TheEvanCat

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Gyumri, Armenia

The Gyumri policemen crowded around a table covered with memos, manifests, photographs, and pertinent pieces of evidence. Two military policemen from the Gyumri base talked quietly with each other. A rack of weapons, tagged with evidence stickers, stood next to the table as Tigran quietly inspected one of the rifles that Private Marovian had hidden in his room. The metal receiver of the rifle bore, at the base near the rear sight, a serial number and the location of manufacture. All four of the rifles’ identifying information matched with the service carbines that went missing in Marovian’s truck. A military interrogation of Private Marovian had been conducted on-base by military police officers, and which had led to the location of another arms cache underneath a Russian restaurant in the eastern ghettos. The truck, too, was found by a hiker in Lake Arpi. Thirty kilometers north of the city, it had appeared that Private Marovian drove the truck to the edge of a dirt firebreak. In a move that somewhat impressed Tigran, the young arms dealer then put the truck in neutral and pointed it down a hill, jumping out before it started rolling too fast.

The military police presented their investigations to the Gyumri department: Marovian was cooperative with the investigation thus far, but Karlovian had fled to the north and slipped across the Georgian border upon hearing about the recent murders. He was terrified, and rightly so, that a police investigation would be coming towards him. A military investigator had been sent north to check with Border Service posts and see if he had emigrated across the border through a checkpoint, especially since the Karlovian family automobile was reported stolen a few days prior. That, however, was no longer Chief Tigran’s problem. The weapons found in the Russian restaurant were part of the stolen arms, and the location was suspiciously close to the residences of several suspected Mafiya lieutenants. It was determined that the lieutenants were trying to incentivize teens and unemployed young adults with money to start hitting Armenian establishments with these weapons, furthering tensions in the city. What the Mafiya sought to gain by inciting race riots was still unclear, but the police were beginning crackdowns on any and all gang activity to try and start building an information network from apprehended suspects.

After the conclusion of the military investigation, one of the MPs turned to Tigran: “Chief Korkarian, we’ve wrapped up all we can for you. The rest of the weapons fall into our jurisdiction, so we are focusing on finding those arms caches. Unfortunately, aside from that, we can’t help you with the Russians. That’s for the Gyumri boys, since you started the case.”

Tigran nodded, shaking the man’s hand. “I understand. Thank you, Corporal,” he said, eyeing the black chevrons on the soldier’s collar. “The weapons are still a big part of it, and we’ll help you once we uncover more of this. Marovian had a ‘sell-list’ that we sent to Sergeant Kavalian. Nothing like any sort of official ledger, he was a little bit sloppy on that, but it was addresses and names.”

The MP smirked, crossing his arms. “We’re excited to kick down some doors. Beats grabbing drunks who are too wasted to fight back well.”

Tigran just nodded solemnly, keeping his thoughts to himself. He knew all about cocky young cops taking risks and going straight for the action. They were like soldiers, almost, and every time they learned the same lesson: policing, especially nowadays, was nasty and sometimes brutal. The first time they see a real victim of heavy assault, murder, or rape, they reevaluate their thoughts on door-kicking and shooting bad guys. It broke some people, jaded others, but nobody ever really was the same. Nothing could be said to them before then, so Tigran thanked the Corporal and escorted him to the jeep waiting outside. He and his partner threw on their taraz soft covers, waved, and jumped in their vehicle to roar off down the road. Tigran sighed and turned to Alex, who was beside him. “Fucking kids,” he muttered. “I hope they don’t crash.” His partner nodded, shrugged, and put his hands in his pockets. They both went back to their desks to handle administrative work.

A few minutes of form-filing had passed before the telephone on Tigran’s desk rang. The patrol chief put his pen down, reached for it, and picked it up to hear his dispatcher in the telephone room: “Chief, two patrols are requested for a vehicle fire in Yerkatgtsi Norvan east of the rail depot at the Axayan-Garegin intersection. Looks like a sedan on fire in an intersection, possibly arson. Firefighters are heading on scene now.”

“Alright, I’ll be there,” Tigran answered, before hanging up the phone. He grabbed his blue policeman’s jacket that was draped off the back of his chair and his duty belt from the coat rack. He busted out through the door, to find Alex smoking a cigarette next to the coffee table. “We’re going to East Gyumri,” he said. “Grab your things, I’ll pull the car out.”

Alex simply nodded, moving towards his desk to grab whatever gear he needed to put on. Tigran, meanwhile, dipped out through the side exit of the police office and withdrew his key ring from the pocket of his pants. Getting through several fence doors, he lightly jogged over to his patrol vehicle: trusty number seventeen, complete with scratches on its bumper from pushing cars off the road and a buffed-out scattering of shotgun pellets on the trunk. Tigran and Alex took care of it, however, and kept it freshly painted after anything happened to it. He swung open the doors to the motor pool, hopped in the driver’s seat, and whipped it out to the front of the office where the second patrolmen were already waiting. Tigran honked his horn at Alex on the curb, who shook the hand of the second car’s passenger and jogged over to get in. “Ready, chief?”

The pair took off, carefully swinging around the corner before heading towards the main through-street of the city. Gyumri was one of Armenia’s largest cities but also one of its oldest. The streets were crowded and winding, having evolved from pedestrian alleys to avenues traversed by horses to automobile roads. One road, Haghtanaki Avenue, flanked the long and narrow Victory Park through a north-south slice of the city: it provided the quickest way to get from one end to another and had been widened for buses, trucks, and the increasingly numerous cars owned by Armenians. Despite this, police response time in the Russian-dominated ghettos in the east often suffered as the patrols struggled to quickly get through. While major infrastructure improvements had been constructed in local areas by provincial governments, a grand national highway system was still being debated in Parliament. The police still had to take constrained city roads to get from one neighborhood to another. It was thirty minutes of driving through traffic, sometimes requiring a siren to move dawdling drivers out of the way, before Tigran and Alex spotted the plume of smoke rising from an intersection.

Yerkatgtsi Norvan had developed a reputation as the bad part of town. Part of that stemmed from the Russians, but it was also just a neighborhood occupied almost exclusively by the working class. Due to its proximity to the train tracks and warehouses of Gyumri, many people worked industry. It was dirty, loud, and smelled of burnt coal constantly. City officials preferred to spend their sanitation budgets elsewhere, providing only the bare minimum of services to apartments here. Russian graffiti covered the bare concrete public housing blocks, shoes dangled from electrical wires, trash blew down empty alleys, and passerby stared at the police. Tigran and Alex stopped their car a safe distance away from the central intersection of the neighborhood and cautiously dismounted. Alex put his hand to his pistol belt, feeling for the wooden handle of his revolver as both of them fanned out to opposite ends of the street. There were no more onlookers, nobody coming to see what was happening. Just the crackling of a fire as the gasoline from the car burned. Tigran eyed the windows of the drab apartment blocks, barely noticing a long object appearing at the top floor of a seven-story building.

“Gun!” he shouted, diving to cover by a streetlight as a shot rang out. His ageing body hit the ground with a thud as a rifle round shattered the window of the police car. Alex tried to return fire with his handgun, putting three wildly inaccurate downrange before kneeling down next to a bus stop. “It’s an ambush!” Tigran repeated, just as a group of people appeared from behind a fence. There were four, armed with shotguns and one with a carbine. Alex swore and ducked down again: one of them leveled their piece and fired off a spray of pellets towards the police. Tigran rolled past the streetlight and got into cover in an entranceway beside him as another volley of shots ripped across the street. He struggled for the revolver in his leather holster, pointing it down the street to shoot off a round. He was now separated from his partner, on opposite ends of the street, outnumbered and outgunned.

In the distance, someone called out in Russian. “Politsiya! Politsiya! Von tam!” The four gangsters fanned out into the road, exchanging more shots with the Armenian police. A carbine round smashed into the concrete by Tigran, blowing chunks of it down onto the sidewalk and hitting the old man with a concussive thud. He stuck his arm out of cover and returned shots before drawing it back in to reload shells from his cartridge belt. He had personally never seen a use for revolver speedloaders like the younger cops, but now could see where they would be handy. The gangsters moved into cover, just as Alex looked back to Tigran from his position.

“I’m gonna go for the shotgun!” he yelled across the street. “Cover me!”

