Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Letter Bee
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Iron lady, Part Four; The Brothers' War, Part Two

"Ngo Dinh Diem has overthrown Emperor Bao Dai and turned against Lady Trung, all the while declaring a 'Temporary Alliance' with the French 'Old Guard', aka the ones who refused to adopt Socialism," were Priscilla Aglipay-Rizal's first words to Sultana Sabiha when the two of them were finally alone. "Now my daugther-in-spirit is barely holding onto Hanoi and the north, as reactionary forces rally against her. Sabiha, I will have to use your people's expertise once more."

This was unexpected, but Sabiha quickly saw the opportunity as the two of them adjusted their seats around the tea table, "Reactionary regimes surround us these days, it seems. Do not worry; the Moro Congress in Mindanao will hopefully share your sentiments, as well as my husband; Vietnam has its own Muslim minority, after all."

She then paused, and continued, "The mariners of Sulu will be willing to carry the weapons, ammunition, food and medicine Lady Trung needs to hold on to the North. We're even willing to do so at reduced rates, as a symbol of our friendship with you. That and smuggling pays, after all. And if the South Vietnamese or the Siamese try the same thing, well, more profit from privateering."

Priscilla pursed her lips, resisting the urge to shiver in disgust. "As long as no civilian sailors get hurt, I have no objections to it." She then drew the letters of marque from her skirt, and placed them on the table, though so gently as to not disturb the full tea cups and pastries. She then gave a slight glare to Sabiha; the Lady President knew that if she didn't issue said letters, or even if she did, there would be civilian casualties. But at least this way, most enemy ships can be brought before her Admiralty courts with their sailors intact.

Sabiha took the letters with a slight smile on her face; the sheaf contained twenty, and more were being printed at the Federal Government's private presses. Unknown to the Lady President, the Sultana of Sulu planned to give a third of the letters of marque and reprisal to her husband and his partisans, giving sort-of legal sanction to their war against the Usurper of Sabah. A ghost of a smirk must have shown on her face, for Priscilla spoke:

"What are you planning, Sabiha?" A sigh and a weary nod of her head before the Lady President continued, "Nothing that I should know about, I suppose. Otherwise I'd interfere, and I suspect that in this case, following my personal moral qualms is not practical."

Sabiha felt a stab of pity for Priscilla, but did not act on it. Instead, with a sigh of her own, she said, "You know this is how politics works. You have to take care of your nation, we have to take care of our people within your nation. There are also people who have a different view of the national interest than you do."

Now was Priscilla's turn to tilt her head away slightly; Sabiha had provoked her doubts and insecurities, and jabbed at her belief that she was doing the right thing. The Sultana felt regret, enough to assure her that she was still a person, then moved for concillation. "Either way, if you have time, I have a set of poems from Rumi translated into the Tagalog language. I also have minatures of the various monarchs of Sulu, their warriors, and their wives."

Priscilla smiled faintly, "I would enjoy that, and you and your husband's calligraphy too." A thought. "Due to what happened to Lady Trung, I will have to reserve some time for an inspection trip to the arms factories producing bootleg Mosin-Nagants. Want to come with me, maybe try a few? You can even give your husband some 'free samples'."

Sabiha bowed deeply in a mixture of respect and regret. She had pushed her...friend into doing everything short of supporting her and her husband openly. The 'Iron Lady' of the Philippines had a reputation to maintain; being seen openly flouting the rules of war on more than one front was something she did not want to do for personal and political reasons. But she would not stop, would not quit. Her husband's brother needed to be overthrown.

So she would sweetly say, "I will be happy to join," before sipping her tea; it had grown lukewarm.

((Note; this is inconsistent in tone with the latest posts because it was written a week or so ago then stored as a backlog in another site.))
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Byrd Man
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Byrd Man El Hombre Pájaro

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Cloud Nine


9:14 PM

Ross Maxwell stood on the parapet looking down at the gambling floor. Steady action was taking place down below, but it was a far cry from the fast and furious betting that would be happening in a few hours. From 11 PM to 3 AM, the entire floor would be packed to the rafters with gamblers, each of them with much more money than sense. By his own count, Cloud Nine would probably net a cool ten million dollars this month. That would be outstanding if this were any other casino, but Cloud Nine was nowhere near all the other casinos.

"Mr. Maxwell," one of the security guards touched his shoulder. "You have a visitor."

Ross turned away and followed the guard upstairs to his private office. Maxwell had a cigarette in one hand, a tumbler of scotch in the other. He downed the drink and flicked the cigarette butt into the tumbler when he saw Sal Valesta waiting for him in front of his office.

"The answer is still no," he said as he walked past the bigger man into the office.

"You haven't heard me out," said Valestra.

"I have," Ross said, sitting down behind his desk. "And as much as it's costing you to fly up here every time, I think the one who can't hear is you."

Valestra smirked. "I can hear just fine. And what I'm hearing from you is a guy who doesn't get it. The Valestra Family gets a piece of every gambling institution, be they legal or otherwise, in the state of California. Just because you fly above the state, it don't make you fucking immune. For that cut, we provide protection."

"From what?" Ross asked with his own smirk. "I have my own security, they thoroughly search every customer's possessions prior to their flight up here, and I have plenty of state lawmakers in my own pocket. Everything you could offer me, I already have."

"No, there's one thing you don't have." Valestra stood in front of the desk, looming over Ross. "You don't have protection from us."

"Leave," replied Ross. He stood and locked eyes with the heavyset mobster, never once blinking. "Leave peacefully, or I'll have my men throw you off the ship. I don't mean that as a figure of speech, either. Leave now or you'll be a greasy little stain on some street in Bakersfield."

Valestra turned and walked out without another word, slamming the door as he left. Ross sighed and collapsed back into his chair and could feel his hands shaking. A few minutes later, the door opened and David Mather came in. David, his partner in business and in life, look concerned.

"I don't know why you don't give them the money, Ross?"

He rubbed his temples and said, "It's the principal of the matter. We built Cloud Nine from the literal ground up-- " Ross diverted his gaze to the picture on the far wall. Him and David during the war. Dashing USAAF Captain Maxwell and brilliant engineer Mather. "-- and now they want to take it from us, piece by piece. That's how it starts, just a small bit here. And then it's not so small, and the next thing you know we're on the outside looking in."

David sighed. "I know, I know... I just... I just wished sometimes you weren't so principled."

Ross let a grin loose on his lips. "I thought that was one of the things you loved about me?"

"Depends on what day it is," David said with his own smile. "Now, aren't you needed back out on the casino floor?"

----

Sal Valestra came out on to the observation deck of Cloud Nine. A half dozen people were standing around the glass bubble that rested on the top of the floating facility. Above them were the balloons that helped keep the whole thing aloft, but everywhere the eye could see was an unobstructed view of the land all around them. It was a cloudless night. A crescent moon hung off in the distance with stars all around it. Below was California in all its bounty. Just off in the distance Sal could make out the jagged shoreline where land ended and the Pacific began.

He reached into his jacket pocked and pulled out a cigarette case. Sal put one of his Cornells in his mouth and lit it before stepping forward to the railing. He took a long drag and spoke to the man beside him without looking at him.

"He didn't go for it," he said, exhaling smoke.

"So we've got the green light," Johnny Leggario asked.

"Yeah," said Sal. "Where's the little German?"

"He's at the show. Mariano and the Moonlights are playing and the doc is a sucker for that big band crap."

"No shit," said Sal. "I fucking love Mariano. I might have to check it out since my flight don't leave until midnight."

Johnny flicked ashes off his own cigarette, a Henry, and stuck it back in his mouth.

"So what's our window on this, Sal?"

"I'll probably get Sully on the phone after I'm back home in LA, so around one in the morning? Clock starts then, so your getaway will be timed for one in the afternoon tomorrow. How big is your crew?"

"With Sully and the inside man? Five. Me, the doc, and Stein are doing the heavy lifting."

"Shit, three guys?" Sal blew smoke and shook his head. "If it were anybody else but you three, I'd call bullshit. I know you're solid as a rock, the doc is out of this world, and Stein? You picked a hell of a crew."

"Like Billy Carter, I swing for the fences."

Sal dropped his cigarette and stomped it out on the heel of his shoe.

"Only difference is, Billy Carter misses he has to go sit his black ass down in the dugout. You miss? Well, it's a long drop to the round below, Johnny."

----

Los Angeles


Silver Lake
10:11 PM


Jessica Hyatt stirred sugar into her coffee and looked down into it. She was by herself in a corner booth at an all-night diner. The rest of the patrons included a lush nodding off into a plate of fried eggs, a gaggle of high school kids monopolizing two tables, and an older couple that looked like they had been in love thirty years and thirty thousand miles earlier. She looked up at the sound of the bell by the door. Special Agent Nate Parker slid into the seat across from her.

"Good evening, Ms. Hyatt."

She didn't say anything. At least the man had the decency to call her by the name she chose. He wouldn't call her by her real name, a constant reminder of the power he held over her. Jessica sipped her coffee as the waitress came over and Parker ordered a black coffee.

"So, who am I finking exactly?" she asked after the woman was gone.

"Nobody," he said with a gentle laugh. "At least not yet. I think I have engineered your perfect entree into the sphere of the Good People."

"I'm all ears."

"Are you familiar with Harvey Edwards?"

"You can't be in my world and not know him," she replied. "The patron saint of leftist causes."

Jessica saw something twitch underneath Parker's right eye. He gave her a smirk and folded his hands together.

"I'll allow you some leeway, given your age, but Harvey Edwards is a traitor to this country who espouses anti-American ideas and causes from the safety of China."

"After what the government did to him, I can't blame him for leaving."

"He deserved worse," hissed Parker. "He deserved a bullet to the back of his head."

There was a lull in the conversation as the waitress brought Parker his cup of coffee. Jessica took the moment to sip her own coffee and look at the man as he added sugar and cream into his cup. He had his dander up over something as trivial as Harvey Edwards. That worried her because that meant that Parker was a true believer. All the horseshit about the Pinkertons doing what needed to be done to protect America, the stuff politicians always used whenever they defended the Pinkertons, he actually bought it. And that scared her because a true believer could not be reasoned with.

"What does Harvey Edwards have to do with this?" she finally asked.

"After prolonged negotiations, he will be preforming in LA two nights from now, part of a west coast tour that will undoubtedly be seen as a political statement since it's almost the twenty first anniversary of the western state's surrender. You will go to the performance and cause a scene. There will be a woman there who will take notice. She likes dramatic iconoclasts, especially those with liberal pedigrees and a love of provocation. I expect that you'll be contacted by her shortly afterwards."

"And who is this woman?" Jessica asked with an arched eyebrow.

"You'll know her when you see her," said Parker. "And after you've seen her, you won't forget her."

---

Kansas City


The Hotel Savoy
2:04 PM


Frenchie Gallo mingled with the rest of the wiseguys in the hotel conference room. Bosses from around the country had all gathered here on the top floor of Kansas City's finest downtown hotel to discuss business. Frenchie was here as Sun City's representative, but he was just one of the eleven men who made up the board. The five families of New York were represented, as was Providence, Chicago, LA, New Orleans, and of course Kansas City.

Geno Como of the KC family had spent the better part of the board's morning sessions arguing with Bobby C. New territory was opening up in the Dakotas and Montana thanks to oil and natural gas booms. There was a growing need for hookers, gambling, and all matter of vice-related services the boys offered. Como wanted the territory because Kansas City was the best option, but Bobby C. had stated his case for the Chicago Outfit. His argument boiled down to "Fuck you, I'm Bobby C." Eventually, the old man stepped in and called for a vote. The Comos won the vote 9-2 and got the right to administer the new territory.

After that, Frenchie got up and made his pitch. Every single organization would use the politicians in their pocket and their connections with the political machines in their territory to get Norman friendly delegates sent to the convention this summer with the orders to vote for the sitting president. A lot of grumbles and questions until Frenchie brought out the quid pro quo. All the old men remembered the days when the boys ran Havana like their own fiefdom, so it was no surprise to Frenchie that the mere mention of it brought a hush to the room. The old called for a lunch recess to think it over and they adjourned.

Frenchie felt a gentle touch on his elbow. He turned around to see nobody there, but then he looked down.

"Franco," Anthony Fortunato said with a gentle smile. "Walk with me."

The old man, head of the Fortunato Crime Family and the boss of bosses, was the closest thing Frenchie ever had to a father. Thirty years ago, he'd taken him under his wing back when the old man was a mid-level wiseguy on the come and Frenchie was just a punk car thief in Brooklyn who only spoke Québécois French. The whole reason Frenchie was Mr. Sun City was because of the old man's benevolence.

"What do you think of this?" the old man asked once they were in a corner by themselves.

"I don't know if I like getting into bed with politicians."

"Ah," Fortunato adjusted his glasses, they were black framed and so thick they made his beady eyes look huge. "But we've always been in bed with politicians on some level. In this country, crime and politics are interwoven. Anybody that doesn't know politics is crime has got a few screws loose."

Frenchie chuckled. "Point taken. But I know our criminals stick by their word. Guys like Reed, on the other hand? People would be alright with politicians being crooks if they actually kept their promises."

The old man shrugged. "They don't keep their promises, we'll whack him."

He couldn't tell if Fortunato was being serious or not. The old man deadpanned him for several seconds before a sly grin broke out on his face. He laughed softly and patted Frenchie on the shoulder.

"I'm kidding, Franco. This thing of ours has reach, but not like that. Plus, I love this country too much to bump off the vice-president."

"Frenchie!" Bobby C. said brightly as he muscled his way between the two men.

He was dressed in his usual loud clothing, bright orange dress shirt with plaid slacks and a sports coat with a tacky Hawaiian tie and aviator sunglasses to cap it all off. Next to the old man, it was a contrast in style. Bobby C. looked like the mobster that he was, meanwhile Fortunato looked like the elderly president of some bank. Wiseguys were like peacocks. Flash suits, watches, and cars were how they displayed their power. Frenchie was guilty of it himself. Only men like Fortunato, the old men in the upper echelons who had real power, never showed off their wealthy. To them, it was tacky and a sign of ill manners. Even as head of the Chicago Outfit, Bobby C. had never got the message.

"How come Johnny didn't come with you?" Bobby asked, peeking over his sunglasses at Frenchie.

"He's working on a few things out in California, helping out the Valestras."

"Crazy fucking kid. I haven't seen him in so long, I'm starting to miss him. Let me introduce you two to someone."

Bobby C. stepped aside and a little man, a few inches shorter than Fortunato, stepped forward. Frenchie saw him during the meeting before lunch. He sat off to the side of the table behind the Chicago delegation, watching but never speaking.

"Jim Sledge," the man said, shaking both Frenchie and the old man's hands. "I'm a political consultant and here on the invitation of... a mutual friend. I'm to report back to him how you all vote."

He was one of Reed's people. He was soft spoken with a face that had a sharp pointed nose that was almost like a rat's. Frenchie knew the type well. If there was dirty work to be done, Sledge would be the one doing it without a doubt. He was about to say something about an outsider being at the meeting when Bobby C. cut him off.

"He was approved to be here," he said with a nod towards the old man. "These politicians may be crazy, but they ain't stupid."

"They told me yesterday," said Fortunato. "And my people made sure Mr. Sledge was not writing or recording anything about the meeting down."

"Yes," said Sledge. His face turned color. "They were very... thorough."

"Well, thank you for coming," said Fortunato. "Let's reconvene the meeting."

They all found their seats. Frenchie sat down thinking about Bobby C. and Sledge. He had originally been Reed's contact, their meeting in Sun City two weeks ago. So why had Reed sent Sledge to Chicago instead of Sun City? Across the big table from Frenchie, Sledge whispered into Bobby C's ear and made the man nod and laugh. Was Reed trying to double down the chances of approval by wooing two bosses? With their respective allies and political pull, both Bobby C. and Frenchie could carry about half the votes on the board by themselves. Maybe that was it? Or maybe it was something deeper?

"Motion is on the table," Fortunato said from the head of the table. "To approve Franco's proposal. All those in favor?"

Nine arms, including the old man, Bobby C., and Frenchie's own, went up into the air. Seeing how the wind was blowing, the other two followed suit. 11-0.

"Motion carries," said Fortunato. "Unanimously. This thing of ours, has just endorsed Michael Norman for reelection as president."
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Dinh AaronMk
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Dinh AaronMk my beloved (french coded)

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China

Guangxi

Unmarked location


The room was filled with smoke. So much so the light from the table lamp cut a clear cone through the thick air. There was no other light, and in the haze two dark figures could be seen. One stood over a table, it had no finish except for blood that had by then been beaten into the wood. The other figure sat in a chair, his arms restrained behind his back and tied to the backrest. He was also strapped forward over the table and he fought to crane his head up to see the standing figure.

The cause of the smoke wasn't easily missed. A bowl has been placed on the table, and all matters of things that burned were smoldering under a layer of wet leaves. It prevented the entire orchestration from going up in flames, but it aided in making the burn ever smokier. Cigarettes, dog shit, a few old mice found dead in the closet somewhere, leaves, sticks. Adding to it, the pack of cheap cigarettes the standing figure had been smoking through during the entire interrogation process added to the choking gloom, though he did not look to care much. The ember on the cigarette glowed a devilish orange every time he took a draw and it was the only sign that the man there was alive.

“Who's supplying you.” the standing man asked in a rough cracking voice.

The sitting man coughed and wheezed against the smoke, but held his tongue.

“Tell me who's sending you arms and providing you with support; I'll remove the bowl.” the man offered, taking a draw from the cigarette.

The sitting man coughed, it sounded painful in his chest. Pneumonia? No, it was too far south and warm for pneumonia to grip a man. He thought it had to be asthma of some sort. The cough from the captive was deep and old. It had to be a long standing respiratory issue. At this point any doubling down would kill him.

“You're a fool. A brave fool. But still a fool.” the man said to the other, leaning over the table. He was speaking in Vietnamese, the entire conversation had been in Vietnamese, flirting between that and French. “But realize if we wanted you dead you would have died before crossing over the border. I have the full power to give you Hell on earth. By the time we finally kill you, not even Nitou and Mamien will know what to do with your soul.” he promised, referring to the mythical keepers of Diyu, Hell. “Speaking up though will still save enough for them to have something to do with you, and you could be saved.”

“Pagan.” sneered the man.

In another room, two men watched the proceedings from behind a pane of one way glass. There world was much better lit, and they strained to not only look passed their reflections but into the swirling smoke inside the room.

“We're going to need to throw the switch and air out the room.” said one of the two, a taller man from up north. His round face had the deep winter tan of having been born on the steppe or the fringes of the Mongolian steppe. He dabbed at his forehead with a white napkin, checking and dabbing at a unchecked injury on his forehead.

“He's going to kill both of them at this rate.” the other agreed, he was a much softer looking man, his clean hair combed back across his head. A delicate mustache on his upper lip. “But at this stage if he hasn't talked yet then he won't.”

“We got much better results from the refugees.” the taller man said, turning from the interrogation room's viewing window.”

Both of the men wore black coats and uniforms. Red trimmed the collars and sleeves as it did the bottom folds of their great coats that fell to about shin length. “Out of curiosity, have you heard anything on this Trung name?” the taller of the two asked.

The other shook his head, “Not at all.” he said, “It's another name.” Ngo Dinh Diem and Bao Dai were the two biggest names that the QJ had been tracking. The newest player to the Vietnamese theater spectacle had come from the blue, and no one knew who was behind the name. It had thrown the southern Bureau into a state of panic and the southern commander had ordered fresh waves of cross-border prisoner captures to find anyone who might know.

“The northern refugees have perhaps been our best source of information.” the shorter of the two continued as they walked to another side room. Here a much more open window looked out into a side-room where a handful of bedraggled looking farming sorts sat in chairs with their eyes half closed. No agents harassed them, they had already taken their brief interviews and given what little they knew. Unless anyone had any more information for the Chinese intelligence network they had a line held out for them to pull if they felt like talking. But a night on the run had rendered them tired and most of them now just looked like they wanted to sleep. “Ngo Dinh Diem has usurped Bao Dai's power in central Vietnam, the Catholic Ngo Dinh is persecuting the Buddhists, sending them fleeing. The north is an adroit mixture between Ngo Dinh and this Trung and Bao Dai has mostly fallen back into the south. French forces seem to be either based in Saigon with their puppet emperor or off in the jungle, no one can tell us which or where. With a ceasefire between the French and the other parties against this new player I get the feeling we'll have more refugees simply trying to get away, it's going to get a lot worse.”

“We shouldn't have overlooked Vietnam.” the taller of them complained.

“We picked Mongolia instead.” the other reminded.

“We should have after Mongolia.”

“We tried, but Congress had other plans.”

“Do you think they forgot?”

