Imperium OffTopicum VII

UPDATE 8#

Hour: 430
Location: Kipchak-Russian Border

An eerie silence was in the air. Spring was young and in this part of the world, that meant the weather was still biting cold. Two small groups of guards stood on either side of the fence, eyeing each other warily.

Lieutenant Çoker Yılmaz was in charge of the platoon on the Kipchak side. Normally a lieutenant would not have been assigned to babysitting a fence, but tonight was no ordinary night. For hours he had been waiting for the secret orders from Sarai Batu that he had been informed of.

They came at 431 precisely. The voice of the Kipchak Commander in Chief, Mustafa Şahin, crackled forth from the lieutenant's radio: Commence Operation Domination. I repeat, commence Operation Domination.

Before the Russian guards knew what was happening, the Kipchaks had opened fire on them. All ten Russians were dead in seconds.

"Good work, gentleman." Lt. Yilmaz congratulated his platoon.

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Within a minute, all across the border, dozens of Russians lay dead. On the Kipchak side, only two men and one woman lay dead. The road lay clear for Kipchak armies.

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It was crucial that no word would reach Moscow of the impending onslaught. Russian protocol, according to the Kipchak spies in Russia, was that guards must contact Moscow every 30 minutes. This gave the Kipchaks a narrow window of half an hour before Moscow suspected trouble. Maybe less, if Moscow, for whatever reason, tried to contact the guards before that.

A minute after his message, Yilmaz heard the planes. They crossed above him in seconds, travelling at top speed.

We're on our way, he thought, turning around in the direction of the nearest command post.

From Dem Taqat:
"Coffee, ASAP," requested Comrade McPortuguese-Name, as he collapsed wearily into his chair. It had been a long day, a very hard day, and a not entirely successful day. He had struggled to manage the various happenings around his country, and the world.

The recent decision to join the war had thrown into chaos the party plans for Peaceful reconstruction of their territory, and further consolidation would now have to be halted to focus on the war effort. The meeting of the Full Council had been completely uncontrolled. Attempts to bring order had seen shouting, arguments, and constant questioning of the government's entire foreign policy. Yesterday’s Lesser Council meeting had been better, but only because they were prepared for the news by the discussions of the Comintern Representatives.

The overall strategy was still being drawn up, with his generals having to conform to international plans in what would be the new army’s first war. However, it was already becoming apparent where dissent lay. The Media's reaction would be coming out within 10 minutes. The Comrade lifted his coffee cup and got lost in mulling over his conflicting thoughts. Time seemed to fly by; as he set the cup down, the News had already begun broadcasting. The Comrade had been questioned earlier about the decision to go along with the Comintern vote and hoped that his answers would come out in a good light. To make matters worse, he had done nothing for the upcoming elections all day. They said war was heck, and he could see what they meant already...

From Robert Can't:


Danilo Ilić was by now quite a renowned person in the inner circles of Sarajevo's government as well as a sort of legend by the revolutionary movement in Načertanija. Said movement existed only in the mountainous regions where the socialists had fled after the counter-revolution. Now, the dispersed groups led solitary lives in small camps around the hills. However, despite their scattered nature, the Serbians were centralized and the varying groups were organized from two bases: one directly east of Pirot and the other to the south-east of Vranje. Both locations were well secluded and could be used to see all that went on in the nearby lands.

Danilo was the unofficial leader of the Vranje base. He led expeditions to disrupt the Government and he did so frequently: everything from organizing assassinations to destroying infrastructure. Through it all, though, he remained quite sad. He had made this country--it was through his efforts that this nation had been born. He had trained, organized, and led the group that had killed the Emperor's unnamed nephew. Seeing the paradise which he had created slowly fall down in the weeks after its creation into an authoritarian--a regime that was completely against his wishes--had been a serious blow to him. Quite truthfully, Danilo was no longer the man he had used to be.


But, what he held in his hands that moment reminded him of an important and historic time before; it was a map. In fact it was the very map that he had used during his journey to Serbia-–the journey he had yet to return from. The map still had on it the little cross which he had drawn on it, while he had been sitting on the train as it had approached the border.