Tigran nodded, got up onto a knee behind the cover of his concrete alcove, and scanned the road with his pistol. Alex stood up, took a deep breath, and started sprinting to the police car. The Russian sniper in the apartment block tried to zero in on the cop, but he was too slow or poorly trained to get a good lock on: a shot went high, shattering a window further down the street. Alex dove into cover by the trunk of the car and fumbled for the latch. It popped open with ease, and he reached for the wood-stocked shotgun strapped into the trunk’s floor. Cursing as he loaded its magazine with shells and racking it, Tigran’s partner kneeled back down and leaned towards the side of his cover. “Come out, fuckers!” he shouted. He followed up in some of the only Russian words he knew: “Syuka blyad!”

A gangster, sufficiently enraged by this, emerged from hiding behind a street corner and leveled his shotgun against the police car. He shot off two rounds in rapid succession, before Alex returned fire with an expertly-aimed slug to the chest. Armenian cops had two types of shells in their cars: buckshot, for closer breaching actions, and solid slug shells for longer-ranged street fights. The Russian was hit center of mass with a 12 gauge slug, his torso exploding in a shower of blood as he was thrown to the ground screaming. Alex racked the shotgun, ejecting a shell onto the concrete, and took aim as the gangster’s friend ran to the middle of the street to retrieve the wounded man. Alex shot again, this one shattering the gangster’s leg and almost tearing it off. The man dropped his carbine as he fell face-first into the concrete. He tried crawling for it, inching towards the piece as Tigran followed up with a second slug that blew his shoulder away. Two dead Russians lay in pools of blood in the street, which was enough to convince the other two to drop their guns and sprint away.

The Russians ran down through the road, dipping behind into an alleyway. The Armenians, unsure if they could still pursue with the sniper aimed squarely at them still, cursed them and fired off a few ineffective return shots. All these did were harmlessly impact into the concrete. Now, it was just them and the burning car: the sniper watched them closely. Tigran and Alex turned to each other, shaking their heads. The chief slumped back into his alcove, holstering his revolver, running a hand through his grey hair. The firefight had taken all of fifteen harrowing minutes, but he had no idea where the other patrol was. They were supposed to flank around to the other side of the intersection but they hadn’t been around during the fight. Yerkatgtsi Norvan was notorious for being confusing and dense, leaving Tigran wondering if they had just gotten lost or were in trouble of their own. With no way to contact them, he wouldn’t know until much later. The pair waited in their cover for another few minutes, unsure if they should chance the sniper.

Tigran, ultimately, decided to regroup with Alex. He steadied himself, nodded at his partner, and took off at as fast of a jog as he could manage while praying that he wouldn’t be shot in the side. He remembered from his military service that it took a trained sniper four seconds to zero in on a moving target. It was obvious that the gangster wasn’t trained, nor was he any good at his job, but Tigran counted in his head as he rushed to the car. There was no return fire, just silence. He ducked down to behind the trunk with Alex: “I think he’s gone,” he said breathlessly.

“Yeah, probably dropped his shit and ran when I blew his friends apart,” Alex remarked, lighting a cigarette out of his trusty steel case. He offered one to the chief, who declined by waving his hand in front of his face and tried again to catch his breath.

“It was an ambush, goddammit,” Tigran scowled. “I haven’t seen this shit before. Fuck them. Fuck them all. This is the shittiest, most cowardly fucking thing you can do. They’re not men, they’re fucking pussies.”

The chief paused again, taking a deep breath to calm down. He couldn’t let his emotions control him like that. They still had to get home. Alex exhaled, leaning his shotgun against the car before standing up out of his squat. With a look to the former sniper’s nest and another drag on the cigarette, he heard a car moving behind them. The cops turned around to see their lost partner, driving slowly towards them. The car stopped, and a bewildered junior patrolman hopped out of the driver’s seat, apologizing profusely. “Chief! Shit, I’m sorry, we took a wrong turn a while back and got lost in this damn neighborhood.”

“Are you a fucking retard? Do we need to institutionalize you with all the other fucking retard babies who got dropped on their heads by alcoholic piece of shit mothers?” Alex shouted, straightening his belt as he walked angrily towards the patrolman. “Who gets lost for twenty fucking minutes in this town? It’s not even that big!”

“Sir! Wha-“ the patrolman began, before noticing the bodies ahead of them. Alex continued his march to the driver, closing in and extending his fingers into a knife that he waved in the face of the new hire. Before any explanation could be offered, Alex turned his knife-hand towards the boyish face of the patrolman and slapped him with an echoing smack. The cop stumbled, but regained his composure.

“We were ambushed, for God sake! Fucking ambushed! It was a fucking trap!”

“Alex!” Tigran called out from the patrol car as he inspected the damage. “Calm down and help me change this tire. And you! Officer… I forget your name.”

“Hovnanian, sir,” the patrolman uttered. “Officer Hovnanian.”
“Get the evidence. There are four guns in the street and we suspect one in that apartment over there,” Tigran ordered. “Recover them and head home. There’s no emergency here, just an ambush. We’ll let the locals deal with the wreck.”

Alex trudged over to Tigran, fuming. The chief had taken a jack and tire iron from the trunk and was busy rolling the spare tire over to the front-left, which had been riddled with buckshot. Small divots pockmarked the hood and side of the car, shredding the rubber tire. Luckily, it was just the one: they didn’t have to cannibalize any spare tired from the other cruiser. “Keep your shit in check, Alex,” warned Tigran as he kneeled down to place the jack under the car’s sturdy frame. “I know it’s frustrating. You saw my response.”

“He’s an idiot,” Alex replied as Tigran jacked up the car. “I wanted to punch him right in his little gut.”

“Show some restraint, next time. We’re professionals. We have laws in this society, we have rules. Everything is going to hell in this city, but we’re stopping it. Does law and order mean nothing to you? Why are you a cop?”

Alex sighed, taking the tire iron from his chief. He loosened the bolts on the wheel, snatching them up and lining them in a neat row as he worked. In the background, the junior patrolman walked through the bodies, picking up guns and slinging them over his shoulder while his partner smoked a cigarette and scanned the potential avenues of approach with his shotgun. Tigran stood back as Alex lifted the wheel off and handed it over. “I don’t like getting shot at,” grumbled Alex.

“If you did, I’d be sending you over to the psychological ward at the hospital,” joked Tigran. “Could you put the tire back on for me? I’m too old and frail.”

The tire was replaced as Hovnanian and his partner emerged from the apartment block. An elderly woman had led them up the stairs to the sniper’s nest, explaining that she had seen a man jump from the second story of the staircase out onto an awning and run away. It had been one of her tenants, renting out the room for only a week. His partner clutched a Mosin Nagant rifle awkwardly in one hand, shotgun in the other. The pair returned to Tigran and Alex: “Sir, we got the weapons. Four in the street and one in that apartment. Was that everything?”

“Yeah, you got it. Thanks, kid,” Tigran answered as he threw them in the back seat, closing the door. “That should be it… Nobody’s hurt, we’re all fine.”

Alex looked back to the still-burning car in the intersection. “So we’re not extinguishing it?”

“It’ll burn out,” Tigran said with a shrug. “Now let’s get out of here.”

The police mounted up in their cars, backing away from the intersection. Rattled but not discouraged, they turned and drove off back to headquarters. The weapons in the back appeared to be part of Private Moravian’s stash still, leading them to think that the gangsters were starting to get more aggressive. With the evidence turned in and the reports beginning to be written by Hovnanian, Tigran and Alex sat together with the case file. Carefully annotating the events of the day, the case thickened still. More weapons, more gangsters, more violence. The military were closing in on Karlovian and the Gyumri police were still hitting suspected sites in the ghettos. Gyumri had turned into a time-bomb, one that the police hoped to diffuse before it escalated into the worst violence the country had seen yet. But for now, the day was over and the police were changing shifts. Tigran and Alex were heading home, done with another day at the office.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

<Snipped quote by TheEvanCat>

Genuine question here: Looking at your sheet, I don't see a mention of the Armenian Genocide anywhere, so I assume it just didn't happen in this timeline on the same scale (Your sheet does mention massacres, but I assume that isn't to the scale of the Armenian Genocide OTL)?

@EveryMemeAKing

Just got back from New York:

But yep, established canon is that the Turks were basically too busy fighting in this shittier version of the Great War to dedicate manpower needed to kill the minorities they didn't like (Armenians, Assyrians, etc.) so there was no real genocide for anyone.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

BYRD WHY THE FUCK YOU GOTTA CALL ME A NAVY MAN I'M IN THE ARMY REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

but thanks tho

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

<Snipped quote by TheEvanCat>

Now looking at it, I see what you mean and I do think it would be unrealistic for Assyria to have a goal to stabilize any surrounding nations, so I'm just going to scrap that idea out of the application and make it so they focus more on stabilizing internally.

