Portus Felix Aftermath

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Strategos Metaxas
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Portus Felix Aftermath

Post by Strategos Metaxas »

Your Majesties,

I beg leave to report as follows.

  1. At 1842 hours on Saturday the 14th of May, 2016, contact was lost with the garrison at Portus Felix. At 1903 hours radio contact was established with the Hikanatoi  Tagama commanding the Constancian Tagamata during its redeployment operation. A significant enemy strike has been launched on the port and harbour of Portus Felix. The attack is believed to have consisted of three air-fuel bombs of the type previously announced in Grand Marshal Xi's ultimatum. The detonation points appear to have been in the Patriarchate Ward, the Military Ward and the Administrative Ward, all within the city walls. A reconnaissance overflight this morning shows that fires are burning out of control in these wards and threatening a wider conflagration. Contact with the Garrison Navarch was re-established this morning and paints a grim picture. The toll is currently in the region of 8,143 confirmed fatalities, mostly through burns and asphyxiation, and when the numbers of reported missing are tabulated brings the likely total to in excess of 13,000, out of a garrison of 20,807 militia, and around 12,000 Home Guard. Of those who remain 7,835 militia and 1,231 Home Guard are reported as incapacitated by severe injuries (mostly burns) and shock induced trauma. This leaves 10,741 effectives within the city's defensive perimeter, and three quarters of these are walking wounded to a greater of lesser extent. Artillery and anti-aircraft munitions are now exhausted. Reserves of ammunition are running low. Stocks of food and medicine have been destroyed or spoiled. Sanitation infrastructure has been compromised and the supply network within the city has broken down. Even if order can be restored it is unlikely that rationing will yield sufficient amounts to last the survivors beyond next week. Organised resistance is increasingly untenable. Permission is sought to evacuate surviving command staff from the city.

    Not a single child under the age of 13 remains alive within the city. Those who were not killed by their parents after the terms of the ultimatum were made known are now amongst the dead after the churches and infirmaries of the Military Ward in which they were sheltered burned down.
  2. The breakout operation launched yesterday, had pushed on into the enemy rear echelon formations before the disruptive effect of the strike on Portus Felix was felt. The impact however has been to preclude the possibility of resupply from the town for those mounting the attack. The Tagamata and its supporting auxiliary banda are now having to make do with whatever, by way of weaponry, food and ammunition, they can salvage from the opposing enemy force.

    The use of chlorine gas and the targeting of enemy unit headquarters is believed to have proved vital in disrupting the first defensive lines. Landmines caused significant losses amongst our forces and many sections were wiped out by enemy suppressing fire whilst trapped in suspected minefields. However, some ingenious efforts at mine detection were effected by brave souls attempting to crawl forward, prodding the ground with their bayonets and carefully digging out anti-personnel mines, clearing at great risk and cost, lines along which the infantry were able to advance.

    Unit cohesion has however broken down. All twelve Scorpion light tanks are now reported to have been knocked out, while twenty-eight of the accompanying technicals have also been destroyed. The Tagamata are now operating in ad hoc formations seeking to fight their way clear of the enemy formation, which appears to be at least of a full division strength. It would appear that attacking eastwards rather than northwards may have been a tactical error on the part of the garrison commander. If the Navarch, survives, and is recovered, she will have to give an account of her actions.

    The last communication with the Hikanatoi  Tagama this morning suggests that casualty rates amongst the breakout force are running at at least 33 to 36%. On this basis we cannot expect to recover viable units from this battle. The best we can hope for is that the forward patrols of our advancing Home Guard columns will be able to rescue escaping individuals and groups, who can then be sent to the rear and then assigned to new units as they are raised or else used as replacements for losses elsewhere.
  3. In view of the fate of Portus Felix, it is strongly advised that children and the infirm be evacuated into the countryside and towards the north of the Kingdom. In urban areas they will only prove a liability.
[/justify]
Andreas Metaxas | Mesazōn of Constancia | Exkoubitorōn Theos

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Strategos Metaxas
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Re: Portus Felix Aftermath

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Megálo Paláti tou Vey, 16 May 2016

A pair of Basileusian Guards dragged a woman, dressed in the grime encrusted and tattered uniform of a naval officer, into a windowless concrete cell of a room and dumped her, none too gently, down into a worm-burrowed chair sat before a metal writing desk. They left her there and slammed the door behind themselves as they went. She could hear the lock being turned and firm scrape of a bolt being slotted into place.

For something like an hour she waited there, with nothing but a single flickering light-bulb for company. The compulsion to scratch at the scabs and lacerations on her face was unrelenting, still she did not yield nor did she fidget with the mess of bandages and gauze that covered her right eye. Her once lustrous black hair was torn, singed and caked in filth.

No one had said one word to her since her arrival in Vey that had not been a barked instruction. She had been given no time to her self before this moment, and the moment dragged more and more, each time the light-bulb flickered.