From across the rough encampment of makeshift tents, crude boxes, and equipment, he heard music: the music from the radio. As soon as they had gotten ahold of a radio, they had attempted to listen in to the news from Free Serbia and Sarajevo. Unfortunately, the news was bleak and they soon discovered that they preferred listening to the comforting melodies played by the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra.



Their camp, as it was, was located in an old abandoned fort and was rather rudimentary. However, they made do and got by--accompanied by the music of the Sarajevo Philharmonic. One day, only a few months earlier, they had made contact with Free Serbia. The heralding of this contact was a sweeter sound to their ears than anything that had ever come over the radio: news of a liberation. The Sarajevo Government had finally gotten around to preparations for a full-blown liberation effort.

The plan came in four stages. Danilo had sketched them out on his map.



First, Phase 1 (in Maroon): the 1st Belgrade Division would go through the Mountains to their south. Using their knowledge of guerrilla tactics, they would assist the Revolutionaries in their efforts to hinder the Načertanija regime as plans were simultaneously put in motion for Phase 3.

Phase 2 (in Light Orange) would involve a wide distribution of the Revolutionaries and Free Serbs amongst the common people, in order to incite the support of the locals and to prepare for the invasion.

Phase 3 (in Green) involved the main military force. The armies would march in from all directions and would secure footholds in the more lightly defended outlying regions.

Phase 4 (in Blue) had the Free Serbian forces combining with the Serb Revolutionaries, supporting each other in a full-frontal assault. The combined forces would attack the strongly-defended urban areas, pushing the enemy forces out, where they could be cornered and trapped between flaking forces.

Danilo liked the plan. He had had some input into it, and he could see that his relayed information regarding the placement of the Byzantine Elite Reinforcements has been put to good use. More importantly, Danilo felt confident that they would win and was prepared to play his part.

Despite his confidence, he still felt nervous. Over the radio came the sound of Dvorak's New World Symphony. It was the signal. When the music ended it would signal the beginning-–the moment where Free Serbia's troops would enter Načertanija. As the music crescendoed to its brutal end, Danilo gripped the piece of paper tightly. Today would be the day that decided the fates of nations. The time was upon him and he was ready to lay down his life as he, along with co-ordinated forces all across the area, launched the beginning of the Serbian Civil War.

From the Latino Nation (spanning across three messages due to the character limit per message):
Ricardo Quiñones Garcia was sitting at a table on the outdoor patio of a New Byzantium café in the Kumbaba quarter of Sile, a coastal district of Istanbul aka Constantinople aka the City of Broken Promises--its name varying depending upon whom you asked. He had been nursing his drink for what seemed like hours, or at least that's what the wait staff kept telling him, so beside his first drink sat two untouched ones, which he had purchased just to keep the servers at bay.

Under the guidance and leadership of the experienced operative known as Valeria Santiago Pérez, Ricardo had been amongst the team that had successfully ferreted-out word of the incoming Byzantine attack, thereby saving countless Latino lives. Valeria, however, had been sent out on another mission to a different country--presumably one of high importance for she was highly sought after as a diplomatic operative--but Ricardo knew not where; such was the nature of his business, for even the secret-keepers knew only bits and pieces of the bigger picture. Now that Ricardo was in charge of local operations, he felt doubts in his own abilities and felt ill-prepared to follow in Valeria's footsteps. However, Ricardo was creative and ingenious in his own right and while he was not as subtle as Valeria, he was good with a direct approach. And so, with the help of a colleague, he prepared a trap for New Byzantium's Minister of Trade.

Ever since New Byzantium's declaration of war, the ports which had previously swelled with trading vessels were all but barren of activity, with only a tenth of the normal boats docked in the nearby marina. The Latino Nation traded with the world and when trade stopped with the Latino Nation, the variety of foreign goods coming into the country dwindled considerably. For the Minister of Trade, that meant a huge loss in profit and a lot less work for his men to perform--which was a bad thing, as he generally skimmed a percentage or two off of the top for his own uses and now found his spending money drastically reduced to a mere pittance.