@MetalLover

I think a good direction to go would be reconciling what happened during the civil war and what happened to the Kurds. Keep in mind there's a Kurdistan that's been alluded to and there might be opportunities for stories there. Other than that, I personally have no further concerns.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

I've redone the application to be back to the original, with a bit worked in saying that a goal of the Assyrian Free State is to "stabilize" some of the surrounding nations in the Middle East.

@MetalLover

Just gotta think about why a state would be willing to do that. Obviously you can act it out, but stuff has got to flow naturally. Especially considering the fact that a global force for good is a big 180 from "Kurdish genocide."

Also consider internal factors: You're still reeling from a civil war. Just gotta work around and through all that.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Yeah, I like the idea of Assyria and the Kurdish conflict that's going on (although Mosul may need to be re looked at.)

But the Mosul Pact is stretching it... a lot. It's falling into that NRP trope of wanting to blob your country, and in this case it doesn't make sense either considering the factors at play in the Middle East and your country. We also don't have any explanation about it, which hurts your case even more.

Edit: Yeah, ninja'd while writing the post.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Yeah, the Middle East is kind of a nebulous area. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire it's just been kind of "yeah, there are Arab states... I guess." You can take a look at me (Armenia) and Chap (Turkey) for the base behind the history, which boils down to "Arab Revolt and then choose your own adventure after that."

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Odessa, Ukraine

“Sorry to hear about it, officer. Yeah, they work for my company, I can take them back with us.”

In the back of a Ukrainian police van were four Armenian sailors with various black eyes and scratches, all looking down at their handcuffs as an Odessa policeman smoked a cigarette outside. Every once in a while, the Ukrainians would arrest a few people fighting at the bars, as sailors do, and keep them until after their ship sailed. The next crew would have to pick them up, take them back, and turn them over to the company management where they would almost inevitably be fired for missing their return leg of a shipment. It turned into a running joke with Armenian ship captains on the Black Sea, like getting tipped at a restaurant but only with drunk and disorderly prisoners to be tossed in the brig. So far, Captain Sarkisian’s return haul would include several hundred tons of steel and four future former employees of the Black Sea Maritime company. He directed his executive officer, Nazarbekian, to take them to the company security guards loitering around on the dock for this exchange.

The Captain thanked the police officer in his decently-pronounced Russian before asking for a cigarette. The Ukrainian policeman sighed and reluctantly offered one out of his pack, which Sarkisian lit with his company-branded lighter before thanking the policeman again. He ran a hand through his greying, thinning hair and cursed the summer heat. Nazarbekian delivered the prisoners to his security team and tipped his hat at them: they took the men inside to be seated in the brig. With an Iranian swagger, the executive officer came back to his captain and withdrew his own cigarettes, smirking while the policeman got in his van and drove off. “You asshole,” Sarkisian muttered. “I don’t like bumming off of strangers.”

“So bumming off of your subordinates is better with you?” quipped Nazarbekian, blowing a puff of smoke through his nostrils. “What a fine reflection of a selfless Merchant Marine leader of character.”

“Do you want to stop being a sarcastic fuck?” replied Sarkisian with a sigh. “It’s bad enough I’m getting tipped four today.”

Nazarbekian scoffed and took a few more drags on the cigarette. “What are the plans for tonight, boss?”

Sarkisian looked back at his ship: the longshoremen were now swarming around the dock with forklifts, cranes, and other pieces of logistical equipment. The Odessa harbormaster worked almost as hard as the Trabzon one, working an intricate timetable of both ingoing and outgoing shipments. Armenia’s gold would be taken off the Breadwinner, driven to a nearby railway, and shipped off to wherever the industrial base of Ukraine needed it. In exchange, as the contract went, a certain tonnage of steel produced in cities like Mariupol or Kryvi Rih was loaded onto sprawling railways and trucks and ships and sent right over the Black Sea. Once it left Trabzon, cities like Hrazdan would receive the steel. Naturally, some of the products were sent straight back to Europe. The captain recalled once transporting a steel shipment and, a week later, receiving machine tools that happened to come from the same factory at the end of their contract chain. Capitalism worked as it worked, and he had a feeling that this was better for the country: Armenia prized self-dependence above all else, but was in a tricky place in terms of natural resources.

Nazarbekian smoked the unfiltered cigarette down to the tips of his fingers, before tossing it away into an open gutter. “You lost or something?” he asked after not getting his reply.

The captain shook himself back to reality: “Yeah, sorry, I was thinking about the timetable.”

“You need to let yourself loose a bit,” Nazarbekian recommended. He wasn’t much younger than Captain Sarkisian, but his strong, muscular build and youthful features stood out in stark contrast to his superior’s receding hairline and facial stress lines. “Going to have some fun or something?”

“Well, I do have opera tickets. You know I’m not into the same scene that you and the junior officers are,” admitted Sarkisian. “I have a wife and a house now, I’m not as young as some of the Lieutenants. Can’t be going around spending all my money on Ukrainian prostitutes and drinks.”

Nazarbekian chuckled and put his hands into his pockets. “If you’re worried about them doing that, I’ll have to keep an eye on them.”

“Mhm, ‘keep an eye on them’, Mister Nazarbekian,” quipped the captain. “You mean take your face out from between a dancer’s breasts every five minutes?”

“Every ten, sir, I think they’re more trustworthy than that,” replied the executive officer just as sharply. He looked back at the port as a taxi zipped past them. Inside were a few of his sailors, already swigging from bottles at noon. “If we keep the lost to recovered prisoner exchange rate even, we can put these guys in the brig to work and have no problems. But we can deal with that tomorrow. If you need me, you know where my hotel is.”

“Absolutely. Go and have a good time, but not too good,” Sarkisian said with a pat on his back. “I’ll see you around.”

Captain Sarkisian set off as Nazarbekian sent his regards. His destination for the evening was a late lunch before an opera, which gave him some time to set out and explore the city he visited often. The port of Odessa quickly gave way to the Square de Richelieu, surrounded by ornate European buildings. Stark industry quickly became European-styled architecture with its tight alleys and painted facades with columns and stone balcony railings. The formal entrance to the city was the Primorsky Stairs, which led down to the city proper from the port and the square. Sarkisian passed through throngs of Odessa’s people enjoying their summer afternoon at cafes and shops as he walked towards the main streets. A statue of Duc de Richelieu, clad in a classical toga like the Greeks of old, towered over the steps. The Primorsky stairs were designed in such a way that, at the top, Sarkisian could only see the landings. He walked his way down the stairs lined with flourishing green trees and arrived at the bottom to look back and only see the stairs. A thin smile reached his lips: the stories about the stairs’ optical illusion were true.

In many ways, Odessa reminded him of Yerevan. The Primorsky stairs were reminiscent of the Yerevan cascade, with its flanking gardens and trees and its beautiful park. The memorials of Armenian heroes and flags hanging from lightposts were almost exactly the same as the ones in Odessa. Being a sailor enabled Sarkisian to see the world beyond Armenia, something that most of his countrymen lacked an idea of. With enemies surrounding them, it became easy to adopt a fortress mentality: seeing the beauty and peace of a European city on a summer’s day and taking in the culture of another people lessened the edge. While Persia was definitely accessible to the Armenians, owing to their strong ties, not many people he knew had been there. The captain was hoping to use some of his vacation time and saved money to visit the empire in the near future. Perhaps someday he could go further into the European world, or even see the United States. Politics, for now, stood firmly in the way on the ageing sea captain’s dreams.

Odessa’s opera house wasn’t too far from the steps. Down the road, the massive Italian baroque structure towered over low-rise apartments that hugged the streets. Odessa, as it seemed, was doing quite well for itself. A few cafes dotted the wide avenue, and Captain Sarkisian instinctually navigated to his favorite one. Ukrainian food to him seemed more or less the same as Russian or even most Armenian foods, but one in particular seemed to be well-done every time he went. The chefs knew his ship and its crew at this point, always welcoming them when they were scheduled to arrive in town. With a table to himself on the shaded patio, he ate reddish-soupy borsch with local fish while the sun began its slow descent to the horizon. He paid in loose Ukrainian hryvnia that he kept from his previous travels before wishing the staff a warm farewell and offering a promise to come in for breakfast in the morning. Adjusting his pants and belt and straightening out his hat, Captain Sarkisian pushed out through the glass door and into the streets again: he had a relaxing evening set out for him.

