[i][b]February 21st, 2014, 0930
L'Hôtel des Mers Claires.
A Private Island In The Seychelles [/b][/i]


[b][color=778899]Vitalli "Kennedy" Tkachenko [/color][/b]

Four sets of eyes (and one pair of ears) perked up as the first operative entered the room, the human team leaders and the canine sidekick all watching as Jonathan took his place. Vitalii could see Arsala opening the file on the second SBS man and was spurred to run through his resume. A Scotsman who had joined the Royal Marines as soon as he was of age, passed through Sandhurst to become an officer before hopping into dark operations with the Boat Service, saw action in Iraq before being invited into MI6 to collect [i]kompromat [/i]and the like. 

All in all, not disimiliar from Noah. The older commando hadn't indicated that they had worked together when Daytrip was in the planning phase, and a bit of mental math comparing their ages made it clear they couldn't have-Vilkas would only have been in the service a couple years by the time Agnew was being sent to Italy deep cover. Still, being from the same service would hopefully mean that they worked well together. 

[color=778899]"Good morning."[/color] Kennedy said politely, his greeting matched by only a dip of the head from Noah and a vague grunt from Templeton, still engrossed in her reading.  

A woman arrived next, and a damned big one to boot-had a face carved up like someone had used it as a butcher's block. That was Van Straaten, the Boer-Afrikaner. Joined the SANDF only a few years-post Apartheid, was mostly involved in border security until the Heavenfall hit and then saw action against various dissidents and criminal elements. She hopped into the Special Forces after a few years and saw real combat against peer or near-peer forces. After an incident in which her team was potentially sold out, she was discharged with some new scars as souvenirs. After that she devoted herself to anti-poaching activities. She was so devoted in fact that she formed her own personal, quite possibly illegal operation that cost her job, and since then had been working in entertainment and more recently a PMC.

An interesting woman, to say the least. She hadn't been Kennedy's first choice; while he could respect someone who was dedicated to their principles her willingness to do things her way had given him pause. Still, Arsala had convinced him to bring her on. As she noted, the Recces were hardcore, all of them parachute qualified and used to long treks through hard terrain with little supplies. Compared to the Americans or the old Soviet groups they lacked foreign operational experience, but individually they were more than professional. 

Vitalli had been about to speak up when Arsala received a notification on her pad, the American turning it so he could see. 

[color=778899]"[i]Der'mo...[/i]fine. Alright everyone, we're starting strong with a cock-up. There were concerns about surveillance, which, while ultimately minor, still means that the rest of our merry band are being delayed in arrival.[/color]

His English was grammatically perfect, albeit somewhat stilted and oddly flat in intonation.  

[color=778899]We will meet them on sight, which means you two get the briefing all to yourselves. I'm Vitalli, callsign Kennedy. I give the orders around here, but let's refrain from the sir stuff, yes? These two are my Team Leads, Arsala aka Templeton and Noah aka Scouse."[/color]

The pair dutifully nodded to the others, Arsala scratching behind her dog's ears as Noah shifted on the balls of his feet.

[color=778899]We'll do proper introductions later, but for now let's focus on the job at hand. I will be giving you all the important pieces, but the entire report will be available for you to read on your datapads. So-"[/color]

He pushed off against the wall and stepped aside, his two team leads following suit as she produced a small remote from his pocket. With the press of a button the lights dimmed and a projector turned on, producing a satellite image of-. 

[color=778899]"San Borondon. Discovered by the Spanish and named after the mythical island of Saint Brendan, it's about one and a half times the size of Taiwan with a population of fifty million. About twenty-five percent of that is their capital city of Les Tirailleurs in the north, another sixth in the smaller city of Whitmore in the south, the rest is scattered across towns and villages around the island. First owned by the Spaniards, then the French, then the English, and finally the Japanese before declaring independence, it's extremely multicultural, with Spanish, French, and English as official languages and plenty of others coming in from World War era forced labor migration and more recent refugees from Heavenfall."[/color]  

The slideshow progressed, displaying three photographs: one in black and white of a dignified older man, the second in color of someone younger, perhaps college-aged, and the third a digital picture of a middle-aged military officer gesticulating in the middle of a speech. The first two were clearly related, with the same straw colored hair and European features. The final subject was of different blood judging by the streaks of black in his mostly grey mane and his obvious Asian heritage. Old burns decorated his face and hands, the skin paler and smoother in patches compared to the rest of his tanned features. 