“It's likely.” the shorter of the two lamented. He was thinking of a memo that was more than a few years old that had passed through the Bureau and its agents a few years after the undercutting of Mongolia and its drift back into China. Back then the situation in Vietnam was straight forward as a French anti-revolutionary government came to rest in Saigon and continued its support for then Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai the puppet. The only contention had come with Ngo Dinh who opposed French rule. Initially then the thought was to support Ngo Dinh in raising a Republic of Vietnam free of European intervention and leave it as is. Then the conversation drifted into forming a third party to seize Vietnam for themselves. But that had shifted too long, and now their third position was taken by a monarchist.

There was a long stretch of silence. Until finally, “There's going to be another cross-border raid, perhaps we can pick up some of Trung's men and drag them into China.” the taller said.

“You going again?”

“No, I hit my head one too many times on trees and I'm not looking forward to it. And I still haven't slept.”

“Out of curiosity,” the shorter of the two asked, as he headed down the hall to the door, “what would you say Nguyễn Sinh Cung is?”

“Are you planning something? You should pass it up through Bureau command first.”

“I'm not, I'm just curious on his position.” he replied.

Guangzhou

Whampoa Island


Zhang Shu wasn't one to let particulars get in his way. And more important to him was he set a timer for himself, one that he didn't know would end but knew he could rest on it. After meeting with Deng he had issued a request to meet with the premier commander of the armed forces, commander Lou Shan Yuang. He had given him a few days to respond to his request. Whether or not the reply had been a yes or no, he took that his secretary's mention he would be performing inspections at Whampoa as being reason enough to meet him there.

It didn't matter if the situation was formal or not. Shu's wheels were in motion and he wouldn't let himself get stop, despite the awkward unimpressive demeanor of the man. This would come to explain how the congressman was riding in the back seat of his car as he passed platoons of jogging academy cadets along the forested road side to the academy proper.

With gravel popping under the wheels of the car it passed through the stone gates of the Whampoa Academy and down the stone drive to a large round about at the entrance to the deceptively small, single-story entry building. Cadets on guard duty snapped to attention as Zhang Shu stepped out. He exchanged mild-mannered salutes to the youths and excused them, “Where is the commander?” he asked in a well to do voice.

“He is in the commander center.” a young officer answered, resting his hands at his waist.

“Thank you, could you take me to him.”

“Certainly.” he said with a bow, and turning on his heels walked to the doors with Shu following close. A pair of cadets opened the doors to the two and let them pass, before letting the heavy wooden doors slowly shut behind them.

They crossed through the outer administrative offices and entered into the inner sanctum of the academy complex. Here, on paved squares ranks of students performed martial arts training and the air was heavy with the cries and chants of training young men. Further students under the watchful gaze of instructors performed martial arts in the grassy parks between the brick paths that crossed through the inner yard. But eventually, all paths terminated at the nerve center of the academy, a massive traditional structure of wood and stone and porch walkways up the three levels of the academy's command center.

Inside the halls smelled of wood and metal polish. There was a hushed tone that only magnified the self-aware presence of the congressman and his guide. Every so often they would pass a class room or some other congress room where the muffled lectures or meetings could be heard out into the hall way. But in all the impression that Shu had was that they were very alone.

The cadet led him up a stair well to the top floor where he stopped alongside a door. “The academy premier's.” he declared, bowing low as Shu entered into the office.

At the sound of the door opening a secretary looked up from his desk and rose to stand. “Excuse me comrade, but the premier is in a meeting.” he said.

“I know, with his commander. I'm here to see him too.” said Shu, “Will you let me in?”

The secretary shook his head, “I'm sorry, I can not do tha-”

“My name is Zhang Shu of the national Congress. I have matters to discuss with one of the men inside that room.”

“I honestly can not let you i-”

Again the secretary was interrupted, but not by Shu. It was by the office door. Standing in the door way were two men on their way out. They had noticed Shu, and Shu had noticed them. “Commander Shan Yuang.” Shu bowed, “Zhang Shu.”

The taller of the two officers sized Shu up and down with an unhappy expression. He was a broad shouldered man, with a weathered harsh face. Turning to his companion he said with a patient voice, “Excuse me.” before stepping away towards Shu.

“I don't think I said you could meet with me, congressman.” Lou Shan Yuang remarked in a low unhappy voice.

“Well I don't wait, not for any one. I have work to do, so I will do it.”

“And there's a time and place for certain sorts.” Shan Yuang told him, “I am here on strict military business, if I wanted to speak to Congress I would have made an appointment with you. I have an inspection to do.”

“And I have an inspection of my own.” Shu shot back.

Lou Shan Yuang glowered, then groaning, “Very well. You can talk, but it'll be on the move.”

“Thank you.” Shu bowed.

Shan Yuang turned back to the academy's premier and waved him to move on with a gesture of his hand. He joined in behind him and turned to Shu as they walked, “So Russia.” he said.

“That's the subject I wanted to talk about.”

“I think it's a mess, a good mess. It neutralizes any military challenges to the north. Getting involved in it would be complicated and I would personally advise heading in on those grounds.”

“But should the Russian state reform under a single government again, that threat of northern competition would resurface. Commander, you and I know the Japanese have an established beach head in Russia and they're poised to reboot their imperial ambitions in the Russian north. Czar or not, the vacuum in power posed by its current state leaves China at risk in geopolitics. So complications or not I'm of the firm opinion we need to be involved.

“Truth of the matter is commander, we shouldn't be letting the revolution become surrounded.”

Commander Shan Yuang gave him a heavy look. “So you've done your strategic thinking.” he conceded as they stepped out onto a back veranda. A towering plinth loomed high over a raised parade ground not too distant. Raised stadium seats stood between them and the plinth. The plinth itself stood empty, though the name written on it in large bronze characters read Sun-Yat Sen, the statue that had once been there had been long removed during the course of the war with Japanese, removed by a tank shell during fighting, it had not been reinstated.

“What would be your recommendations then, what does the army need, what will it need to do.”

“First and foremost it will need intelligence.” Shan Yuang said as they walked along, “Who's there, how many men do they have, what are their conditions to fight. What's the landscape like, where are the strategic locations. I can't make any concise decisions without that information. This can be three months worth of preparations, assuming strategic planning time we would be ready to go to war by this winter.”

“Well I want to give you one month.”

“Are you insane?” Lou Shan Yuang nearly yelled.

“No, I am not.” Shu said casually dismissive, “We have in the country now a group of Russian men, some or many of whom may be Siberian locals. If you get in contact with them they can provide you with what information you might possibly need. For now I'm immediately concerned for Siberia. If it helps the military's case at all we will handle Russia in stages. The nature of the country leaves no government to declare war on, so proper proceedings in that regard do not need to be made.”

“China can't go to war without a deceleration of war comrade,” Lou Shan Yuang reminded him, “How can you expect this to be legal?”

“Because the government was built to handle unforeseen circumstances. We'll write the play book now in Congress.”

“You're all a club of fools.” the commander chided as they climbed up some stone stairs to the parade ground.

“Yet someone has to do it. Commander, all I ultimately ask is you get with my man and come up with something. I will work on getting the two of you a chance to appear before Congress to make statements for the plan moving ahead. I'm the one greasing wheels in the end. But for the sake of international security for China I advise you consider this being taken seriously. If China is to go to war with Japan a third time it will not be over Chinese land.”
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May 20th, Addis Ababa
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Three girls sat together in a coffee shop, sipping on their hot drinks and giggling to one another about their futures underneath a painted wooden sign advertising Negus Coffee. All three were the children of government functionaries, members of Ethiopia's small technocratic class, the pioneers of a western bourgeoisie lifestyle in a culture not far removed from its feudal past. From the looks of the three, they were hardly different from other girls their age, wearing the long cotton habesha kemis and their hair in tight cornrows along their head, where it expanded in a burst of natural hair behind them.

"Kofi is talking to my father tonight!" Eskedare Nebiyou said. Her impending marriage was the gravitational center of the conversation.

"An officer will do good for you." Konjit Bruk replied. She was the shortest girl, going a little on plump.

Leyla Masri watched the old woman in the corner of the room preparing the coffee. She roasted the beans in a pan over an open fire. The rest of the preparation was done on a short table in front of her as she sat on a stool close to the floor. Leyla wondered when she married, if she was happy with her life, and if she had dreams when she was younger.

"Are you still planning on getting a career, Leyla?" Konjit said, irritating Eskedare.

"Yes." Leyla said. "I read in a magazine that women in some parts of America are expected to get careers" Leyla said.

"That's so weird." Eskedare replied, making a face. "I don't think I could ever do a career. I mean, who would raise the children?"

"I don't know that I want children." Leyla informed matter of factly.

Eskedare looked scandalized. Konjit looked amused. "There has to be children." the former said, "That's the way the world works. What would have happened if your mother decided a career was more important that children?"

"I wouldn't have been born I guess." Leyla looked thoughtful, "But if I wasn't born, I wouldn't be around to care."

"Don't say that!" Eskedare made a concerned face and touched Leyla on the wrist. The round-faced Eskedare was matronly, but Leyla's tall slender form made her look more like an overgrown little girl, and she couldn't see herself as somebody's mother.

"Have you heard about Azima al-Himyari?" Leyla said, "She trains with her father's men."

"Because she is her father's only child" Konjit whispered, "And everybody knows that Ras Hassan would rather see his daughter rule when he is dead then have any of his great generals take the spot."

"They probably won't let her." Eskedare said.

"I want to see the world." Leyla replied, self conscious that her voice sounded whiny when she said this. "I don't see why only boys should do this. It is not just Azima al-Himyari, or the girls in America. The world is changing. All the world. Maybe in a hundred years, there will be more women with careers then there are men."

"I think you will do good." Konjit patted Leyla on the knee. Eskedare sulked.

"I have to go soon. Here..." Leyla picked up her cup, "One more drink, for Emebet Eleni School for Girls and the latest three graduates of their program." The other girls drank, aware that life had caught up with them, and they were soon to be pulled apart. Leyla left them and went into the street alone.

It was not that long ago that Addis Ababa wasn't safe for a girl to walk on her own. When Leyla was a little girl, the Emperor ordered the institution of the country's first true police force, focused on keeping Addis Ababa's growing metropolis protected. She saw them in their corner booths, catching gossip from familiar locals to keep themselves entertained, but present, and that presence was enough to dissuade most would-be criminals.

The city was changing in other ways. Tall buildings were going up downtown, towers like they had in far away fantastic lands like Manhattan or Beijing. Car traffic had far outpaced traffic by ass or cart. A growing middle class life brought luxurious conveniences like soda pop and cheap clothing. So much of this started to appear when Leyla was a girl; she had watched the process, and it was intoxicating. She wanted to be part of it.

She came to the monument of her hopes. It was a literal monument, a tall brass statue of Mikael of Wollo, the great grandfather of the current Emperor. The man on the statue was on horseback, a proud lion's mane headdress on his head, a flowing cape on his back, and a sword firmly in his hand. It stood in the middle of a roundabout in front of Negus Mikael Military Academy. This was her destination. If everything went right, it would be her life.

Negus Mikael Military Academy was not a single building, but a collection of buildings surrounding a perfectly circular courtyard. All of the buildings, if smashed together, could fit inside the expansive courtyard and leave extra room. As it stood, they created a perfect ring, gaps closed by a tall slat fence, leaving only a single entrance through a steel gate. Leyla passed through. The front half of the courtyard was a garden planted in honor of Negus Mikael. The second half was a dusty semi-circular drilling ground with a flagpole proudly displaying the Imperial colors. In that drilling ground, young men dreaming of careers in the officer core practiced with fake wooden guns. She watched them, not ignorant of the flower of lust flickering in her breast at seeing so many young men in uniform.

The Shotel had a building here. There was no sign, but rather a single sword crossed over a shield to mark their location, like something from a western pulp story. This was not the sleek western architecture one might expect from an agency like the Shotel, nor was it a militaristic bunker. The building was humble, like a two story house. She went inside.

"Can I help you?" a young man looked at her suspiciously.

"I'm here for a job." she said.

"A job? We don't hire everybody who comes in you know. What can you do for the Shotel?"

"I know two languages. Aside from Amharic." she said, "English and French. I am working on Arabic, but that isn't easy, and I am only seventeen."

"That isn't bad." the man admitted, "But there are many men who have the same skill. Do you feel comfortable taking a job from a man?"

She paused. How do you even answer something like that? In her mind, she imagined a smug look on Eskedare's face. "Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't the Emperor ordered the government to hire more women?"

"That law isn't in effect yet. I know it has passed, but no word has came down to me."

"It has passed." she said, "You guys should get a head start. Not every day a girl walks in here asking for a job."

The man laughed and shook his head. "You are good. We should have you doing interrogations. Okay, here is what we'll do. You are young. You still live with your father, yes?"

She nodded.

"We need a letter stating his approval. If you can get that, I think we can find a place for you."

She smiled. "Okay. I will see you tomorrow."
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May 20th, Siege of Mombasa
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"Enemy amassing for another attack along the causeway, sah." Stated a lookout perched in a battered window that was missing all of its glass. The man was surveying the Communist forces through binoculars as they began to move into position for another desperate attack across the narrow earthen bridge. The sound of gunfire intensified even as he spoke and the Red Flag began to move forwards in fits as the man carrying it ran from cover to cover. Behind the flag he could see a small motorbike and side car race up to the assembled Communist troops to drop off the Communist Commander.

Another white man joined him in the window. Both wore green fatigues, shorts, high ankled boots, and were sun burnt to an almost painful degree already despite the bush caps they wore. There was no sign of rank on either of them, though a winged dagger patch was sewn onto their shoulders.

They were in one of the houses that had been least affected by the fighting, a hundred yards or so from the main fighting line. They were the First Rhodesian Volunteers ("FRV"). A small unit of men forged into steel by the war with Portugal, the Bush War with the local tribes, and now the War with Communism. War was their life and none of them would have known what to do if peace ever came. Thankfully, there was always another war.

"Mortars! Target the causeway." Shouted the second white man. Dane Peralta was an experienced career army officer who had retired when the Bush War came to a close and taken a number of men with him to form the FRV.

There was a shouted affirmative from the courtyard behind him and a moment later two "whumps" sounded as the small hand carried mortars spat their projectiles into the air. They were impossible to follow in flight but the explosions of dirt they caused could not be ignored as black bodies tumbled through the air.

The Tribesmen were brave, there was no doubting their fearlessness. The whites who opposed them were equally brave, though out numbered and dwindling in numbers. Both sides suffered from a lack of unity in their chain of command. Nominally each side had a leader, and while the Communists suffered Tribal divisions, the White defenders often failed to support each other properly. Many of them were simply terrified local farmers and only the superiority of their weapons had prevented them from being overrun completely.

"Suicide bomb." The lookout said, pointing now to where some mad bastard was running forward with an artillery shell dangling around his neck. You almost had to admire the man. This was why the city was going to fall. The defenders did not have the same fanatical belief as their enemy. Still, they could make them bleed red for it.

"Follow me!" Peralta called out to his men, the majority of whom were squatting around several buckets of water refilling their canteens. All of them were big men, built for war, and none hesitated as they picked up their weapons and hurried after him.

Out into the dusty streets they went, black boots turning up a cloud of particles as they hurried towards the barricade. A trickle of wounded passed them in the opposite direction, heading for what passed for a hospital. Some of the wounded shouted encouragement, others simply staggered on, a couple passed spare ammunition and grenades to the Rhodesians.

The explosion of the suicide bomb shook the ground they walked on, bricks toppling from already wrecked buildings, and the sound of gunfire seemed to die away entirely ahead of them. The makeshift artillery might have done the trick.

"On the run!' Peralta roared out and his men gave a cheer as they surged around the corner of the last house and straight into the dust cloud that was rolling away from the Causeway. It was a choking mass and the Rhodesians pulled their bandanas up over their mouths and noses, squinting into the dust. At least identifying the enemy would be easy, any black man would die.

The sound of the explosion echoed in the streets even as the first of the enemy came charging through the dust, eyes wide with confusion and terror. The Communists had penetrated the barricades and bitter hand to hand fighting began to appear out of the gloom. Peralta shot the first man in the chest, then again in the head as he passed over him. Around him the Rhodesians gave a savage cheer and hurried into the chaos.

Quantity had a quality all of their own, this was true, but the smoke, dust, and chaos rendered any effectual use of those numbers useless as communication broke down. Small pockets of Communists were able to penetrate the barricade, only to find themselves with enemies on three sides and the slaughter commenced.

The Rhodesians fought in disciplined squads of four, each maintaining a visual link with their neighbour as they fought their way into the barricades. Rifles and pistols cracked even as bayonets went forward and were bloodied. The Rhodesians had adopted the Nepalese Kukri during the Great War and now they used it with brutal efficiency in the close confines of the barricades.

Men died in the dust, the cloud shifting ever so slowly with the weak ocean breeze that pushed at it. Men died screaming any of a dozen languages and as they died their blood ran together, black and white, the same in the end. It was sacrilegious.

The pressure of the enemy attack suddenly began to ease and then vanish all together as the black fighters retreated through the barricades, the whites in pursuit. The sound of gunfire swelled again as white defenders retook their abandoned machine guns and opened fire on the retreating enemy. More Communists died in that short run across open ground then had been killed in the fighting amongst the barricades. The Red Flag went with them.

The Rhodesians suffered only one casualty, Dane Peralta. He took a bullet to the chest and died as blood bubbled from his lips, still firing into the Communists as they turned to run. He collapsed only when his heart stopped beating. His men dragged his body back into the city as newly arrived reinforcements hurried to man the barricades.

The decision was made that night as the Rhodesians crouched around Peraltas body. They were leaving.

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May 15th: Addis Ababa
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Sahle's golden train pulled up to Addis Ababa's station in the morning. Out the window the Emperor saw dozens of men on horse back dressed in the traditional clothing of the Galla cavalry; a lions mane headdress, a goat-skin cape with colorful embroidery, a small shield in one hand, and a lance in the other. Modern warfare had made this look obsolete, but the Ethiopians lived in their history, and their ceremonies demanded tradition.

Sahle himself was dressed Imperially, wearing excellent robes and riding boots. He dismounted the train in a good mood. His destination was the biggest party of the season.

Waiting for him near the platform was Ras Wolde Petros Mikael, one of the few feudal lords left in Ethiopia and Sahle's great-uncle. It is said that Ras Wolde Petros was conceived the night of the Battle of Segale by Negus Mikael, Emperor Iyasu's father, during a celebration of the victory. After Mikael's death, Iyasu had his younger brother made Ras and gave him the province of Wollo at the tender age of eleven. That'd been thirty two years ago, and the man dismounting from his horse was a bearded warrior entering middle age.

"Your Imperial Majesty." Ras Wolde Petros saluted.

"Uncle!" Sahle smiled, "It is good to see you. I'm distressed you had to ride on horseback all the way down here. Sometime we will introduce you to motor cars."

Ras Wolde Petros's expression remained flat. "Did you learn anything on your tour?" he asked. The two men were walking toward the Emperor's limousine: a German Maybach gifted to him by Tanganyika.

"I learned things. I always learn things." Sahle said nonchalantly. The door was opened for him by his driver.

"Good. I need your knowledge. There are disturbing things happening in this country. We need your guidance."

Sahle slipped into the limo where Rudolph was already waiting. The door was closed behind him. Sahle saluted his great-uncle and watch the man remount his horse. They proceeded through the city slowly so the horsemen could escort them to the Jan Meda near the center of town.

Addis Ababa was growing. Its city center didn't yet sport the boastful spear-like skyscrapers seen in American cities, but the solid squared off types were there, tall enough to be impressive, especially in a city founded within living memory eighty years ago. The modern core passed by on the Emperor's left. On his right was the hill where the palace and tomb of Menelik II stood. Up there, among shady eucalyptuses, were the stately reminders of Ethiopia's first lurch into civilization, the Romanesque married to the spindly and spend-thrift African.

Rudolph offered the Emperor a joint. Sahle waved it away. "I'd fall asleep. We'll go later."

"I'll save the date." Rudolph tucked it in an inner pocket and straightened his jacket.

As they approached the Jan Meda, foot traffic was busier. The Jan Meda wasn't much, just a massive flat dirt plain kept unoccupied so it could be used for special events. Crowds were forming. Sahle rolled down his window and waved. He didn't mind the people. They were what they looked like; just people, no worse than he was, but there was something alien about them too. The reality of their lives, how they lived and what they did, were just words to him. He only really understood his life, and he understood their life through his. Since his life was good, so must theirs be. He subconsciously suspected that every left-wing worry or peasant complaint was a show put on for him by God to flesh out the world around him. He wouldn't say this, he wouldn't even think it without laughing at himself, but some deep part of him assumed it was true.

There would be food for the common people here anyway. He'd given that work to Sisay Makari, who organized a feast outside the normal holiday schedule and opening it up for all the city, ensuring that many would show up.