Yerevan, Armenia

As was the political tradition in Armenia, the handoff of power took place in Republican Square by the government buildings. As throngs of citizens gathered, the ceremony began with an invocation from the Catholicos of All Armenians. As the country, the government, the office, and the people were blessed, Hasmik Assanian stood quietly behind the tall man in ornate red, black, and gold robes with his head bowed. With words of thanks and appreciation, the new president stepped forward and began the process of inauguration. A copy of the Armenian Constitution was brought forth by the dark-skinned Premier Justice of Armenia, a solemn man of almost seventy years with a neatly-trimmed grey beard. He placed it down on the podium, inviting Assanian to place his hand upon it. The photographers in the crowd snapped pictures of the new president in front of flag-colored banners and the Parliament and Cabinet stoically standing behind him. A gust of wind rippled through the square before the Premier Justice adjusted a microphone closer to their faces. He turned to Assanian, serious as always: “Please place your hand on the podium and repeat after me.”

In segments, a phrase at a time, the oath of office was delivered in front of the crowd and broadcasted to Armenians across the country and in various diaspora communities: “, Hasmik Assanian, swear to faithfully and fully exercise the powers of the President of the Republic of Armenia. I am devoted to the defense and progression of the state and the Armenian people, and will diligently work to ensure their sovereignty, independence, security, and integrity. I am committed to the rights and freedoms of every Armenian and the Constitution of the Republic. In the name of God, I wholly and without reservation accept this elected position.”

A round of applause and cheers erupted from the crowd as Assanian’s supporters waved flags, banners, and shouted slogans. Journalists jostled for photos while police patrolled for demonstrators or the rowdier spectators. On the podium, the new president took a handshake from the old one. They looked each other in the eye and nodded, no one offering up any emotion after such a bitter race that often devolved into personal attacks. The old administration went back to their seats while the newly elected governors took their places behind Assanian. The transition of power, like every cycle was complete. The world, it seemed, was sparse with these moments. Monarchies, empires, and dictators flying the flag of their various ideologies were more common than not. The Fedayi and the Council fought long and bitterly for their Armenian republic: Vadratian and Assanian had an understanding that, if nothing else, this democracy was the only thing they had.

A speech closed out the inauguration. It was a speech like many that had been given during the campaign, promising freedom and prosperity and continued security. Assanian, at the podium under the sun with the flag behind him, felt almost tired as he seemed to say the same things over and over. Armenia, the Fatherland, shining brighter than before: a secure future for their people. Applause shook the square when he finished, people cheering in the crowd and chanting popular slogans. A new hope for the troubling times, and end to the turbulence of the past decade. As the ceremony drew to a close and Assanian waved one last time before walking off the stage, he wondered how long this euphoria would last. It seemed that he was stepping into a complicated, muddled situation. Security, politics, money, power, and the fate of a people were all intertwined in obtuse and difficult ways. Work already awaited him at the office.

Hrazdan, Armenia

The exams were over and the summer had started for the students of Hrazdan’s universities. For many of them, that meant going to work in the industries to apply their skills and gain experience before they graduated in the coming years. Others would travel around to conduct research or do projects, but nobody was left to their own devices. A student’s life in Armenia was funded by the government, so they were sure to be put to work to return that investment. The Hrazdan University of Industry in particular had a special contract with an ordnance factory in the west of the city. Far from the city center and the gentrification there, the Tsaghkadzor Heavy Industry Plant sat nestled in some hills on its complex. Jon Korkarian, in a taxi with his briefcase, drove through the grey cityscape and looked through the windows as they approached a concrete wall and a blue metal gate. A flag hung from the barbed-wire topping on the wall, alongside murals featuring tanks rolling off the assembly line. A police officer read a newspaper in a guard shack just outside, his partner dozing off in the police car parked nearby.

Jon paid the taxi driver and struggled to get out, his tall and lanky frame hitting the doorframe as he opened the door. He waved at the taxi as it pulled away and sped back towards the city, then turned to face the policeman who had been throwing his jacket on in the guard shack: the heat was sweltering in the small metal building. Jon exchanged pleasantries with the man before handing in his ID and factory papers that had been mailed to him the week before: he introduced himself as a new assistant there and that he would be working for the summer. The cop absentmindedly flipped through the stack of papers and forms that Jon had brought through, not particularly caring about a brand new university intern that had to get through. A bead of sweat ran down his wrinkled face and dripped onto Jon’s ID. The student subtly grimaced and muttered “Gross” under his breath, but the policeman didn’t seem to notice. Without any other questions, the cop handed the ID back to Jon and walked to the metal door blocking the road. He banged on it three times, and another bored policeman unlocked the latch and opened it. With a screech, the door came open for the new intern.

“Good morning, sir,” Jon said to the third police officer. “I’m one of the new employees here, do you know where I can go?”

The cop, cigarette dangling from his mouth, shrugged and stuck his hands into his pants pockets. “I just make sure nobody runs off with the fuckin’ scrap metal, kid. Maybe go over there and ask someone else.”

Jon rolled his eyes, thanked the officer for his help, and moved on. The road to the factory was at least two hundred meters from here, with a massive parking lot of tanks in between him and the gigantic industrial plant. Built with Persian loans almost five years ago, this plant was one of the newer government contracts for heavy military equipment. Jon’s father had been an officer in the armored corps before his retirement and had set him up with this job through his business connections. The work certainly showed: rows of vintage-looking tanks were parked in the hot sun in neat rows outside the massive assembly line ahead of him. Jon walked the road in awe, gazing at the large, brutish machines. Their metal hulls, painted an olive green, were riveted and plated with armor. Guns with massive bores poked out of turrets on the sides on top. Curiously, these models seemed older: they almost looked like machines from the Great War instead of new designs. Some of them bore unusual modifications, like dozer blades or mine flails.

After a few more minutes of wandering towards the factory, Jon found himself at the door of the assembly line. The building stretched for some distance to the rear and was many times taller than the tanks inside. Groups of technicians with welding torches, air hammers for riveting, and any other tools necessary for the job crowded around the machines. The hall echoed with the sounds of men and, surprisingly, women fixing and modifying the tanks. A crane on its rails near the ceiling of the factory brought a massive turret towards one of them, lowering it on chains as a crew helped guide it into place. Jon, awestruck at the operation, didn’t notice when a man in a dress shirt and slacks came up behind him. “Is this our new hire?” he nearly shouted, startling the young student. Jon spun around to see an older, middle-aged man in a blue shirt with a tie tucked in between its buttons. He extended his hand out, Jon took it and put his hand on his chest as he introduced himself.

“My apologies for shouting,” said the man, “but it gets noisy here. My hearing isn’t too great on its own either. But I’m happy to see you made it. My name is Andrei Bagruntsian, I’m the modernization program manager here. All of this you see is what we do.”

Mr. Bagruntsian swept his hand out to the rows of tanks parked outside. Then, looking back, his brow furrowed. With a quick hand motion, he waved Jon back to the side of the assembly line. A group of overall-clad workers pushing a cart full of metal plates came through, nodding their greetings at the boss. “We should go to the office,” he stated quickly, before leading Jon back to a metal staircase. They went up to a catwalk that ran parallel to the assembly line before ducking off into a side wing of the factory where the offices were. The offices were a labyrinth of grey concrete, and Mr. Bagruntsian walked Jon through some more staircases and winding turns before they reached a wood-paneled door. His name appeared on the window: the boss used a key from his pocket to unlock it and lead him in. It was a modest, spacious office with a desk on one side and a pair of couches next to a coffee table on the other. A flag hung from the wall above his bookshelf, along with several photographs of what appeared to be tank crews with their machines.

“Sorry it’s a little hot in here,” Mr. Bagruntsian apologized again as he turned on the ceiling fan. “I would open the windows but it lets the carbon and metal particulates in here and makes me quite ill. Plus it smells all day and my wife doesn’t like when I come home all coated in it.”

Jon sat down on the red fabric couch and set his papers down beside him. Mr. Bagruntsian went to a coffeemaker set aside next to his desk and began to prepare two cups as he spoke. “So, Mr. Korkarian, you’re here to work with my department?”

“Yes, sir,” Jon replied quickly, his hands folded politely in his lap. “Since I study industrial management and all, I’m here with your operations department.”

“I’m aware… You’re here to help with deliveries to the military. It’s a fun job, I assure you. Lots of travel,” he said with a chuckle. “Hope you like the desert. And trains.”