"It shouldn't be long now," Ricardo thought to himself. The Minister of Trade had a predictable routine and would be leaving the office shortly--15 minutes earlier than he should, as was his habit. Ricardo got up to leave, dropping a 10-spot note on the table, and was rewarded as the predictable Minister rounded a nearby corner. Casually, Ricardo departed the café and followed the Minister a couple of blocks behind him--the streets were packed and busy but the Minister hardly varied his route between the office and his favourite after-work pub, allowing Ricardo to stay far enough back to avoid arousing suspicion. Ricardo caught a glimpse of the Minister as the Minister ducked around the corner of a building and into an alleyway.

Ricardo hastened to catch up--the timing was tight and he needed to be in position for the plan to work. As he rounded the corner, he bumped headlong into another man who came at him in a dead run. Ricardo was slammed against the wall and slid to the ground as the other man hurtled past, dropping a wallet and a 100-spot note at the edge of the alleyway before hurrying off. Ricardo brushed himself off as he got up without pain--he was no worse for wear as he had fallen gracefully, having expected the assailant's escape. As he turned toward the alleyway again, he spotted the Minister sprawled on the ground and helped him up.

"It's gone! My id! My credentials! My kids' photos... he took it all!" moaned the Minister of Trade as Ricardo hauled him to his feet.

"Do you mean this wallet?" Ricardo cleverly asked, as he pointed to the wallet and the 100-spot note conveniently located next to each other. "Your assailant must have dropped them when he plowed into me. It seems that lady luck is with you today."

"Oh, thank heavens, I am saved!" the Minister of Trade cried out with joy. He reached down for his wallet and then hesitated before getting back up; the desire to pick up the money was clear but his pride prevented him from doing so in front of a complete stranger.

"I'll tell you what," said Ricardo, as he sprang his trap. "You deserve this money for your trouble and obvious pain. However, I can see that you are a very honest man. Therefore, I will take the money and spend it on drinks that I will buy for you. How does that sound? The only trouble is that I don't know this area well enough to know where a pub might be located..."

The Minister's reply was a humble one but when Ricardo saw the gleam in the Minster's eyes at his proposal, he knew that he had his mark pegged. A couple of hours later, after several rounds of drinks had loosened the Minister's tongue, the Minister began to complain heartily. "It's all the Latinos' fault! If they didn't hog the world's trade, I'd have more options. Now, my trading empire is in ruins. Ah, but they have what's coming to them, that's for certain. Soon we will be declared upon by another nation, but this declaration will be a ruse, and the Latinos will rue the day that they cut off trade with us. The Latinos will never know what hit them as their homelands are unexpectedly invaded by this newfound 'war-time ally.' It shall be a glorious day indeed!" Pausing, the Minister of Trade seemed to realise what he was saying, and, in a moment of clarity asked "Say, who are you anyway?"

"I am no one of importance. Have another two drinks, on me," replied Ricardo as he paid up the tab with the barkeeper and strolled out, before his mark could piece together just what they'd been talking about and what the implications of said conversation might be. The Minister of Trade happily smiled at the bartender when he was served the next drink and thought nothing more of the strange man that had helped make his evening such an enjoyable one.


In another part of the world, Valeria Santiago Pérez struggled out of her business casual suit, showered, and changed into a bright red cocktail dress. She hated dressing in such a fancy fashion, but she had a role to play and she was not one to disappoint others. A master of disguise and foreign languages, this evening she was posing as Valerie Strogolev, a Russian Ambassador to the Republic of the Gulf Coast.



Over the past couple of weeks, she had wheedled her way into the confidences of Charolette and it was by Charolette's personal invitation that she was being granted entrance to the Presidential Ball. Actually, the invitation had been signed "Charlotte;" it appeared that Charolette enjoyed altering the spelling of her name as much as most women enjoy changing their shoes.