The arrival of the Emperor caused a stir. People bowed. Some prayed. Others shouted well wishes, or whatever they had to say, which Sahle couldn't hear because it all blended together into crowd noise. The cavalry guard fanned out, giving the limo a place to turn and unload. Sahle found himself facing a sea of officials and delegates. This was the part of Emperoring that Sahle was good at, and he put on a big smile. He saw from the corner of his eye the Heaps, who he knew well from aboard the ENS Happiness, Mrs Heap much better than Mr Heap. They circled into the crowd. Sahle forgot they'd been on the train with him until now, since he had kept them in a different car.

The man of the hour greeted him, a man in his thirties wearing expensive robes, his hair cut short and his rounded face sporting a western style toothbrush mustache. When he signed it, his name appeared as Tsehafi Taezaz Bitwoded Desta Getachew. However, most of this was not his name. Ethiopia, like so many feudal governments in world history, was drowning in titles. Tsehafi Taezaz was his position within the court: Minister of the Pen. This meant he was the keeper of the Imperial seal, the Emperor's primary advisor, and his secretary. Bitwoded was an Imperial blessing, meaning beloved, denoting his position in the Emperor's personal circle. With this in mind, the name he signed, Tsehafi Taezaz Bitwoded Desta Getachew, could be translated as "The Minister of the Pen, and Beloved of the Emperor; Desta Getachew." And since Ethiopians didn't have true surnames, but rather placed their father's name behind their own, and their grandfather's behind that if they had a reason to be especially proud of that connection, Desta's name could be further translated as "The Minister of the Pen, and Beloved of the Emperor; Desta, son of Getachew."

Desta Getachew was surrounded my a number of hangers on and friends with political benefits. They came in all colors, like a bag of sweets. Sahle recognized Akale Tebebe, one of Desta's many secretaries, a young man with a habit of dressing in robes so well made and intricately decorated that they made all the women look like nuns in comparison.

"Your Imperial Majesty." Desta saluted. His voice was as smooth as butter. "Akale is here for your congratulations."

"For what?" Sahle said.

"He's leading our diplomatic mission to China."

"Very good." Sahle finally looked at the man, "We do not know much about China, besides that they are over there somewhere" he motioned northward, "But We know you'll find it. And you'll make Us proud." Sahle switched to the Imperial We, almost without thinking, when he was in the presence of his Minister of the Pen.

"I live to serve your majesty" Akale said.

"Come, your majesty." Desta motioned, "Most of the whose who have gathered near the Vin Rouge table." Vin Rouge, a French Restaurant and Culture Club, catered the food for the elite.

Emebet Hoy Eleni, Sahle's mother, chatted with her youngest son Yaqob, Sahle's seventeen year old brother. Eleni was a middle aged woman gone chubby, dressed in the thick dress of a royal lady, her hair kept short. Yaqob was young looking, nearly as tall as Sahle, with the difference in height made up by the young prince's impressive afro.

"Mother, brother, I didn't see you!" Sahle said buoyantly.

"Your majesty." they both replied.

"How did you like your visit to the south?" Sahle came closer to Yaqob, allowing them to speak in hushed tones. "I heard you had your fun."

"I said what needed to be said." Yaqob replied stoicly.

"You did!" Sahle slapped him on the back, "You are a speaker, my brother. You say what you need to say. Hello mother." He kissed his mother on the cheek.

"How was the ocean?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's still there. We'll talk later. Desta probably has friends for me to meet..."

Desta did. He stood politely through the family reunion, but he had the look of business undone on his face, a look he wore too often for Sahle's taste. Desta Getachew hadn't become Minister of the Pen by fucking the right princess. He'd fought his way to the top, a shining star of the new bureaucracy, and a man who had his hand in more pockets than Sahle had in skirts.

Desta's friends were the typical kind. Foreigners for the most part, and businessmen. Some whispered that Minister of the Pen was only his side gig. This was true in a sense. He was Mesfin (Governor) of Sidamo, the government of which put him in a position to dominate the Ethiopian coffee trade, distributing world wide under the corporate umbrella 'Negus Coffee'.

"Your majesty." a youngish American man greeted in an accent that sounded partially British, "I'm Bradford Carnahan, President of the American branch of Negus Coffee." He was the first of several foreign dignitaries. Though they came from all over the world, they all dressed the same; safari suits and pith helmets, like Addis Ababa was a hunting camp in the bush. Carnahan spiffed up his suit with an inexplicable anchor pendant on his breast pocket.

"It is always a pleasure to meet Americans." Sahle said, "Your country makes the best music of all the big world."

"A fan of the Second New England School?" Carnahan acted delighted, speaking through his teeth at a higher pitch than he had before. Sahle had no clue what he meant. "I did not expect such class in this place. No offense of course, my good man... or your majesty, if you prefer."

"Does the Second New England School do Jazz?"

"Oooh, you're a Gershwin man?" Carnahan gave a wry smile, "Between you and me, I like a little taste of the wild life too. Don't tell the boys. Oh! You know who also likes Gershwin! I almost forgot..." He snapped, "Sis!"

A beautiful blue-eyed woman parted from the table, a cup of red wine in her hand. "This is my sister, Livy Carnahan. She's just graduated. Harvard, naturally. She wants to see the world..." Bradford continued to ramble. Sahle hardly noticed him now.

"Your majesty." she smiled, red hair falling across her shoulders.

"If Americans are so lovely, I should give up my crown." Sahle kissed her hand. She seemed surprised by this.

"I don't think you should give up your country. It is a lovely place." she replied, visibly embarrassed.

"Eh, scenery is scenery. How long are you staying, before you go off to see more world?"

"We're going to Sidamo, to see Mr Desta's properties." Bradford interjected. "That is why we are all here."

Desta was looking impatiently at Sahle. So was a line of goofy looking men. "We hope you enjoy your time." Sahle straightened himself up, inwardly groaning, outwardly Imperial. Livy was still in his mind when he went to the next person.

"Miyagi Yakuga" Desta introduced a short Asian man to the Emperor. "He's President of Negus Coffee in Japan." The Japanese man bowed from the waist in a way that Sahle thought looked awkward.

"I am happy to have met your majesty." Miyagi said, "Our countries, Japan and Ethiopia, are similar in many ways. We both respect our Emperors, and the beauty that is in the world."

"We appreciate your words." Sahle said, moving to the next man.

"Freiherr Wolfgang von Fürstenberg" Desta introduced a red-faced German with a mustache not unlike Desta's.

"We know him." Sahle grinned, "The German Ambassador."

"Of course you do, your majesty." Wolfgang beamed, "Mine is not a face you forget. It won't let you. Believe me, men have tried, and they have failed."

"You went to tour Magdala?" The Emperor recalled, "Were you impressed?"

"Your Emperor Theodore must have been a great man to have walked up that mountain more than once. It almost took the life out of me."

Sahle laughed. "We wouldn't know; We haven't been."

"You must go." Wolfgang seemed surprised. "The view from the top is brilliant."

"Maybe we'll go together" Sahle said, "Stay down at the bottom, and get drunk, and boast of the men who have been to the top."

"Germany is glad to have a friend like you, your majesty." The German Ambassador rolled with laughter. Desta nudged the Emperor to continue.

"Jefferson Davis Bacon, Ambassador to the United States." Desta brought Sahle to a fat man with a white suite instead of safari clothes, and greasy strings of hair hanging out from under his pith helmet.

"Well I don't think it's treason to call you 'Your Majesty'" Bacon had a slow drawn out accent, "So accept a true blue 'Your Majesty' from me."

"We do." Sahle said. He found it interesting that, though the German and the Japanese man spoke French, the Americans spoke their native English.

"President Norman wants the United States to be friends with all the world. So if you can think of anything, and I do mean anything in the most christian and hospitable sense, have no fear of asking it from us."

Sahle moved onto somebody he recognized.

"Mr Heap" he said, cutting Desta to the chase, "Mrs Heap."

"Your majesty!" Mr Heap said, giving the best excited and on the verge of climax smile he could muster. "I again must tell you how gay of a time we had on your ship. Beautrice especially enjoyed the ride."

The Heaps had a guest. "This is Ms Sarah Reicker." Reginald babbled, "She's, ah, what you call colored. Black and white parents, you know? Jungle fever, wot wot."

The effect was pleasant, a rich brown skin color and long black hair complimented, in her case, by a pair of green eyes. She was shorter than him, perhaps around 5'5, with a build that suggested she was no stranger to physical exercise. To Sahle she looked like an Ethiopian.

Her eyes met his and she bowed slightly. "Your majesty. A pleasure to meet you."

Reginald meanwhile made no secret of trying to see down the front of her shirt as she bowed, though a flash of irritation showed on his face. A failed attempt at wooing her perhaps?

"She's my Aide." Heaps said quickly to cover his momentary lapse, "Recently arrived from the Rhodesian Foreign Affairs Office. We breed them good down there!"

"You do." Sahle smiled. He kissed Sarah's hand. "If there is anything you need while you are in this country, I am at your disposal."

Sarah smiled. The two parted ways when Desta put his hand on the Emperor's shoulder.

Sahle had met Desta's special friends. But they weren't here for that. There was a party to have. The Emperor speed-walked to the dais - a stage set up at one end of the crowd, draped in fine cloth, glittered in golden ornaments, a throne in the center. Two male lions flanked the throne, golden collars around their necks and golden chains attaching them to the dais, a reflection not so much of their behavior (they roamed free in the Palace gardens), but of the nervousness of their foreign visitors around such animals. Sahle sprung up the Dais and turned around to address the massive audience.

"The Lion of Judah has prevailed!" he said, standing one foot on his throne and the other on the stage, his voice projecting without artificial aid. The Lion to his right, the one called Aron, roared. Sahle grinned, pointed at himself, and mouthed the words without saying them "I am the Lion of Judah." He then sat down, poised arrogantly with one leg resting on his knee, and ran his fingers through Aron's black mane. The second lion, Muse, woke up and became attentive at the presence of so many people look its direction.

"We are here to celebrate Tsehafi Taezaz Bitwoded Desta Getachew" Sahle continued to address the crowd, "Our good friend and worthy servant." Everyone's attention was on him. Desta calmly walked up to the dais and sat at the Emperor's feet. "You have all come to celebrate this man's honorable life. This is the time for well wishers and gifts!"

The government officials were not given the honor of first up to the dais. That honor was given to Desta's foreign friends. Jefferson Davis Bacon went first, giving the Minister of the Pen the keys to a new car he'd no doubt be shown later on. Freiherr Wolfgang von Fürstenberg gave him a custom-made pistol with leopards engraved on the grip. Reginald and Beautrice Heap walked up arm in arm, their cute young friend in tow, and presented Desta with a painting from some respectable artist Sahle knew nothing about. Miyagi Yakuga hefted up a large porcelain vase bearing the image of cherry trees in full blossom.

Bradford Carnahan marched up with his sister Livy following behind. Sahle only had eyes for the later. He might not have noticed Bradford at all if the man didn't raise his voice when presenting Desta with the deed to some property in Manhattan. "You said you love New York City, Mr Desta." Bradford almost shouted, "Perhaps you can spend some of the summer there, when the African heat sets in. The boys at the Union League Club would be fascinated by your company I'm sure."

Livy Carnahan stood quietly behind her blustering brother, glass of wine in hand. Rushed along by Desta before, the Emperor hadn't been allowed to fully drink in her beauty, but as the line of foreigners were followed by a longer line of Ethiopian nobles and officials, he had all the time in the world. She was thin, wore a knee-length daisy-yellow dress, and stood in a regal pose that she must have learned at some finishing school. Red hair flowed over her shoulders, and Sahle didn't stop himself from imagining her in the Eve pose, that hair barely hiding her small breasts.

His fantasy fully rounded out, placing them both in the Garden of Eden, standing on opposing sides of a babbling creek beneath the shade of eucalyptus trees. She was pale, graceful, a princess, and she felt right and warm in his arms. He melted into this image and lived in it as the ceremony dragged on.

"The Bahr Negus didn't make it." Desta's patient voice shook Sahle from his daydream. The gift giving ceremony was done. Those who were invited were proceeding to the palace.

"I didn't see him." Sahle said. He looked for Livy Carnahan and noticed she had left as well. That was disappointing, but now Desta had his full attention.

The Bahr Negus, Hamere Noh Dagna, was loyal as far as Sahle could tell, but he was a prickly man, and rarely left his stronghold in Mogadishu unless there was personal honor in it for him. Bahr Negus was an ancient office that had lapsed during the Era of Judges. It's literal meaning was "Sea King." In ancient times, it denoted a sort of Marquis of the coast, a man who's rule covered the coastal strip of Eritrea and whose job it was to protect the country from the Muslim empires bordering the Red Sea. In those days, the Bahr Negus had often rivaled the Emperors, even fighting them under the flag of a separate kingdom they called Medri Bahri, or "Sea Land". Iyasu V had resurrected the office for several reasons. First, Ethiopia's new found power made it necessary to build a navy, and the office of Bahr Negus put the naval project in the hands of a unifying individual. Second, by giving the government of the cities surrounding the major Naval ports to the Bahr Negus, Iyasu deprived the Al-Himyaris of Mogadishu, checking the most powerful subject of the Ethiopian State. It was clever. Sahle was in awe of his grandfather's ability to think of stuff like that.

Sahle also knew that Desta and Hamere Noh Dagna disliked each other. They were both proud men seeking honors, and that made them like two identical poles on a magnet. Sahle didn't feel slighted by his Bahr Negus's failure to appear. The slight was meant for Desta.

The procession to the palace was slow. Sahle climbed into his car and realized that Rudolph von Lettow-Vorbeck wasn't with him. They had split up at the beginning of the event and failed to come back together. Sahle rode alone to his home on a road choked with the traffic of nice cars.

Gebi Iyasu had been the home of the Imperial Family for thirty years now. It was designed by an Italian architect, its main entrance very similar to that of an Italian villa, with columned arches for the entrance way and balcony overlooking it. The second story connected to the east and west wing directly, but the first floor did not, as the second story connections were held up by a colonnade that led into the courtyard behind the estate. Sahle's limo went into a hidden garage meant only for the Imperial residents. When they parked, he smiled at seeing Sisay Makari's motorcycle, an Orthodox cross inlayed on the gas tank.

A less crowded version of the party filled the Imperial Palace. "The Conquering Lion of Judah, Negus Negast of Ethiopia, Sahle." A Page announced when he entered the main hall. Everyone bowed.

"We hope you enjoy your time." Sahle said, signalling for them to stand. Sahle went looking for Livy Carnahan.

"Your Imperial Majesty." A familiar voice grated on his ears. He was looking for Livy, but he found the Heaps. Reginald and Beautrice were admiring a vase on a pedestal. "You have a lovely place here, old boy." Heap said, "I cannot say that I've seen this sort of craftsmanship in all of Africa. I have been to plenty of wealthy homes in Rhodesia, so I can tell you that Rhodesia has plenty of collectors, but none with a piece like this."

"It's nice." Sahle said.

"I dare say Beautrice would be willing to pay for this..."

"I apologize." Sahle cut the old man off, "But I have the business of my country to attend to. We'll restart this conversation later?"

Reginald Heap nodded and let him go.

Sahle hoped he would find the Carnahans by echolocation, in the sense that Bradford Carhanan's voice tended to echo across entire locations, but he didn't hear it. He thought they were in the courtyard and started for there. That's where the lions would have been transported, he reasoned, and foreign visitors were always fascinated by the Imperial menagerie.

"Your Majesty." Desta Getachew put his hand on the Imperial shoulder. That voice meant business. Deflated, Sahle followed his Minister of the Pen into a mostly empty room.

Yaqob and a sharply dressed Akale Tebebe sat at a table together drinking some of the wine supplied by Vin Rouge. Desta sat down. Sahle followed.

"You've met Akale." Sahle looked at his brother.

"I'm wishing him luck on his journey." Yaqob said in a pillowy voice. "Hou Sai Tang is the greatest man of our time. It will be a challenge for Akale to represent our government to someone so important."

Akale giggled. "No pressure!" he joked. Sahle grinned. Yaqob didn't.

"Today is a good day for you then." Desta said, "Leul Yaqob, how would you like to..."

"I'm going to China." Yaqob completed his sentence. "I saw that coming, honestly. I do not appreciate being put away, but I will go."

"Good." Sahle felt relieved. "Enjoy yourself."

Desta motioned for Sahle to stop. "Yaqob, you must remember that you are there to observe."

"I would prefer you not talk to me like that." Yaqob said.

"The Rhodesians were offended. You know this..."

"Good."

"That isn't good. We can afford a problem with Rhodesia, though we don't want to have to afford them, but China is important. I cannot have you spitting in Hou Sai Tang's face..."

"I would never do that!"

"You must respect the Chinese no matter what you feel. You are their guest. This isn't a manners thing either. You are their guest because your country wants something from them. Maybe not now, but someday we might want something from them, and good relations are necessary."

"I'll have my bags packed." Yaqob said.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by TheEvanCat
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TheEvanCat Your Cool Alcoholic Uncle

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Gyumri, Armenia

“So what happened to this guy? He looks pretty fucked up.”

Four policemen crowded over the body of a dead teenager. His white shirt was riddled with three bullet holes and stained with blood. A pained, shocked expression and wide open eyes had frozen on his face. The rest of his body was splayed out, spread-eagled, on the sidewalk. A pool of blood, now dry, had formed beneath the corpse. It was obvious that he had been shot just an hour or two ago. Behind him, the brick wall bore several more bullet holes. In the streets, a junior policeman had picked up a dozen shells and dropped them on top of a hood of his car. One of the other officers had just finished calling an ambulance to pick the body up, and was now smoking a cigarette while leaning against the vehicle. One hand rested on the service revolver in his leather holster attached to his duty belt as he eyed a curious passersby on the other side of the street. The rest of the police were busy checking the dead body.

“He looks Russian, that’s for sure,” an older officer said as he gently tilted the head and gestured to the back of it. “See? Russians have that flat part on the back of their heads.”

“Yep, it’s from when they got dropped on their heads of children. Probably explains why most of them are fucking retards,” chimed in the policeman smoking next to the patrol car. The man took a deep drag from the cigarette, exhaled through his nose, and flicked the butt into a nearby gutter. Adjusting his belt, he came back over to the body.

“Actually, I want a cigarette as well,” admitted the third cop. He bent down and patted the body with the back of his hand, careful not to get his palm bloodied. “Does this guy have any on him?”

“Go ahead, and I might want to get one off of you as well,” his friend replied.

The third officer rolled the body over and found his prize: a slightly crushed pack of cheap cigarettes in the teenager’s back pocket. He extracted them and began distributing them out to the patrolmen. “Hey kid!” he said to the junior officer, duly counting the shells on the hood on the patrol car. “Want a cigarette?”

With a chuckle, he added: “Are you even old enough to smoke?”

The junior officer froze, unsure of what the right answer is. After hesitating a moment, he stuttered: “Should we be taking those? I mean, it’s evidence, right? What happens if they figure out we’re tampering with the investigation?”

The older officer, who had previously remained silent during the exchange, laughed without looking up from his notepad. “Nobody is going to care about a pack of smokes. Don’t worry about it, I know that training teaches you this stuff. Half of that doesn’t fly in the real world.”

The junior officer, cowed into submission by his superiors, reluctantly accepted a cigarette. He fumbled with an offered lighter, taking several tries to get the cigarette burning. Obviously suppressing a cough, he went back to work sorting the spent shells into a cardboard box marked for evidence. “There are an awful lot of rounds that were fired,” he remarked, looking at them. “Someone didn’t like him.”

“Well this is a Russian kid, probably no older than twenty,” the older officer said, finishing up his notes. “Remember that robbery last week? A group of kids speaking Russian broke into a drugstore and stole a bunch of junk. They didn’t hurt the owner but they for sure vandalized his livelihood. Davit, you responded to that one, right?”

Davit, the chainsmoker, nodded and adjusted his rather loose duty belt again. “Bunch of kids threw some rocks at the windows and knocked everything down. Stole a couple hundred dram and some painkillers or something. The damages report wasn’t pretty, but we arrested at least one of the kids.”

“I’ve seen some shit like this before. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s a retaliation for the attack,” the oldest officer sagely concluded. “It’s also most definitely racially motivated. Russian kids knocking down an Armenian store? What with this atmosphere, I guarantee you it was someone from that community. I can call up some people once we get back to the station, including our dear shopkeeper friend.”

Davit threw his cigarette into the same gutter, just as his friend cracked a joke: “Maybe it was Davit, since he’s a big fan of Russians.”

Although Davit appeared mildly frustrated by the comment, his posture never shifted. Eventually, the older officer called for them to settle down and finish collecting the evidence. A camera was brought out to take pictures for later, since most day-to-day crime was handled by the patrolmen instead of rarer specialized detectives. One picture of the body, one of the street, and one of the wall were snapped. Davit and the junior officer soon left to get the photos developed and drop the evidence off at the station, while the oldest patrolman stayed behind with his partner to wait for the ambulance. A corpse didn’t warrant too much expediency on the part of the medical services in Gyumri. It took another hour for the ambulance to arrive, driving up to the curb lazily with no lights or sirens. Both of the officers helped the ambulance driver with the body, finally closing the doors on the back of the van and watching it drive off to the morgue. The night had gotten darker, and the crime scene was now lit by the orange flow of a streetlamp. It would be another hour before the city services arrived to hose down the blood.

