[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

The training exercise had been almost routine. Almost. For several hours, the instructors and the students exchanged rubber bullets on the steep hills of Sevan Island. Abbasian, undermanned and under-equipped, led his team through a flanking maneuver that seemed all too elementary to be predicted. On the other end of the maneuver was a small element of leftovers. Carrying machineguns and as much spare ammunition as they could carry, Sulayev and about three others shrewdly tricked the instructors into believing that he had taken his entire team up the beach into the predicted killzone. With all the machineguns turned on the instructors, they believed that they were facing at least half a company. When Sulayev was pinned by enemy fire, the instructors began their attempt to rout C Company. But as they filed into a firing line on a rock outcropping looking down onto the beach, Abbasian came in to eliminate them. The eastern flank collapsed, allowing for the students' other companies to flood the gap and fill in through holes left in the defenses. When the instructor teams began to notice, they pulled in tighter. Some units had to be shifted from west to east to fill in: a prime opportunity for the westernmost student companies to rally and shoot them in their backs.

On the hill, the fortress didn't last long. An hour-long lull in the fighting provided an opportunity for the students - missing vital radio links from breakages or "deaths" - to regroup and hit the outpost as planned. Most of the scouting forces had been obliterated during the confusion of C Company's beach run, leaving only a small unit of defenders on the fortress. They fought for as long as they could, yet the elements were against them. It was a heroic charge from A Company that pushed up and over the sandbag fortifications and into the trenches. Moments later, a young Officer Candidate singlehandedly ripped down the guidon from its posting at the center of the base. The exercise had ended: the students had won their right to graduate. Exhausted, grimy, and still anxious, the Candidates flooded onto the provided riverine boats to be steamed back to the waiting docks. They came in slow as the sun set behind them, casting a shimmering orange light on the harbor. Lining the piers were soldiers and airmen, all watching their new officers arrive. There was no jubilant celebration or victory music. The boats crept in ominously while the Candidates looked out and over. Their faces had long since been turned into grimy murals of streaked facepaint, carbon, dirt, and sometimes blood. Their uniforms were more brown than olive.

A returning Candidate's eyes seemed apathetic - dead, almost. He stared his soldiers in the eyes, too tired to avert his gaze once locked. Some slunk low below the gunwales to sleep, avoiding the matter altogether. They were awoken by the bump of the craft against the dock, the riverine-men tying their ropes to cleats on the wooden platforms. Quietly, they were ushered out of the boats and onto waiting trucks. Their rucksacks were hastily thrown onboard, followed by their rifles. The men clambered aboard last. They drove the rest of the way to the dingy, cinderblock bays that sat low in the shaded training retreat of Joint Base Sevan Lake. Surrounded by a prison-like chainlink fence and barbed wire, these had been home for the past seven - almost eight now - weeks. The sun had set already by the time the Candidates had dragged their soaked, dirty gear into their cots. Wordlessly, they stripped without any sense of shame or modesty. The few who felt motivated enough went to go take cold showers in the communal bathroom, but most instantly curled up on their bunks and fell fast asleep. Almost taking pity on these young Officer Candidates, the instructors allowed them to sleep in an extra hour the next morning before waking them up with the traditional morning doorkicking.

OCS was over. The graduation ceremony took place in the same parade ground that they had entered into so many days ago on a moonlit night. Many recalled being forced off the bus at gunpoint in the middle of the night, forced to recover their belongings after having their bags dumped out in a ditch beside the dilapidated asphalt road. Dressed in clean uniforms, they stood at attention for a half hour listening to a speech from an officer that they didn't particularly know nor care about. The head instructor, too, gave his own speech. He ran through what was the standard par for the course at that point: how motivated and dedicated to success the young officers were. How they withstood challenges for the Fatherland, how they stood up to the occasion when nobody else would. Officers, by very definition, were volunteers. A far cry from the two-year conscript forced on border guard duty. These were just words. The officers said words without meaning. Each one of the new officers had their own reasons to be there. Fervent patriotism wasn't the only thing that drove them. Tradition marched some along, as it had their fathers and grandfathers. Money motivated others, or the promise of a secure career. Many simply wanted to put their skills as university graduates to work and train up before they left their service term. Some others wanted back in because they had gotten bored with civilian life.

That was something that bothered Abbasian as he said his goodbyes and left for the train station with Sulayev. Both of them, with their insignia newly pinned upon their collars, walked the boulevard casually. He turned to his Yazidi friend, lit a cigarette, and rummaged around in his pocket for something that he wasn't sure he was even looking for. "I can't go back to the real world," the dark-skinned Lieutenant admitted. His brown eyes scanned the mountains above the train tracks before he stopped himself. The thrumming of propellers in the distance wasn't a threat.

