Eternity RPC Board
06-22-2018, 08:31 PM
Tytus Dabrowski mentally spun back the film reel of his life, searching for the one moment that defined his life's trajectory. He longed today, as he did most days, to find the moment that ultimately led him to get off a plane in a foreign country as a professional agent provocateur for another foreign country against his will. As he thought, he shuffled down the boarding tunnel with the other plainclothes Ashkubans that had been unlucky or dumb enough to get caught doing what he did over the years.
Rummaging in his mind produced a few milestones: dropping out of school while trying to hold down odd jobs and stay clean, falling back into the waiting arms of friends who hadn't, getting trashed on cheap liquor and hearing exactly how much his friends made dealing, a brief period of fantastic wealth, getting forcefully inducted into the cartel, and being told the only career advancement other than death was to start up new markets for them in Skathia. Each held its own little memorable place on the slippery slope, but none of them carried the same emotional punch to the gut as his third week in Vestor when he was told he wouldn't be leaving. It seemed like he wasn't the first to pull the old innocent tourist card as a cover for his activities. By the size of the facility he was taken to, that ship had sailed some thousands of 'tourists' ago.
---
Vasily Utryev, CT7, despised each and every foreigner in the internment camp. He watched them shuffle into the camp cafeteria with unbridled derision. Each and every week, foreign tourists were caught with drugs or weapons or religious paraphernalia. Each of them came with an agenda and didn't particularly care what the Vestians had to say about it. Everyone wanted to overthrow the Mandate or profit from its destruction, and each of them had the same insufferable audacity to claim they did it all for the poor, miserable, backwards Vestians too foolish to realize the wonders of capitalism or majesty of socialism.
Horseshit. Vasily liked the Mandate just fine, and so did most of his comrades. He was good at his job but didn't like extra hours, so he sat comfortably at CT7. The Mandate neither screwed him out of fair compensation nor ceaselessly pushed him to uptier to the level of his incompetence. Better than dying in an office chair working 80-hour weeks for the reward of doing more work.
That reminded him that it was indeed time to put some warm bodies to work. He needed no VOX system - his voice carried to the four corners of the earth on a clear, warm day like today. He drummed on the cheap folding cafeteria table that served as his recruiting office and cleared his throat.
"Foreign prisoners," he said, forcefully addressing the weary lunch crowd, "you have been told repeatedly that your only parole is MT13 service. You can pick Fuel Duty or Genetic Test Subject if you want, but you'll die. Join the penal brigades, Redeem yourselves in fire, and you may yet live and be repatriated to your old countries. There is a new unit forming up today for immediate deployment, Ashkubans only. See me if you want to get out of the Mandate."
Tytus, now in his third month at the camp, knew better than to ask too many questions. He sprinted to the table where Vasily sat with reams of paperwork.
---
Pythian Embassy, Cynesse
1099th Penal Brigadiers on scene
The protests had been intensifying throughout the day - now they were nearly riots. Tytus and three hundred of his closest friends loosely surrounded the Pythian embassy in plain clothes, shouting prearranged anti-Pythian slogans, waving pre-prepared anti-Pythian banners, and hurling locally-sourced rocks and empty bottles toward the embassy grounds. Most shattered on the grounds just inside the gates or atop the roofs of the guard shacks where Pythian military personnel scanned the crowd warily. It appeared for all the world that a group of Ashkubans had some very specific greivances against Pythia and wished to do some very specific things to them in retaliation.
Earlier today, the local police attempted to corral the protestors off the street to the adjacent block. It was a foolish mistake. The Vestian handlers let those who broke bones or worse return to the airport to be released from penal service. More than a few men were desperate enough to take the out, and the savage scuffles saw wounded on both sides and the media attention around bloodied Ashkubans with their legs bending the wrong way was immediate and strong. Unwilling to take more casualties and a media circus without direct orders, the police held cordons on the cross streets and a thin line around the embassy - far enough to prevent projectiles from hitting the embassy buildings, but just barely.
"Hieronym, Tobiasz, form your men on me," said MT6 Yuri Markov, also un-uniformed. "Dominik, hold in reserve. We don't know what awaits us after we kick the hornet's nest."
This was MT6 Markov's first deployment as penal brigadier handler, and while foreign brigader jobs were typically more straightforward he still felt a nervous chill worm its way down his spine. Theory in the classroom was straightforward and simple, but real life had many variables that could easily slip and twist out of one's fingers. He straightened up and prepared to escalate the situation.
"Alright," he said to one of the handlers, "do it. Northwest grounds."
The handler nodded and pulled a fragmentation grenade out of his satchel, concealed from police by the press of humanity on all sides. He pulled the pin and threw expertly, arcing the frag naturally over the compound walls and into the corner of the embassy grounds away from the buildings and guard huts. It detonated with a furious flast and burst, sounding like a particularly loud gunshot. A small pillar of smoke rose from charred rose bushes, and chunks of dirt and rock showered the embattled guard huts as the Pythian soldiers inside clamored to cover.
