[b]Yerevan, Armenia[/b]

The phone rang. Assanian clambered off of the couch that he had spent the night on, scratching at his stubble and tucking in half of the white undershirt that hung sloppily over his trousers. Hungover with a throbbing headache as was the usual for a weekend morning, he brushed away a bottle of vodka next to a progress report on subsidized apartment highrises in West Yerevan. It landed with a dull thud on the carpet while Assanian gingerly lifted the red phone off of its base. With a groan in his voice, he half-muttered: "So it's happening?"

An aide on the phone acknowledged with a hasty affirmative and outlined what had happened an hour prior. Turkish warplanes had engaged Istanbul defenses and were dogfighting with Greek craft in the air. As it now appeared, Greece had lost the fight for the air and had rushed ground forces to the frontlines of the city. Istanbul militias had blockaded major armor movements in the industrial outskirts and were engaging in brutal street-to-street fighting with the Turkish troopers. Greek units had begun to reinforce the local police and militia detachments and were holding their own against overwhelming odds in a typical Hellenic fashion. Greek and Armenian vessels reported being strafed by token Ottoman resistance in the Black Sea and the Aegean, but the Turkish warships were more concentrated on steaming to battle positions along the Mediterranean. "Mister Ivakon has begun execution of Operation Pyramid as per your orders. Airborne units are being cobbled together to drop as many personnel into Istanbul as we can in a short time period. Little activity on the border, looks like everyone is firmly entrenched and not going anywhere."

"They don't want to go anywhere," Assanian predicted bluntly. "Tell them to let headquarters know the instant a fucking Turk flinches in our general direction. They don't have the military buildup to try and smash our lines but reconnaissance has been wrong before."

"Yes, sir," the aide answered unhesitatingly. The phone became muffled for a second as he relayed the information to another telephone operator with a direct line to the War Ministry. The aide came back and reported in: "We're limiting our response to Istanbul but are ready to conduct aggressor plans with our border units, the Poti garrison, our Cyprus base, and our Kurdish outposts. Everyone is on high alert and waiting for your signal, Mister President."

"Alright, alright," the President replied, throwing on a coat over a wrinkled dress shirt sans tie. "I'm heading to the War Department. Tell Jordan... Eh, Minister Ivakon that I'm getting there as quickly as I can."

"Yes, sir." The phone clicked off as the aide hung up, presumably to attend to more important issues as intelligence flooded the call center to be distributed to other government officials. The windows of Assanian's residence rattled, helicopters flying low and fast from bases west of the Hrazdan River to Sevan Lake. Military couriers had taken to the streets in staff cars flying little Armenian flags, even personal civilian vehicles. In just a few short hours, the reservists would be completely mobilized to man defensive positions in antiaircraft nests and artillery pits all across the nation.

Assanian, still reeking of alcohol and bad decisions, slammed through his door while grabbing a briefcase. He had no idea what was in it, just that it was probably the one from the other day's meeting. A car was called from the motor pool to come pick him up and the Presidential Guard had formed a protective barrier around the city residence to deter saboteurs.

"The fucking world has gone mad!" the President of Armenia shouted at nobody in particular. "Spain! China! The fucking Ethiopians! Now this shit? Can we go six fucking months without another goddamn war?"

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

"Your unit has just been deployed, gents."

A crisp morning breeze blew through the formation in front of the Sevan Lake barracks. The Army security battalion stood in fatigues before their commander, who outlined that because of the Istanbul crisis they were needed to rapidly clear and secure the Istanbul airport. Their battalion would be flown to a forward airbase in Greece before being trucked into the city under the cover of night. The flight was heading out in an hour. PFC George Yaglian bowed his head at the thought, the fact that they weren't even a rapid-response battalion bothering him. Now he had an hour to cram everything he needed for urban fighting into a rucksack and make it to the tarmac to board a plane. His roommate, standing next to him, also understood: his Armenian had been improving to the point where he really had no excuse anymore to disobey orders and act disorderly in public. It turned out for the best, as he narrowly avoided a transition to the Foreign Legion and a first-class ticket to an Istanbul drop zone right in the heart of the fighting. At least the airport would be on the Greek side of the Bosporus and therefore marginally safer.