"You can't? What did your family think?" Sulayev responded as he bummed a cigarette himself.

"They were disappointed that I left home again. I told them I couldn't work at that damn logging company for another day. I wanted to do an actual job."

"That is an actual job," the Yazidi argued. "We need lumber."

"I wanted to do something again. I got bored. I... I missed the war. I sound like a fucking psycho, I know."

Sulayev sighed deeply, almost mournfully. He stopped in his tracks and put his duffel down onto the sidewalk. Abbasian, still ahead of him, turned again.

"I know what you mean," Suleyev admitted simply. "I want the high back. War's a terrible thing but I want more. The entire time I wanted to leave but now I can't stop thinking about going back."

Abbasian's friend, a stone pillar of stoicism, sat atop his bag and looked down at his boots. The Armenian edged forward before dropping his bag next to him. Sulayev's shoulders drooped as he ran a hand over his still-shaved scalp.

"I watched so many people die. I saw a kid barely younger than me get his arm blown off when he tried to man a gun in a trench. I was about to take it. That could've been me. Then I got on the gun anyways and I hosed down an advancing squad. I cut them down like they cut that kid down... I liked it. I felt good. I'm not supposed to feel like that. I'm not supposed to want more. My family doesn't fucking know. My girlfriend wouldn't understand. Fuck, she even left me halfway through OCS. I got the letter."

"What'd you do with it?"

"I crumpled it up and tucked it behind the spoon of a hand grenade on range day."

Abbasian raised his eyebrow but remained silent. The deep remorse, infectious and downing, was starting to get to him as well. He thought of his own personal conflicts. He had seen war just as Sulayev had, although maybe not as badly through the lens of a spotter's binoculars. He had his moments as well: he recalled a time after his first deployment where he had kicked through the drywall in his basement when he was drunk and consumed with grief. He had spiraled into a drinking cycle after that as he thought that he could chase the demons away with alcohol. He had nightmares, and every once in a while he couldn't sleep. Abbasian would lie atop his bed, staring at the ceiling as he heard the sounds of urban warfare echo through his head. One phrase in particular - "Holy shit, man! How are you alive?" - repeated itself over and over. He had just crouched down behind an overturned dumpster before an artillery explosion sent a piece of concrete flying through his manpack radio. It missed him by centimeters. Life and death were, for him, so closely related in the fields of Erzurum that he no longer thought about it. A body became a body: an object, not a person. Sulayev must have felt the same resignation, albeit much more guiltily.

"Who the fuck would care if I died?" Sulayev moaned, burying his face in his hands. He sobbed like a child, broken down almost completely. "Maybe my parents but they don't fucking count, man. I don't have any kids, any brothers."

Abbasian looked around, then down. Stirred by the sudden outburst of emotion, he sat down as well. He remained silent, hand around Sulayev's shoulders and patting his back paternally.

And so the penitent soldiers comforted each other on the side of the road until they were galvanized to action by the sound of a train horn. They picked their bags up and straightened their uniforms. With a final check of composure, they walked side by side, out of Sevan.

[b]Yerevan, Armenia[/b]

The cool morning air reminded Assanian of his time in the military: early wakeups, early physical training, and early marches on the road. His service as a pathfinder in the Armenian Regiments of the Ottoman Empire had been rather fruitful and part of him appreciated the opportunities for development even if he had been capped at an arbitrary limit by Ottoman military higher-ups. After all, it was his training that allowed him to escape Nor Yerzenka with his life during the early stages of the Revolution. He had to put off getting his law degree in Yerevan until after his service was up, but he appreciated that as well. He spent the 1950s partying and running around with his hair on fire until he realized that it was time to mellow out and get his future in order. He still served out a full career, retiring at age 40, but that was only because he had nowhere else to go. Unmarried with parents lost to cancer in his 30s, Assanian was alone in the world. Some of his peers would notice his introversion and distance as he fell into a depression before deciding to leave the military. After 1968 and his retirement, he was left to his own devices. He began to teach law and realized that the Armenian Regiments had done more good than harm. His opinion of military service lightened, perhaps as nostalgia took over as the years went by.