The pair returned to the station, wordlessly driving through the emptied streets with only sighs to break the silence. The patrol car turned the corner onto the station’s street, before the older officer suggested a stop: “Alex, do you want coffee? We can stop by and get a cup at the coffeehouse before we file the report.”

His partner nodded, and the car drove past the station. Nearby was an all-day coffeehouse popular with the Gyumri police. Alex and the older officer, whose name was Tigran, pulled up by the curb and walked in to a small table in the corner. Two simple, black coffees were ordered alongside pastries. They chatted for a little bit about their families and what they were going to do once they got home. Tigran lived only with his wife in a modest apartment, his four children had since gone to university. Alex wanted to marry his girlfriend, and had plans to propose the next month. Unfortunately, he was worried how the long work hours would affect them and was hesitating until he could transfer to a department with a more regular schedule. He was thinking about taking a stint doing clerical work for the force, instead of patrolling. Armenian police forces operated on a points-system for personnel: he had racked up enough points for performance and time-in-service to transfer, but not yet enough to promote. Tigran advised that he talk to his girlfriend, and figure out what they were both good with.

“A lot of this stress in your personal life isn’t really worth it,” Tigran added as he finished the coffee. He slid a few dram under the cup for the waiter. “Me and my wife have gotten along fine.”

Tigran and Alex returned to the station a few minutes later. Tigran, as the senior patrolman on shift that evening, opened the door to his office and hung his hat and jacket on the coatrack. Armenian police uniforms were dark blue, with light blue shirts bearing token insignia for department and rank. An orange band encircled his service cap, matching the identically-colored stripe down his pants. With his jacket put away, he signed and untucked his shirt before sitting down on a well-worn wooden chair. At his desk, a typewriter sat and several copied forms were prepared for him. Under his desk, in a drawer marked “forms”, was a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. The rest of the office was bare, with only a window behind him and no other decoration. Not even a rug adorned the floor, and it was lit by a sole lightbulb. Like most of the Gyumri police office, it was strictly utilitarian. Tigran often thought about buying a carpet or some paintings, something just to liven up the place. His sister wove carpets in Hrazdan, maybe he could ask about one next time they met. It would be an excellent gift, after all.

The problem about the murder was not the crime itself, but the implications. Tigran had seen plenty of murders, but racial ones had been rare. He was born just after the Great War, and had only heard stories of the time where Armenians killed Turks just for being Turkish and vice versa. The last few years had been troubling to him: thousands of migrants, fleeing the collapsing Russian Empire, had swarmed across the then-loosely-guarded border. Many settled in Gyumri, establishing huge ghettoes. Most worked blue-collar jobs in the factories or as part of the Armenian construction boom, and these jobs were notorious for low pay and highly dangerous conditions. Tigran felt bad for the Russians, who were forced to become more and more insular as Armenians denied them services. A then-popular law was passed in the late 1950s that made it legal for landlords to offer different prices based on different people. The public explanation was that this was supposed to enable more leeway in terms of poorer people haggling for a better price. In practice, most landlords raised rent prices on Russians. Curiously enough, Tigran had noticed less ethnic Armenian homeless in Gyumri as well: perhaps the law was working, but just only for the natives.

The implications on this murder were clear. Tit for tat attacks were going to continue unless the Gyumri police made it clear that the killer was going to be arrested. There was a simmering attitude in the department to “let it go” and sweep such a comparatively minor crime under the rug, but Tigran knew better. Even though he personally didn’t care for the Russian teen, a burglar who had destroyed a fellow Armenian citizen’s drugstore, he knew that things could get worse. The last thing he wanted in Gyumri was a race riot. Another thing that concerned the senior patrolman was the apparent usage of automatic weapons. There were simply too many shells for it to have been a hunting rifle or civilian weapon. Davit, a member of the military reserves in addition to the police force, had left a note on Tigran’s desk with an analysis of the shells: they were 9mm military casings used in a standard-issue handgun or submachinegun. Someone was running around with a submachinegun, shooting down Russians. The potential for this to become disastrous was obvious: most police were armed with chunky six-shooter, break-action revolvers. Shotguns and semi-automatic rifles were kept in the armory, but only for extreme situations.

He figured that there must be something else going on. Tigran finished the incident report, stowed his bottle of vodka after a final swig, and reached for his telephone. A folder with a list of numbers laid next to it, and he fingered through the sheets until he found one of the more-frequently-used ones: the Military Police at the Gyumri base. Usually, they would call when they found a drunk soldier belligerent in the streets, and Tigran knew most of the duty personnel well by now. He rang the number, and waited for someone to pick up. A familiar voice came over the speaker: “Army Military Police, Gyumri. This is Sergeant Kavalian, how may I help you?”

“Ivan, how are you?” Tigran asked cordially. Sergeant Ivan Kavalian was a frequent duty NCO, after his last divorce left him with not much else to do. He was a good man, willing to take one for the team so his other friends could go home to their much more faithful wives.

“I’m pretty alright,” Sergeant Kavalian answered. “I just bought a new book, actually. Pretty interesting. I’ve been reading it tonight.”

“Excellent, excellent. Maybe you can tell me about it later. Right now, I have a question for you. Are you aware of any missing weapons?”

“Missing weapons?” exclaimed Sergeant Kavalian.

“Well, we’ve got a murder and my reservist told me he thinks it was committed with a submachinegun.”

“Well, truth be told, last month a truck went missing transporting some equipment to a field training exercise,” Sergeant Kavalian said after a slight pause. “It was reported up to us and we went looking, but couldn’t find anything. The two truck drivers went AWOL as well, probably drove off with the truck. We have warrants out for them but we have been scouring the nearby area for a while now.”

“Why didn’t we hear about this, Ivan?” Tigran said, a hint of frustration in his usually-calm voice. “These weapons are starting to turn up in Gyumri. This was a revenge killing near a Russian ghetto, this is not good for our security situation.”

“This was being handled as an internal issue. AWOL soldiers are our area of responsibility,” Sergeant Kavalian replied matter-of-factly.

“This is no longer an internal issue. I want everything you have on this case, since I know more is going to come out of it.”

“Can I send a runner to your office tomorrow with the files? The night shift is bare-bones, like usual.”

“That’s fine, but we’re going to start looking for this guy. I’ll expect your runner tomorrow. Goodnight, Sergeant.”

Tigran hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. A quick thought about another shot of vodka was silenced by the rational need to drive home and not crash his car. The senior patrolman sighed deeply, then ran a hand through his greying hair. Without another word, he stood up from his creaking chair and tucked his shirt into his pants. The light was clicked off with a yank on its chain, right as Tigran thought again about putting a painting up. As he left the office, he said goodnight to another officer working on some last-minute paperwork. Tigran’s week was not close to being finished.

Armenian-Georgian Border

Military funerals at remote outposts were not the festivities of heroes. Caskets had been fabricated from wood in a storeroom, crosses and names painted atop them in simple white paint. They were buried in a line in an area atop a small hill near the border station. A chest-high chickenwire fence surrounded the makeshift cemetery, already populated with two other soldiers who died in a vehicle crash six months ago. Until real gravestones could be carved and sent in with the next supply shipment, a soldier’s grave would have to do: their rifle, stuck into the ground with a bayonet, with two boots at the base of it. A helmet sat on the buttstock, while each soldier’s dog tags hung from the triggerwell. In white paint on the front of the helmet was their last name. In front of the graves stood the base platoon commander, flanked by his senior NCO. Those who were available came out for the funeral. It was the largest one to be conducted at the small post. A bugler stood at attention nearby.

Upon receipt of the order, the personnel stood still as the bugler played the national anthem. The sole musician, a regular soldier who happened to be able to bugle, reminded Corporal Yaglian of himself. Yaglian was a pianist, playing regularly in his barracks with a piano he had bought from a widow in the nearby town. He carted it back on the back of his jeep alongside cigarettes and alcohol, earning a talking-to from his platoon commander. Ultimately, a case of beer kept Yaglian in good standing with his superior. He hadn’t been called out for any funerals or ceremonies, but his music was usually well appreciated in the desolate outpost. The bugler played his lonely, mournful tone until it finished, and he dropped his instrument to his side. The platoon commander looked to his left, nodded at the sergeant who commanded the twenty-one-gun salute, and pulled a list from his pocket. He read the first name:

“Sergeant George Hazerian.”

The seven riflemen fired their shots, three apiece. Yaglian flinched each time, while the senior personnel stood stoically still. The platoon commander read the next names: Corporal David Petrosian. Private First Class Ivan Sarkisian. Private Igor Rahmonov. Private Leon Abadjian. Each time, the riflemen fired their three shots. They were aimed over the border, perhaps intentionally by the platoon commander.

The next team, a team just like Yaglian’s, was read out. Corporal Abraham Hovanesian. Private Petyr Jamgochian. Private Ilya Kargarian. Private Ilholm Bagruntian. The final shots were fired and the riflemen stood back at attention. The platoon commander wrapped up his final remarks, short and simply, before dismissing the attendees. The soldiers bowed their heads again before turning back to the patrol base. It was getting late, and the next shift was due to return soon. Once the vehicles were gassed up and given a quick check, it was time to go out again. Yaglian’s section was staying at this patrol base for another few days until they could make the long trip back to their home installation. They had been offered food, beds, and time to rest while their own vehicles were repaired. One sustained damage from the sniper attack and needed to be patched up. The other had nearly ruined its suspension driving quickly over the barely-defined mountain paths. Yaglian’s platoon commander had already been notified on the event, and was expecting them back in the next few days.

There was talk of retaliation amongst the troops. Since the attack, the platoon commander had spent a lot of time in his office on the phone: the troops were beginning to speculate that he was discussing plans with the company commander located a few kilometers to the rear. Perhaps he was requesting assets for use: an airbase nearby staffed with attack planes was well-known by Georgian militias by now. Whatever the situation was, the soldiers were on edge. Every patrol was nervously watched by the others, as they drove their patrol shifts across the border. Only two more attacks had happened in the days since, both of them minor sniper incidents that ended with superior firepower driving the militias back into the mountains. Nothing compared to the death of an entire patrol, at least not yet.

For now, the soldiers didn’t know much more than that. Yaglian ate in the mess tent and heard only snippets of new developments. He talked little to the other platoon besides this, and often just read a borrowed book while he slept on the floor under a field blanket, using his rucksack as a pillow. The days were long and filled with nothing besides waiting. Most of the section just napped the time away, eager to get some sort of rest if they weren’t patrolling for hours every day. After three days, Yaglian’s vehicle was repaired and his section was to return to their home station with the next outgoing patrol. They met with the vehicle, inspecting the green-painted scrap metal used to patch the bullet holes. After they deemed the job good enough, they grabbed their rifles and gear and piled into the sturdy jeeps. Saying goodbye to their comrades, they left the next morning at six, departing across the bumpy roads. The sun peaked up from behind the notoriously tough Caucasian mountains as the four-car convoy drove through dirt roads. The rough terrain continued to be an enemy: one of the vehicles popped a tire and required a change.

Yaglian’s section was reunited with a patrol from their home station: Second Section, led by Corporal Melkonian, was there to take them home. Corporal Melkonian was a conscript that filled in for his wounded section leader after a jeep crash left him with a broken neck. The stereotypical uncaring draftee, Melkonian refused to cut his hair or shave and often wore a large chain outside of a uniform that was buttoned too low for regulation. This was not the man Yaglian necessarily trusted to take him back to the home patrol base, but it was the man he had. And evidently, Corporal Melkonian was a fierce fighter. It’s probably the only reason he was allowed to do what he did. His section, also mostly comprised of conscripts, was just as motley. They did the job, however, and that was what counted those days. There was simply too much to do to care about disciplining men who didn’t shave. Yaglian’s section leader had a few words with Corporal Melkonian at the rendezvous point, shared a cigarette with him, and ordered a mount-up. Another patrol completed uneventfully for both sides. The section of stragglers joined Melkonian and his men on the road back home, and back to the mission at hand.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by DELETED32084
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May 15th, 1960 / Addis Ababa
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Sara Reicker found the false smile she had practiced so many times over the past few years coming naturally when she had been introduced to the Rhodesian Diplomatic Envoy to Ethiopia. Mr Reginald Heap summed up everything there was to hate about White Rhodesians. He was boorish, had a stupid accent, an overinflated opinion of himself, and was almost comically racist against non-whites. If she didn't know better she would have thought it was an act but after reading his file as the Bureau she realized he was as actually as terrible as he seemed.

**Two Days earlier**

Her journey North to Ethiopia, her first International assignment, had been a long one. The train system through much of Africa may have been somewhat passable in the days of the Colonial Empires but they had fallen deeply into disrepair since that time. The only true railways she had travelled one, that didn't involve hand carts, walking, riding donkeys, bush pilots and even a few boats, were in Rhodesia and Ethiopia.

She had some time to reflect on her life as she went, passing through numerous shit heap towns and pathetic villages full of men who treated her like property and their terrified, and sometimes cattle like, wives. She had only left one body in a ditch, back in Mozambique, when the man who ran the mule train refused to take no for an answer and she had driven a screw driver through his ear.

The cruelest irony of all was that she owed her position and skills to the Whiteman. Only in White Rhodesia could a coloured woman, or even a black woman, hold a position like hers, be trusted, well paid, and treated like an equal by most of her colleagues. If the local Black population ran the country she'd be either flat on her back or squatting in the mud delivering babies. Okay, maybe that was unfair to the Black folk but hell, she'd seen what happened in Zambia when the Whites lost power, utter fucking chaos. She was fairly certain that the recent round of murders involving dead White farmers was going to lead to a military intervention by the Rhodesian Security Forces. That would be interesting to watch.

Her arrival in Addis Ababa had been very interesting indeed. The train, an old steam engine that had carried her without fail for the proceeding two days, chugged into the main station and ground to a halt with an explosion of steam. After the final stop before the capital she had changed out of her Khakis into something more "culturally appropriate". The dress, which was white and went right down to her ankles, was hemmed with a vibrant blue. The effect was rather cooling and easily allowed her to conceal a small pistol on her right thigh, and a knife on the left. She had allowed herself a moment's fantasy of a young woman on her way to a secret rendezvous with a lover but her ride to the Rhodesian Consulate had destroyed that throughly.

The Consulate car, a British built Rolls Royce, met her at the train station and the driver, a native Ethiopian, had wasted in time in warning her about the Heaps.

"Make sure you're never alone wit heem." The man had said, eyeing her in the rear view mirror, his accent strange to her ear. "He likes to play wit the ladies. And his missus is no betta. She will finger you too if she can."

He had gone on about the majority of the staff and by the time she actually arrived at the consulate, she was a pretty good idea of what sort of lifestyle she could expect for the next little while. The Heaps were obviously philandering perverts, the majority of the white male staff had been hand picked by Reginald Heap and as a result tended to be very "forward". The local Black employee's stole anything that wasn't nailed down and Beatrice Heap had a spending problem that somehow had spilled over into the Consulate budget. Now that was interesting.

A thirty minute drive had been them draw up front of the Consulate, a grand old Colonial Mansion done up in yellow with black shutters, and she had been deposited on the gravel drive with her single suitcase before the car roared away again. She was still surveying the tall windows when a middle aged white woman with long black hair came bustling out of the building.

"Oh, um, well, hello... You must be Sara! Yes, of course, hello. I am Beatrice, Reggies better half." She laughed, an almost high pitched note that made her seem a touch mad. Sara noticed Beatrice give her a hair to shoe once over, a small smile appearing as she did so.

"Nice to meet you Beatrice." Sara held out her hand. There was an awkward moment in which the two women stared at each other and then Beatrice laughed again.

"We don't shake hands with the help, my dear girl, Ethiopian thing dontcha know."

That was a load of bullshit if Sara had ever heard it, but it confirmed her initial deductions about the woman from the Bureau files.

"Reggie is out at the moment but do come in, I'll have one of the staff show you to your room. I understand your good with your hands?" There was a strange look on the womans face as she said it, almost sly. "For typing of course."

Sara nodded, now throughly uncomfortable. She would make damn sure she locked her bedroom door at night.

"Oh Charles!" Beatrice called out, perhaps louder than necessary, and was answered almost immediately by a strongly built black man who appeared at the consulate doorway. He didn't speak but simply bowed his head slightly.

"See! That's how it should be Sara, do take notes. Now off you go." Beatrice chattered away as she dismissed Sara with a wave, hurrying back into the Consulate like a scalded cat.

"She thought you were the Master. Otherwise she'd never have come out." Charles said quietly as he picked up her bags and gestured towards the Consulate. "Your room is on the third floor, in the East wing, you'll get some lovely sunrises from there."

Sara followed him after a grateful "Thank you". The stairs were marble, the hallways marble, the walls covered in gorgeous local hangings that showed plenty of skin and, in more than a few cases, plenty of sex. It was no wonder the Rhodesian Government was not entirely happy with "Reggie".

"In here." Charles said as they stopped in front of a large wooden door. He leaned in close to her for just a second. "Check for spy holes." It was the last thing he said as he walked away.

Sara picked up her bag, turned the door knob, and stepped into a small but comfortable apartment. A cozy sitting room was closest to the corner of the house, two sides being open to the outside with a small balcony facing East. The third side had two doors, one into a bedroom, the other into a bathroom which had a lovely walk-in shower. She took a moment to look around the main sitting area and found nothing out of the ordinary.

She did not have to look very hard to find a peephole in the shower, and another in her bedroom. Both had commanding views of places she was likely to be naked. Well that was disturbing it did tell her that behind the walls of the house, running throughout the whole building perhaps, was a hidden series of passageways. That meant there would be a door, and that meant she could access it.

She carefully moved a plant to block the peephole in her bedroom and hung a towel to block the one in the shower. It was a start. She went back into the sitting room and stepped out onto the balconey. The City of Addis Ababa spread out before her with all of its sights and smells. She had arrived.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Vilageidiotx
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Vilageidiotx Jacobin of All Trades

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(co-written by Byrd)

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May 21st: Washington DC, USA
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Le'elt Taytu Yohannes loved living in the capital of the United States. It had an energy she'd never seen before coming here. The Western world wasn't new to her; she'd earned a Law Degree while studying in Turin, though her program had been sped up for diplomatic reasons. Europe was old, venerable; a shinier version of what she knew growing up in Ethiopia. But the United States was alive. Vital. Living here irked her of course, she knew it was essentially an exile, but she couldn't help but love most of the experience. She watched the city pass by from a taxi-cab window, the lights glaring on the glass. Men in herringbone suits walked arm in arm with their wives, women in fashionable dresses and hats, cozy underneath the lights of stately old buildings. She dreamed of the day Addis Ababa would shed its humble origins entirely and become like this place.

She was let out in front of Second-Empire building, stepping onto a cross-brick sidewalk, in view of a set of stairs leading to a fountain. Though she was not from here, she did her best to join American society, wearing their styles and having her hair relaxed with lye so that it looked straight and smooth like a European woman's. She straightened her green silk dress and walked toward a golden doorway, the English word "Occidental" above it. She made sure her embassy ID was on top in her purse before going in.

There was one thing she didn't like about America; their racial caste system placed her with the negros, a situation that grated on her dignity. She was the brother of the Emperor, not a shanqella at work on a coffee plantation, or some naked barbarian on the border of Swahililand. She saw how some of the whites gave her a wide berth when she mingled with them in public. She would have turned against America if it weren't for her Embassy ID, a talisman that got her out of the worst indignities.

The clink of glass and buzz of conversation surrounded her as she walked into the Occidental Grill. A waiter approached her nervously. "Black patrons need to use..."

She took out her ID and handed it to the waiter before he had time to finish. He studied it and smiled. "I'm apologize, your excellency.

"I'm here to see Congressman Rawlings" she said, taking back her card.

"Right this way."

She received ugly looks as she followed the man through the gauntlet between white-cloth topped tables and the bar. A person of her skin tone entering through the front was a minor scandal to some. Thankfully nobody spoke up, sparing her the humiliation. Even the Presidents of the United States seemed to silently judge her. The walls in this restaurant were covered with a gallery of Presidential faces; dozens of old men who had held the reigns of this young country in its short life. Like most Ethiopian aristocrats, she combated the hurt of western pretensions by remembering that even Rome was a baby compared to her country: the oldest civilization in the world still on its feet.

She arrived at the table and saw the man she was meeting. Jack Rawlins was a negro. This was true by American standards, but it was also true by Ethiopian standards. He stood up when he saw her. Neither noticed the waiter scuttle away.

"Your excellency," Jack said with a large grin and slight bow. "I'm glad you could make it."

