War of the Vestors

[Miljoen_vuist]

"Men of Miljoen, the time has finally come to prove your superiority, not shrink or shrink your birthright! Our nation will no longer suffer the aggressions of the Vestors, nor will we suffer our trade and good name by their economic warfare Soon we will cross the border of injustice and destroy everything in our path, conquer the Vestor-cities before us and take their riches that they have stolen from us. "They are rightfully ours! We will push their capital and their leaders and put them right for their crimes, and if they are found guilty, I'll kill them for you, my loyal men, I'll do this, go do the same for me, fight and win for our proud country! "

With these words, the supreme executive power of the Miljoen Republic, Martin van Derksen, had announced his new foreign policy after he came to power. Now these same words gathered the men of the Miljoen Armored Corps and sent them into action. R-115 "Spartan" armored people carriers, R-87 "Lancer" anti-aircraft tanks, R-90 "Gryphon" multi-mission tank destroyers and hordes of staples R-70C "Shield" line battle tanks swarmed across the border and into history.

Commander First Armored Corps ordered its units to strike the Vestors border guards directly against their Miljoen counterparts. They fired grenades and rockets to quickly switch off the border posts before news of the great invasion reached the capital of Vestor. Once they had advanced into the interior, the infantry would disembark and capture border towns.

Thread size: 10 fu
Gambit of 1fu
1d6 rolled for a total of: 1 (1)

[STRATCOM]

It was a beautiful morning on Lake Gideon's southern coast, and MT7 Valentina Svetlana intended to enjoy every minute of it. Cold, clear water was a treat in the scorching summer heat, even if the most she got from the cupola of her FC200 Coyote was a cool, wet breeze. Every other direction was blinding sand or somber scrub brush, and even the inference of coastline over the next hill was intoxicating.

Her Coyote, 21, was part of the mechanized company rotated in for border patrol periodically. The nimble infantry fighting vehicles were to Vestians as sedans were to foreigners, and with ninety five percent of all Coyotes ever built still running in some capacity there were machines to spare for such a trivial duty as guarding a stretch of desert border. Svetlana figured that 21, for fifteen years prior part of a frontline Elanii DMZ unit, now had another ten or twelve years left in her before being demoted to civil defender paddy wagon, then another seven before being released to civilian duty like mail carrying.

All told, this mass produced cannon with wheels would serve the Vestor Licit People's Mandate for nearly forty years - all due to the Vestian obsession with hot roddery and grease monkeying, which ensured that each generation of vehicle crew would be even more lavish with maintenance, repairs, and upkeep than the last. This had the peculiar effect that older Coyotes were more valuable than newer ones, despite the technological advancements.

An FC200 fresh off the line today had bare metal and factory settings, while a multi-decade veteran like 21 had its sights dialed and engine tuned to perfection by no less than three crews - to say nothing of the tapestries of paint that adorned its approved panels. Svetlana and her crew had taken 21 south to Lawact for the Custom Show last year and made it to the semifinals, losing out to an admittedly gorgeous rendition of the Great Patriotic Resistance on an '81 Coyote.

A rumbling crescendo in the distance brought her back from her reminiscing. Instinctively she looked to the sky, hoping for a flash thunderstorm to drive out the heat. No such luck. Perhaps it was some commotion on post, an unlucky cargo handler who was about to earn himself a wave of demerits. She considered voxing the dispatch for details, but shrugged and let it go. Vocex calls were priority only, and there was no need to single out her unit on a quiet patrol like this.

Far in the distance, she could make out the faint skyline of the foreign metropolis Detigstad, a Miljoeni city. She was miles too far away to see any kind of activity, but the sight of the robber-baron city put her ill at ease. She told MT8 Vasily to start the engine and tapped out a telex message to dispatch as the reassuring rumble of the diesel kicked in.

"21 TO DISP - DISTURBANCE 180 OF 4240 - ADVISE," was all that she had time to type out before another, closer series of rumbling booms echoed across the desert floor. These were close enough to be obviously manmade. She flipped down the closed-circuit mic on her bulky helmet.

"Gunner up," she said, hearing it repeated with popping static in her ears.

"Gunner up, ponyal," said the young gunnery officer, MT9 Tereshkova, sliding down the scope from her seat.

"Gunner, traverse, one-eight-zero," she said, all business now. "Driver, one-eight-zero into forty-two thirty-nine. Take it slow."

A small chorus of 'ponyal's signified acknowledgment. In a few seconds, 21 was easing down the dirt path towards the noise.

"21 TO DISP - INVESTIGATING 180 INTO 4239 - SAY STATUS," Svetlana sent off, growing increasingly uneasy that dispatch was taking longer than their signature twelve seconds.

21 crested a hill, and as the hull settled back down Svetlana was greeted by a sight so surprising that she scarcely noticed the telex receiver beeping with a response from dispatch.

"DISP TO 21 - BORDER SEISMOS NONRESPONSIVE 4220 TO 4285 - INVESTIGATE - VOCEX AUTHED," it said.

The nature of the problem was quickly made obvious. A large force -no, a wave, a seething carpet- of foreign armor was streaming onto Vestian soil, the ruined frontline bunkers behind them with their broken expensive seismometers and unlucky immolated MT9 sentries pouring thick, oily smoke against the bright sky. It was a scene of sheer mechanized horror, the kind of thing they show in Motor Officer School to scare the slackers straight.

