was his. He was proud of it. They had been through so much: times always seemed dark. Yet somehow they made it. The Captain looked back at his Cypriot friend and smiled. It was as good a metaphor as any.

[b]Artashat, Armenia[/b]

Against the backdrop of the mountains was a peculiar scene. Artashat had been shattered by the Armenian Revolution, the scene of the largest battle in the conflict. For almost a year, Armenian guerrillas and Ottoman troopers fought over Artashat and its surrounding suburbs. It held little strategic value geographically, instead being the location of the nearest Ottoman garrison to Yerevan. Situated directly south of the capital, it was on the road coming up from the unpoliced southern territories to the heart of colonial subjugation. Day broke over the city that still bore the scars of the war. Tenement buildings covered in scaffolding cast shadows on the fields nearby where crews still poured soil into shell craters. A pickup truck sauntered down the highway, past a fenced-in junkyard where someone had set up a business towing and reclaiming abandoned vehicles left over by evacuated civilians. The white truck bore a black NRA insignia on its doors, and the bed was filled with surveying equipment. Aram Terzian rode shotgun, looking out at the landscape from beneath a pair of sunglasses while his secretary drove.

A worker's camp had been erected on the north side of town as the road construction made its way south from Yerevan. The truck pulled through the front gate, manned by local police, and crunched its way over a gravel roadway into a parking lot. On the other side of the road was a fenced-in training area where a foreman was instructing some newly-hired locals on how to pour concrete. A tent had been erected beside it in the center of the camp with a military-style arrangement, containing the main planning center for the reconstruction of Artashat. Terzian, as the Director of the National Recovery Agency, was responsible for checking up on these projects from time to time. Stepping out of the truck and onto the ground, he acknowledged two workers on a smoke break and entered through the blue tent flap. Inside seemed to be the mirror image of a military tactical command center. A sand table was planted squarely in the center with engineers clustered around it. A telephone desk sat in the corner with a switchboard operator ordering a new load of asphalt from a local company. Beside her, rows of clerks and typists did various administration jobs.

One of the engineers turned around to acknowledge the new visitor, and went to shake his hand. Black-haired, muscular, and dressed in a dirty denim jacket and cargo pants, he embodied the image of a frontiersman. A large cross hung from a silver chain on his neck. He introduced himself: "The name's Paul Gredakjian. I'm the chief engineer and the man in charge of Artashat's public works department."

Director Terzian smiled and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, resting in his curly brown hair. "Pleasure to meet you, Paul. I've heard good things about you. I recall you built some of the infrastructure for the Erzurum pipeline way back in the sixties."

"Yessir," Gredakjian beamed with a shining sense of humor behind him. "I designed and managed the construction of some machinery houses, which were promptly destroyed by our marvelous partisans in 1977. And they worked damn well, too. Nothing could stop 'em."

"Well, except for the ASF," Terzian joked. "I was there, I got to tour the pump-houses and see where someone had gutted the pump computer with his bayonet and a sledgehammer. A damn shame."

"Well, at least we got parts from the Persians to fix it up. At least that's what I heard through the agency's rumor mill." Gredakjian shrugged. He swept out his hand to guide Terzian to the map where he was busy planning a vision of the new Artashat with fellow engineers. "Let me introduce you to the crew."

Gredakjian pointed out the half dozen civil engineers clustered around the map, naming them and their roles. They were traffic engineers, structural engineers, city planners, and environmental engineers. Each of them had experienced entire careers dealing exactly with this situation. Almost two thirds of them were former military, used to dealing in austere environments. "With them", he said confidently, "we can rebuild the city. It may have been smashed by war, but we'll be sure to bring peace with us."

"So how's it been going?"

"Excellently. We're high on morale and supplies, ahead of schedule in some places. We expect to be here for years, but we are all willing to improve our city," the engineer proudly stated. Many of the construction-men - like the locals seen training to pour concrete - were displaced citizens living in a nearby NRA refugee camp. Their service to the country was a mix of fervent patriotism and the desire to return to a normal life. Many, however, were conscripted: if one refused to serve in the military, civil service was thrust upon them by a draft board. The NRA was by the far the biggest recipient of civilian conscripts and an even larger hirer of veterans just getting out of their two-year term. It was a concept illustrated on the nearby propaganda poster put onto a corkboard: "Do you want to waste all we have gained? Do your part!"

