Telling Stories

I’m likely to add more to this one tomorrow – it doesn’t break in a very natural spot – but that won’t be part of tomorrow’s writing.

—

Littorand learned painful lessons from its first war, and the fact that it had only been won by geography and poor timing on the empire’s part was not lost on the victors.

An aggressive program of recruitment and training, including a brief period of compulsory military service for men of fighting age, was the first solution the councils could come up with. This was supported by a massive ship-building program; the rationale being that even a relatively small imperial force slipped around the mountains would be able to subdue Littorand without much difficulty. Bosca didn’t have a navy on its south coast at that point – the only thing south of its breakaway provinces was near-endless ocean, so no real effort had been made to control the waves. Naval superiority combined with a vigorous defence of the mountain fortresses ought to be enough, leaders decided.

This doctrine proved its worth when the imperial army returned five years later. Probing attacks on the pass met with no more success than the full-fledged assault of the previous war, and the empire found itself woefully outmatched at sea. The war never had a chance to escalate, as the empire descended into a disastrous fourth civil war barely two months after the first attack.

The war – and the series of invasions from Bosca’s northern neighbours that followed it – proved crippling for the empire. Tens of thousands died, regimes rose and fell every year, and the empire’s strong central authority was almost shattered. Littorand was left alone for the better part of two decades, and while the empire was largely left out of many of the technological advances taking place in Galacia and the western continent, Littorand was able to reap the benefits of open trade.

By the time Bosca pulled itself out of its destructive conflicts, the position of the two nations had almost been reversed. Littorand possessed a strong economy, a powerful technological base, and a well-equipped and highly disciplined army; the empire was now poor, and its army had been all but destroyed by nearly twenty years of constant fighting. By the time the empire felt secure enough to make a third attempt at bringing its breakaway province to heel, warfare had changed considerably: the internal combustion engine had made armies far more mobile than they had previously been, and powered flight introduced the concept of air warfare.

The empire’s near-dissolution had taught it some valuable lessons. The third invasion of Littorand didn’t begin with official declarations or the movement of infantry – instead, it came far faster than the defenders were able to anticipate. Taking advantage of harsh weather that prevented Littorand’s air corps from flying, imperial engineers blasted the Sorne back to its original course and built a hasty bridge to cross the gap. The mechanised force that rushed through the reopened pass quickly overwhelmed the Littorand army units assigned to guard it and broke through to the southern foothills. An assault reminiscent of the last two wars on the eastern pass kept its defenders in place, while the bulk of the Boscan army marched behind the armoured vanguard.

Modern military historians generally agree that the desperate battles fought over the following three months, more than anything else, defined Littorand’s army as it is today. The defending soldiers were now better equipped and trained than their enemies, but faced nearly overwhelming numbers. The invading army had been contained in a roughly fifty-kilometre radius from the exit of the western pass, but the defenders simply did not have the numbers to maintain the front indefinitely.

Updating late but at least there’s plenty! This is the first of a planned series of pseudo-historical ramblings about Littorand’s on and off wars with the Boscan empire. And yes, Littorand is in the southern hemisphere – thanks for noticing!

—

While it predated the nation’s independence by nearly a century, the first Boscan civil war was nevertheless a formative conflict in Littorand’s military history. The province was initially left out of the conflict until the recall of imperial soldiers prompted one of the pretenders from the neighbouring southern provinces to make an opportunistic annexation.

When the loyalist armies turned their attention to the southern rebels, the assaults laid a template that all but one of the subsequent major conflicts would follow. The rugged terrain of what is now modern Littorand’s northernmost state slowed the numerically superior loyalists and channeled them into two columns; the rebel troops were able to stall both columns – raiding their rear lines all the while – until winter sealed the mountain passes. The fighting resumed in spring, with no real progress made by either side; the loyalists made no real headway, and the rebels found that any damage they were able to inflict was easily repaired by the flood of fresh troops and goods from the reunified imperial home territories. The stalemate was eventually broken by the pretender’s pride; his arbitrary governance and refusal to keep the peace in his occupied provinces made him deeply unpopular, to the point where the loyalist general found himself meeting a delegation of local lords offering him the pretender’s severed head.