"Back up, back up!" Svetlana hissed into the mic, and 21 lurched back over the hill in reverse to avoid being spotted and killed. At her further urging, Vasily guided 21 into a hidden nook in the gnarls of rock and sand which would provide concealment unless the Miljoeni came scouring the hills. By the speed of their advance, that seemed unlikely.

Willing the ice in her veins to go away with each measured, tense exhale, MT7 Svetlana picked up the vocex receiver and called dispatch.

"Overwhelming armor advance from the east," she managed to get out. "Get me Lawact now."

FU Remaining: 7 of 7
Gambit response: 1 FU
Gambit attempt:
1d6 rolled for a total of: 2 (2)

[Miljoen_vuist]

Commander First Armored Corps smiled broadly when he saw that his tanks were coming quickly beyond the Vestor border. The number of victims was minimal, but it hurt him that a number of initiatives had been lost due to unexpected resistance from border police stations. The speed of the advance he also found nerve-racking, while they moved too fast to be stuck by enemy tank force, the commander feared their speed would leave them open to encirclement and air strikes if they did not pay attention. Yet they had the advantage in numbers and speed. If the surprise element had been lost, so be it. It was a necessary war victim.

He ordered the "Shields" to remain true to their name and form a wall of armor for the more fragile and expensive "Spartans" and "Lancers". The "Gryphon" multi-mission tank destroyers he had ordered to cross the border into killer teams and advance faster to seize the great advance, using their powerful guns and strong armouring to overcome any resistance that would may have been contributed by the Vestors. Their pathetic Coyotes tanks would not be a party to brand new Miljoen armor.

Thread size: 10 fu
Gambit of 1fu
1d6 rolled for a total of: 6 (6)

[STRATCOM]

Svetlana dared to pop the commander's hatch on 21, peering out over the rock cropping that hid them into the Miljoeni advance. Her bulky vocex headset felt glued to her head, tiring her neck with the weight of responsibility.

Dispatch had not routed her to Lawact, instead escalating up their own chain of command while she relayed details of the advance to them. She knew her words would take well over an hour to reach the military district so that planes and artillery could start mounting a counterattack. For now, Miljoeni tanks streamed unopposed down the dusty asphalt roads of the border sector towards the Mandate's second largest city.

In the meantime, the surviving border stations were scrambling their armor. The Miljoeni blitz had been extremely fast and narrow, breaching less than ten miles of border, and it seemed that their air support was minimal. Local commanders hoped their laser focus on Lawact could be exploited to strike the force with Coyotes at the flanks and rear, forcing it to slow and engage and giving NTC and Ranger aircraft to scramble.

In time, the enemy force slowed to a trickle of logistics vehicles, personnel carriers, and rearguard fighting vehicles. Svetlana reported this and the line went silent. She heard a few seconds of talking and rustling in the background. The dispatcher told her to get ready to move and that VOX use authorization had been rescinded. Then he hung up. This struck Svetlana as an ill omen.

Before she could think too long on this, the telex receiver chattered with a fresh message from dispatch. She tore her eyes away from the now-empty border sector, and three seconds later ordered 21 to button up and Vasily to get it moving. She reread the message another two times to be sure:

"DISP TO 21 - RENDEZ WITH 3/7 MECH AT 4080, MOVE SE, DESTROY ENEMY REARGUARD AROUND 3880."

As they turned onto the road, she could already see 3/7's Coyotes moving up to engage the rearguard vehicles that had just passed 21. They sunk cannon shells into cargo trucks and personnel carriers, firing fast and wild to draw attention. Their actual impact was questionable, but the counterattack certainly seemed ferocious.

Coyotes were built for force recon and carrying personnel: their armor and guns were no match for modern tanks. Svetlana knew, like the other mechanized commanders, that this attack was purely diversionary. Their purpose was to try and get the main advance to slow and react to their assault to buy Lawact time, not to roll up the rearguard. How effective they were would be measured by how long they could trade fire before being inevitably destroyed.

"Gunner up," she said, pushing the thought aside.

"Gunner up, ponyal!"

"Gunner, load HE! Sight target to your zero-one-five."

The gunner confirmed, and trained on the nearest Miljoeni vehicle. It bounced on its suspension as it roared across the brush, having turned off the road to respond to the hail of cannon fire.

Here we go, thought Svetlana.

"Fire!"

FU Remaining: 7 of 7
Gambit response: 1 FU
Gambit attempt:
1d6 rolled for a total of: 5 (5)

[Miljoen_vuist]

Commander First Armored Corps smiled broadly when he saw his gambit succeed, there was little resistance on the open roads, instead the Vestors' border guards had been left behind who could not organize. He had not even realized that the pathetic Vestors were trying to slow their advance with a counterattack, but rather that his subordinate leader of the 7th Armored Division, who guarded the rear, reacted first. He knew that under no circumstances could he stop to kill their inferior tanks in the right way, but had to keep moving to secure the advance. Whether their Miljoen pride would enable them to follow this mission instead of turning around to destroy their enemy remains to be seen. This also applied to the risk of losing men who had to leave them behind, and even worse: leaving to be prisoners of war of the gruesome Vestors state.

"Men of Miljoen, from the 7th Armored Division," said the subordinate, "move quickly and immediately south to support the advance! Do not fight against the Vestor's attempt to lure you! Only fire as you leave the area, do not stop and fight! Commander First Armored Corps and our glorious president count on you! " With these words he put the radio down and studied his map, hoping they would beat this distraction.

Gambit: to disconnect the rear guard without getting entangled with the forces of Vestors to continue the lightning strike
Gambit of 1fu
Fu remaining: 9 of 10
1d6 rolled for a total of: 1 (1)