The door of the black staff car was slammed shut by an Army honor guardsmen as Assanian exited. It sped off down the road, kicking up exhaust as it went. Assanian grumbled something about Polish engines while he straightened his tie and walked up through the gardens to the Government House. Designed by Armenian architects shortly after independence, the beautiful and immaculately landscaped gardens were an attempt to demonstrate sovereignty. Cutting through the middle was a walkway patterned after an Armenian carpet, watched over on both sides by statues of Fedayeen on horseback. A stairway led up to a patio, beyond which was the door to the Parliamentary chamber. Inside of the building was a labyrinth of offices. Assanian, of course, was heading down to the basement. The Minister of War, Jordan Ivakon, was present in a meeting room alongside the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Alongside them were the recent evacuees from the Istanbul embassy and the Greek and Istanbul military liaisons. Assanian was ushered through by the Army guards who clutched rifles and wore web belts saddled down by ammunition pouches over their service uniforms. Hidden underneath their jackets were concealed flak vests. They looked fairly strange kitted down in battle gear atop their khaki uniforms and blaze orange berets. Assanian didn't have time to question the decision making process of the Army.

The Government House was not usually a center of cabinet meeting, but circumstances dictated it. The grey area of the Istanbul Crisis needed both civil and military inputs: Assanian was trying to handle the Ottoman attempts at revenge without shattering the fragile peace that he had brokered merely months before. Istanbul's revolt and transition to a cosmopolitan city-state had been a black eye for the Ottomans' pride. Armenia was a humiliation of the greatest sort and the rest of the Empire's dissolution was just as so, but Istanbul was the crown jewel of their state. The fact that the Istanbulite government leaned towards Greece and Armenia as protectors instead of the Ottomans was a slap in the face to the Sultanate still reeling from the death of Suleiman at the hands of spies: Ethiopians, no less! As a force of Armenian naval assets bore down on the city straits, they were fully prepared to launch ground forces in support of a Greek column that had parked itself to the west of the city in occupied territory. The Ottomans had been probing the City Guard for days now and flying reconnaissance missions over the Armenian flotilla. Political factions from both sides such as the embassy and the NSS had been evacuated from the city.

Assanian swept through several metal doors in the concrete basement of the Government House. The harsh, Spartan decor was enough to remind him that these had been constructed as an air-raid shelter for Armenian government personnel. Luckily, air defense artillerymen and the Air Force had prevented most of the heavier attempts at raiding through: as was explained to Assanian by the chief of the anti-aircraft branch, there was a huge disparity between technology on the ground and in the air. The development of land-based rotary cannons spitting 20mm shells in an endless stream would simply tear up strategic bombers. Flak systems on the ground were still immensely popular, shredding through airborne objects with ease. Fighters were harder to hit but could still be taken down. There were rumors of Polish aircraft utilizing jets and rockets operating at an experimental level, but Assanian's requests for information were denied even if it meant that the Poles could use their experimental airframes in actual combat to see the results firsthand. Operation Beta could only go so far.

A familiar dramatic scene awaited Assanian in the briefing room selected for that day's meeting. Briefcases, documents, photographs, censored pages of dossiers and observations, and anything else that could possibly be relevant covered the paper. Jordan Ivakon, the hard-charging combat veteran from Russia, held a cigarette loosely in his mouth while he ran a hand through his thick, curly hair. He sported a pair of clear, rimless glasses similar to the ones aviators wore with swagger. The Minister's coat - a wool sweater with a distinctly militaristic feel - was tossed haphazardly onto a coat rack in the corner. On the other side of the table was the Minister of Foreign Affairs: he was an older man by the name of Ibrahim Krikorian. Also bespectacled but distinctly lacking the "cool" factor, he was a bit more heavy-set and walked slowly with a limp. Assanian's neutral, almost plain self fit right in the middle of these two characters. All three of them exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, asking about families and wives. They sat down to work quickly enough, anxiously knowing that time was scarce.

Ivakon dramatically stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray near his hand before reaching into his pocket and tossing a few photographs out onto the table. They were aerial reconnaissance photos taken by a plane equipped with a high-power camera. An Ottoman equipment yard on the north shore of the peninsula appeared in these blurry, black and white stills. They were curiously empty of all materiel that had been parked there only a month or so ago.

"This," Ivakon said, pointing to the photos, "is a reservist equipment yard belonging to the 45th Home Guard. Whenever the Turks buy new tanks, the old ones get put here so the reserve units have something to play with. They were, as of last month, packed with all manner of trucks and tanks and anything else under the sun... Last week, they were gone."

He motioned in to another photograph that appeared distinctly different from the others, taken by a cameraman on the ground. The NSS often paid off locals to take pictures of equipment yards, so this was probably a destitute farmer who lived nearby taking a few shots to get a generous payoff. The image showed a row of older tanks behind a barbed-wire fence, each with a white triangle and the numbers "45/2" on the turret.