Littorand saw no real conflict through the second and third civil wars, and after independence its fledgling army was only employed to intimidate remaining lawless elements in the early years of nationhood. Its first real war came six years after its formation, when the empire had finally grown impatient with its breakaway province’s stubborn refusal to return to the fold.

The initial occupation force was, in hindsight, far too small to fight an effective war of reconquest – the imperial generals had clearly expected a simple show of force to be sufficient to make the provinces fall into line. It was instead met by an army five times its size: an insufferable provocation to the empire. An overwhelming force was assembled and sent south, but as in the civil war the defenders were able to use the terrain to their advantage. At first, the Littorand soldiers were vastly out of their depth; the Boscan troops were mostly veterans of the northern conflicts, with vastly better equipment and tactics. Half of the battles turned into routs almost as soon as they began, and only the early onset of snow in the high passes prevented an outright victory for the empire. That first brute strike may well have ended the war – and an independent Littorand – within two months if the invasion hadn’t been so poorly timed, beginning in the second week of June.

The winter gave the Littorand army and people much-needed breathing space. While the commanders of the army were sceptical of their soldiers’ ability to continue fighting, the brutal nature of the empire’s response had galvanised political support for independence. Huge surges of volunteers helped to replenish the army’s ranks, but the army remained inferior to the empire’s in both numbers and experience. Knowing that it would be near impossible to win traditional battles against the empire’s armies, Littorand’s leaders diverted the fast-flowing Sorne river into the eastern pass and heavily fortified the narrowest point of the western one. When the snow melted, the attackers found their avenues of attack reduced to a single pass held by a series of truly murderous defences. Littorand was at heart a nation of engineers, and the winter months had given the defenders time to construct fortifications of such strength that even the mostly green troops were at a massive advantage while defending them. The narrow valley stymied the imperial army’s tremendous numerical advantage, and the elevation of the defenders’ position gave their artillery a decisive advantage over the attackers’.

The battles in the valley continued for the better part of seven months before a ceasefire was declared – not because the Boscan army considered itself beaten, but because it needed all of its strength to defend the empire’s eastern provinces from a war with a larger and more aggressive neighbour. Regardless of the reason, the imperial army’s retreat became a tacit acknowledgement of the autonomy – and the resilience – of the young nation of Littorand.

BAM here we are. Giacomo’s pretty grumpy hey!

—

The soldiers had obviously been in the middle of something, if their postures were anything to go by. Giacomo waved his good hand distractedly. “No need to stop, kids. I’m just here to keep warm.” They seemed to take him at his word, which was fine. Things were going well enough if they were willing to discuss things in front of the boss. The tallest one – Massimino – turned back to face the other two and picked up the argument where it had left off.

“Well, okay. I’m just saying I don’t think you’re being entirely fair, Steiner. We’re at least accomplishing something by helping these people.” Massimino was infantry and almost as heavily augmented as Giacomo. His artificial parts glinted in the floodlights and moved as smoothly as anything natural. The man he was arguing with – Steiner – rolled his eyes and made a token gesture of raising his hands.

“We’re not a charity, you know? There are plenty of others who are much better equipped for humanitarian aid.” He slapped the side of the vehicle for emphasis. “I didn’t sign up to drive this just for fun and games. We should be taking the fight  to the empire!

The cyborg snorted. “There’s not much point in fighting them if we’re not capable of treating the local population any better than they are. This camp isn’t a holiday resort, it’s full of desperate people who’ve just had their lives ripped away from them.”

“Sure. So what? We’re not here for that. The imperial army’s over those hills, doubtless committing fresh atrocities, and we’re just supposed to wait and let the scout force rap them on the knuckles?” Steiner had gotten louder and louder, to the point where one of the mechanics – Giacomo couldn’t recall his name – turned around and gave the assembled soldiers a look of worn patience. The tank crewman scowled, but didn’t continue speaking. For the hundredth time, Giacomo felt vindicated in his grassroots approach to leadership. He was sure the new girl didn’t ever get this sort of perspective on her soldiers’ mood.  The third soldier – Carson, infantry, unaugmented – gave Giacomo a brief sideways glance before replying.