"I take it you've been successful. I saw the scaffolding on my way in," Terzian commented, gesturing for the large engineer to follow him through the tent flap. They emerged into the still summer air, the Director putting on his sunglasses. Gravel crunched under their feet as they walked over the parking lot. Trucks from the NRA and the military drove past occasionally, scattering about to perform their duties. Orange light filled the camp with a holy glow, the skeletons of new apartment buildings casting long shadows on the ground. Cranes, silhouetted in black against the dawn sky, began their sluggish motions. It was every bit as symbolic as he hoped: Gredakjian seemed to think so as well, producing a camera from a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. "It's a beautiful day," continued the Director as the engineer snapped a brief photograph. The sun rose over Artashat. Terzian lit a cigarette and offered it to the engineer, who refused. Together they took in the sights for a few minutes before the engineer announced he had work to do. The Director nodded, and they parted ways.

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

"Right face!"

The four-dozen Candidates who lived in block A turned squarely right in unison, snapping their feet together in a resounding clack. The training instructor, beret pulled tightly to the side of his shaved head, shouted again: "Forward march!"

In unison, they moved. Smartly filing past the NCO, they took turns through the door and emerged on the outside of the blockhouse into the sunlight. The order was given to stop, and the Candidates halted on the asphalt parade ground. Dressed in their olive battledress uniforms, they awaited what was to come next. Seven weeks of OCS had broken them down and brought them back up. They had been soldiers: now they were leaders. They all knew what it was like to lead men into simulated combat, they had been tirelessly instructed on proper forms of military knowledge and tactics. Mentally, they were hard. When their instructors almost drowned them in Lake Sevan during the "Baptism" in the first week, they had known that they were being hardened. When the instructors began the days by firing live ammunition through the blockhouse windows or throwing buckets of animal blood and guts onto sleeping Candidates in the field, they were being hardened. When the instructors showed them graphic photographs and film reels of men dead and dying and told that these were going to be the young teenagers under their command, they were being hardened. There were some failures. They were not spoken of.

The air was still as the head instructor climbed the wooden podium that he used to address the Candidates. Their final week was here: the capstone of their experiences. In battledress, the commander of the school ascended. His weathered face gazed upon the almost one hundred young men ahead of him. He cleared his throat.

"Candidates, today we begin the final exercise. You have five days to destroy a heavily-guarded encampment on Sevan Island. There will be an airmobile insertion on the south side of the island where there will be heavy resistance. It is your job as leaders to be able to overcome and eliminate the enemy position. There is no support or reinforcement. There is only you and the opposing forces on this island. You will eat rarely, sleep even less. By the time you are done, you will be hardened warriors. You will be fit to lead others into battle. I turn you now to your section officers to brief you on your individual area of responsibility. The clock starts tomorrow morning. Dismissed."

Another command was called to set the Candidates into their barracks blocks again. In less than five minutes, the men were called into their ready rooms to prepare for the day. Abbasian, a member of Company D, hustled back into his room in the frenzy to find Sulayev packing his bag with equipment. Wordlessly, Abbasian headed for his closet where his gear was hung neatly. In short order, his flak jacket, helmet, bag, and rifle were all laid out on his cot. They helped each other find whatever they needed, from toiletries to raincoats to entrenchment tools. They were into the long haul now. At noon, after a quick lunch of canned rations, the company assembled in the briefing room to find their tactical officer preparing a briefing for their part of the raid. All of the forty men scurried in, shutting the door behind them. They were all dressed down in their battledress uniforms: some inexplicably were wearing their load bearing harnesses for one reason or another. The tactical officer maintained a sand table in the center of the room with a map of Sevan Island placed upon it. Shell casings painted red, blue, green, yellow, purple, and orange were used to denote the six companies' units. D Company was purple.

The tactical officer, a Major with combat experience dating back to the 1950s and an eyepatch beneath scraggly black hair. His uniform was colored in the unique paratrooper lizardstripe that set him apart from the rest of them with their dull olive fatigues. Colloquially, he was known as a hardass and it was a reputation he intended to keep. The tactical officer would consistently volunteer his Candidates for the most dangerous or strenuous missions and tasks, much to the chagrin of the students attending the eight-week school.