A key turned in the lock and the bolt squeaked its protest as it was slid back. Another man in a grey uniform, an ESB contractor - 'in the Palace?' she barely acknowledged the thought - walked across to the desk and placed a sheet of paper and a pencil down before her.

"Write a full account of everything that has occurred since the 14th of May until your extraction. I will return in one hour." The tall man, bald and covered in hideous scars said, with no trace of any emotion.

Eudokia looked up at the man with her one good eye. His pallor was deathly. "On just one sheet?" she asked, her tone one of resignation.

"Write small." he answered, not condescending to look down at her. "And write fast. I will return in an hour." With that he turned on his heels, a little stiffly she thought, and walked from the room.

What could she do, she wrote it all down, detailed how the ultimatum had been received. What her response had been. The argument she had had with the Urban Prefect, her father - step-father - she corrected herself. How she had resolved that little problem. The night in the dugout she omitted. It did her no credit and there was no-one left alive to contradict her after all. And then, the explosions, three of them, that had struck in the centre of the town, an old town - lots of wood and thatch on top of Babkhan mud-bricks. The raging fires that had sucked in all the air, the faint heat that could be felt even from the trenches on the perimeter, the explosions as munition dumps and the infernal machines blew up, one after the other. And the next day, the bodies - the shrunken charred bodies from which the flesh had bubbled and boiled and melted away. She made mention of those details - no shame in making them understand what they were facing.

The scarred man returned, she hadn't finished but put down her pencil regardless. Brusquely, he picked up the pencil and the piece of paper. Glancing at what she had written his latticework face formed into a rare mutilated form of half-scowl. However he said nothing as he walked out of the room again. The bolt slammed across and the door firmly locked once more.

Time passed slowly again. A nicotine craving was kicking in. Stress and exhaustion, she told herself. No, she just needed a fucking cigarette. Or some coffee. Or something. Anything. Instead there was nothing. Nothing, save for the flickering of the light.

Unlocked and unbolted, the wrought iron door opened again. The grey man again, a woman wearing policewoman's black uniform and a full length brown leather apron now stood beside him. There was a cruel set to her features. In her hands was a wash-bowl, steam vapours wafting upwards, draped across her left arm was a towel and hanging from her right, a beige canvas dress. A prisoners uniform.

"Any chance of a cigarette, while we're at it?" Eudokia ventured. The woman smirked but the man just looked down at her with contempt.

"You're filthy, anybody with a pulse would be revolted by the sight of you."

"And the smell." Added the policewoman.

"Oh, you know, been busy." Eudokia answered with a certain amount of icy scorn. After all who were they to be criticising her appearance. All nice and clean and safe in Vey along with the other bastards while others had bled and died on their behalf.

"You will strip." The man said. "And wash."

"What, you mean right now?" She asked, incredulously.

"You will strip and wash." He answered, the gaze of his cold eyes meeting her own.

"In front of you?" She answered back, damned if she was going to parade for the delectation of some dead-eyed pervert.

"In front of me." He answered. "If that troubles you, we can convene the court-martial. As things stand you might enjoy that even less."

"Fine." She almost choked on the anger that welled up inside her as she spoke the word. She was, still was, a Navarch - how dare anyone treat her this way. But she'd lost a city. They'd treat her any damned way they'd like.

The policewoman set the wash-bowl down on the desk and produced a scouring brush from the pocket of the apron. Pain and humiliation. That was the game then. The copper was enjoying it too, cajoling her into peeling of each layer of tattered uniform and soiled garments, forcing Eudokia into exposing herself. The ESB man watched her the entire time as she was doused with scalding water and scoured with the brush, yet he was studying her as though she was not a person at all, but merely a broken thing - to be discarded or repaired.

Mercifully the worst of the ordeal came to an end as the prison dress was passed over and she was curtly instructed to dress and then to sit. Now the Policewoman removed from the apron pocket a pair of scissors more akin to shears than anything a barber might have employed.

"Look, is this really necessary?" Eudokia muttered in protest, as the policewoman gathered up the first bunch of her matted hair and pulled it tight.

"Do you think we want lice spreading amongst the living?" answered the man.

"Lice? It's only been three days?"

"You are in no position to argue. It is either this or quarantine and frankly you don't have that time, nor the luxury of being able to quibble over procedures."

"Much good it would do you." Said the policewoman as tugged another length of hair into tautness and snipped.

Eudokia endured the remainder of the shearing in silence, wincing only the scissors, which were not so sharp as they ought to be, seemed to be more plucking rather than cutting her hair. In her mind she was marking them both, and what she would do to them when the time came.