“Steiner, I don’t think you do understand why we’re here. We’re not just soldiers, we’re representatives of Galacia. You may have joined up to get revenge, but that’s not one of Command’s priorities. These people are going through a hell you’ve never experienced,” he continued, forestalling Steiner’s protests, “and yes, I know you ran away from execution or imprisonment. But you’ve never known poverty. You were raised in a noble house, you came here on a private jet, and you’re living in the most pampered nation on the face of the earth. You’ve never had to wake up wondering whether or not you’d have to eat weevils for breakfast. We’ve been ordered to sit here, and for what it’s worth I agree with Massimino: there’s no harm in offering aid while we’re able to. They’re hurting too, you know?”

Giacomo was glad for his prosthetics – he doubted that he’d have been able to keep from raising an eyebrow at that speech. It was amazing to see a grunt as feral as Carson buying into Carla’s high-minded rhetoric about human solidarity. Maybe there was something to it, after all. Steiner looked hurt, but his response was pre-empted by a comms officer who came running out of the darkness. Another nuisance: the rain made personal wireless communications too unreliable for paging, so they had to run everything to him whenever he left the main tent. The man was nearly out of breath – poor fitness standards, Giacomo mused – but managed to speak after a couple of seconds.

“Call from HQ, sir. No details, but I was told to get you on air as fast as possible.” Giacomo nodded. Her Ladyship, no doubt – Carla was rarely satisfied with his reports, and usually grilled him for details she really had no business knowing. Still, she was in charge, and he’d had ample opportunities to quit before now. He nodded to the newcomer and left the circle with a brief “carry on” to the debating soldiers – he considered a casual salute, but his deteriorating arm made him reconsider. They already knew that he fought and bled with them, and driving the point home unnecessarily wouldn’t achieve much. This lot were certainly a better class of grunt than he’d been back in the day, and they deserved a CO they could put their faith in.

He moved on through the rain and cursed it again. Forget moving the whole company out; it was going to slow him down enough that he’d get chewed out for being late to report. Just his luck to be stuck out here in the wet, having to remember half-forgotten minutiae for a commander who should know well enough to let him manage his own affairs. Just his luck to know that it was exactly what he’d signed up for.

Duty could be a bitch at times.

I’m amazed at how naturally this came out, given how much horrible headdesking I’d ran into trying to write something else today. This is set between the first few missions of the upcoming AW hack. Not sure if I’m going to polish these pieces up a bit and actually use them to spruik the thing or if I’m better off just treating them as character studies and writing practice.

—

“The raiders retreated almost as soon as they saw our camp; they were clearly expecting to hit a refugee camp with no real defences. I doubt they’ll hit us again, but we’re following standard security protocol anyway. With your permission, I’d like to move back behind the border inside a week. We don’t want the Boscans getting suspicious at this point.” Giacomo speed-read the report he’d just dictated before sending it off, knowing that his request would be refused. He still saw no reason to edit it out; he’d learned long ago that he was better off voicing dissent to his commander’s face than allowing it to brew behind her back. If he kept on complaining then she’d either reassign him or fill him in properly on this suspicious assignment, and either situation was a win to him.

He moved to pick up the hardcopy report from the local liaison and frowned as his arm refused to stretch all the way. He’d taken a stray bullet when the raiders had made their abortive attack on the camp, and the breach in the watertight cladding had allowed the rain and mud to creep in and foul up the actuators. It was the second time in an hour the arm had seized up on him, and if past experience was anything to go by then the whole thing would probably be inoperable below the elbow within another day. He considered calling up the prosthetic surgeon to get an explanation for the shoddy patch job he’d received, but thought better of it. The man doubtless had his hands full attending to the company’s augmented infantry, and Giacomo’s own prosthetics were a secondary concern: as the commander of this expedition he was here for his brains, not his body. Odds were that the job hadn’t even been that bad – he suspected it would have held for a week if it hadn’t been for the blasted rain.