"Candidates, our objective is simple: we're sliding down the northeast side of the island after our drop off. The fortress is situated on the tallest point of the island, so this is kind of a Kajman Point scenario. While the other companies make a frontal assault, us and F Company will try to flank. That renders us alone and stretched out instead of with the main force but I'm confident that you'll be able to handle it."

"Sir!" called one of Abbasian's classmates from the back, hand raised. "Are we distracting them or pulling them away, or are we participating in the main assault?"

"They're not stupid enough to go on a wild goose chase for scouts, dammit!" growled the Major. "You're going in with F in the rear. It's simple. A fucking child could figure this out."

The student slumped down meekly in his chair, subdued by the ever-powerful "tac." The Major continued: "It's not a complicated scenario, we aren't dealing with urban environments or civilians. You see someone in a khaki uniform, you blast them with your rubber bullets."

He moved some shell casings from the entry point up the coast. "The enemy is going to be in the treeline taking shots at us as we move in, but are expected to fall back if we push forward. The worst thing we can do is get bogged down because that only gets us fucking routed. If we fall, they'll have more force to repel the other assaults. We're going to take it nice and slow: we have five whole days to siege them before we risk it and invade. You all know the basics, so take the fuck charge."

"Kill!" echoed the students in the briefing room, Abbasian included.

"Good job! Alright, the helicopters leave at dawn tomorrow. Continue packing and getting ready. We're in for a long week. But remember, graduation is just around the corner. Finish this, and you can finally get the fuck out of my sight. Got it?"

"Kill!" the company repeated eagerly.

"Dismissed!"

It took another few hours to fully prepare. Weapons and armor needed to be checked out from the armory and maintenance performed on the gear. In the barracks rooms, the roommates duly went about their work. From the speakers, somehow, someone had managed to turn on the radio and pump music into the company's blockhouse. Normally reserved for announcements and wakeup calls, this was a pleasant change of pace. The soothing, relaxing tones of the popular Armenian artists was a far cry from the adrenaline-fueled madhouse of OCS. There was no yelling, no shouting. For a few hours, the men had peace and quiet. Sulayev and Abbasian enjoyed it while it lasted: Sulayev was never one to be talkative - indeed, he knew only conversational Armenian and spoke mostly Kurdish as a first language. Like Abbasian, he was similarly slotted for the Foreign Legion after graduation: Abbasian was heading to the Arabic units while Sulayev was to take command in a Kurdish detachment. Abbasian had taught some more complicated language skills to his Yazidi roommate, but he still preferred to be quiet. Abbasian didn't mind: he mostly slept during his downtime.

Night fell rather quickly, the dusk turning darker and darker almost without the Candidates noticing. By the time the final preparations were completed and the Candidates had reported to their tactical officer, it was almost ten. They were briefed in more detail about the operation: Abbasian was chosen to be a squad leader and was given his responsibilities. He led eight others in a traditional squad aspect, and was the forward scouting unit. He was to rush ahead of the others to clear the way and find paths for the flanking element. If there was contact, he was to report back and try to neutralize the enemy before they returned to base. If all else failed, he would help them find another route.

Sleep came easy for the Candidates: they fell asleep as soon as they touched their cots. Beside them, their gear was lined up nice and neatly. The lights were turned off at taps and the barracks fell into darkness. Eight hours later, at the crack of dawn, the distant thrumming of helicopters woke the men. The chopping of the heavy rotor blades drew closer. On the parade ground, they landed: it was time.

[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

In a drunken haze, Yaglian didn't know who threw the first punch. However, the case was still the same: the Corporal was still knocked down onto the floor in a sketchy alley outside of an equally sketchy nightclub. In front of him was an intoxicated truck driver wearing his disheveled battledress. The oaf of a man swung forward again, flailing into the air while Yaglian rolled sideways and attempted to get back up on his feet. His motor skills failed him, and he soon found himself back on the ground while the truck driver pushed himself off of the wall he had ran into. "Come here, ya little shit!" he slurred, putting his fists up. The bouncer in the corner by the door was laughing at them, but didn't do anything. He thought it was too funny.

"Motherfucker, who the fuck are you?" Yaglian rambled back, trying again to get up off of the ground. The saxophone case he was carrying dropped to the ground and he accidentally kicked it away.

"You suck, man," the drunken truck driver said. "You sound like one of them blacks."

"Gah, you just have shitty taste, you cunt!"