Jon nervously laughed as well, accepting a steaming cup of coffee. Mr. Bagruntsian reached into his shirt pocket and offered up a cigarette. The younger student accepted, even if he didn’t smoke all that often, and accepted the lighter as well. Mr. Bagruntsian, seeing this, grinned and reached down below the table. He withdrew a bottle of brandy from a drawer and placed it on the table before popping the top. “I hope you’re not afraid of a little day drinking, either,” the director joked. He poured a hefty portion into both coffees.

The boss sat back in his couch, slumping into the fabric with an exhale. “So do you know what we do here?” he asked. Jon replied back with a vague and general answer about military equipment production, to which Mr. Bagruntsian nodded. “Well it’s not just that, our factory specializes in refitting old equipment.”

“Are those the tanks I saw outside?” Jon asked, looking out the window to the rows of old armored vehicles on the pavement.

“Exactly. See, when the Great War ended we acquired a good deal of Ottoman military equipment. A lot of it is still good. We have been using these tanks for almost forty years now, but they’re starting to get old. New weapons development have outpaced what these are: the first, most primitive armored vehicles. However, the government has maintained a directive that essentially boils down to ‘we don’t throw anything away.’”

The director took a sip from his coffee and wiped his mustached face with a handkerchief. He continued: “So these tanks have been operating with reserve units and people like the Border Service who still function, but aren’t on the priority list for new equipment. But what’s cheaper than buying new tanks for them is refitting old ones. See, steel is steel. Engines are engines. Guns are guns. Something made in the Great War will still kill you, and it’s the summer of 1960. That’s why you see guerrillas running around Georgia with old Tsarist Mosins. So what we can do is apply our knowledge and change up these platforms as we need to. We can simply bolt new armor on and replace the engines with something more powerful. New armament can be added, it’s as easy as swapping out a turret. We can even use these workhorses for utility tasks. Do you know what an assault looks like nowadays?”

Jon shook his head. “Not really.”

“Well a lot of these old tanks, they’re sturdy. Especially with new engines, we can outfit them with mobile bridges. Drop them down on trenches and you can drive other vehicles across without getting them stuck. It’s how you storm a line. You can also fit them with mine flails, use those dangling metal chains to trip up landmines and clear a path. Dozer blades are cheap and cut through obstacles. There’s a lot that you can do, and the government tasked us to use our imaginations sometimes. We come up with good ideas, we sell them. The engineers in particular have been very pleased with these. Not having to clear minefields by hand has been a life saver.”

“So I deliver these?” Jon asked, recoiling at the taste after a sip of his spiked coffee. “And… market the other ones?”

“Exactly, yes. So we’re glad to have you with the project. Sounds like a good time, yes?”

“Absolutely, sir. I’m excited to get out and work.”

“Well first, we’re going to tour you around and get you settled with the operations department. You’ll learn up on operations at the factory before we send you out. Pretty easy job, and the pay isn’t awful,” Mr. Bagruntsian joked again. He stood up again, offering his hand. Jon shook it, thanked him for the coffee, and collected up his briefcase.

“Thank you for the job, sir,” he said with a hand over his heart again.

Mr. Bagruntsian laughed. “I’ll be around, so don’t worry if you can’t figure something out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to prepare for. I need to find my jacket, even if it is the damned summer."

Jon nodded and thanked him again, then left the room. He closed the door on his way out, reflecting on his new work for the next few months. He was excited to travel, and the factory was already looking like an interesting place to work. Mr. Bagruntsian seemed like a good enough boss, even if he appeared hurried all the time. That, however, was probably normal for Armenian ordnance factories. The student ran a hand through his hair and shrugged: it was a good job with some good experience involved. He waited outside the office to dwell on it. Within a few minutes, someone came to grab him and get him settled in the operations office. For the first time in his adult life, he was finally working on something real.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Patara Darbazi, Georgia

Yaglian’s section took point, two jeeps moving through the winding roads in the Georgian mountains. They were far from home, the lights of the border installations long having vanished as they continued their questionably-legal mission through the rough terrain of bandit country. Patara Darbazi was vanished in the hills of Georgia, forgotten to many and home only to a few dozen civilians. Only a single raider encampment put it on any sort of map: the Armenian military’s. It was part of a network of supply camps that enabled small teams of bandits to poke and prod at the Border Service and try to find routes for their next smuggling operation. Hitting this one, in concert with an organized attack on two other encampments, would be enough to bloody the nose of the Georgian Mountain Wolves militia, albeit only mildly. A platoon of Armenian troops pulled their vehicles into the trees beside the ancient, overgrown path they were traveling on: it was the end of the road for those machines. A team from third section was assigned to watch them, much to the chagrin of its leader who was now missing the fight.

The rest of the troops grabbed what they needed from their rucksacks and bounded off. Their light-olive green uniforms blended into the shadows of the woods as mud splashed onto their gaiters and brown leather boots. Most of them carried their carbines slung low at the ready, scanning the mountaintops as the sun rose. The machinegun teams, belts of ammunition wrapped around their torsos like the fedayi of old, took up positions in the march with their equipment ready to be emplaced. A kilometer on foot at this pace took twenty minutes to march, before they spread out into the hills to the south and west of the encampment. To their west, the town was stirring as farmers came out in the early morning light to check on their animals. In silence, like they had rehearsed on a small scale in the lot behind their barracks, they spread their sections into lines. Machine gun teams from the weapons section found good spots on their hilltop and dug in, aiming their bulky weapons at the silhouettes of the bandit tents.

Yaglian’s section found cover behind an abandoned barn, its wood rotted and its roof having caved in years ago. His own team hunkered down by a pair of rusty bicycles and a stack of chicken coops that had long since been tossed away. He went back and forth across his three men as he checked them off: had they forgotten anything? Were they ready to fight? After ensuring everyone took a look at their weapons for any sort of mechanical errors, he ordered them to fix their bayonets. As quietly as they could, the knives were unsheathed and clicked into place underneath the barrels of their carbines. Yaglian tugged his into place to ensure its secure placement and slapped his curved, banana-shaped magazine into the rifle’s frame. Taped to its side was another magazine upside-down so that he could reload easily while clearing through the camp. Sergeant Ozanian came to Yaglian as he finished his preparation: “Are we ready?”

“Yes, Sergeant. Everyone is good.”

The section leader eyed the morning dawn as it crept over the jagged rocks of Georgia. The other section leader on the southern flank was jogging from his position behind a hill to the barn, waving his hand. The two NCOs exchanged words, before Sergeant Ozanian patted the other man on the back and send him off. “Corporal Yaglian, we’re all ready. I’m going to blow this whistle, our Lieutenant will hear it, and he’s going to start the gunfire.”

“We count to sixty and then begin our movement,” Yaglian continued as Ozanian nodded.

“Once we pass the line of view of the Lieutenant, he’ll blow his whistle to stop the guns as we move into the camp. It’s an easy raid, straight out of a textbook.”

The border guards all nodded, overhearing the plan, and made final adjustments to their gear. Yaglian tilted his taraz soft cover straight onto his head, brushing one of the loose wool ends over his shoulder before he looked back towards Sergeant Ozanian. The mustachioed, middle-aged section leader had stood up from his position by the chicken coops and put a dull grey whistle to his mouth: he blew three dreadfully long bursts, followed by a hearty yell: “Onwards! Onwards!”

The machinegun teams from their section fired their guns, streams of bullets hosing through the bandit guardsmen. Puffs of dirt and grass were kicked up violently from every impact as the bandits dove for cover behind rocks and sandbags. One after the other in a synchronized “talk”, these guns fired their bursts to pin down the enemy forces. Those who were not stuck behind cover down emerged from their tents, bewildered, before grabbing their rifles to return fire. Within seconds, the snaps of bolt-action rifles answered the Armenian guns. Tracers, linked every five rounds in a machinegun’s belt, inched closer and closer to their targets as the gunners began to adjust their fire. In response, the bandits’ shots tracked the direction of these and began to close in on their positions. Return fire kept some of the firing line down with their heads behind cover, but fire superiority was regained as soon as the other rifles on the line doubled down on the enemy positions.

By the time Yaglian counted to sixty, the guns’ high-powered rounds had torn through much of the bandits’ cover. Several laid wounded on the ground, screaming as they clutched gushing wounds or, in some cases, the stumps of missing limbs. Others tried dragging them out of the way of danger, risking their lives for their partners. The troops on the southern flank heard the second set of whistle blasts, and Yaglian steeled himself before he rushed out into the open field beside the barn. As soon as the Armenians emerged from their position, the machineguns shifted their fire to the north, clearing the way for their comrades to advance. Yaglian threw himself towards the bandit camp just a hundred meters in front of him, but that distance felt like he was running a marathon. The Corporal looked back from the raid’s destination to his team, and extended his left arm straight out: “Get into a line!”