Tytus turned his head to the explosion and gaped. This would not be as easy or safe as they had promised him.
Rummaging in his mind produced a few milestones: dropping out of school while trying to hold down odd jobs and stay clean, falling back into the waiting arms of friends who hadn't, getting trashed on cheap liquor and hearing exactly how much his friends made dealing, a brief period of fantastic wealth, getting forcefully inducted into the cartel, and being told the only career advancement other than death was to start up new markets for them in Skathia. Each held its own little memorable place on the slippery slope, but none of them carried the same emotional punch to the gut as his third week in Vestor when he was told he wouldn't be leaving. It seemed like he wasn't the first to pull the old innocent tourist card as a cover for his activities. By the size of the facility he was taken to, that ship had sailed some thousands of 'tourists' ago.
---
Vasily Utryev, CT7, despised each and every foreigner in the internment camp. He watched them shuffle into the camp cafeteria with unbridled derision. Each and every week, foreign tourists were caught with drugs or weapons or religious paraphernalia. Each of them came with an agenda and didn't particularly care what the Vestians had to say about it. Everyone wanted to overthrow the Mandate or profit from its destruction, and each of them had the same insufferable audacity to claim they did it all for the poor, miserable, backwards Vestians too foolish to realize the wonders of capitalism or majesty of socialism.
Horseshit. Vasily liked the Mandate just fine, and so did most of his comrades. He was good at his job but didn't like extra hours, so he sat comfortably at CT7. The Mandate neither screwed him out of fair compensation nor ceaselessly pushed him to uptier to the level of his incompetence. Better than dying in an office chair working 80-hour weeks for the reward of doing more work.
That reminded him that it was indeed time to put some warm bodies to work. He needed no VOX system - his voice carried to the four corners of the earth on a clear, warm day like today. He drummed on the cheap folding cafeteria table that served as his recruiting office and cleared his throat.
"Foreign prisoners," he said, forcefully addressing the weary lunch crowd, "you have been told repeatedly that your only parole is MT13 service. You can pick Fuel Duty or Genetic Test Subject if you want, but you'll die. Join the penal brigades, Redeem yourselves in fire, and you may yet live and be repatriated to your old countries. There is a new unit forming up today for immediate deployment, Ashkubans only. See me if you want to get out of the Mandate."
Tytus, now in his third month at the camp, knew better than to ask too many questions. He sprinted to the table where Vasily sat with reams of paperwork.
---
Pythian Embassy, Cynesse
1099th Penal Brigadiers on scene
The protests had been intensifying throughout the day - now they were nearly riots. Tytus and three hundred of his closest friends loosely surrounded the Pythian embassy in plain clothes, shouting prearranged anti-Pythian slogans, waving pre-prepared anti-Pythian banners, and hurling locally-sourced rocks and empty bottles toward the embassy grounds. Most shattered on the grounds just inside the gates or atop the roofs of the guard shacks where Pythian military personnel scanned the crowd warily. It appeared for all the world that a group of Ashkubans had some very specific greivances against Pythia and wished to do some very specific things to them in retaliation.
Earlier today, the local police attempted to corral the protestors off the street to the adjacent block. It was a foolish mistake. The Vestian handlers let those who broke bones or worse return to the airport to be released from penal service. More than a few men were desperate enough to take the out, and the savage scuffles saw wounded on both sides and the media attention around bloodied Ashkubans with their legs bending the wrong way was immediate and strong. Unwilling to take more casualties and a media circus without direct orders, the police held cordons on the cross streets and a thin line around the embassy - far enough to prevent projectiles from hitting the embassy buildings, but just barely.
"Hieronym, Tobiasz, form your men on me," said MT6 Yuri Markov, also un-uniformed. "Dominik, hold in reserve. We don't know what awaits us after we kick the hornet's nest."
This was MT6 Markov's first deployment as penal brigadier handler, and while foreign brigader jobs were typically more straightforward he still felt a nervous chill worm its way down his spine. Theory in the classroom was straightforward and simple, but real life had many variables that could easily slip and twist out of one's fingers. He straightened up and prepared to escalate the situation.
"Alright," he said to one of the handlers, "do it. Northwest grounds."
The handler nodded and pulled a fragmentation grenade out of his satchel, concealed from police by the press of humanity on all sides. He pulled the pin and threw expertly, arcing the frag naturally over the compound walls and into the corner of the embassy grounds away from the buildings and guard huts. It detonated with a furious flast and burst, sounding like a particularly loud gunshot. A small pillar of smoke rose from charred rose bushes, and chunks of dirt and rock showered the embattled guard huts as the Pythian soldiers inside clamored to cover.
Tytus turned his head to the explosion and gaped. This would not be as easy or safe as they had promised him.