Bathed in flickering yellow neon lights, the pair slammed against each other and fought in the most uncoordinated method possible. Yaglian struck the truck driver in the face several times, breaking his nose and drenching the man's uniform in blood. Yaglian was smacked in the ear with an open hand and stumbled down. The truck driver didn't relent and dove in after him, grabbing the Corporal by the lapels and lifting him up. Before he even realized it, Yaglian was tossed over the truck driver's shoulder and slammed down onto the hard ground. "Motherfucker!" he shouted breathlessly as his foe stumbled in for another strike. Once again, he rolled out of the way: the truck driver was making another move towards him and fell to the ground, smashing his face into the pavement. While the truck driver was scrambling off of the floor, Yaglian made his move to the dumpster. Nearby was a discarded bottle of vodka, which he grabbed hold of. The truck driver floundered his way over to the downed musician muttering something about black people, before Yaglian threw the bottle at his face. It shattered, and he went down in pain.

"Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck!" he shouted, running his hand over his bloody face. The Corporal got up off of the floor, ran over to his instrument case, and bolted. He barely got to the corner when he heard the bouncer call out: "Hey kid!"

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR3XY6wfSBw]Yaglian stopped cautiously, but his body was prepared to run in case the bouncer tried to hold him here until the police surely arrived.[/url]

"If it's any consolation, I thought your music was pretty good. Don't know what his problem was," the bouncer grinned with a mock salute. "Stay safe, soldier."

Yaglian nodded, looked back at the drunken truck driver writing on the ground, and made a break for it. He ran out of the alley, onto the street, and was almost blinded by the lights. Sevan had the most colorful nightlife in the whole region: nobody knows for sure how it started. Vice had been legalized by the province governor in an attempt to make the city an even more popular tourist destination. Prostitution, drugs, gambling, and anything else that could be imagined was completely allowed. It was rumored that the Armenian mafia had a hand in this, but nobody could tell for certain. What was once a resort town for the rich and wealthy became rather two-faced: on one hand, uptown Sevan maintained its classy tourist air and mansions still dotted the cliffs surrounding the beautiful lake. On the other, downtown Sevan had been commandeered to make way for neon palaces of sin. Not that there was anything wrong with that: Yaglian enjoyed the company of an exotic Circassian whore or three every once in a while. The shadier parts, however, lacked a clear police presence - they were too busy making the rich feel better - and it was often up to vigilantes, mobsters, and local bouncers to keep the peace.

Not in this case, however. Yaglian heard the sounds of sirens down the street and realized that they were the MPs. He had always been a sort of jailbird in the past and was familiar enough with the two different police forces that he recognized the slightly different intonation of an MP's squad car. The drunken Corporal took off faster, stumbling through the streets and away from a court martial. The sirens got closer as he went, tripping over sidewalks and exotic Egyptian palms in planters. With the law closing in, he ducked left into another alley. This one was bare and featureless, with only dumpsters and the back doors to some shops. The police car's lights flashed closer and closer, red and blue mixed with the multicolored neon of the city decorations. As Yaglian stumbled away, the car edged up on the curb and two fatigued officers wearing brassards and steel helmets stepped out. "Kid, it's been a long night. Get over here," the driver seemed to sigh.

Yaglian tried to run but instead tripped over his feet and stumbled to the ground. Hitting the concrete with a dull thud, he realized that his nose was bleeding and seemed to hurt more than it had before. Only afterwards when he sobered up would he realize that it was broken and crooked to the side. The MP walked casually to the drunk Corporal and sighed again, squatting down next to him. "Corporal, you're just going to the drunk tank tonight. Got any weapons on ya?"

Yaglian murmured something indecipherable and shook his head, still clutching his nose. The cop patted him down anyways and found nothing.

"Who's your commander?" the MP asked casually. Yaglian groaned again and writhed around on the floor. The cop's partner arrived at his side with a pair of handcuffs and quickly slapped them around Yaglian's wrists.

"We'll find that out in the morning, buddy," the other one noted with a shrug. "We're takin' you back to the station. Can't let you tarnish the image of our Army anymore..."

"Border Guard," Yaglian slurred. "I ain't no Army, get your hands off of me."

"Kid, you're still in the Department," the driver retorted as he hoisted Yaglian onto his feet. He turned to his partner who was inspecting Yaglian's instrument case: "Book him, Krik."