The Ashkuban's Fury

[STRATCOM]

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.

[Ayzek]

Though no one in power noticed what exactly was thrown at the time, everyone heard the explosion and saw the smoke rising over the walls. Of course, no one expected a fragmentation grenade and the police instead imagined a Molotov cocktail. Nonetheless, the reaction was swift. Though police commanders on the ground feared a media backlash from bloody scuffles with a protesting minority, they entire force feared upset politicians even more. The State of Pythos was an unexpected friend of the absolute monarchy, after all. Along with Nyland, and, to a lesser extent Drahen, Pythos was a chief benefactor of Cynesse's fledgling economy.

Though the protest had taken the government by surprise, the reactionary regime was nonetheless always prepared for a protest or dozens. This late in the afternoon, several hours into the protest against Pythian "exploitation" of Cynesse, the state's well-developed arsenal Nylander-funded and Pythian-provided of anti-protest equipment was poised to intervene at a single word. And it came moments after what had just happened fully sunk in.

Police drones overhead jammed communication devices as officers guarding the media relayed a fresh gag order and forced reporters to shut off their devices. A moment later, what seemed like the entire city's police force struck. Sonic weapons, mounted on trucks stationed behind the police lines, suddenly came alive and brought with them an ear-piercing whine, forcing the protestors back. When the distance grew, the police fired tear gas into the crowd. The riot police, armed with batons and riot shields, advanced shortly afterwards, knocking staggering protestors onto the ground for less-equipped officers to arrest. Their own ears were protected by their noise-isolating, radio-equipped helmets.

Though the police left a small path out of the area open for the crowd to disperse, Cynesse was a state that made examples out of protestors and aimed to make as many arrests as possible. It was not a short run from the Pythian embassy to the way out. With locals having joined the anti-Pythian protest—and having started their own elsewhere in the city and the the kingdom—not all penal brigadiers would manage to make it away, though perhaps that was for the best.

[STRATCOM]

"Okay," said Vasily, "we've kicked it off. Load up the foreigners."

The handlers corralled the Ashkubans through the gap in the police. Within the hour they were clear of the protests and being loaded back onto the planes to be processed out of penal service. That suited Vasily just fine. Foreigners were no good for penal brigadier work, just a bunch of faces of a specific ethnicity for false flag ops like this. They withered under pressure and routed under conditions they could expect teenaged Vestian MT9s to endure.

While the swarthy foreigners were breathing a sigh of relief that their scared-straight penal service was over, for the small Vestian contingent attached to the deployment the true Reclamation had only just begun. Vasily ordered the remaining handlers not already airborne with the foreigners to spread their MT13s out to different protest sites, fanning the flames and distributing Molotov cocktails to the increasingly angry crowds.

A few Vestians also stopped by trash bins and mailboxes on the route of police reinforcements, though what they were doing was not readily apparent in the tangle of protesters.

[Ayzek]

Though the majority of the brigadiers and their handlers did manage to slip through the police, a handful did fall into the hands of the authorities, coincidental casualties of the riot police's advance. It didn't help that the handlers were in no position to guide their lambs through the rout at their leisure. It was difficult to keep track of anyone between the tear gas, the acoustic cannons, and the frenzied crowd, let alone issues commands. To make matters worse for the handlers, the officers were zealous and trained to go after leaders. If the handlers were too obvious or too well-equipped, they quickly found themselves targeted.

Nonetheless, the crowd of an estimated two-thousand was dispersed within minutes. Dozens lay on the streets, however--some victims of the stampede, most of an officer's baton, and a few of the tear gas. Systematically, they were cuffed and dragged to police trucks and buses. They would be processed soon enough.

While the protest at the embassy was dispersed as a response to the attack, the other, smaller, protests were left alone. The protests at other locations were less intensive, however. It was the minorities that suffered the most, after all. The majority of ethnic Cynessians were content to work in foreign-funded factories and warehouses, and had little interest in losing what income they had. Still, it was possible to stir the crowd into action. But it would take and, in the smaller crowds, carry more risks--especially after resources freed from the embassy were redeployed.

It was also likely outside the scope of the mission. The Mandate was payed by an Ishnalli national to harass the Pythian embassy, after all, not to stir chaos in the Kingdom.

[STRATCOM]

CT7 Vasily Utryev began to share his adjutants' infectious dour countenance shortly after one of them, CT8 Hieronym, ushered him into a civilian phone booth among the stirring throng. A shortwave vocex set brought along for special contingencies was set up in the booth, and Vasily took the receiver.

"CT7 Utryev, Unit A, Foreign Penal Brigade," he said into the vocex hesitantly.

"Say your status," said the voice on the other end.

"Ashkubans have done their bit and are on the planes. We're about to begin MT13 Reclamation-"

"Don't," interrupted the voice. "Recall all of them immediately. You'll be landing in Cadenza, Chiri. Take the sea route."

Vasily's voice took an indignant tone. This was his job, his first job, and his single shot to prove himself as a penal brigadier commander.

"This is an active operation! Who do you think you are?"

"MT6 Yuri Markov," said the voice on the other end, "but it's not for my gain. The Vestor Licit People's Mandate is under attack. An armored strike from the Miljoeni is driving towards Lawact. Recall to Chiri. You'll retain command of the foreigners and the MT13s, directly under me."

No small honor done to allow me to retain direct command, thought Vasily with his heart pounding in his chest. Whether it would make a difference at the next uptiering committee, though, depended on whether he survived the next 72 hours.

Rapidly, the Vestian would-be martyrs joined the Ashkuban provocateurs on the tarmac. The civilian planes took off with them aboard shortly thereafter, leaving the native protestors to their fate.