As "Valerie Strogolev" approached the gates of the Presidential offices, she put on her sweetest smile, flashed her invitation to the guards, and slipped in through the front doors to the bustle awaiting inside. The entrance hall was extravagantly decorated and brightly lit--bald foreheads and faces covered in make-up shined brightly in the reflected light. Before she could make it very far, Charolette appeared and took her by the arm, showing her around as her guest for the evening.



When the party progressed into the ballroom, she and Charolette split up, tag-teaming the smartly-dressed men and coyly luring them into dances. However, as the night wore on, the men got more and more drunk, ever more lurid in their gazes and praises, and barely hiding their desire for her. When one man with whom she was dancing started to grope her, she had had enough and politely excused herself to visit the ladies' room.

As she boldly walked out of the room, Valeria saw her chance and slipped away into an empty corridor. From there, she casually walked across the carpeted floor to a nearby stairwell, which she used to access a restricted row of offices above the ballroom. For someone talented such as her, gaining access past a security-card-requiring lock was a trivial matter and she was soon rifling through documents of war plans.

"Hmmm, very interesting," she thought to herself. Not a single map of New Byzantium stood in the room. However, maps of North and Central America were scattered about, with arrows pointing into the lands owned by of all the nearby nations. One such map on the wall had dark-blue-coloured pins dotting territories belonging to her nation. Frightened but not surprised by what she saw, she moved from office to office, being careful not to leave a trace of her passing.


After more than an hour of searching, she came upon what she'd been hoping to find: a series of innocuous-looking co-ordinates without even a map attached. She had studied many Gulf Coast military communiqués that her nation had intercepted and this one matched the pattern of an encoded army and naval distribution, which was exactly what she was after. Suddenly, though, she heard a scraping sound and looked up--not 2 feet away was a man in uniform with a very unhappy look on his face.

"What are you doing here? Show yourself!" he shouted as he flicked his flashlight toward her.

"Ничего, Солдат," ("Nothing, soldier") she purred in perfectly-accented Russian as she walked confidently toward the man. He went for his gun but by then she was upon him, drawing her finger down his arm from his shoulder to his forearm in a seductive manner and flashing a brilliant smile and innocent eyes his way. The soldier was thunderstruck by the woman's coy beauty and she continued to casually stroll past him, walking out of the room with the correct belief that he was too busy ogling her swaying form in her curvacious dress to do more than stare and drool.

Back in the corridor, Valeria slipped into another office, from which she snuck out via a side door, leaving the bewildered guard scratching his head in the hallway, wondering if he'd imagined the entire encounter.

As Valeria returned to the party, she bid farewell to Charolette, giving her a warm hug and a light kiss on the cheek as she whispered how wonderful a time she had had with her that evening. Walking slowly and gracefully toward the door, her cool demeanour encouraged an otherwise stationary guard to fall out of position and hold the exit door open for her; he held it open long after she was gone for he was boldly staring at her backside as she strutted down the front lawn's pathway toward the waiting limos for guests.

Ignoring the limos, she strolled up the lane to her parked motorcycle, boldly climbing aboard in her cocktail dress and donning a sexy and complementary leather jacket and biker helmet pair, before zipping out of there. Once Valeria was certain that she was not being followed, she pulled her bike into an enclosed garage at a secure location, from which she made an encrypted communiqué. Having an excellent memory for patterns, Valeria was able to recite the Gulf Coast's troop deployments from memory.


At his outpost in Columbia, Armando Ortega Hernandez, Head of Intelligence of the Latino Nation, poured over the recent intelligence reports. He had been at it for hours but still had not heard word where the Gulf might be deploying its troops, although he had multiple agents on that task. Then, shortly after 5 am, with his bleary eyes making him blink several times just to be certain that he was not hallucinating, he saw Valeria's codename appear on his screen. He smiled to himself, knowing that once again, she had pulled off a virtual miracle, a miracle that would prove to be the undoing of the Gulf Coast in the upcoming battles.

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