The other three men sprinted out to form a straight line perpendicular to the camp’s perimeter, alongside the other team in their section. Every couple of meters, the troops would instinctively get down to a knee or behind whatever cover was available and begin covering their other team’s bound: a few rounds would be quickly fired off before they got moving again. Yaglian slid into the mud in the middle of the field just a few meters away from where he started and aimed into the radium-painted iron sights on his rifle onto the silhouette of a man. He squinted his right eye, gripped hard on the wooden rifle stock, and squeezed a trio of shots off from his carbine. Each one kicked into his shoulder, pushing the muzzle of his piece into the sky as the rounds flew towards their destinations. The bandits were still were focused on the machinegun positions, and had been caught off-guard by the southern flank’s first round of fire. Almost as soon as their shooting began, Yaglian’s team was off on a sprint to the position.

This process could would be repeated a few more times until the southern flank reached the barriers of the camp. By now, the fighting had turned into a ferocious close-quarters match as the machineguns had called off their firing entirely. Yaglian’s team reached a sandbagged position where a guard was now laying, bleeding out against a rock. Another bandit was tending to his wounds as Yaglian’s youngest soldier, Lingorian, leapt up and over the barricade. Both of them stopped, only for a split second, and looked each other in the eye. Lingorian, without the betrayal of any emotion or thought, mechanically moved his rifle to his eye and took aim at the Georgians. He hesitated for a second as the rest of his team moved past him to clear through the encampment, before he saw the wounded bandit’s hand twitch. He didn’t look twice to find out if the men were armed or not as he shot both of them on the wet, dewy ground. Lowering the rifle, he moved up to join his team.

As Lingorian bounded to the next piece of cover with Yaglian, he slammed his shoulder into a wooden box of supplies. The young Private caught his breath and fumbled to regain his footing. Both of them crouched down as another round of gunfire cracked through the camp. After looking back to Lingorian and the rest of his team, Yaglian peeked his head around the corner of the box and fired a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy. Two shots answered him, so he replied with another round of shooting. Another Armenian had come running up to their stack of crates and took aim, popping shots off as he slowed to a walk. Yaglian stepped out to join him, firing his own carbine until the Georgian militant ahead of him was knocked down to the ground. Inside a row of tents to the east, the two heard the report of a submachinegun rip through a section. A chorus of shots silenced the bandit, and the southern flank continued to move through the encampment.

The largest structure was another wooden barn that housed the bandits’ supplies for its patrols. Sergeant Ozanian had consolidated his troops together around it as the rest of the camp was cleared. Enemy gunfire was lessened, and eventually silenced, and now Armenian troops had the barn surrounded. Inside, it was suspected that some Georgians were hiding in wait. Yaglian ordered his men to take up covered positions and watch the windows, and went to seek out his section leader. The Corporal turned back and jogged quickly to where he had killed the bandit just a minute earlier, finding Ozanian talking to the other team leader in his section. “Sergeant!” he called. “Hey, what are we doing about this barn?”

Sergeant Ozanian glanced towards a guard position to the north as a short exchange of gunfire resulted in the injury of a Georgian as his knee was blown out. The wounded bandit tried to crawl away before he was stabbed in the back by an Armenian trooper’s bayonet. The Georgians were dead and all the tents had been searched. The only place left for them to be was the barn. The section leader looked back to Yaglian: “Are your guys hurt?”

The team leader shook his head. “No, Sergeant, we didn’t have too much resistance on our corner. How’s everyone else?”

“A couple troops in 3rd Section were wounded from that submachinegun, none very seriously. Our medic is with them, but that’s about it. We got lucky. Let’s hope it stays with us, George, because your team will be clearing that barn.”

“Clearing it, Sergeant?” asked Yaglian, stunned. He looked back towards the structure, now surrounded by Armenian troops. “Can’t we just burn it down or something?”

Ozanian frowned: “If we burn it down, it might set off the munitions inside. We might hurt ourselves in the process.”

“And what happens if we get hurt while we clear it, Sergeant?” testily replied the team leader, before he stopped himself and calmed his tone down. “They’ve got the drop on us.”

Ozanian twirled his mustache, a habit of his, and looked back at the barn. “We’re wasting time the longer we stay here. We have to finish this up so we can withdraw. This is a raid, not a siege.”

Yaglian was about to argue further, but held his tongue. Frustrated at the prospect of leading his team into certain danger, he just nodded and acknowledged. “I’ll go in,” he said.

Back at his team, Yaglian briefed the situation to his troops. Private Lingorian offered to take point as they kicked in the rear door, while the rest of the team would stream in and destroy whatever they found. It was suspected that there were two or three Georgians hiding, possibly up in the rafters of the barn, since visual inspection of the ground floor through the windows yielded nothing. Without further word, Yaglian’s four troops jogged their way to the back entrance as the rest of their section covered them. Silently, they lined up behind the door, eyeing the rusty hinges keeping it in place. With two well-aimed rifle shots, the door’s hingeplates were blown off and a hearty kick was delivered by the Armenian soldier. The door collapsed inwards, breaking into two as it flew towards the inside of the barn while Lingorian stormed inside, sweeping the area with his rifle. The troops rushed in, underneath the cover of a covered rafter: Lingorian was the first to head beyond this, going into the clear open area in the center of the barn.

Yaglian’s eyes were scanning a corner when he heard the gunshots: he looked back to Lingorian only as the young trooper fell to the ground in a crumpling heap. His other rifleman rushed over the wounded comrade and let loose a series of wild shots that reverberated through the entire barn. He, too, was felled by submachinegun fire. Yaglian and the only remaining member of his team both looked up to the rafter and began shooting through the wood floor. Bullets whipped up through the rafters and threw splinters of wood and hay around: one enemy was hit, falling to the ground with a thump and a cry. Yaglian fired until he ran out of ammunition, before quickly reloading and emptying his magazine at the rafter in a rage. He looked to Gagarian, the last member of his team, and nodded his head towards Lingorian and their other fallen partner. Gagarian, a veteran of the fighting, knew exactly what they were going to do. Both of them raised their rifles to cover the rafters as they walked backwards to the casualties.

A Georgian militant popped out from behind a box and was swiftly eliminated by the two Armenians. They stopped at their comrades and kept scanning the rafters, looking for more movement. Yaglian thought he saw something and fired off four shots at a dark corner, but it turned out to be nothing. He turned to Gagarian and slapped his shoulder, signaling for him to get the casualties out of the barn. The strong, stocky trooper slung his rifle over his shoulder and picked up Lingorian, who groaned and grunted and clutched his stomach as he left a trail of blood out the door. Lingorian’s partner, Gaznian, wasn’t moving or making any sort of noise. Yaglian sidestepped closer to him, still keeping his rifle on the rafters, and lightly kicked him in the thigh. He didn’t stir. Gagarian arrived to drag Gaznian away, and Yaglian scanned the barn one last time before running out to find Sergeant Ozanian. The section leader had run to Private Lingorian along with the platoon medic as the other section withdrew to the north. “He’s hurt bad,” simply stated Gagarian as he dropped Gaznian beside Lingorian. “And Gaznian… I think he’s dead.”

The platoon medic dropped his medical rucksack next to Lingorian, seeing the man groan and writhe in pain. It was a good sign, it meant that he was alive. Meanwhile, Gaznian was still staring at the sky with blank eyes and his mouth agape. The medic wasted no time, first pressing up the fingernail on his finger to try and evoke a response. When that failed, he scrambled over to Gaznian’s face and flicked his eyeball: still nothing. His last and most drastic option was to stand up, maneuver to Gaznian’s lower body, and deliver a swift kick to the groin that still wouldn’t rouse the man. The medic looked at Gagarian, and shook his head. “That one’s dead, but I think I can help the other.”

Gagarian turned back to Yaglian, who had arrived to hear the medic’s report. He exchanged worried looks with Sergeant Ozanian, right before a yelp from Lingorian cut through the air as the medic stuffed dressing and gauze into his stomach wounds. Once the bleeding of the young trooper was stabilized, the medic gestured for Gagarian to come over and help him lift the body up and out of the way. The two took off running with Lingorian as Yaglian and Ozanian both dragged the body of Gaznian behind them. The section withdrew to the north to rejoin the other members of their flank, with the medic and Gagarian heading off to the trucks to rush Lingorian back to the border station where a medical team was being called up from the rear by radio. Within minutes, another whistle was blown and the west flank swept through just like the southern one just had. They encountered no resistance, blew their whistle, and the Armenians began running off to the trucks.