"Now if you see here in our reports," the War Minister pointed out as he shuffled through an envelope of official papers, "some spotters have observed tanks with the very same identification outside of Istanbul. Usually, Ottoman battle doctrine doesn't pull reservists out to battle until things got desperate, which is why we only saw them at the end of the war... The fact that they're putting them on the frontlines with regular combat troops proves that the Turks are planning something big."

"Big enough that they want to throw everything they've got at it," added Krikorian. He pushed up his glasses and continued: "The Greeks are getting antsy. The Istanbul city government has ordered them to stay outside of the city limit unless the Ottomans directly invade. They have assurances from us and the Greeks already that we'll respect their independence but they're frantically working it out with the Turkish provisional government in Ankara. Recently intercepted communications have revealed that these talks are breaking down in a rapid manner... The Turks are frustrated and ready to do something rash."

"As of right now, we need a policy put in public," Ivakon stated seriously. He leaned down over the table, looking his President in the eye. "This goes one of two ways, from what we've determined. We continue to provide an unofficial posture against the Turks and they invade. If we state in public that we will defend Istanbul, they may not."

"May?" scoffed Assanian. He straightened out his tie, trying to maintain his composure.

"The Turks want revenge. Their empire just fell apart and they're humiliated. They might not listen to us anyways... With the amount of forces they're putting on the Istanbul border, they're probably preparing to fight us anyways. Our own border is relatively stagnant, I doubt we'll be doing any DMZ smashing in the near future what with many of our forces engaged with Istanbul. They feel the same way."

"We'll still expect conflict," piped up the portly Krikorian again, waving his hand in front of his face clumsily as if trying to articulate his point further.

"Our border forces are more than ready to handle a few weeks of conflict at least... Especially since we pulled more of them from Georgia's borders and left local police forces in charge of arresting the druggies that try to cross the border with meth," retorted Ivakon as he shot a glance over at Krikorian.

The Foreign Minister shrugged. "Whoever gets past the reigning warlord in those mountain passes these days anyways... Some hardliner religious fellow who crucifies drug traffickers in some sort of theocracy. But that's none of my business."

Assanian leaned back with a sigh. He had a habit of playing with button on his breast pocket, opening and closing it absentmindedly while he thought. "The plan we talked about last week is still in effect, right?"

"Our newest batch of officers just came out of training and are being put into their units as we speak. Paratrooper detachments from the 1st and 2nd Regiments as well as the Foreign Legion," replied back the Russian, cocking his head to the side. "Airmobile infantry are prepared on the decks of our transport ships ready to land at designated high-value locations to secure them before the paratroopers can come in with better numbers and equipment. The Greeks will do the brunt of the fighting. We just hold the line and get what we need."

Assanian nodded understandingly. "I see nothing has really changed."

"Situation remains the same," muttered Krikorian, quoting an old military adage.

Another round of silent nods. Assanian looked back at the door and the coat rack before hastily throwing his coat around his shoulders. "Call me if it changes," remarked the President. He walked out of the room, gently closing the door behind him. The ministers inside sat in silence until Ivakon packed up his intelligence and bid farewell to his colleagues. Back to the office for him. Krikorian would do the same.

[b]Istanbul[/b]

The Istanbul city militiaman stubbed out his cigarette on a clay ashtray sitting on a windowsill. He was tired, having reached the tail end of his night shift. A rifle was slung around his shoulder and body armor hung loosely off of his broad shoulders. A thick mustache adorned his dark face. The sun cast its reddish rays on the desolate outskirts of the east side of Istanbul, past abandoned industrial buildings and lots filled with nothing. The man put his rifle down as he reached for another cigarette. His lighter came to his face and he lit it with a palm cupped over the flame. The rumbling of something in the distance wasn't an immediate concern for him until he noticed that it was approaching ever more quickly. A dozen black dots in the distance grew rapidly, soon enough revealing themselves as sturdy propeller driven attack aircraft. They zoomed by low and fast before the militiaman could react: seconds later, explosions boomed in the cityscape behind him.

Another wave of aircraft passed overhead. Another salvo of bombs hit targets located all over the city. An ammunition dump on the riverside exploded, shattering windows and blowing debris across the urban maze of Istanbul. The militiaman dropped to the ground just moments before a cannon opened up on his guard position, tearing away the flimsy brick wall to his left. His heart beat through his chest and his breath became rapid and shallow: he grabbed his rifle and let loose a burst towards the sky in a vain attempt to fight back. A second airstrike blew him away completely, leaving nothing left except a bloodied stub of leg and a boot that came to a rest a quarter of a kilometer down the road.

Over the radio, still squawking in the corner, an Istanbul commander called his men to arms. The war had begun again.