He pulled out a chair for Taytu and pushed it in to the table once she sat. He took his place across from her and couldn't help but smile again. She was so beautiful. Jack had met and worked with her a few times since she had arrived in Washington. As the only negro member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he had been declared the expert on African diplomacy by his peers. They thought that it gave Jack and advantage to be the same skin color as the diplomats, but to almost all of them he was an outsider, one of the countless members of the African diaspora that existed outside the continent. He held as much kinship to them as the president did to a random Frenchman.

"I see you came through the front door," he said as he glanced down at the menu. "This place is good about letting us through the front, those of us that have enough influence at least. That, along with the way they cook lamb chops, is why I chose it."

"I'll follow your lead." Taytu smiled. She never liked the part of eating in public where she had to chose something. It was an art she hadn't mastered yet. What a person ate said something about them, she was sure of that, and she didn't want to order something with a subtext she didn't want to communicate. Her eyes went down to the wine selection, where she practiced having fashionable opinions.

"You come here often?" she felt obligated to make small talk, so she did.

"Not really," Jack said as he scanned the menu. "There's a little shack in Anacostia I like to go to. They do South Carolina barbecue." He looked up and grinned at Tatyu. "It's the best damn barbecue in DC, or anywhere this far from the South."

Like almost all negroes in America, Jack had roots in the South. His grandfather had come up from North Carolina to work in Illinois right after Reconstruction. He had distant relatives down there that he had never met, but knew of. He encouraged them and all the black people down there to head north. It wasn't ideal; the fact that a congressman and an honest to god princess were grudgingly given a table at a restaurant in the nation's capital was proof.

Jack ordered lamb chops for both of them when the waiter came. He let her order the wine as a compromise. He looked out the side of his eye at her as she ordered. She was very beautiful, probably the most beautiful woman he had ever met that wasn't an American. Jack had a reputation in DC as something of a tomcat. If the woman was attractive and lived in the area, then he had bedded or tried to bed them regardless of their race.

"So," he said with a smile. "You said that you had something you wished to discuss."

Taytu reached into her purse and pulled out a newspaper clipping. "Have you seen this? He's the son of immigrants from my homeland. He passed away last month and his collection was put in the storehouse of the National Gallery"

"Issak Ibsa." Jack read from the article.

"I would like the collection to go to my country. Since you are on the Foreign Affairs Committee..."

Jack looked up from the article and tried to hide his embarrassment. When she had said she wanted to meet over dinner to discuss some things, he thought it was a thinly-veiled attempt at a date. As royalty, it wouldn't be unexpected for Taytu to ignore usual male-female decorum and ask him out. He thought there was legitimate chemistry between them, and she had always been interested in him every time they had met? Or was that simple cordiality that Jack mistook as being something more?

"I don't know, your excellency," he said, feeling the warmth on his face and praying that he was not blushing. "Ibsa's parents may have been from your homeland, but he was born and raised here in America. That would be like England requesting the Wheeler Presidential Library be built in London instead of Montana. As much as I admire your nation, I also admire positive role models for young negro Americans and Ibsa is very much that."

"I understand the sentiment" Taytu said. "And Ethiopia is willing to pay a price. Whatever overcomes that sentiment." she poured the wine. The conversation made her forget about the dishonors of American life. When she saw Jack's expression slacken ever so little, she read it as the career deal-maker recognizing an exceptional bargainer; the hunter becoming the hunted.

"I'll see what I can do," he said sheepishly.

There was a pause as the waiter and a busboy brought them the meal. Each plate had a lamb chop on it with a vegetable medley of green beans, carrots, and peas along with a helping of mashed potatoes. Jack looked down at it. His appetite was suddenly gone. He felt embarrassed that he thought this was something more than an informal business meeting. Taytu had probably betrothed to some sheikh since birth.

"It would be beneficial and more expedient if you went through State instead of congress. When it comes to something like negotiating and selling artwork, they have leeway and I can give you some names of people to speak to."

He didn't want the artwork to leave the country and would fight against it, but right now he was eager to get off the issue and pass her along to someone else.

"How's your lamb?" he asked politely.

"Very good." she said. She didn't actually take a bite until after she'd complimented it, but her mind wasn't on dinner now. "Those names would be useful. You will put in a good word, of course."

There was something wrong. She couldn't tell what, but the conversation was falling... flatter than she expected.

"Do you have something on your mind?" She asked. As soon as she said it, she didn't know why she had, and she wished she could unsay it, but it was too late.

Jack finished the piece of food he was chewing. It was still as good as he remembered it. When he was done, he sat his knife and fork on his plate.

"I... got the wrong idea about what this was. I thought this was going to be more than business... I thought." He looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. "This was like a date."

"My English isn't perfect. I'm confused by your meaning." Taytu said. She thought she knew his meaning, and a sort of pre-revulsion was curdling in her blood, but she didn't want to believe it. Perhaps she was confused. She hoped that was it.

Jack put his hand on his face. If he wasn't blushing before, he sure was now. She was really going to make him spell it out. He looked down at the table and cleared his throat.

"Uhh... I thought you wanted to meet for... romantic purposes."

"Ro..." she pursed her lips, "That would be inappropriate, congressman."

"Yes," he said, clearing his throat. "Yes... it would. But... I mean, we're consenting adults. Plus, all the signals have been there, your excellency. You cannot fault me for making an assumption based on how you've been conducting yourself."

"Conducting." her hackles were properly raised now, and she poised her head like a cobra ready to strike, "I do not appreciate your tone."

"Well I don't appreciate being embarrassed" Jack cut into his lamb chop aggressively, "I know you're still new to this country, but even you have to have know when a man's interested in you."

"Even..." it was too much. Taytu didn't like being talked down to; her station in life was supposed to be above it. But to be talked to this way by a negro? Her hand wrapped around the stem of her glass, and she threw wine in the face of the impetuous congressman from Illinois. He looked stunned, his face and shirt collar stained red, and seeing him made her feel a tinge of regret. But done is done. She held onto her dignity like a life-preserver and marched out on her own, leaving the congressman behind.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Letter Bee
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Iron lady, Part Five

It was rare that Priscilla Aglipay-Rizal invited members of the Catholic Church - from which her father's Philippine Independent Church had split off a long time ago - into her home and her study. It was even rarer that she actually listened to them. And it was almost unheard of that she admitted to them being correct about something she disagreed with.

Yet it had happened, and Priscilla can only look at the photographs and financial books and written testimony with dismay before saying, "Father Agustin, the Co-operatives in Subic Bay had promised me their loyalty. They told me they can manage the former US base and former US assets as efficiently as possible as they were formerly employed by the Americans. But they never told me - they never told me they'd profit from the labor of children!"

Father Agustin, a short and stocky old man with wispy white hair wearing a straw hat and a long black robe, looked at Priscilla with pity. He would then say: "You are like your father, believing that the baby was to be thrown out with the bathwater, that all laws can be replaced with yours'. Yet all leaders have limits; they are not the Most High."

A purse of his lips. "Nevertheless, you have to accept that the Worker Co-operatives in Subic have made the former US base a den of sin and inequity; the illegitimate Half-Filipino children of former US soldiers slave away alongside Vietnamese and Rohingya in the garment factories, Malays from Sabah handle toxic waste and remove unexploded ordnance alongside Khmer youths. Refugees from the rest of Southeast Asia are forced into prostitution or other forms of grueling work, as they are not Filipino citizens and thus covered by the New Labor Code."

Priscilla's face hardened. "I will begin proceedings against them immediately; send out the Police to stop them and bring them to trial -"

Father Agustin raised his hand. "This is not wartime, and as you said, the oppressed refugees and immigrants are not covered by the law's protection. Nor are they protected by common human decency. Will you violate your own laws when the Most High himself does not? Is that what your new sect has taught you?"

Priscilla thought it over. She couldn't just do nothing, but Father Agustin was right; her laws had allowed for this to happen. The Philippines was a democracy and she preferred it that way; she was even planning to do a Cincinnatus once her second term was up. And she will not compromise this democracy just to cover up her mistakes. So the Lady President relaxed, sitting back on a modest chair.

Her next words were: "How did you collect this evidence? I presume the Catholic Church has deigned to walk among the poor and downtrodden once more?" That last part was an unecessary barb and one Priscilla would have cursed herself for in earlier days. But right now, she was not above pettiness...nor asking for an apology later. "Forgive me; old prejudices assert themselves."

"I wouldn't be a priest if I didn't forgive," Father Agustin was nonplussed. "The Old Faith still maintains a lot of followers even among the corrupt, still ministers to the bodies and souls of those they exploit. Under the banner of missionary work, we keep our ears and eyes open, extending what help we could." A purse of his lips as he prepared an admission. "And your new sect, under your father's successors, have walked this battlefield as well; all differences fade in the struggle to succor the poor."

A nod from Priscilla. "Gather evidence, then, Father Agustin, and help those who I cannot help. From this moment on, you and yours' are under my protection; my reputation, my place, my power, I am prepared to sacrifice them all if it would help your cause. Those who proclaim yourselves your enemies proclaim themselves mine as well."

Already, the Lady President was measuring her assets, going through her mental list of friends and allies to see who would resist the temptation to put their narrow interests above the interests of thier nation. A coalition would need to be built in order to defeat the increasingly over-mighty enemies in Subic, and preparations made to drive a wedge within the unprincipled elements in that place itself. Steps had to be taken in order to ensure that what was happening there was not happening elsewhere as well; more investigation needed to be done.

Father Agustin nodded. "Thank you for your help. If you had not agreed, we would have turned to Japan via the See of Nagasaki, or even the Godless Hou Tsai Tang. I am glad not to have used that weapon."

The implications were clear; Father Agustin could destroy her credibility with the wider world and her credibility as a member of the Unified Left by exposing the actions of unscrupulous Co-operatives in her country. If he had ideas for other demands in his head, she would be unable to refuse them. As it is, she had to rely on his integrity...the integrity of a Catholic.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Vilageidiotx
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May 22nd: The Semien Mountains, Within the Woreda of Debarq
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Fitawrari Ergete Galawdeyos imagined himself the George Washington of Ethiopia. He was a revolutionary, a carrier of the flag of democratic liberalism in the ancient highlands of the Habesha people. Of course, he wasn't really a Fitawrari; that title was a military office now, something like a brigadier general. In older times it had been a baronial ranking within the aristocracy. No government had given him the title. And, of course, he was no George Washington either. His self image differed wildly from how others saw him.

Ergete walked boldly onto the property of a local Nagadras; one of the bureaucrats charged with managing regulation and taxation in the bustling market at Debarq. The man wasn't home. His nice country estate - a mud-brick affair with hints of Italian architecture - sat on top a hill not far from the pen where he kept his cattle. Only a few thin cows were in there now.

Despite his genteel self-image, Ergete looked like a wild man, his beard and afro overgrown and wooly, his cotton clothes covered in trail dust, and an Italian-made Berthier rifle slung across his back. In one hand he held a hammer and nail. In the other hand he had a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; that old document that heralded the French revolution centuries before.

The mansion was quiet. He approached the door confidently, as if it were his own house, and when he stepped up onto the slate-wood porch, he brought the hammer up. The door rattled when it struck. A few strokes and the Declaration was solidly in place. He was almost done when the door opened, and a surprised looking servant stared him straight in the face. Ergete punched the servant, the hammer clenched in his fist as added weight behind the blow, and the startled man sprawled out on the floor. If there were more than just the one man home, they might have guns. Ergete booked it back down the hill and jumped on his horse just as a stampeding herd of cattle rumbled past. Ergete wasn't a lone vigilante. He had followers. And though Ergete thought of these men as his liberating army, most of them realized what the rest of the countryside around Debarq already assumed; they were Shiftas.

Shifta is an open ended term in cultures of East Africa. To Ergete's credit, a Shifta is part revolutionary, and many a revolution in Ethiopian government came about at the end of a Shifta's sword. But the term also described banditry and outlaw behavior. They were the minutemen, the cowboys, the outlaws, and frontiersmen, all wrapped up into one, products of the fact that government's grip was loose outside the major cities.

Bullets flew from second story windows. There were more servants after all. Ergete brought his horse to a gallop, pivoted, and shot back. The men driving the herd from behind also returned fire, but the ones riding in front or along the side kept to their duty, making sure the frightened cattle stayed on course.

The servants, lacking horses, didn't follow. Ergete and his men kept the herd on the run until they were well off the road, riding toward the cloud-sheathed Semien mountains rising like columns holding up the eastern sky. The cattle calmed down when they reached a deep gully trickling with a thin stream of water.

"See any Neftanya?" Ergete asked Mahetsent Lekonk, his right-hand man. Mahetsent had rode with Ergete's father as a boy. Now Mahetsent was a greybeard nearing sixty, and a good counselor to his Fitawrari.

"No." Mahetsent said. He'd rode up from the back. "It might be too late for them to leave their farms and organize, unless they want to search these hills by torchlight. Tomorrow though, they will be crawling over this place like ants."

"We'll follow this stream a little further before we cross the next ridge. That was cleanly done, friend."

"The gunfire was unnecessary." Mahetsent chided.

Ergete slapped his friend on the back. "You cannot milk a cow without spilling a little on the ground. I don't like to fight against the people, but the people don't know what is good for them yet. They stand in the way of their own freedom, and of ours."

"They won't thank you if you shoot them." Mahetsent said quietly.

"Even if we shot a man's arm off, he'll thank us anyway when he finds out how sweet freedom tastes. You can live with only one arm."

The foothills grew taller until they became small mountains, their tops crowned by rocky cliffs like walls built by God. This land was God's country, a monk would agree with this sentiment just as quickly as a peasant or an Emperor. The hope of the Christian faith was spoken by the babbling of mountain streams and the fresh green grass growing close to the ground. Even the men who realized they were bandits wore crosses. Weren't they in the tradition of David? Of the Maccabees?

The sun was setting in the west when the first of the Shifta's noticed they were being followed. News traveled quickly around the ambling herd of cattle, and soon the commanders knew it too. "There are men up there." Mahetsent said quietly to Ergete. He turned around and stared in the direction of the sun as it fell over the horizon. "I can't see them, but some of the younger men reported seeing shadows."

Ergete turned his horse around. The western sky was the color of fresh blood, fading into the blue like a bleeding wound in a pond. "Thank the lord for young revolutionaries, because I can't see a thing." He paused, "Post a watch."

"If that is them, they have the sun at their back." Mahetsent said, "They'll see us easier than we see them."

Ergete paused a moment more, struggling one more time to spot their enemy. "We're going to keep the herd moving tonight. We know this part of the country better then they do."

"We'll lose some." Mahetsent warned.

"We'll keep the rest." Ergete responded. He rode to the front while Mahetsent went the other direction to relay his instructions.

They traveled quickly despite the dark. It was easier in the river bed, still dry enough to travel, functioning as a road leading them in the right direction. It bent around a ridge and started to dissipate into the hills. Ergete wasn't boasting when he said they knew this land. The middle path led to a low place that acted as a sort of pass over the next set of mountains. From here on out the road was harder.

Torches went up, one after another, as the Shiftas found the material to make them. Ergete hadn't wanted this; torches made their procession easier to spot. But a leader had to make sacrifices to the wisdom of his people. They knew this land as well as he did after all, and it would be rough going. The path grew narrower and rockier as moonlight became their only guide. Ergete recognized that the path was becoming too narrow. He split the party, sending them around two different sides of a ridge. They were not far from home, so even though they were slowed down, their tensions eased.

Shots rang out somewhere in the distance. The tension snapped back into place, and guns came out. The cattle were spooked, sped up, and the Shiftas found themselves trying to settle the animals and watch for an attack at the same time. Ergete looked up at the towering rock-face above, but only starlight peeped down through the knifing crags. If there was an attack on the other column, they couldn't do anything about it now. They had to move on.

"Look out!" he heard someone shout. His head whipped around and he saw a cow tumbling down at him. He didn't have time to dodge, but his horse did, and it reared back just in time to let the limp side of beef roll beneath it. When it came to a stop, it stood up and dumbly rejoined the herd, and the procession moved on. The night passed without another incident, having only heard three shots. They arrived at their camp an hour before sundown.

The Shifta camp was essentially a nomad village. Women and children lived there, going about their day to day chores from flimsy huts and tents. They welcomed the men cautiously, recognizing the party was small, looking for the ones they knew and loved. The older children were prepared for the cattle, and they helped move the animals into temporary pens made from sticks.

"Fitawrari Ergete" an old man in the dusty white robes of a priest greeted.

"Hold on, Abba." Ergete announced. He looked at his scattered men and raised his gun above his head. "Soldiers! Your comrades are still out there! Follow me and let's find them." A manly bellow rose up. Rifles and swords clattered. They formed, still on horseback, and rode back the direction they came, half expecting that around the next bend they'd find the Neftanya.

Instead they saw cattle. Riding alongside were their comrades, Mahetsent leading them. This elicited another cheer, joyous this time, and they lead the cattle together into the camp, to the excitement of their wives and children.

"Did you lose anyone?" Ergete asked his older second.

"No" Mahetsent looked puzzled, "It was a pleasant night."

"We heard shooting."

"Oh yes!" Mahetsent laughed, "One of our men went after a wolf. We had to tell him to quiet down. He thought they were after the cattle." Ergete slapped him on the back.

It was a good moment. The soldiers sat their horses proudly, their wives and children grinning like lions, their prizes paraded in front of them. This was his people. He loved them. He wanted to see them thrive, to break the chains of old feudal government, and build the United States of Africa of which he dreamed.

The dusty priest came up, clapping to the tune of a hymn.

"God has blessed us." Ergete dismounted. He strapped his rifle to his saddle and turned to the little man.

"God has blessed all of us." the priest said, "You don't know how many lives you have improved."

"I have the men ready" Ergete looked toward the second cattle pen where some of the younger men were mounted and waiting. "Do you have a place for them?"

"Yes yes."

"Good." Ergete smiled, "Don't eat them all by yourself. We wouldn't want you to get fat."

The priest's face became dour very quickly, "You know I will give them to the people."

Ergete laughed, slapping the priest on the back. "Of course you will, Abba. They will be grateful to you. I am grateful too."
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by DELETED32084
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May 23rd, 1960, Maputo, Rhodesia
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Andrew lay in a ditch, dead grass and brush pulled over his head, his breathing harsh and loud in his own ears. His side was on fire, he was sure his ribs were broken, and blood was drying all over his right side from the wound in his shoulder.

He was trying desperately to control his breathing as the sound of an engine drew closer. He could just see the nearest Rhodesian Security Force ("RSF") heavy vehicle, known locally as the Beast, some hundred yards away. The vehicle was unique to Rhodesia and more terrifying than anything he had seen in the United States. It had the front grill of a Land Rover but that was where the similarities ended. The wheel base was almost twice as wide with massive tires that allowed it to travel quickly over rough ground. A large metal frame doubled as a roll cage with a single driver, mounted machine gun and gunner, and, in the case of this vehicle, two large Rhodesian Ridgebacks sitting in a rear compartment with their handler.

For seven days he had been running West, stealing a horse at one point to evade pursuit and even throwing himself into a dinghy, barely escaping a Ridgeback who had managed to outstrip its handler. He had been unable to locate any weapons, no white man was going to throw him a spare rifle and a black man covered in blood was hardly likely to engender sympathy and anyone who didn't want a visit from the Police.

The brush was heavy against his skin, the brambles tearing into his clothes and pressing against his wounds. It was agony. He had barely eaten and only drank from streams and rivers during his journey. On more than one occasion he had killed a domestic animal and used its blood to try and conceal his trail. It had confused the dogs for a while, but each time they had honed in on him again.

The rumble of the heavy engine slowly died in the distance and he risked another look in the direction of his pursuers. The vehicle was moving slowly into the distance and he almost sighed with relief until he realized the dogs were no longer on their perch. A jolt of panic shot through him and he begin to slowly push the brush off of himself, raising his head ever higher and higher, listening, looking, trying to locate the dogs. He feared them more than any man. He had seen them catch a fugitive before and tear the screaming man to pieces before there handlers could retrain them. They were terror incarnate.

A scream sounded to the west and he almost leapt up and run. Shouts, shots, the roar of the Ridgebacks, all of it rising in a crescendo that told him he was a dead man. Then it occurred to him, the sounds were moving away from him! He rolled to his knees, still in the bottom of the ditch, and risked looking westwards.

He could see the RSF dogman running, pistol in hand, the two dogs bounding ahead of him, their barking high pitched and excited. Ahead of them, in full flight across the landscape, were two black men in tattered bush fatigues.

The sound of a truck engine brought his attention around again and he saw the Beast come roaring back up the narrow roadway that seemed dwarfed by its size. The gunner was leaning back, his field of fire blocked by the dog handler, the drivers teeth exposed in a savage grin as the vehicle hit the ditch, bounced wildly for a moment, and then tore after the fugitives.

Andrew wasted no time wondering who the poor souls were that had saved his life. He turned, put his head down, and began to run. The nearest copse of trees was several hundred yards away and, despite the pain and tears of agony that coursed down his cheeks, he ran like he had never run before.