As the troops withdrew, the order was given by the platoon commander to destroy the camp in its entirety. A single rifleman stopped atop the berm where the machinegun positions had just been located, withdrew a rifle grenade from his web gear, and screwed it onto the barrel of his rifle. Taking aim at the barn, he fired: the rifle grenade sailed through the air and impacted straight in the middle of its broad side. The munitions crates inside were detonated with the explosive and a brilliant fireball engulfed what had used to be the battle area. Bits of flaming debris ignited the tents and those began to burn as well. The platoon commander watched as his objective was destroyed, patted the rifleman on the shoulder, and both of them took off to rejoin their platoon. Within minutes, the Armenians were back in the trucks and gunning it back to the border as the sun cleared the morning mist. Elsewhere in the Georgian mountains, the other raids went according to plan as well: the Mountain Wolves would be stirred indeed.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Yerevan, Armenia

Elections were logistically-heavy operations. For months, electoral committees studied census data to determine the intricate distribution of ballots and voting stations amongst Armenian communities. From the biggest cities to the smallest mountain towns, all the way out to flying seaplanes to collect absentee ballots from merchant ships, voting officials were beginning their work. A strong democracy was called for in the original roots of the Armenian nation, the idea being that the Armenian state served the Armenian people instead of the goals of a single man. Everyone, from company men in Yerevan to farmers working vineyards in the valleys near Stepanakert, was afforded the opportunity to vote. And June was when all of this came together to determine the next Armenian president. In Yerevan, each neighborhood maintained a voting office in some sort of civic center: a community center, library, school, or something like that. These in turn were guarded by police, where signs of illegitimate voting were watched for. People began lining up in the morning underneath the watchful eyes of armed police officers, and voted until the polls closed at dusk.

Votes were collected from hamaynkner, or local towns and communities, in regional centers where they were counted. For local elections, this was usually enough to determine low-level politicians. Larger operations, such as for province-sized marz elections, used these voting centers’ data and counted up from them: this simple scaled up to the national level in the case of the June presidential election. Many of the Armenian revolutionary councilmen had been educated in Europe during Ottoman rule, and thus returned to their country seeking to establish similar institutions for their own democracy. Armenian executive elections were set up with a two-round system drawn from European political systems. The election of 1960 had four major candidates: Hasmik Assanian, who was still projected to be leading with a majority; the current conservative incumbent of Joseph Vadratian, and two others from the revolutionary and socialist parties who were trailing behind both. Assanian’s surge in popularity over the course of the election was projected to have him take the presidency that week: however, the system enabled a second election between him and another candidate if neither of them managed to break fifty percent of the vote.

At the campaign headquarters, however, the staff didn’t seem so humble. Champagne, specially delivered from France, was cooling in the cellar while laborers carried unimportant furniture and other objects to the curb. Radio Yerevan announced the closings of polling stations in various marzs as the sun dipped below the skyline of the city, bathing its pink buildings in an orange glow. Assanian waited in his office with his Vice President to-be. While Assanian was in his mid-forties with lighter skin and thinning black hair, the Vice President was thirty-two, the youngest a candidate could be, with longish curly brown hair and a much darker complexion and looked almost Turkish. His name was Hovik Idratian, and he came from Van. Idratian was picked specifically due to his experience in the region, being descended from a long line of well-respected Western Armenian who were popular for their incessant efforts to lobby for a region that was mostly ignored by the Easterners. A land of barren desert and sand had hardened the young man, despite his boyish face. He presented himself fairly lightly, however, and wore a suit of light grey in contrast to Assanian’s stern black.

As Idratian’s job was to manage the cabinet of Assanian’s administration, he was in the back by a desk coordinating their arrival to the office. All eleven of them were returning from their private residences in Yerevan in their cars, elated at the news of the election. Just the other day, the final selection had been made on the most difficult position to fill: Minister of Development. The National Reconstruction Agency was that ministry’s major project, and was responsible for bringing the parts of Armenia that were still developmentally stunted up to par with what was to be expected from a regional power: something that Armenia saw itself as an achievable goal within the next decade or so. Assanian and Idratian picked another Westerner for this position, due to his philanthropy work repairing villages that were destroyed by Ottoman occupiers during the revolution. He, too, was highly respected by many of the lower-class Armenians, even if he did sometimes say things that bordered on too communist for Assanian’s own liking. Despite this, he knew how to get money for these projects and he knew how to use it wisely.

It seemed, however, that the job of the presidency started before the election was even over. Already, an investigation in Gyumri was starting to turn up evidence of a volatile situation in its ghettoes. Communists were, in the opinion of his intelligence committee, starting to worsen the already volatile situation in Europe. Persia wanted to review terms of a new oil pipeline before the contract could be moved further. His laundry list of things to take care of grew every day, some of it appearing in the newspapers recently and some of it simply being inherited from an apathetic incumbent. Vadratian had spent the last few months sitting in office, most likely with his boxes already packed, blaming anyone and anything except himself for why the polls showed him being, at most, around twenty percent. There were rumors of him trying to delay the election by any means necessary, but the Constitution declared it legal to forcibly step a sitting president down if they tried to stay in power without a good reason. He had already tried to call fraud on multiple primary poll results over the election season, and each investigation yielded nothing.

In Armenia, the legislative system usually maintained enough checks and balances on the executive branch, thanks to the political agreements amongst the Armenian Separatist Federation Councilmen after the Revolution. The Armenian Parliament had the power necessary to arrest, in the worst case, an executive politician who was unwilling to leave once his term was over. In addition, several leaders of the ASF militias still survived and constituted the Council even in their old age. They had no organized power but, if they disapproved of someone and made it known, any and all of their social or political capital would vanish as others took advantage of this to attack them. They were already annoyed with Vadratian for his actions around the Russians, hinting that treating the Russians like he did was akin to the Ottoman occupation, so they were watching the election closely. One wrong move from Vadratian, and he could be labeled a traitor to the Armenian state by people who were unanimously respected in society. It seemed like President Vadratian knew that, too, and had slinked away from the spotlight in the last week or so of the election.

The votes were coming in as the sun set and night took over the city. The densest and most urban hamaynkner, such as Yerevan or other cities, would report their votes to their respective marzer first while the rural countryside naturally took longer. Therefore, more urban marzer reported in first: Yerevan traditionally was the start of the results, and an overwhelming victory for Assanian came through the telephone lines to a staffer. Assanian led at sixty-six percent of Yerevan’s vote, followed by Vadratian at fifteen. A resounding cheer came through the floor from below, as it was a wide belief that Yerevan charted the course of the rest of the country. For every major presidential election, Yerevan had correctly predicted the winner. While this didn’t stack up for Parliament’s elections all the time, it was still a strong enough tradition to celebrate heavily when Yerevan brought in a political win. Somewhere, a bottle of champagne’s muffled pop sounded through the thin walls of the West Yerevan building. Idratian silently smirked and pounded his fist on his chest, before reaching for his own bottle of dark liquor.

The rest of the night, until the morning hours when the mountainous Artsakh could finally get all of its votes transported and counted, was spent listening to the voting reports come through the official telephone lines. The scores from these provinces were averaged out as the sun began to rise, leading to the final result that would be broadcast for the country to hear: Hasmik Assanian had won the Armenian presidency with a vote of sixty-five percent of the Armenian populace. Joseph Vadratian took his place with twenty percent, mostly brought in from the southern areas with little to no Russian presence, while the fringe candidates managed fifteen between them. A roar came from the downstairs offices as the campaign clinched its victory. Someone lit fireworks off the roof and the street exploded in red, blue, and orange lights one after the other. Idratian came over to the armchair where Assanian watched the Hrazdan River from his window and handed him the bottle. Out a whiskey glass emblazoned with the logo of his old regiment, the next President of the Republic of Armenia sipped some of Idratian’s liquor. It tasted like aged cognac.

“Well sir, it looks like everyone is all here,” proclaimed Idratian as he peeked outside of the wooden door to the hallway. “Do you want to meet your new cabinet?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s my new cabinet, but it’s official now,” answered back Assanian as he threw a suitcoat over his sturdy frame.