The barracks was a rush of soldiers packing their gear. Yaglian tore apart his bathroom locker for a toiletries kit of shaving cream and toothpaste, packing that at the bottom of his green pack. Clothes, combat gear, a tent half, and a sleeping kit completed the nearly thirty kilo load. He packed some porn magazines in the side pocket, never leaving home on a mission without them. With a lot of time and little to do at his border post, Yaglian became a connoisseur of the pornographic arts. That, alongside drinking, smoking, womanizing, and complaining, became his favorite activities. "This is bullshit," he blurted out to his roommate, exercising the latter.

"How am I supposed to tell the girlfriend about this?" mumbled Private First Class Iain Panoutsopoulos in a thick Grecian accent.

"Do you even have a girlfriend?" shot back Yaglian, stuffing a poncho liner to the top of his rucksack with some effort.

"I have... some..."

"Casino whores don't fucking count, Pano," Yaglian reminded him.

"This one is real. Do not worry, my friend."

The rucksack went on over the worn body armor and load-carrying harness with a considerable amount of effort. Next came the rifle, slinging it around his chest atop the gear. It was uncomfortable and heavy, and it would be a permanent part of his person for the foreseeable future. The steel helmet - scarred and battered from skirmishes along the Georgian border - went on last, the capstone of his combat equipment. He had written his name, rank, and blood type on a white piece of tape attached to the front while a simple Orthodox cross had been painted on the back. Sometime during his tour in Georgia, the members of the outpost had all signed the sides of it in black marker. He wanted something to stand out from the newer members of the security battalion, so he managed to cobble together his most faded uniform - bleached almost white by the sun and and repaired in the barracks many times with a sewing kit. The formation went fifteen minutes later on the tarmac. Huddled together in the shade of a wooden awning, a Captain was giving the situation brief. The Ottomans were closing in on the city quickly and they were taking a flightplan over the Black Sea to land at a Thracian airfield - a strip of dirt carved out of some farmer's land - before being trucked in.

Not much else was discussed during the briefing: everything that was known was passed out on a strictly need-to-know basis. That didn't even account for what wasn't known, and that was most of the situation. They were being pushed out from high alert without taking time to collect their senses. There was just no time. The troops were rushed onto the waiting transport aircraft - gargantuan propeller-powered cargo carriers painted camouflaged green on top and bluegrey on the bottom - and sent out without much fanfare. Dusk fell over the hillscape of Armenia as the last of the three planes struggled off the cracked pavement of Sevan Airfield. They banked west, towards Istanbul, the final rays of sun shining off of the wingtips before it set beneath the horizon.

[b]The Black Sea[/b]

On the deck of a former flattop cargo ship were six improvised helicopter landing pads and assorted support structures. Heavy, Polish-made troop-carrier helicopters sat high on their suspensions, engines at takeoff speed and troops rushed inside. Rain pelted at the troopers huddled in their coats, seaspray lashed at the faces of guards manning the rail. Haroud Abbasian and Ibrahim Sulayev, platoon commanders in the 11th Foreign Legion Regiment (Arab) looked over the map of Istanbul marked up in battle plans. Their wave was the next one to go once the helicopters returned. They had been stationed on these makeshift floating bases in the Black Sea in lieu of an airborne paratrooper unit like they had thought, becoming the first Armenians to react to a crisis in Istanbul. It was rather fitting that most of the men weren't Armenian at all, but rather ethnic Arabs and Kurds who were placed together for unit cohesion. Abbasian and Sulayev spoke Arabic fluently and were to communicate between regular Armenian units and those in the 11th Regiment who were not as strong in the language and customs of their new home. Some of them grumbled that the Armenians sent the Arabs, Greeks, and Russians first into battle to preserve their own sons, but Abbasian was there to serve as an example that Armenians were going in with them as equals. It was a roundabout, mildly racist subject, and one that nobody tried to think or talk about.