Twice he stumbled and each time he expected to hear the sound of the Beast engine, the roar of the hounds, or the crack of a rifle, but nothing came. The trees drew closer and closer, their huge boughs reaching out towards him as it beckoning him into their embrace.

He hit them at a run, smashing through the brush, muffling a scream as one branch slammed into his ribs. He stumbled, the white light of pain blinding him so that he tripped and fell, his forehead shredding into pieces against the ground so that more blood poured down his face. He moaned, tried to roll over, and suddenly hands were on him.

They grabbed his legs, his arms, and another smothered his yell, closing over his mouth with a firm grip. He kicked, tried to swing his fists, fought with the desperation of a man who had nothing left to lose and then, almost like a prayer, a voice whispered desperately in his ear.

"Be still brother! You are safe here." The voice was friendly, it spoke his language, and, most important of all, it was kind.

He sagged in their grip, his saviours, whoever they were, he couldn't seem them, blood was blinding him but he was safe. He began to sob quietly as two people lifted him by the arms and began to guide him through the trees. He was safe.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Vilageidiotx
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May 24th: The Siege of Mombasa
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What were the white men thinking when they saw what was being built on the other side of Mombasa Harbor?

Over the last couple of days, Thomas Jefferson Murungaru often found himself grinning at the absurdity of Agricola's plan. It looked like it would work, but it was still hard to take seriously. Five wood contraptions, like massive versions of the shadufs farmers used to draw water out of rivers, stood quietly on a rise looking out toward Fort Jesus on the Mombasa side. Most of the thing was simply the supporting base for the swinging arm, the front holding a bucket full of lead shot serving as a counterweight. When released, the counterweight was supposed to fling a sling on the other end of the arm and send an artillery shell flying through the air. It would be horribly useless on a modern battlefield, but Murungaru's unique problems gave the ancient devices a chance to relive medieval glories.

"They are trebuchets." Agricola told another set of tourists. Soldiers from other parts of the siege line found excuses, or straight up deserted their posts, to see the strange phenomena on the left flank.

"Tre-shays?" a wide eyed soldier replied, leaning against his rifle, gazing up at one of the wooden monsters. "This thing will win the battle?"

"I hope so." Agricola looked to Murungaru, addressing both men at the same time, "If we can get these things moving quickly enough, I think we'll put Fort Jesus into shock."

"They can destroy the fort?" the soldier said, running his hand over a support strut.

"No." Agricola said, "Fort Jesus was built to resist canon fire. But Fort Jesus was built to be manned by soldiers."

The soldier grinned wide. "I want to see it go."

"It'll go soon."

"We have more work to do." Murungaru walked up to the gawking soldiers. "You have work too. Return to your lines. This will be done soon, and we will be in the city, then you will have whatever you can find." They went, leaving the commander alone with his engineer.

"Come." Murungaru said, "I haven't worked on a boat yet. Time to show me how it is done."

Behind the stoic trebuchets, in a stand of palm trees, catamarans were being produced in the open air at an industrial speed. Li Huan was at work here. She was a veteran of catamaran production, and she was showing the less skilled workers how it was done. They were carving new canoes here too, having exhausted the supply of those that could be requisitioned from fishermen.

The workers who looked up were surprised to see Murungaru pick up rope and begin to work. He ignored their shocked faces. His eyes were on Agricola, and he twisted his Hou beard as he watched his engineer demonstrate the work.

It was understandable that his men were surprised. Murungaru was an educated man, having received an education from a mission near the village her grew up. This patronage put his nose in a book at young age and kept it there. He didn't enter into Kenyan politics through tribal affiliation; he entered it through his studies, and his prominence in the party came when Chairman Lutalo chose him as the man to write on the matters of theory the Chairman didn't really understand, which was most of it.

"I always meant to ask" Agricola stopped working for a moment. Sweat was on the white man's brow. The white ones were easily affected by the head. "Thomas Jefferson? Was that the name your parents gave you?"

Murungaru shook his head. "No. Edward was my childhood name. But that is the name of a King. I changed my name to that of a revolutionary."

"That answers it." Agricola went back to work, "This is a good idea, you know. Soldiers like to see it when their commander joins in the tough work."

"That is true." Murungaru was distracted. He was clumsy at working with his hands. Something as small as tying a knot took more effort than he knew it should, and it frustrated him. Agricola was a natural, and Murungaru found himself comparing his speed and comfort at work to that of his engineer, which frustrated him more.

"Look at you!" Li Huan came over, eyes beaming, to watch her lover at work.

"My thumbs are made for holding a pen." Murungaru excused himself.

"Your thumbs are made for whatever you do with them." Li said in her bubbly way, "You work quicker and we'll be sleeping inside the city by tonight. Here you go, I'll help you, I want to see the sun rise without gunfire..."

She smelled nice. Even on the battlefield she somehow managed that. Being close to her was a salve on his cramping arms, and he worked more contented with her by his side.

It was almost over. Finally. This damned siege. He was ready to go back to work in Uganda, work relevant to the theories he'd spent his whole adult life studying. Work those damned racists in Mombasa were holding him back from. As the makeshift catamarans stacked up, they counted down the hours until this would all be over.

Noon-time came, and so did the trucks carrying artillery shells. They'd been moved thirty miles around the city, avoiding use of the network built for the siege, kept instead on old farm roads that avoided Tudor Creek altogether. With them came several columns of soldiers who'd marched behind the trucks on foot. These new men gawked at the strange wooden things ahead of them.

"It's time to warm up the crew." Agricola said. Murunguru nodded. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Gunners! Form!"

The gunners made up most of the men putting together the catamarans. They were Agricola's engineering staff, who carried out the work he needed done. Agricola lead them up the the machines, everyone already knowing their place, while Murungaru followed behind.

Large stones played the part of ammunition for now. Two men carried each stone, wrestling it underneath the machine and placing it firmly in the pouch. Then they got out of the way. Another man stood by, and the moment his comrades were clear, he pulled the trigger. There was a wooden groan and a woosh as the counterweight swung down, slinging the arm in the air and throwing the stone. Five stones slammed into the water of Tudor creek.

"The weight of the artillery shells will be different than these rocks" Agricola said to Murungaru, "But the shells will be uniform. We'll be able to range find." Murungaru said nothing. He watched the crews of the machines grab onto straps, pulling down the long arm with all their weight, the one ton counterweight lifting back into place with the help of simple machinery.

"I wish they were faster." Murungaru said.

"So do they." Agricola replied, "But we are all new to this."

They tested again, and again. Some rocks landed on the beach, though most hit the water. "It will be different when it comes time to use real ammo" Agricola said, almost to himself, "I did my calculations based on the shells you have."

A rock hit the wall of distant Fort Jesus and let out a crack that could be heard across the channel. It did nothing of course, but that was to be expected. He hoped the enemy heard it. He wondered what they thought now.

"The men should have rest before tonight." Agricola said. Murungaru agreed.

There was more on their minds then the question of whether or not the projectiles would hit their target. The things had been built down where the boats were being put together now; a natural precaution against snipers. When they were pushed into place, those doing the work assumed they'd have to dodge sniper fire but none came. The whites in their island city had the machines in their sight, but they didn't seem to care. Sandbags were put in place around the machines to protect the crew when it was time, but that was was limited. Murungaru's gut told him the whites allowed construction to go on just to for the spectacle of the thing. But it was hard to tell what they were thinking, seeing beasts from their own ancient history revived on the other side of Tudor Creek. Murungaru feared they'd be able to stop them from operating when time came.

The men ate Irio; a starchy blend of boiled peas, potatoes, and corn. It was a simple meal, but one that represented the Communist's control of the surrounding countryside and the ease they had feeding their armies. When the armies came together, the arrived in their tribal groups, but Murungaru split them up, attempting to keep units multi-tribal as a first step in building an identity. Houism dominated the Swahili discussion, bringing with it a distrust of nationalism, but Murungaru knew a national character had to exist before a revolutionary one could be brought about, and he worked under that principle. But with the flanks mingling now, men sought out their tribal brothers, and swapped stories with them. A culture of counting coup and capturing trophies pervaded the besieging forces, and this moment gave the men a chance to show off their finds.

An hour passed by. Agricola and Li Huan helped finish up the catamarans, leaving Murungaru alone. He sat there, eating his green paste, thinking about the night to come. Fort Jesus was their target. It was built in the 16th century by the Portuguese, an early step in the march of white colonialism. Now it was a useful anachronism, a thick stone fort with timeworn plaster, watching over the harbor like an ancient monument. To take it was to take the last chance for Mombasa to feed itself, controlling the port as it did. But it was a fort. It was meant to defend against attack.

"We're going to need to start soon." Agricola sat down next to him, "My crew has to find their range before the sun sets."

"Give it some time." Murungaru replied, "We want most of the ground attack to happen at night. That'll mitigate their advantage."

"I'm not so convinced." Agricola said, "Darkness means confusion."

"I believe the African will handle the confusion better than the white man. The men we fight are organized in their defense, if we can break that organization, the warrior spirit will prevail."

"I hope so."

"A little longer." Murungaru asked again.

--

The battle started slowly, Agricola's men walking to their trebuchets as coolly as if they'd been called to dinner. The big explosive shells were brought to the wooden machines by hand, the ammo trucks parked a distance away for extra protection. Agricola himself dodged under a machine to load the first shell and trigger the rigged fuse. When all five were loaded, the triggers were pulled, and five shells were slung toward the quiet fort.

All five landed in the water. Three exploded and sent up geysers.

The engineers got to work. Unlike artillery, adjusting this machine was only a step removed from taking it apart entirely, and Murungaru regretted the time he had requested. It was twenty minutes before they were ready to fire again. Everyone held their breath as they watched the shells arc toward Mombasa a second time.

Three hit the shallows on the other side. Two hit the beach, cratering the sand in a blow that shook the dust of Fort Jesus's stone walls. A cry rose up from the Communist lines. Nobody but Murungaru seemed to notice the bullet that whizzed above all their heads, fired from the direction of Mombasa.

Fifteen minutes later, in the falling twilight, they fired another round, and a shell hit the wall, fire dancing up the stone walls. The celebration was cut off when one of the engineers hopped up to grab a strap on the long arm and was struck by a sniper's bullet. He was carried away bleeding. Their enemy might have found their efforts too strange to stop before, but now they were fighting back.

When the trebuchets found their range, no more adjustments needed to be made and the bombardment sped up. So did the return fire. Fountains of flame jumped from the enemy ramparts, and sniper fire cut down engineers as they prepared for the next round. Splinters were visible in the beams, lit up ominously by torches. War drums began to play. Shadows came from over the hill behind them. They were communists soldiers, boats hefted on their shoulders, ready to begin the attack.

"Get all fronts moving" Murungaru told his radio-man, who went away to retrieve his equipment. He pulled out his pistol. There would be no reason to use it, but when his blood was up the feeling of the grip in his hands comforted him.

Bombs flew above the heads of Communist warriors pushing their catamarans into the water. Sniper fire struck the sand, and sometimes flesh, but it was too weak to turn them back.

A sound of cracking wood crashed right above him.

"Their targeting the machines." he shouted. Agricola looked up, their eyes on a ugly hole in one of the supporting beams. The engineer stared for a long while, and Murungaru waited, hoping he had an answer.

"They'll be busy in a minute." Agricola pointed toward the fort, where Catamarans were landing on the other side. Gunfire was being exchanged. Murungaru knew this was the part of the battle where all he could do was wait, watching a dark battlefield lit only by bursts of fire.

Another bullet struck a trebuchet, hitting it in the long arm as it swung, causing it to snap in two. Men ran out of the way as the counterweight came crashing down and the rest of the machine split apart like a cracked nut. They were down to four.

Something about this attack felt different. His warriors used rope-hooks to scale the wall, and they did so with little resistance. More men crossed the channel, the sniper fire slowed, and the gunfire remained stable. In the firelight, he saw a red flag waving above Fort Jesus. The question was; would it stay there until morning?
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China

Guangzhou

February 3, 1944


While the war had just settled, the scars still remained. Sitting on a stool in a far back corner of the small single-room noodle cafe in the city of Guangzhou. Outside rain pattered against the windows as tired men with drooping soldiers strolled inside. The air smelled of wet straw and the smell of noodles cooking over a large fire next to the small boy.

He sat with an arm curled up against his chest, and a foot twisted on the narrow edge he left to it on his stool. The youth, not much older than ten had much the same scars of war as the men filing into this room. The hand tucked into his chest was mangled, missing several fingers from a bomb. His foot had twisted and never healed right when he had ran into and fell into a crater made from a mortar shell hidden in high weeds in the hills. The site of the young boy was grave. As he sat the old woman cooking the noddles occasionally passed a small cube of grilled chicken to him, which he took in greedy hands and stuffed into his mouth, afraid as if any of the guests stepping in would catch him and become jealous.

He was a wild haired child. He had the figure of a child who was once wild, but the grave depth and shadows under his eyes had long dampened his youthful energy. He had been suffering nightmare for the passed several months and had not slept. Even as the men spoke of peace as the Party of Hou took control of China a squirming part of his soul had not heard the news and each time there was a loud noise turned and twisted, making the child jump whenever a door slammed too loud, or the thunder cracked over head. He twisted about to run even whenever the floor boards cracked, or there was the sound of foot falls in cobbled alley ways, when a twig snapped or the wind howled through the cracks just right and imitated the sound of a passing shell.

Had he been older, he mad have been able to come to understand and articulate that it was only after the war these feeling emerged. When the chaos that had been his normal subsided and the first routines of permanent peace took hold. He was not used to living in comfort. He had only lived in terror and fear. And mundane events as happening before his eyes represented an alienating disconnect between the then and the now. The adults, and the older men and women could grasp the difference, they had not been on the front lines between China and Japan their whole lives as he, their entire consciousness was not melded in the three-way contest between Communist, Nationalist, and Japanese.

As the last of the locals packed into the small cafe a tall lanky man in a black double breasted shirt and red trousers went to the door, and pulling a heavy beam across the door locked it. The room was full of quiet, patient murmurings as things organized themselves. Volunteers produced themselves from the crowd and went up to the old woman. The youth watched them warily out of the corner of his eyes as they took as many bowls as they could hold and each filled with noodles. They rotated through the crowd passing out bowls of hot dinner.

When the men and women of the meeting were settled with their bowls an orange robbed figure rose from their midst. He would have been otherwise hard to miss among the crowd of muted and dirty colors, the saffron orange of his monk vestments burned like the light of the sun among the depressed pallet of the urban workers assembled. But among the regulars, including that of the youth his presence was so innocuous that the monk among them was almost invisible. He was treated without ritual, as he would have preferred.

With a long white beard in contradiction to his bowling ball bald head he was quickly become an ancient man in association from many of the others here. His back was bent, and even at a distance the deep lines in his face were plainly visible in his dark splotchy face. He was small, but even so he commanded the presence of a man many times his height and his simply standing up commanded the silence of all those in the room. Soon the muffled chatter of the tavern fell silent with only the faint subdued eating of noodles.

Reaching into his robes, the old monk produced a large poster he had rolled up. The torn edges suggested he had liberated it straight from a telephone pole in the city center. Its white trim around stark blood-red field indicated its author, the Communists. Its size spoke of its purpose, a proclamation. And its plain language spoke to its purpose.

“By Order of the Standing Transitional Committee of China, the Party of New China is proud to declare the end of fighting and issues the following standing orders across the nation!” the monk read in an unexpectedly loud tone. He brought total silence to the room, it felt as if time had frozen completely and only he was the only thing that moved at its center.

“Matter 1: For compliance with the transitional authority, all local municipalities not presently governed by the Chinese Revolutionary Army dissolve their present governments for assumption of selected authorities to oversee the process of New Nationalism.” the monk read, “Matter 2: That civilian organizations not already registered to the Party Office of External Affairs register themselves with the State, or disband. Matter 3: That private companies in operation in the claimed Chinese territories disband private ownership for transition to State operation. Matter 4: The private individuals and communities submit to a region wide census of material and people in compliance to a State Inventory of industrial, agricultural, and other material assets in interest of and welfare of The State. Matter 5: Foreign churches operating within China are to disband, its foreign missionaries to return to their home. Compliance will be ensured.

“These Five Matters are issued thus.”

The room rang with excited chatter. The sudden chaos of the noise caused the youth to recoil reflexively, throwing up his hands to guard his face. The old woman next to him was the only one to take notice of his discomfort and laid a gentle hand on his shoulders and gave him a comforting squeeze. His breathing shuddered, and the torrent of noise faded away, the Buddhist Monk regaining control.

“I know this isn't good.” he said, “But that's why we're here. That's why we're always here.” he reminded him, “Does anyone want to take up the floor?”

There were soft murmurings from among the attendees. Then one stood up. The young man lowered his arms and slowly lifted his face to continue following the proceedings. “This ban on civilians meetings and organizations, it's basically a ban on meetings is it?” he asked.

“I'm not sure but it sounds like it.” the monk said.

“This isn't much better than under the Guomintang.” the other man spat. He carried a weight of betrayal on his shoulders. His heart had been stabbed and he declared it boldly on his voice.

“Then what do you expect to do?” someone in the crowd asked, “Go and fight? Chun Lo we have been doing that now for nearly twenty year! How much longer can we go on.”

“And what am I supposed to do? I have my pride, I have my principles. I wished to see a freer world, and this is what we get today? Something no better than what we had under the Generalissimo?” he was referring to Chiang Kai Shek. His name still sent ripples of fear and paranoia among them. Though he was rumored to have been killed in the course of battle, invoking his name was like invoking the state police and inviting them to come down on them. While they were never very effective, fighting the Communists and Japanese both equally hard took away many resources from suppressing the numerous far-left groups in southern China.

“You will have to let it go. If you are to fight, then please give yourself some rest.” a woman pleaded, “I have lost too many sons, too many brothers to this fighting. We have our peace now. Can we get at least a year of no more war?”

There were murmurs of silent approval. The general opinion of his peers though did not set well with the man so eager to fight. “Wai Ling Ho, open the door. I want to leave!” the man said, clearly enraged beyond tolerance.

“As you will.” a soft voice said, resigned. The board shutting the noddle house's door was lifted, unlocking the door and the man stormed out into the gray rain.

As the door was shut behind him a pervasive and sad silence hung over everyone's heads. “I will miss him.” someone said, resigned, “Before he does anything rash, before it is too late for him I hope he will come to his senses.”

Everyone nodded. Some whispered in agreement.

“If we are not to fight, then are we surrendering?”

“No!” someone declared, “If we do surrender, then the dream for freedom will be for naught. If I may suggest: we resist. But in our own ways. We have through the entire war survived and resisted Nanjing and Tokyo with our own networks, we never had to rely on them for our needs, our wants. We should maintain them, surrender nothing to Beijing. But, we will not fight them with gun or sword.”

“I agree, brother. But for how long?” a young woman asked, tense and fearful.

“How ever long it will take to have liberty. One month, a year, a hundred. Until the sun sets on the dynasty of Hou. However long it will need to be until the authority of the state is diminished and the people inoculated. All is for all, let us know no negative freedom.”

There were resounding calls of agreement, and people began to rise in their chairs. As the fervor rose they all began to sing. They began to sing songs the Americans taught them. What the men who called themselves the Wobblies taught them.

“In the gloom of mighty cities
mid the roar of whirling wheels
we are toiling on like chattel slaves of old,
and our masters hope to keep us
ever thus beneath their heels
and to coining our very life blood into gold.”

Hong Kong

May 25nd, 1960


It was three in the afternoon and Lo Bai Shun sat at his drawing desk, a lamp directed down on the starchy white paper he was working with and a jar full of pencils, pens, and markers off to the side. A few pensive lines had been put to paper, but nothing much had been done. Interest had been lost in the project, and had been lost for the passed forty-five minutes. Caught in the terrifying clutch of his imagination Lo Bai shuddered as it gently stirred the silt and clouded the waters of his imaginations with bitter tasting memories.

He starred out the window a foot from his desk, it was opened wide letting in the warm spring air as it swept off the ocean that shimmered just beyond the law-ground flats at the base of the mountain. At the top floor of a three-story apartment block in the hills in the mountains of Hong Kong. The fresh spring air was doing little to calm him, and despite it being in the mid 20's Celsius he was sweating as if it were two times hotter. He brushed his brow with his war mangled hand and pushed back from the drawing desk.

His apartment was small and sparsely furnished. A studio apartment. Apart from the writing desk he used for drawing he had a dresser with six changes of clothes, a bed barely big enough for one and a half persons, and a sink and toilet that would be out in the open if it were not for the curtain the surrounded both. He had another sink and a small counter-top, ostensibly for cooking but he had no appliances or means to cook let alone store anything apart from a bowl of fruit or a bread-stocked bread box. Every surface available was covered with books and sheets of paper, organized into folders and numbered in a sequence. He had portfolios dating back to 1951 when he had begun doodling simple comic strips in charcoal; much of them had rubbed thin but he had managed to find a few unworn and getting the remaining charcoal bonded to the paper managed to save his early works, these he kept in a folder under his clothes in the small dresser. He also had a notebook, several actually containing a script written by he and two other friends, and notes from a much broader network of friends in the region; it was being passed around but he had not yet gotten to making his reviews of changes and passing them around.