[color=778899]"After ousting the Japanese Borondon was ruled by the King Alonso Acosta the second, who you see behind me. His family was set up by the Spanish to rule as local governors. They were Western-educated, extremely wealthy, and spent the war in comfortable exile in London. Still, he's a symbol of national pride so the people welcome him back with open arms. His son, Cristóbal, is much less liked. He relies on the army to force people into compliance and then makes the mistake of cutting their pay. He was killed in 1970 and replaced by the man at the top of our to-do list, General Henri Cheung."[/color] 

They had all heard the name in the initial pitch that had brought them on board. Still, some things bore repeating. 

[color=778899]"He is no pushover, a hardcore army officer who refused to give up names when the monarchists tortured him. Cheung starts fine but as the decades go on he falls back on the usual to maintain power. Suppression of the media, corruption as a way of governing, the imprisonment and killing of dissidents. An unpleasant person, but a smart one. He benefits greatly from the Heavenfall as Borondon is so remote that it was largely spared. In the wake of the event he makes some powerful friends whose interests do not align with the N/UN, namely the New Central African Alliance and megacorporations such as Montrose Incorporated, Universal Manufacturing Conglomerate, and NeoDyne Technologies. They give him cash and supply his forces with weapons and training,  he sends excess population to work for them and provides land that they use to set up manufacturing facilities. It's also all but confirmed that he allows multiple criminal organizations to operate within the country in exchange for protection money and the occasional use of their muscle."[/color]

Kennedy turned away from the screen, eyes straining in the darkness as he looked over his team.  

[color=778899]"The N/UN wants him gone. His regime presents a subtle but insidious threat to their interests and the stability of the region but they can't invade a non-aggressive state without risking retaliation from the Africans and the mega-corps, not to mention that attacking the country is more likely to make the populace rally around him. That's why we're going in. We'll be dropped off via smuggler plane to meet up with a coalition of left and right-wing guerrillas, and from there we'll form a plan of action. Our goal is straightforward: capture or eliminate Henri Cheung and his key organization members to pave the way for a more amenable government. Any questions thus far?"[/color] 

As he spoke Arsala handed out tablets to Hippo and Tepid, a sticky note with the temporary passcode attached to each.

[hider=San Borondon Overview]
[b]Country Information
[/b]
[i]Name:[/i] San Borondon. Named after the mythical Saint Brendan's Island by the Spanish, it's kept its name through the centuries under different governments.

[i]Size:[/i] Roughly 20,000 square miles, or around 1.5 times the size of Taiwan 

[i]Population:[/i] Approximately 50 million. Almost a quarter of that is in its capital city, Les Tirailleurs (usually just called Tira by locals). Another sixth of the population lives in Borondon's second-largest city, Whitmore. The remainder is split between various towns and villages across the island.

[i]Language:[/i] Its official languages are Spanish, French, and English, although Cantonese is commonly spoken due to the huge influx of laborers brought in by the Japanese from Guangdong and Hong Kong. Other common languages are Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and Hindi, introduced to the island by the waves of refugees brought by the Heavenfall.

[i]Overview:[/i] San Borondon is the archetypal post-colonial state: unstable and reeling from a long history of being pillaged by foreign powers, with political boundaries that don't adhere to traditional tribal regions, a strong distrust of the West, and natural resources still ripe for plundering. This is of course a gross simplification, but it's not entirely inaccurate.

The tragic fact is that San Borodon has a vibrant and eclectic culture formed from the mixing of ancient traditions, European and African influences, and later Chinese immigration. Food, language, and music are shaped by this broad mixture of identities, but its overshadowed by the country's tragic past.

A large island nation in the Pacific, San Borondon is remote, sitting approximately three thousand miles away from Hawaii. Discovered by the Spanish in the late 1600s, the island was found to be rich in natural resources (namely gold). This and its tropical climate, well-suited to a variety of cash crops, made it a target for the European empires. It switched hands from the Spanish to the French to the English, and briefly during World War 2, the Japanese. Throughout its three hundred-year occupation, San  Borondon's native peoples fought an on-and-off guerrilla war against the various foreigners. 

The island was skipped during the island-hopping campaign of the Pacific Theatre but supplies and training from the American OSS and British SOE allowed it to liberate itself, the local resistance movement overcoming the Japanese garrison and declaring sovereignty. Britain, focused on rebuilding and already embroiled in colonial disputes in India, Malaya, and Kenya, was uninterested in fighting to keep a relatively small and incredibly distant portion of its empire. San Borondon was thus independent.

The monarchic Kingdom of San Borondon was ruled by the Acosta family, the descendants of the lineage put in power by the Spanish to run the colony. Western-educated and obscenely wealthy, the royal family was nevertheless seen as a symbol of Borondonian pride and largely supported by the people. King Alonso II, the hugely popular exiled leader, returned to rule throughout the 1950s.