Abbasian and Sulayev counted off their platoons as they clambered aboard the massive helicopters. The gigantic green beasts could hold as many as fifty troops, but was mostly designed for cargo. On the tailbooms of the craft were painted black and white stripes to easily identify them to ground observers that were inside the city already. These invasion stripes were adapted from American military tactics during their conflict with Canada. With the helicopters fully loaded, the ramps closed and sealed the men inside. The roar of the ocean, the constant pelting of rain, and the whomping thumps of the rotors were dulled by a skin of aluminum. Everyone inside stood huddled close to each other bathed in the red lights: there was no sitting space with all of the gear and weapon systems crowding the cabin. It was suffocating, sweaty, and miserably tense. Someone tried to crack a quick joke in Arabic, effecting only nervous laughter. Abbasian leaned back against the ramp in the back next to his squad leaders, who all looked to him with a mixture of anticipation and cold apathy. He was tested, sure, but new to their unit. He was similarly a half-breed, and the ethnic Arabs had a distrust of their mixed-race Lieutenant. Until they personally saw him on the battlefield, the doubts would remain. Abbasian loaded a straight magazine into the rifle and held it close to his body like a child.

"I'm not about to give some sort of grand speech," said the platoon leader sagely. "Look out for your mates and keep your head down. That's it."

It took an hour to get to Istanbul. They flew low over the waves to avoid antiaircraft fire, but it was useless anyways. A pair of fast-moving attack craft had spotted them on a shorefront patrol and moved to engage. The small, nimble craft engaged their supercharged propeller engines and honed in on the beasts racing towards the city. One of the helicopters raised its throttle, nose bucking up to gain altitude and slow its speed. A Turkish fighter saw it, turned, and fired a burst of cannon across the sky. The tracer rounds streaked towards the slow, hulking, and poorly maneuverable helicopter before shredding the tailrotor in half. An explosion flashed brilliantly across the dark waters and the helicopter immediately began to autorotate. Over the radio, the pilot frantically called his last mayday as the main rotor's energy spun the craft out of control. The torque tore the fragile beast apart on the way down to the rough waves, where it impacted in a thunderous splash. The fighters, satisfied, peeled off to begin another assault but were turned back by, as luck would have it, a need to refuel. The wreck of the helicopter was never found, while Istanbul authorities recovered the body of a washed-up soldier five days later. It was assumed they had drowned.

It took them another fifteen minutes to get to Istanbul after a quarter of the company had been lost in the helicopter crash. The landing zone had been picked up by Pathfinders on the beaches months before and were now lit by flares prepared by the forward-advance ground teams. This was the fourth landing of the night. On the beach was yet another wreck: a helicopter from the second wave that had snagged a powerline with its rotor, pulling out a telephone pole with its immense force and slamming it into the side of the body. Nobody had been hurt, but the craft was deemed useless and had been condemned to lay on the beach for the remainder of the operation. The four helicopters that had survived the trip from the helicarrier touched down on the sand nearby to hurriedly disgorge the troopers. Abbasian counted off his men as they left, loudly shouting the numbers as they ran from the ramp to a seawall that was being used as cover. The helicopters were sitting ducks for Ottoman airstrikes, despite the overwhelming Istanbul flak and cannon fire that blanketed the sky. They landed for maybe thirty seconds at most before struggling off the ground, whipping sand and seaspray at the Armenians on the beach.

Before long, the sun's rays peeked through the buildings on the cliffs of Istanbul. In a double-file line, Abbasian led his troops up through the paths to the city proper, quickly before they were ambushed by an Ottoman element. Istanbul had been bombed for a solid twelve hours by tactical air units trying to snuff out militia positions: an office building not a hundred meters away billowed smoke as its carpet, paper, wood furniture, and anything else burned away in an inferno. Waves of heat washed over the Lieutenant, who scrambled his way over rubble and into the haze of smoke. Gunfire rang out through the streets. It echoed through the empty, tightly-packed streets. Boots crunched on broken glass. They were close to their objective: a hotel situated to the east of the canal that divided the city in half. Abbasian's platoon was a forward warning element for the regular military, tasked with holding off Turkish infantry as they maneuvered through the streets outside of the cover of their armored vehicles and air power. For now, the militiamen held off the Ottomans at the industrial outskirts but were falling rapidly: they simply hadn't had enough time or resources to train up against the relatively experienced Ottoman military hardliners. Abbasian didn't trust them to hold out for much longer.

And they didn't. Lieutenant Haroud Abbasian trudged through the courtyard to the hotel when he heard the first shot: it cracked over his head and sent his troops scrambling for cover. The safeties on their weapons were clicked off and someone shouted a direction to return fire.

The war was on.