He and his company had been stuck babysitting a bunch of refugees from Ferres for the last three days. The camp itself was in a political no-man’s-land: officially part of Ferres, but outside the territories claimed by the attacking Boscans, and apparently not worth enough to the smaller nation’s government to bother defending from the wave of opportunistic bandits and mercenaries scavenging for food and equipment in the wake of the government’s collapse. It had been raining incessantly since the evening of the first day, and the roads in and around the tent city had been turned into miserably thick mud. Giacomo and his unit had come here at Carla’s insistence – officially to gather intelligence about occupied Ferres, but more likely thanks to his commander’s humanitarian bent. The ragged mix of civilians and ill-equipped deserters certainly wouldn’t have stood a chance against half of the raiding groups wandering around without the ADF unit sitting on the edge of their camp, and while Giacomo certainly didn’t bear any grudge against them, he couldn’t help but feel that his talents would be put to better use striking against the Boscan army. Let the volunteer army take this assignment – they probably joined up with this kind of nursemaid duty in mind anyway.

Still, orders were orders. Even if Carla didn’t have some unspoken bigger plan for Giacomo and his men, she was the ADF commander. If it really was a big mistake, then he was sure she’d realise soon enough; for all that she was too soft a touch, she was a much sharper player than anyone he’d worked with in the past.

Giacomo just hoped the weather would clear up. The terrain they’d trekked through to get here in the first place had been rugged enough when dry – right now he was fairly sure that half the company was effectively immobilised by the mud. If they needed to push forward to back up the advance force – or even worse, retreat back to the regular army’s lines while under fire – then he’d be faced with the dilemma of waiting for the weather to improve or leaving the better part of the company’s wheeled vehicles behind. His arm stiffened up again, and he growled to himself. Odds were good that the water was going to wreck the wretched thing permanently, and he didn’t look forward to getting it replaced.

He stalked out of his tent, figuring the rain had already done its worst. The cold didn’t bother him much – he didn’t have many nerves left in his limbs anyway – and it was important for him to be seen in tough times. Soldiers wouldn’t follow a commander who’d tell them to patrol in the wet while staying back in an air-conditioned prefab, that much was for sure. He checked up on the sentries at the north perimeter before joining a mixed group of infantry and mechanics warming themselves by a tank’s diesel exhaust.

A section of smart polymer had been set up above to stop the rain, but it wasn’t big enough to offer proper shelter, and only succeeded at channeling the water into thick streams around its edges. None of them bothered to salute as he approached; the mechanics were busy with maintenance of some sort, and the grunts had all been with him long enough to know how little he cared for ceremony.

A quick AW:P update, some backstory for the Galacian campaign and a minor character therein. Not quite finished, mostly because I’m not sure where to go with it. :/

—

Something unusual was afoot.

It wasn’t anything Marco could put his finger on – there hadn’t been any change to the daily routine, and the flurry of debate and voting that usually preceded a mobilisation hadn’t come. Things just felt… off. All of the higher-ups looked distracted, for one. Marco didn’t know any of them well enough to come out and ask, so he was stuck with trying to sort out the rumours at his own level.

It didn’t help that he was new here – he only knew a handful of the base’s soldiers by name, and of those maybe half were likely to trust him enough to share the kind of information he was after. To make it worse, all of the information he had gathered was borderline contradictory. The man running the mess hall was convinced that Littorand was planning an invasion and all of the conferences amongst the higher-ups were being used to plan defensive strategies. One of the men guarding the barracks Marco had been put up in – Stelvio? – thought that the silence was politically motivated: the top officers were planning on doing something underhanded – an assassination in Bosca, or maybe a midnight raid on one of the empire’s border outposts – and didn’t trust anyone not to blow the whistle.

Kendric, the quartermaster, seemed to think that it was just paranoia about the next month’s budget review. “Everyone always gets frightened that their department will be axed”, he’d said while looking over Marco’s requisition forms. “It’ll all blow over before too long.”

As it turned out, Marco didn’t get time to connect the dots. Two weeks after his transfer, he was summoned to a meeting room – “the commander wants to see you” is all his escort had offered. When he found himself sitting down opposite a lean, deeply tanned woman whose gaze seemed to look right through him, he realised that they hadn’t meant the base commander: he was being interviewed by his boss.

“We’re going into Ferres. It’ll start with a small force, and I want you to act as executive officer.”