He had two windows, at one he kept two banzai plants on the windowsill and grew a small potted pepper plant which sat on the floor nearest.

There was not much space for a single person to move around well in Lo Bai's apartment, and pacing it on a gimped leg was an act of avoiding cracking an elbow or a knee on the corner of the chair, dresser, or something else in the way. He stopped his pacing when he heard a phone ring. His phone. He stopped mid stride and looked over to the counter, where the ringing was coming out from within a stack of books. He made the few steps over, and moving aside the art books answered. “Lo Bai.” he answered.

“Lo Bai, hey this is Hui Feng.” the voice on the other end said, high pitched and excitable.

“Oh, hey Feng.” Lo Bai grumbled. Rubbing his forehead with the ball of his palm. He did not feel happy, nor did he sound happy speaking. His voice, naturally deep and rumbling was even harder and tense.

“Are you OK? You don't sound so good.” Feng asked him, concerned.

“It's nothing.” Lo Bai grunted.

“You should go see Master Fu, it might not hurt to make a trip out to Guangzhou again.”

Lo Bai grumbled something unintelligible in response. The Old Network was alive and well. And while Lo Bai could not ever say he was depressed as a part of the War experience, meeting up with fragments of the Network helped to calm the anxiety. He didn't need to be told that. “Anyways, I was calling to ask if you had the camera.” Feng added.

Lo Bai turned towards the door where on a coat rack a decade-old black and white hand held camera hung by a cracking leather strap from a coat hook, alongside a surplus army raincoat and over a pair of boots and shoes. Tapped to the wall above, a black piece of cloth embroidered with a white skull and crossbones hung to the wall, the Old Network. “Yeah, I have it.” he said.

“Are you using it?” Feng asked.

“Not right now, bu-” Lo Bai began. Feng however cut in quick.

“Listen, I need it for a day or two. Maybe three. My sister is getting married up in Shanghai and I thought I'd do her a favor and try to get some pictures of the ceremony while I was up. Can I take it?”

Lo Bai knew is the camera was passed along to him and if anyone else found out they'd be going to Feng to ask to borrow it. It was no single person's tool and it was passed around through a small insulated community, the Network. But he had asked, and it would be impolite to turn him down. So Lo Bai had to acquiesce.

“Excellent.” Feng said.

“I still got film on it I need to develop.” Lo Bai said.

“Don't worry about that. You can stop by the studio and develop your pictures. I'll take it from there.”

“Thanks.”

“How's the project going, by the way?” Feng asked. That was a tough question to answer. Lo Bai turned to the drawing desk and the sheets of paper scattered over it. On them various character drawings stood, sat, or walks across a white landscape of negative space in various reference positions.

“Where it was last week.” he said. While there had been progress it wasn't anything that seriously moved it ahead. When the work was done it had to be passed around. It had to be animated, assembled. It was a cartoon after all. Feng understood.

“You can drop the camera off at my place. I'll see about getting some tea.”

“Thanks, I'll be on my way.” Lo Bai said, and Feng hung up. So did he. Rubbing his head he felt the claustrophobic apartment becoming even more so and he counted his graces that he had reason to go out. Not like he would have anyways. He took the camera, and slipping on his shoes headed out the door.

Hong Kong's mountain fringes were a whole other world to the city itself. And while no designation was dropped between what was considered Hong Kong and not in the re-integration of the city at the end of the Revolution to be anywhere north of Kowloon or on the outlying islands was cause to wonder if one were really in a city. Apart from a few squat brick apartments barely higher than the maples and the mangroves. Sparse paved roads wound across the rolling hills and into the tiny village communities nestled at the bottom of lows in the soil and clay where farmers lived butted up to their rice patties. The city had been spreading itself out very slowly, and year by year people like Lo Bai wanting to leave the claustrophobia of inner Hong Kong could get a lottery ticket out into the New Territories, freeing up space in the old port-side neighborhoods in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. One by one the districts of the New Territories and Lantau island were dotted with small, almost cute small apartment blocks.

The revolution had nearly shut down the city. The isolation and autarky of the Hou administration closing down the ports and now only internal traffic came in and out of ports. If it had not been for post-revolution decisions of resettlement and reconstruction the total collapse of industry would have seen the thousands who had migrated into Hong Kong from the country outside the former British colony going back. But things were captured and held into a stasis, Lo Bai recalled some politicians said there was growth in Hong Kong, growth in the community. But the effects must only be what could be seen on paper, Lo Bai couldn't find it.

But he had sought out and took the chance to head out of the tightly packed, vertical community of Hong Kong and its densely packed seven, fourteen story apartments. Even if his apartment was not much bigger than what he once had he relished the freedom from the sounds of street hawks. He reveled in the absence of the clicking, squealing, and bells of the trolley system. No more had he chicken cages pressed against his windows, or pigeons on every edge. And every smell of man and machine was gone, replaced with its distant phantom blowing over from just over the Kowloon district line.

The walk to the nearest trolley station though was a brisk hike of almost twenty minutes along a narrow road that was variable paved or unpaved. Occasionally winding passed a bombed-out house left behind from when northern Hong Kong was a battlefield between Japanese and Republican forces, or the no man's land where Communist mountain guerrillas and Republicans battled. There were fences of wood and stone hidden behind clumps of wild tea trees and young pines, looking into the wild and gnarled branches hiding weather-worn fence posts Lo Bai could imagine a still undiscovered corpse hiding among the thickets.

The country road passed fenced in grazing fields where small herds of cows mulled across the pasture. Passed orchards, passed fields. By a semi-wild groves of trees and over-grown under brush until finally it let out on a paved main road. Through the middle tracks had been laid down in the asphalt. This was the trolley line.

Lo Bai lived in Sha Tin district, north-eastern of Hong Kong and. Mostly pasture land, still mostly farmed it was its own world. Hui Feng lived in Kowloon City..

Passing by some bushes, and a chest-high red postal box Lo Bai came on the street car terminal, a small wooden canopy with low benches. He looked at the clock hung up on one of its posts, it was 3:24 in the afternoon. In a few minutes the street car would be arriving and he could be on his way to the city center. He sat down and was soon joined a few minutes later by an elderly couple who took their seats on the far end of the bench. At 3:02 the trolley street car arrived, its contact sparking on the over-head wire as it came to a stop in front of them. They got on.

Seating himself in a distant section of the trolley Lo Bai leaned his head against the window and watched with detached interest the world and city passing by him. Wilderness and farm fields passed slowly by in rhythmic click-clacks and into small development. Tall trees shading the sides of brick buildings. A few wayward cattle standing atop a road side hill, or laying in a sandy hole cut into the side of a steep hill. Their relaxed expressions only half following the trolley. A few small beaten cars, a couple trucks passed the trolley on its whole journey, but much of the other traffic was men and women with rickshaws, ox drawn carts, or bicycles; some pulling small wagons laden with produce and goods throughout the city in a loose thin river.

At points the trolley stopped and a bell rang as a door opened, letting on more riders in the mid-afternoon or letting them off. Lo Bai did not pretend to notice them as they went through, little more than ghosts and detached souls to him as he laid his head against the window. He daydreamed as he went, slowly collecting himself to a less anxious state. The slow rocking movement of the trolley allowed that much, and the short sudden jolts it made as it popped over a small bump between the track rails kept the ride from being so regular he could lull himself to sleep.

He sat with his head against the window thinking about the world he and his companions were making. He had suggested the world, and passed it along to his closest friends over a year ago and they all made changes and adjustments to it, fleshing it out and adding dialog until it had turned into a script much longer than the ten to fifteen minute odd jobs they've done for the local theaters and cinemas in Hong Kong. For him to be honest, he felt that much of what they made in way of cartoons could not possibly reach a national stage, could not pass through the censors and approval board of some of the last openly operating organs of Beijing's total control. Still, he did not mind things being kept in the underground, informal circles; there was plenty of that in Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou alone.

But how did he get into animation? That puzzled Lo Bai plenty, he knew how he did as if it was recalling a road taken to get from A to B. Sometime during the Revolution, radical expatriates from America made their way into Asia. Forced out of their homeland by the end of their civil war they brought their passion for new ideas, their own guns, books, images, movies, and music and settled down in Hong Kong. Or rather: not immediately. The conditions of China at the time meant they had to head west first and to do so under otherwise illegal pretenses – to the KMT – to fall in with the Communists or other groups as international battalions. The movement of Communism in China was the only safe place they had to be in those times, and when the fighting was over they settled down on Hong Kong island as a Little America alongside various Little Britain's, Australia's, and New Zealands housing expatriate communities who found themselves trapped, unwilling to leave, or who came to China on the purpose to fight for its revolution and to live within its spirit. Among them they brought their western animation, and showed it in cobbled together basement cinemas as the world was torn apart above.

He had been inspired then, and fascinating. He started drawing, and when things cooled down and peace restored had been making gains in advancing his skill and scope. He had worked on a few state projects during art-school post-war in the late forties and early fifties. Found friends who worked in animation as well, within the Network and without. They made up an informal studio of sorts, mailing progress or visiting each others homes and doing work there. It was a disorganized sort of work, and chaotic but very human. Yet, he wondered how he got there, what force had driven Americans to China, to deliver black and white cartoon animation to inspire him as a shell shocked kid? If there was a God, he believed it may have been his intervention.

Which lead into what he was working on, what he and his friends had written and were producing. He had proposed the concept as being that, suggesting an outside force was the director of world events; no one was really free in this world. But that had changed, it turned from a god to aliens, and then from aliens to an alien machine that could manifest wishes or fears. Then it was asked: was it on our world, or in space? The answer came to space, and the heroes were now of a future millennium who traveled to seek this distant Wish Maker on its strange planet. And then they began to ask: what is a wish? What is the nature of a wish? How could it be articulated? Should it be?

The trolley car stopped. Shaken away from the doldrums of his own imagination Lo Bai saw he was in Kowloon now. He shifted in his seat and rose up. The trolley car was full now, and people were standing in the aisle. An old woman had taken a seat next to him and stood up to let him out. He went out the open back door and headed to the sidewalk and the pedestrian lot.

Standing at the door of Feng's apartment now, Lo Bai looked up. There wasn't any side-walk here, the road and the foundation of the building ahead of him seemingly phasing well into one another in the brick work. Looking up he counted the rising awnings and porches of each ascending level, 1, 2, 3... 6. Six floors above, and all around in the middle of Kowloon there he could hear and smell all the sensations he had moved to avoid. The faint cackling of hens, the passing of cars and trolley cars. Nearby a street vendor called out for customers, hawking noodles, buns, and eggs. Somewhere off in a distant alley there was a barking dog and higher up the building a window was open and a radio on and the sounds of a radio soap opera drifted down onto the street with the fluttering of pigeons wings to mix with the chorus and rise up again.

Stepping inside the afternoon light dimmed to a soft incandescent glow. Old men say in whicker chairs along the side of the hall with knees connected and a game of checkers unfolded across their shared laps. Lo Bai knew the way up, and he ascended each flight of stairs on automatic programming. Still though, to be among this concentration of people, in such a tight space his old anxieties bubbled and he knew he had to step out quick, or at least get out onto the balcony. He controlled his breathing, in and out slowly; keep from hyperventilating. He was among people now, not the makeshift hospitals all over again.

He stopped at a room numbed 417, it was a simple green door in a white hall; the numbers a faded bronze. He knocked, and inside the muffled sounds of movement could be heard. The door creaked open and a face peered through the narrow crack, and then opened all the way. “Hey!” Feng called, a tall lanky man with a broad bullish face and shallow, dark brown eyes, “I was wondering if you were coming.” he laughed, stepping back into his apartment.

Feng was stout and short, shorter than most. He cut his hair short along the edges, and kept the rest combed back across his head. Despite his heavy muscular build he moved with surprising grace around his small apartment, packed with a vast collection and furniture, he even had time and space to put a small family alter by the window looking out over the street.

Lo Bai passed a small mirror hanging on the wall and turned to look at himself in the reflection. A gaunt narrow face, and hair that was long; passed the ears. His gaze was light, but detached and distant. He scratched at some thin stubble along the side of his face and limped into the apartment. “Yeah, well I made it.” he said.

“I can see.” Feng laughed, he moved energetically about and Lo Bai gave up watching him quick. He scanned the room without taking in any details as his friend sailed between three small rooms, “My wife stepped out to get tonight's dinner. You want to stay?” he asked.

“I don't know.” Lo Bai answered.

“You don't know?” Feng answered, “Why not?”

Lo Bai shrugged, “Work, I suppose.”

“Well you're doing a good job at avoiding that.” Feng laughed from another room, “But while you're out why don't you stay a while. How are you feeling?”

“The same.”

“So moody and acting like shit smells, the usual?” Feng answered, reappearing in the living room as Lo Bai took a seat in a lime-green recliner. It smelled like rice wine. He didn't have anything to answer him with, and long having failed watching him dash about turned his head to the window and looked out into the city. There was not much to see, a slightly shorter building stood opposite, with the typical Victorian roof styling with added Chinese dragons for local flavor.

“When's the wedding?” Lo Bai asked out of politeness.

“I leave tomorrow.” Feng answered.

“You have a lot to get ready?” Lo Bai asked.

“Oh yeah, I haven't stopped moving since I woke up. You remember my old suit? I had to go get that fixed. I had to run several blocks to the tailor to pick it up today. I also forgot to check in on the train for tomorrow, and I had to run to do that. I don't need to be caught off guard.”

“Mhm.” Lo Bai nodded detached.

“So, you got your film out?” Feng asked.

Lo Bai remembered, he had the camera to hand over. Turning it over in his lap he flipped the door on the compartment holding the role of film and pulled the canister out. He passed the empty camera to Feng.

“What'd you get?” Feng asked.

“Alleys, oceans, background. Nothing spectacular.” he said, then thought to ask: “While you're up in Shanghai, you think you can get some pictures too?”

“Like what?” asked Feng

“I don't know, factory shots: you know. Pipes, vents, dumps. Anything... 'alien' I guess.”

Feng thought about the request for a moment, then shrugged assuredly. “Sure, why not. I'll see what I can do. You need the keys to the lab?”

“I do.”
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Letter Bee
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The Brothers' War, Part Three

They came unlooked-for by night; a half-dozen swift ships, made up of light wood and driven by the wind blowing at their black sails. If not for the mortars loaded on each vessel's deck, they would have seemed like relics of older and simpler times; no threat to the fleet of crude boats anchored on Lahad Datu's docks.

Sultan Al-Hakam Kiram, who accompanied the flagship of this small fleet, chuckled to himself before raising his Kalis, the half-wavy, half-straight blade glinting in the pale moonlight. It was the signal for each boat to start the assault.

The loud booms of artillery ended the silence of the night, as the heaviest ships of his brother's pirate fleet were struck first, exploding in bright red flames, causing panic as the wind blew and began to blow and fan the sparks around, setting most of the surrounding boats on fire. Loud splashes of water marked where the Sulu strike force had missed their shots, an oversight.

His joy was soon ended by the sound of artillery coming from the city itself, as well as the enemy's own small boats, some of them converted foriegn fishing vessels with machine guns and Moro Lantakas (native cannon usually made up of Bronze). The Sultan flashed his Kalis twice, a signal for his ships to begin a fighting retreat, sailing back to Sulu while firing parting shots from their mortars, a recent import from Socialist France. Another boom of mortar fire, and a large fishing boat blew apart, a testament to the efficiency of these new artillery pieces.

Then came a loud splash as a cannonball exploded in the waters close to his boat, soaking him in saltwater. His raiders fired back, using not just their mortars, but the bootleg Mosin-Nagants they had brought with them to battle. Sultan Al-Hakam Kiram felt a hand on his shoulder, gently pressing; it was time to get down to the deck and relative safety.

His ships, manned by experienced mariners, laid down overlapping fields of fire without hitting each other, causing more casualties to the pirate fleet as the docks of Lahad Datu were lit with a red-orange glow; the fire was spreading to the rest of the city. But although the wind favored them, the whirr of an outboard motor brought a cold spike of fear into the Sultan's heart; he had underestimated the hardware that his brother's pirates had mustered...or had been given; the majority of the newer vessels weren't just foriegn fishing boats, they were newly-made!

"They're catching up!" one of his sailors cried out as he sighted the motorized fishing boat, equipped with machine guns, raking his ship with fire as his men tried to aim their Mosin-Nagants, but were torn apart by a rapid spray of bullets; the causalties would have been higher with better aim.

"Surrender now!" an unnaturally loud voice sounded from the fishing boat; one of those new 'Megaphone' devices? "Surrender or you will be killed!"

The Sultan was prepared to signal his defiance; he still had mortars, but the repurposed fishing boat was struck from behind and shaken by what he presumed were one of his other boats, who had sensed an opportunity to fire a mortar. The fact that this fishing boat withstood that was a grim signal, but he didn't have time to think more about it as the wind began picking up once more, carrying away the boat. The artilleryman manning the Sultan's vessel's artillery, mounted on the bow, was still alive, and, facing another burst of machine gun fire, made another parting shot.

This time, the enemy fishing boat didn't stand a chance. But the destroyed ship was no signal of victory; another blast from his right showed one of the Sulu strike force's ships being blasted to bits, the cries and groans of wounded and drowning men filling his ears with cold guilt.

More shots were being fired; but they were now meant to cover the strike force's escape. Thanks to the winds favoring them, most of them - or at the very worst, half - would escape. The Sultan had already analyzed the situation and why he had lost; he had underestimated the enemy, the enemy's hardware, and the capabilities of himself and his men. A bitter pill to swallow; the fact that the old style of raiding was no longer viable, not without new inventions like radios, both ship-portable and stationary. That and outboard motors, like the ones on the boat that nearly caught him.

Speaking of those boats, the Lady President would love to know that a third party was donating foriegn equipment to the usurper in Sabah/North Borneo; the Rajah of Sarawak would find this knowledge of benefit as well. That ought to lessen the political fallout from his vigilante action, maybe even get the Federal Government supporting him and Sabiha...

((Note; this is inconsistent in tone with the latest posts because it was written a month ago then stored as a backlog in another site.))
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by DELETED32084
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The Siege of Mombasa
May 24th, 1960
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"So you ladies are leaving?" Commander Trevor stood in the open door of the small house that the Rhodesians had been occupying. "Take one casualty and you tuck your tails and run."

The Rhodesians for the most part ignored the man but their new leader, a lean Sergeant who might remind others of a Cheetah, stood to face the Commander from where he was packing his rucksack.

"Any fool can see you're going to loose this little fight, Commander." He spat the last word with an intense scorn. "Your treatment of their prisoners, lack of resources, poor morale, and their numbers are going to carry this day, anyone can see that. You played your cards and you played damn fucking poorly."

"A Rhodesian woman lectures me on warfare!" Trevor laughed but the Sergeant cracked a partial smile instead of lashing out.

"Aye, we won in Mozambique, we have stability and a homeland. How's that been going for you?"

The Commander's face turned red in an instant and he swung a heavy blow at the Rhodesians head. Caught off gaurd, the Sergeant managed to twist away and the blow glanced off his skull and he took a half step backwards. In an instant the other Rhodesians were on their feet as the Sergeant rocked back and launched himself in a spear tackle at the Commander.

The two men hit the ground with a thud and several punches were exchanged before the remaining Rhodesians managed to pull the two men apart. Two held the enraged Sergeant back while two others bodily hurled the Commander through the door and into the street where his surprised escort scrambled up from the dusty roadway.

For a tense moment the two groups faced each other, hands slowly going to weapons. Then the Commander spat in the dust between them.

"Alright then, you will fight me but not the real enemy. Get out. But you'll have no help from me or mine." He turned on his heel and stormed down the street towards Fort Jesus. The Rhodesians waited until he was gone before relaxing and backing into their house.

The Sergeant, wiping blood from his face, turned to a man sitting huddled over a radio that had not moved the whole time. "Any luck Perkins?"

The man looked up from his apparatus and nodded. "Aye Sarge, I have good and bad news. While you had your little tussle I was able to make contact with the Fast Destroyer Balla Balla. She's off the coast doing trial runs with new engines on board. They have direct orders not to interfere with the Communist action here due to the current state of peace between Rhodesia and Ethiopia. They will however stand to off the coast and take us aboard if we can find a boat."

As one the men looked through a shattered window towards Fort Jesus and its imposing bulk where it squatted over the bay. All the boats on their side of the river had been drawn up below the fort to protect them from the Communist forces and their ramshackle catamarans. It was a daunting prospect. Commander Trevor was hardly like to let them just have a boat at this point, and, if they didn't get one, they would be fighting the final battle with him whether they liked it or not.