The pair strode through the hallway, its cream-colored walls lit by lightbulbs in elaborate sconces. The conference room was located at the end, next to the staircase of the building, guarded by an oak double door. The Vice President went forth to open the door for his new boss and waved him through. Inside, Assanian’s cabinet awaited: men from their early thirties to their sixties, dressed in anything from navy blue to dark grey suits but all with a purple tie and a flag pin upon their lapels, stood in a semicircle with glasses raised for the new leader of their country. A smile touched the stern lips of a stoic man, before Idratian poured him his own glass of traditional brandy: made from white grapes and spring water from a vineyard just outside of Yerevan. Without further word, they toasted, slamming their drinks down onto the conference table before downing them: “To the new President!”

More fireworks popped in the sky outside, as supporters of the new president moved to Independence Square to celebrate. Bullhorns and speakers announced the victory to the people of Armenia, from the desert of Erzurum to the black forests of the Artsakh. This night was for celebrating, but after a short break the next week was when business truly started. Things were moving quickly in the region: there really was no rest for anyone in this world.

Aygestan, Armenia

Logging was a deceptively simple operation: if enough people cut deep enough into a tree with their axes, it would fall to the ground and could be picked up and moved to carpenters to be made into an innumerable amount of useful objects. The Artsakh was known as a heavily forested region nestled in the rocky mountains of Eastern Armenia, bordering Azerbaijan and Persia. Much of Armenia’s wood came from here, and the craftsmanship of Artsakh woodworkers was known throughout the region. But before ornate furniture could be exported from the region, the raw wood had to come from the mountain valleys. As the morning fog cleared, a crew of men in a military-surplus halftrack painted bright blue drove through a winding dirt road. A rainstorm from the direction of Sevan had just passed through and left thick mud in its wake, but the halftrack motored through with efficiency before taking a turn towards the job site. It wound down the hill, taking care to go slowly by the sharp turns that threatened to flip the clumsy vehicle. Eventually, it came to a series of tents and firepits that marked the logging camp.

A crew of a dozen men jumped out of the back and into the mud, splashing it onto their coveralls and cotton pants. They held axes and hatchets in their hands and greeted their friends as a late breakfast was served. Most people around there ate a simple, small breakfast: in this case, coffee was made and poured for the new crew and loaves of bread were prepared with jars of sweet jam. Breakfast and conversation filled the forest as the fog and mist left, revealing a lush undergrowth of dark green foliage sneaking through the trees. With the size of this camp, it took about a day to fell around twenty trees, so they wasted no time getting to work. The loggers moved from their camp with their equipment bundled on the back of mules and other pack animals to help navigate the rough mountain slopes in their way, trekking through their footpaths past the stumps of trees that had been cut down before. Careful to select ones that they could easily bring back, the loggers selected their first hauls of the day and immediately set up their things.

Gor Kandarian worked a handsaw with his partner on one of the bigger trees on the mountainside. A set of steel cables had been wrapped around the tree and attached to a pulley somewhere else so that, once the tree had been cut, they could lower it down slowly. This was a necessity in mountain logging, catching the timbers before they swung down violently onto people. Gor and his partner worked the backbreaking labor of sawing the handsaw back and worth, sweating as the summer heat began to replace the cool morning fog. It was ten in the morning by the time they had gotten almost there: Gor checked his cheap mechanical wristwatch and nodded, approving of the timeliness of this particular job. The two went back to business before, several minutes later, a crackling and splitting sound was heard from a few meters away. Another tree had been felled, caught by its wires, and gently lowered to the ground to be cleared of branches and jutting sticks before rolled back to a collection point. Gor continued to saw, before he saw his tree begin to topple over once it was almost severed.

The gigantic tree, lush with a healthy dark brown bark, began to fall as its weight dragged it to the ground. The slack on its steel cables tightened, stretching them out. Gor stepped back, down from his portable ladder, but never heard the metallic popping sound as the left cable snapped out of an old, rusty clip on the pulley that someone had forgotten to replace. The cable, now unconstrained by its pulley, suddenly let loose: the tree began falling rapidly, swinging towards Gor’s direction. Unable to even register what was happening before tragedy struck, Gor was slammed in the torso by the massive log and sent flying down the mountain slope like a ragdoll. The tree crashed into another with a thunderous sound, while Gor himself found an end to his journey as he slammed into the trunk of another tree. Blood oozed from his head and nose where, underneath, he had cracked his skull against the tree. He went limp, his vision quickly phased to darkness, and he was dead as quickly as he became injured.

Naturally, the crew of logging workers stopped their work immediately and rushed over to help, but by then it was too late. The body of Gor was picked up by two of his comrades and dragged back to the camp, a process that took much longer than getting out to the job site. A runner came to camp and pounded on the fabric door of the supervisor’s tent, screaming for him to come out. The man was ordered to take the supervisor’s automobile and drive to the clinic in Aygestan, the local village, and find the doctor. This, too, proved difficult as the vehicle became stuck in the mud on the dirt road back to the village. Gor was laid out in the center of camp, but the members of the camp knew that it was already too late. He was dead long before he had gotten back to camp. It was only a matter of time before the doctor came by to declare the same thing. An hour later, he did.

Elsewhere in the village, Mary Kandarian watered her bed of carrots in the yard behind her family home. Nestled atop a hill that sloped down into the woods, the Kandarian home was like most Artsakh rural homestays, was built of stone with decorative wooden columns and a porch that wrapped around the base of the structure. In the back was the greenhouse, a small barn, and several plots of vegetables that Mary enjoyed cultivating for their meals. Within the house, Gor and Mary lived with both of their parents and four children, forming a large family unit typical of rural society there. Their days were generally the same, with Gor coming and going at regular hours unless he knew, and always ahead of time, if he was spending time in the camp as a permanent party. The kids would go to school and come back every day, and the grandparents would stay and read and knit and watch over the house with Mary. For Gor to come home late was highly unusual, since he didn’t do things like go out drinking with his coworkers after work.

Around nine at night, a knock came to Mary’s door. She was reading in the living room while waiting for Gor, the kids had been sent to bed and the parents were asleep already. She got up and went to the red-painted entrance where she thought that Gor should have already used his key. Opening the door, she saw two men were not her husband: the town doctor and the camp supervisor, palms folded respectfully and somber looks upon their faces. The supervisor, and older man with a greying beard and long hair that touched the collar of his grey cotton shirt, bowed his head as he took a step forward. “Mrs. Kandarian,” he began softly, “Gor was killed today.”

Mary’s heart froze, like she was having a heart attack. She stood in the doorway for a few seconds while the blood rushed to her head, reddening her face and leaving the tips of her fingers and toes numb. Her heart, it seemed, could be felt pounding through her chest and her head. “What do you mean?” she asked, trying to keep her wavering voice steady under the pressure.

“I mean… There was an accident. I’m so sorry.” This was all the supervisor could manage in front of Mary. It was obvious he was upset by this as well.

Mary’s mouth twitched and formed into a grotesque frown, tears flowing from her eyes despite her attempts to stop them. Her breathing became almost like hiccups as she tried to stop the sobbing. The supervisor put his hand on her shoulder, and she jerked away. The doctor now, came up to comfort her. “Gor will be returned to you for the funeral, and the priest will be coming by tomorrow,” he soothed, knowing that this was the only thing he could say. “If there is anything else you need, just remember that the village is with you.”

“But why?” asked Mary, looking back up at the doctor. “Why Gor? What am I going to do?”

The supervisor hesitated for a second before answering: “These things happen, it could have happened to anyone at any time. Even me… But the storm will pass eventually for you and your family.”

Mary shook her head and stepped back into her house, grabbing the door handle: “Return my husband’s body to us tomorrow,” she asked. “But for now, leave me be.”

The supervisor nodded quietly, and Mary slammed the door on them. Unable to control it anymore, she went to her sofa and dove into it. Her husband of ten years, dead in a random accident. Someone who she had raised her family with and built her life around, gone in an instant. It was frustrating, it was maddening, and it was tragic. How could it have happened to her? Even worse, now they had four children and three grandparents to support, none of whom worked, and Gor was the only steady source of money that they had. She was left in a dark place with nowhere to go, and she cried through the night long after the supervisor’s car pulled away from the road and headed off to the doctor’s office. The night was long for Mary, proved by her red eyes and running makeup as the sun rose and shone through her window. Before breakfast, she cleaned herself up to maintain the air of dignity as her family came down to eat. As they gathered around their upset mother, they noticed that something was wrong, and Mary stood in front of the crowd of increasingly-frightened family members to say it bluntly: “Your father… Well, your father is dead.”