San Borondon was essentially in the middle of nowhere but occupied an important strategic space as a midpoint between the Americas and Asia. Thus, it spent the Cold War being courted by both sides. Alonso cleverly played the East and West against each other, publicly leaning one way and then the other to leverage material support and training. The country dealt in a huge amount of shipping as well as the sale of natural resources, but the wealth remained with a few important families and their friends/investors. Most of the island lived in poverty, with those on the coast subsisting on fishing and those inland mining, farming, or working in the cities. The capital was essentially a larger Kowloon, millions of people packed into high-rise tenements and shanties. This was, of course, a breeding ground for crime, with foreign and domestic gangs seeking to control the smuggling on the island. 

Alonso, popular though he was, failed to solve the island's overarching problems. Towards the end of his reign there was growing discontent, and when he died in 1960 his son, Cristóbal, inherited a shaky situation.

Cristóbal was not up to the task. Raised in luxury outside of San Borondon, he had little attachment to the island and was more interested in hobnobbing with celebrities than he was in caring for his people. Half-hearted economic reforms failed to restore their trust in the monarchy so Cristóbal used oppression and fear to maintain power. This was not to last, as budget cuts to the military made his officers turn on him. By 1970 Cristóbal was dead and his family thrown out of the country, replaced by President Owen Granger. Granger, initially well-respected, was plagued by rumors of sexual impropriety and having collaborated with Imperial Japan. While these rumors started organically, they were seized upon by his political rival General Henri Cheung. Granger resigned in 1975, and General Cheung took power shortly after.

By virtue of overthrowing the now-hated monarchy (and putting the blame for all of the nation's problems on them), Cheung began his reign as Interim President with high popularity. He continued in his predecessors' footsteps by treading a line between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and worked to balance his approval by the right and left wings of his own country. He presented his regime as a return to traditional values abandoned by the late King Cristóbal and now-deposed Granger while implementing a literacy drive inspired by Castro's. Although there was still discontent Cheung was far more adept at managing it than previous rulers, wielding both carrot and stick to keep himself in power. 

There were multiple attempts on his life through the decades, each one causing him to tighten his grip. By the end of the 90s he was unpopular but viewed as a lesser evil than what came before. Elections had ceased and civil rights were curtailed, but San Borondon maintained course.

The cataclysmic Heavenfall was something of a blessing in disguise for the country, as its remote location meant that it was spared from most of the destruction. The shipping industry that had sustained it for so long was of course hugely reduced and there were no more Eastern or Western blocs from which it could source funds, but General Cheung was quick to make new friends. 

With the balance of power shifting south, he allied himself with the New Central African Alliance. The burgeoning alliance was growing quickly and needed cheap labor to expand, and San Borondon now had a huge number of refugees that it could not afford to care for. A deal was struck, the excess population being essentially loaned out to the NCAA for construction and manufacturing. Meanwhile, the rising megacorporations were looking for places willing to host their facilities. Montrose Incorporated, Universal Manufacturing Conglomerate, and NeoDyne Technologies all courted General Cheung, and in addition to yearly payments directly to him, they agreed to supply his military with weapons, vehicles, and other equipment in exchange for land rights and exemption from pollution controls. In addition to the semi-legal skullduggery of the megacorps, the General is widely suspected of condoning the entirely illegal activities of various criminal syndicates. San Borondon is a known midpoint for arms, drug and human trafficking, and international authorities believe that Cheung tolerates the activities of local and foreign gangs in exchange for a cut of the profits and use of their muscle.

As of the current day, the regime's enemies are a strange assortment spanning the political spectrum. The left wing considers Cheung a vicious crony capitalist of the worst type, openly selling the nation out to big business and organized crime to enrich himself and his favored lackeys. The right sees him as an opportunistic liar who talked tough about returning to traditional values and supporting San Borondon's middle and upper classes, but in actuality allowed immorality to flourish while choking local industry in support of foreign interests. 

Finally, the N/UN simply cannot overlook San Borodon any longer. As a satellite nation (or at least, ally of) the hostile NCAA and the amoral megacorporations, it presents a threat to the safety and stability of the N/UN's constituent nations, not to mention its repressive treatment and forced disappearance of its own citizens as well as its encouragement of international crime. That said, the N/UN cannot simply march in and replace the General with a leader they like more without angering both the NCAA and the corps, and even if it wanted to risk retaliation, it's stretched too thin to do so. It simply cannot deploy the manpower required to overthrow a fairly stable and very well-armed government. Not to mention that with San Borondon's history of resistance against imperial powers, any conventional action is likely to cause the population to rally around their leader.[/hider] 

[@Rhona W] [@PrinceAlexus]