"Well, no time to waste them. Let the Balla Balla know that we're going to try and make it out to them. Any boat not coming from the Fort should be considered hostile. We will pop blue if needed."

The radioman nodded and spoke rapidly into his radio. The reply was scratchy at best but the rest of the squad heard the reply.

"Roger that FRV, Balla Balla standing by for twenty four hours. After that, you're on your own lads, we've got our orders."

One of the men snorted and made a dismissive comment but the Sergeant waved the objection down. "Easy lads. We're not a regular army unit, we got ourselves into this, they don't even have to wait twenty four hours if they don't want to. We owe them now."

A grudging round of nods went around the room. The First Rhodesian Volunteers had indeed landed themselves in the midst of the this shit storm. Initially they had answered the call to help defend another white nation against the tide of darkness that had been sweeping across Africa with Rhodesia as the sole shining light. What they had found on arrival was a regime led by a man who slaughtered blacks like cattle. The FRV were hardly what you might call "civic minded" but they had all served with black soldiers against Mozambique and seen what was possible when the white minority worked with the black population rather than creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred.

It was a moot point now, their survival was at stake. They had seen how poorly Commander Trevor had handled the siege to this point. His men were well armed but badly led, running short on ammunition and even shorter on reinforcements. White folk were pretty thin on the ground in this area and soon they would be an extinct species in this part of Africa.

"Forget your gear. Weapons and ammo only. We're going to have to make a run for it. Or, we can ruck up and try and walk out of here?" The Sergeant said the last words were said with a sly smile at the chorus of good natured curses he got in return.

The men emptied their recently packed bags onto the dusty floor. They stuffed their pockets with ammunition, some food stuffs, and personal mementos they did not wish to leave behind. A few knelt in prayer, others checked the sharpness of their hand weapons, and everyone checked and rechecked the action on their weapons.

Dark was beginning to fall when the Rhodesians stepped out into the street. The sound of gunfire from Fort Jesus was sporadic at the moment, the fires on both sides of the river the only real light to be seen for miles. The odd civilian hurried by through the streets as the men made their way toward the fort. There were still several hundred white civilians in the city and they would surely die, or get raped and then die, depending on the victors tastes. The Rhodesians did not fancy sticking around to see that.

The relative quiet was shattered by three explosions near Fort Jesus that sent towering columns of water into the air. One of the men cursed quietly as he stumbled, startled by the explosions. No one laughed. This could only mean that an attack was coming. They began to walk faster.

The time it took for the next shells to land was puzzling to the Rhodesians. They had fought with artillery before and well served pieces could lob rounds within minutes of each other but whatever the Communists had took nearly twenty minutes to fire their next barrage.

One of the Rhodesians stopped abruptly so that two others had to move quickly to avoid him. "Fuck me lads. They're using catapults..."

In the gathering dusk they could just make out the heavy wooden throwing arms of the Communist weapons several hundred yards away across the river as they hurled their next load at Fort Jesus.

"Not Catapults, Trebuchets." Corrected another soldier as he squinted in the dark. "They must be throwing artillery shells. Unless they built explosive pots or some such. Clever fellas."

"And this is why that Trevor cunt is going to lose. No imagination and these black bastards are using medieval weaponry. We need to hustle." The Sergeant cut in. The shells were beginning to strike the fort now and the crack of a rifle saw one of the siege engineers topple into the blackness below. At least someone in the bloody fort was trying to fight back.

The Rhodesians began to run. They ignored shouts from the defenders they passed and instead of taking the high road towards the fort they turned left and went down the well worn stone stairs toward the harbour, the bulk of Fort Jesus hiding the siege engines from their sight. The defenders were light here as they got close to the harbour, far fewer than expected, it was evident that Trevor had even less men than he had led them to believe.

They reached the beach at a sprint to find a number of small craft, only a half dozen with engines, drawn up on the beach or tied to the stone quay. Several sentries were crouched on the stone staring into the darkness and as the Rhodesians reached them one raised his rifle and fired a shot into the gloom.

"Catamarans!" The sentry yelled, his next shot was rewarded with a scream and a splash in the darkness beyond. The white splash of oars could be seen clearly now coming around the edge of Fort Jesus just as the gunfire on the far side began to rise in intensity.

"Bloody attack is underway. Head for those two boats and give the blackies hell!" The Sergeant called out as he gestured to two sleek wooden yachts that rested in the deep water at the end of the pier.

Without further prompting the Rhodesians laid down a blistering curtain of gunfire. The white bursts of water showed as machine guns stitched their way across the surface to hit the catamarans and the war cries of the attackers turned into screams as the bullets tore into them.

The fight was hardly one sided however and there was nowhere to hide on the pier as the Communists returned fire. The sentry who had called the alarm fell with a bullet his throat and choked to death next to a Rhodesian who had fallen with a bullet hole in his forehead and a surprised look on his face.

More catamarans appeared from the darkness until the whole bay appeared to be covered with their slim white figures, their crews paddling madly as if they could sense victory at hand. The fire from the fort was slackening and the sound of hand to hand combat came loud to the Rhodesians below who were inching their way along the pier on their bellies. Two more of their number were hit and died on the stone, one clutching at a belly wound that would take hours to kill him.

Bullets tore overhead like angry wasps and only the movement of the catamarans and the darkness prevented the Communists from wiping the Rhodesian contingent out. The sound of bullets striking stone, steel, and wood, was all around them, and one of the boats they had picked out on the far end of the pier was slowly settling in the water as bullets shattered its hull.

The Sergeant, lying as low as he could, did the only thing he could think of. He pulled a blue flare from his pocket, lit it, and tossed it back towards land. It illuminated the pier but also brought help in the form of a massive geyser that exploded between two catamarans, sending them spinning through the air like toothpicks in a gale. The blue flare, used widely by the Rhodesian Security Forces to signal "I need help right fucking now" had evidently been expected by the Navy.

The sound of a heavy gun rolled over the bay and a moment later two more catamarans blew apart as another shell struck one and exploded against some piece of metal. Smaller cannons, 5 inch guns from the sound of them, joined in the action and several more catamarans simply dissolved into nothing as the shells slammed into them. Out in the darkness the muzzle flashes of the Balla Balla's guns were drawing closer and her bow wake was clearly visible now.

The Communist gunfire subsided drastically after the first few shells and now ended all together as the catamarans fled before the ship that bore down on them. The big guns fell silent as the catamarans scattered, either grounding themselves beneath the fort or returning the way they had come.

"MOVE!" The Sergeant roared and his remaining command, some fifteen able bodied soldiers and nine wounded, piled in the remaining boat, dangerously overloading it as they did so. The engine coughed to life and the boat pulled away from the pier, her decks almost swamping in the gentle surf that was buffeting the shoreline.

They were halfway to the Balla Balla when a launch appeared around her stern and bore down on them. Rhodesian Marines lowered their weapons when they saw the white faces and friendly hands pulled the exhausted Rhodesian survivors into the launch.

"Anyone left behind?" A Naval Lieutenant asked as the Sergeant was pulled aboard.

"Only the dead." Gasped the Sergeant as he slumped onto the anti-skid decking, never had he been so glad to be so uncomfortable in his life.

The Lieutenant nodded and flashed a light at the Balla Balla who acknowledged the signal and began to get underway, heading back out into the darkness with the launch racing to catch up.

For the Rhodesians, the Siege of Mombasa was over.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Vilageidiotx
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Vilageidiotx Jacobin of All Trades

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May 25th, Addis Ababa
---------------------------------

It'd been more than a week since the party, and the Palace was getting ready for the Emperor's departure yet again, after he decided to accompany his Minister of the Pen on a sight seeing tour of Sidamo. The announcement had been a surprise to everyone, including Desta himself. It wasn't coffee plants that attracted him to this tourist venture. Rather, it was his newest obsession. He planned to seduce her somewhere in the south so he could forget all about her and move on. This was a regular pattern for Emperor Sahle. He hadn't seen her since the party, but she was still in his mind.

He sat on the veranda at Gebi Iyasu, looking out at the fountain, and the pair of lions sleeping in the garden. Wicker mesob tables were set out in front of everyone, and lunch was served Ethiopian style, with several kinds of spicy stews in little piles on top of injera flatbread. A servant offered Jefferson Davis Bacon some clarified butter. The obese man gazed into the sunshine colored liquid before accepting some.

"My mammy used to call me 'Butters' when I was a boy." the American said, "She'd come out on the porch when it was time for dinner and yell 'Here Butters, come get your cornbread before your sister devours it all.' She was a little woman, the mammy was that is, my sister was fat even in those days. Mammy was little, but her voice carried through the countryside like the angel's trumpets." He laughed a choppy, nostalgia filled kind of laugh. Sahle hadn't been paying attention; his mind was still on conquering the redheaded Carnahan girl.

"What do you think of the food?" Desta Getachew asked, watching the American intently.

"In truth I feel rude eating with my hands in front of y'all. I've devoured my share of ribs, don't get me wrong sir, but this is such a pretty setting, and I don't want to stain the fine China." Bacon patted the mesob and laughed, heartier this time. While Desta ate slowly and Sahle ate mechanically, Yaqob occupying the fourth place didn't eat at all. He was like a guardian statue in front of an Egyptian tomb.

"Relax" Desta said, "Food don't make the man. Titles do. We know what powers we have. How we eat? Eh, who cares."

"I like you, sir." Bacon said, "You'd make a good southerner."

"What is this business you meant to discuss?" Desta's tone remained friendly and formal.

"Well, as I told you..."

"Explain the whole thing for his Majesty's sake." Desta said. Sahle turned his attention, not so much because he heard himself invoked, but rather because he felt Desta's eyes.

"There are only three East Asian powers that the United States gives a damn about; what Nepal chooses to do with its time interests us about as much as a rooster's tit. What we worry about, sir, is the mighty Pacific ocean. That means Japan, China, and the Philippines."

"What does this have to do with Ethiopia?" Yaqob interrupted.

"I'm getting to that, sir." Bacon said, "America don't trust any of the three. If it came to a war over the Pacific, we'd hope Japan comes out the victor. We understand the Japs. Under their Samurai hats, they're businessmen. But that means they're shrewd, and they'd squeeze us out of the market as soon as they got a chance. Now, the Chinese are reds, so we don't trust them for squat. The Filipinos are reds too, but they are the weakest out of the three, and that makes them vulnerable should we need them to be. Now if Hou was as a smart son of a bitch as he puts on airs to be, he'd of locked down the Filipinos and had the South China Sea to himself a long time ago. But he hasn't figured that out yet, so we have the opportunity to throw a wrench in the works for all parties involved, and that wrench is Ethiopian. See, we don't want a war, because war mean winners and winners mean we have tougher competition in those markets still available to us. We'd like to see all three standing still, knifes behind their backs. It's better for business that way."

"We have no reason to anger the Chinese government." Sahle said. That he thought to say that made him feel as statesmanlike as a reincarnated Zara Yaqob.

"What we propose isn't anything so drastic." Bacon said, "There are companies in the United States who have an interest in keeping the South China Sea in check, and they are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Now, you have a navy in the Indian Ocean, and I am under the impression it doesn't get used very much."

"True." Desta said, a slight grin on his face.

"We'd be willing to buy one fully functional battleship off of you, at discount of course, or else we would have furnished the ship ourselves, but we'll throw some trade preferences to sweeten the pot. I understand the coffee industry is a local favorite, and my people do love a good brew. So you chose the ship. The US navy would then move that ship to the Philippines and hand it to them as a gift. A free pawn in the hands of the weakest power. You could send an officer or two to assist in the training Filipino personnel."

Sahle's head hurt. He wished Desta had taken care of this himself. He didn't know what to say.

"This will have to be discussed with the Bahr Negus." Yaqob spoke for him.

"Not necessarily." Desta replied, "The Emperor's authority extends to the entire military. If the Imperial Court issues an edict regarding the navy, the Bahr Negus has to..."

"I'm aware of this." Yaqob interrupted, "But the Bahr Negus isn't just some market town Nagadras. Disrespecting him is a bad idea."

"Who rules in Ethiopia?" Desta maintained the same manner and tone, but there was an irritable touch just behind the surface. "His Imperial Majesty, or his bureaucrats?"

"I will let you boys straighten this out." Bacon said.

"We will." Desta said, "If the Emperor has no objections between now and tomorrow, expect a confirmation on your desk before the sun sets."
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Letter Bee
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The Golden Lady

Contessa Aurelia Dizon was the first to accept Priscilla Aglipay-Rizal and the Second Katipunan's offer of clemency in exchange for allegiance; this allowed her to keep most of her estates and even more of her wealth, most of which was in America and Spain. True, the middle-aged woman - the same age as the so-called Lady President - had to obey pesky labor laws and grant her peons more power, but it was a small price to pay to keep her ancestral territory and mansion. A mansion whose balcony she was looking out from as the sun rose.

A servant; Julio, one of her remaining loyal retainers, walked to just behing her side. The old man was clad in light but formal clothing, and was already carrying a plate with her favorite light teas. He would then say, "The tenants have sowed the new crop from Ethiopia. It is called Teff, right?"

Aurelia nodded, and spoke as she smiled, "Yes. The seeds are small so more of them can be sown, plus they can be cooked with less heat and fire. Another step to increased food production and self-sufficiency, or so 'The Agriculturist'," she chuckled as she talked about Archibald Santos, "Would preach. However, what sustains a small farmer will be profitable for the remaining large landowners in the nation." She then picked up her sweet tea and took a sip, enjoying the cool winds of the countryside. After several minutes of this, she would prepare to return to her chambers, but not before saying: "Poor Priscilla; never to enjoy the comforts of life."

From her desk she would take out her paperwork; deals made to export produce through Subic Bay and the 'Worker Co-Operatives there. Although proven inferiors, the co-operatives of Subic served a purpose.

She would observe the numbers and words as they informed her of continued profits from the toil of refugees and immigrants from the rest of Southeast Asia who wanted a taste of the Philippines' food security. At the same time, however, letters from the leaders of the corrupt Co-operatives were worrying about a recent Executive Order sent by the Lady President herself. This Executive Order had ordered that the process of naturalization for immigrants and refugees - after careful vetting and voluntary attendance in 'citizenship courses' - be handled by the local chapters of the Subic Youth League instead of the Workers' Co-operatives. As the Youth Leagues were among the most enthusiastic followers of the Lady President, it was clear that this was a sign of mistrust with the Co-operative heads. Aurelia chuckled to herself; took Priscilla long enough to find out that the oppressed of one day were tomorrow's oppressors.

Another servant then entered; Maria, a young woman in her 20s' in well-maintained servants' clothes. The girl carried a packet of unopened letters with traditional wax seals, and bowed deeply to Aurelia as she handed over the packets. the Contessa looked over the letters; not bothering the ones marked 'Subic' as they contained more complaints. In her mind, she had already cast them aside; the Lady President had found them out and they were useless to her now. Best to find other avenues of export.

Instead, she opened the letters from America, where many of her relatives resided. A few talked of life in that country and asked for her permission to plan an Anti-Priscilla - not Anti-Filipino, Anti-Priscilla - lobby in San Francisco; Aurelia planned to veto anything more than verbal efforts in that direction. This was not because of any loyalty to Priscilla, but because letting the Filipino Exiles organize anything would reduce their dependence on her for returning the country to the rule by their traditional betters.

For a brief moment, she mused; did she really want her relations and other members of the former aristocracy to return? After all, those who sided with Priscilla like she did...they may have lost money, some slices of land, their pride, and were burdened by uppity peasants, but they didn't have competition. The remaining planters and large landowners actually had it better by staying and letting the Lady President and her small pool of 'professional idealists' butt against the limits of their power. After all, 'class solidarity' was for poor people; Aurelia was the top dog in the Philippines' landowning scene and she was not letting that go.

Opening another letter, she smiled; the Bangko Sentral were now ready to pay her back for the money she had shelled them in the past...by bankrolling the political party she was about to start.

What would she call it? The lower classes had more power than ever, so she had to appeal to them. And one thing she knew is that people will always want more, and that the Lady President had failed to give her people technological advancement, entertainment, and all the good things in life Americans now enjoyed. So why not give it to them as long as her wealth would grow richer? And ironically, Hou's China had led the way with its January 2nd Movement. And so, like every good Filipino, she will pirate that idea...she would call it the May 25th movement...
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Vilageidiotx Jacobin of All Trades

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May 25th: The Siege of Mombasa
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Thomas Jefferson Murungaru stood on the ramparts of Fort Jesus, loving every second counting down toward his eminent victory. Mombasa was on fire. Some of this fire was metaphorical, the fire of combat. Some of it was literal, the effect of wayward shells on the wooden buildings surrounding the old fort. What happened to Mombasa didn't matter to him. What mattered was that it was falling. Finally, after all this time, he was free.

Agricola and Li Huan stayed on the other side. Their idea of Communism didn't include the loot and pillage of a captured town, and they look defeated when they realized it was Murungaru's intention to let his men loose for the rest of the day. It was true that Marx didn't theorize about the economics of sacking a city. There was no C-L-M equation where Commodities are Looted and then are turned into Money. Well, not yet anyway. Perhaps he'd add that to the canon of Marxist thought. His own theory of 'Hallelujah, Mombasa has finally fucking fallen!'

The screams, the shooting, and sounds of destruction washed over him and past him. He paced the battlements, thinking on what came next. Should he go to Revolution-Town? Put down the rebels that surrounded their capital? Or was his place here, rebuilding what would be the main port of the Swahili nation? There were corpses on the walkway, but he passed them without thinking too much of them. This place smelled like death. He stepped over bloody bodies as if they were logs.

"Comrade commander!" he was startled by a voice behind him. Murungaru turned around and saw the smiling face of a blood spattered soldier. "We've captured Trevor, sir."

"What a good day!" Murungaru exclaimed, slapping the man on the shoulder, "Take me to him. Let's make it a better day."

They passed by shattered buildings as they walked down the twisting roads of Old Town. Tongues of fire licked the bodies of dead whites. Orders were to take their enemies prisoner, but in the excitement of conquest, the conquerors were killing men and using their wives. No reporters were let into the city. Foreign journalists were entertained on the other side of the bay by Agricola, who was trying to keep them busy looking at the trebuchets that won the battle. It was a mile walk until they left the smoke-choked roads of Old Town and entered a section meant for tourism. This place was open, populated by restaurants and hotels where Communist soldiers were eating and drinking like kings at an apocalyptic feast.

Soldiers and officers met him crowded in front of the hanging motel. The most recent victims of Trevor's morbid taunting were placed on the ground and covered in blankets. Commander Trevor knelt on the ground, a black eye on his face, his thick shoulders heaving as he stared hatefully at his captors.

"You have lost your city, Mister Trevor." Murungaru said.

"I killed as many of your red golliwogs as I could." the captive grinned defiantly, staring Murungaru straight in the eye. "Kill me and you can do whatever you want. This is your hellhole now."

"I am not a murderer, Mister Trevor." Murungaru said. Communist soldiers gathered around the scene, yelling hatefully at the captive but keeping their distance, interested in seeing what their leader was doing. Murungaru had an audience.

"Call yourself what you want." Trevor looked straight ahead, "But kill me."

Many of the black soldiers came here fresh from looting. Their pockets were stuffed, and their bodies were draped with jewelry. Some wore expensive hats they had found regardless of the intended gender. Murungaru saw this. He took a lady's brimmed hat from the head of one of his men and held it like a bowl. "You fought well for capitalism, so I will honor you with the ritual of your people." Trevor looked uncertain. Murungaru orbited Trevor holding out one palm forward, motioning his people to back away. They did. He allowed for a pause pregnant with suspense before he spoke.

"Highest bidder gets to knock out this man's teeth." he said boldly, holding the hat above his head. Offers came as a sudden roar like in a stock market, made up of stolen paper money and jewelry. Murungaru couldn't keep track. He picked a winner at random. A big bald headed man put a gold locket in the hat and walked up to Trevor. He had one punch, and he used it well, sending the white man's head flying back, teeth and blood spraying onto the men holding him down.

More came in. They bought the write to punch, to kick, to cut, to stomp. The hat overflowed with trinkets and paper money. Murungaru watched as Trevor went from defiant, to punch-drunk, to broken, to knocked out. sputtering on the ground.

"Fetch water." Murungaru ordered. They went to Tudor Creek to collect it, bringing it back and dumping the brine unceremoniously in their enemy's face.

Murungaru squatted in front of his beaten foe. They stared eye to eye, as much as they could considering Trevor's swollen face. "You will survive for a time."

"Kill..." Trevor slurred, pulling against the men pinning him down, but his strength wasn't there. Murungaru grabbed a handful of paper money and stuffed it in Trevor's mouth. It soaked up the blood. He pulled a match, struck it, and lit the dry half of the money on fire. Small streams of flame parched Trevor's lips.

"Put him up." Murungaru ordered, "We'll take him with us." They dragged him away, the flaming money in his mouth flagging, to the further taunts of the Communists.

He had made his decision. Mombasa was somebody else's problem. It was time to leave.
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