Finally the end came as the man remarked that she looked 'barely presentable' and called in the two Basileusian Guards from before. They led her away from the concrete cell and out into a dark corridor filled with rooms that were open to the corridor except for the vertical metal bars set into the door frames. In this manner did she learn that the Grand Palace did indeed possess its own functioning set of dungeons. The guards marched her past the cells with their manacles and straw-lined floors, past the more modern suite of interrogation facilities and on past the series of metal gates that were opened to allow their passage, then she was taken up some time worn stone stairs to a wooden door, which one of the guards opened himself and led her through -

Into the courtyard of the palace. As she stood, blinking, once more in the sunlight she realised that the guards were no longer beside her, and that she was alone, shaven-headed and dressed like a convict, at the heart of the palce. Not quite alone, posted at each corner of the courtyard was an Exubitor, a member of the elite Tagama of the army - conspicuous by their absence from Portus Felix, she'd ruefully noted. One of the men raised a hand to his earpiece and appeared to be talking, he was too far away for the words to carry to where she stood. And she waited, there didn't seem to be much else to do. No prospect of escape from the courtyard and she had absolutely no desire to try her luck going back the way she came.

She didn't have to wait long. Soon three men walked out onto the courtyard. One she recognised straight away, the former Vice-Chancellor of Vey University, now suddenly elevated to the rank of the Exubitors and declared Autocrat, the man of many moustaches, Andreas Metaxas himself. The man stood to his right; tall, broad-shouldered and dark skinned, she recognised too - the leader of the ESB expedition that was meant to be investigating Babkhan archaeological sites. Somehow Eudokia doubted whether the man, who was sporting a brown camel-suit and a collarless white shirt, would have known a ziggurat if one had fallen on top of him. Her heart sank when she realised who the third man, in the grey ESB uniform, was. The bald scarred man, hovering at Metaxas' left shoulder whispering something. Metaxas himself didn't appear to be giving what was being said his full attention. Instead he stopped and paused to lean in and sniff at a white rose that had been planted in the courtyard's small ornamental garden. As he stood back up, Metaxas turned and looked in Eudokia's direction. The Strategos raised his right hand and beckoned her over. Not having much choice in the matter she hastened to obey, wincing as she stepped onto a patch of gravel and remembered that she'd been made to leave her cell bare-footed.

As she approached, Metaxas turned to the grey bald man and said something. A short and sharp discussion ensued, the result of which was the grey man nodded to the expedition leader and turned to walk back the way they had come, out of the courtyard. Tentatively, Eudokia waited until the bald man had left and then made her approach. She was no longer in uniform, so she was under no obligation to salute, but the man before her was now - by some impenetrable permutation of fate - Autocrat and co-ruler of the Kingdom, so, on balance, and balancing on sore feet, she did her best to essay an awkward curtsey.

"I still haven't gotten use to that, you know." remarked Metaxas in a genial tone to the Shirerithian stood beside him. "Up my dear, I'm only a counterfeit sovereign you know, while the bombs are falling and our betters have better places to be, of course. But then afterwards back to the obscurity of academia."

Eudokia was torn between wondering whether anybody actually ever spoke like that and doubting whether he actually believed a word of what he'd just said - combined with wonder at who it was he thought he was fooling. The Autokrator however was pressing on regardless.

"Now, I must introduce you to this fine gentleman here. Marcellus Paixhans, silent 's' you know, is a very useful chap to know when it comes to finding ways to blow stuff up. Go on then, say how do you do, Marcellus."

"Ma'am." Said the ESB's lead representative in Constancia, not unkindly, with a slight nod and a tentative smile. His eyes however had taken in her dishevelled appearance. What judgement they had formed would remain to be seen.

"A pleasure." Answered Eudokia without much conviction.

"Splendid. Now, Marcellus, this is the lady I was telling you about. The one who lost our city."

"Begging your pardon, Kyrios." Said Eudokia in a tone that could have been mistaken for deferential by those who did not know her. "But the city isn't lost. It's exactly where I left it."

"There!" Exclaimed Metaxas. "You see, that damned ghoul of yours was right. Put her down in the cells for a day and rough her up and she'll still come back snarking."

"Some might say it was a bit of a lame pun." Answered the Shirerithian.

"Nonsense. It was snark of the purest sort. There you see. I can concede that I was wrong and that your creature was on the money."

"Hyrrion has been known not to be entirely wrong." Marcellus replied, suggesting that whatever his own thoughts about the bald man, he was guarding them.

"May I ask, what it was you were discussing?" Eudokia cursed herself almost the exact moment she'd asked. She suspected, and she didn't want to know.

"Why, my dear, I was firmly of the opinion that anyone in a command position who violates the prohibition on unauthorised retreats must pay with their lives. No hard feelings, but an order applied to one must be an order applied to all. You were to have been taken out and shot in the dry moat. Even had a television crew on standby to record the damn thing.
Pour encourager les autres
or whatever it is that Alexandrians say."

"You have it correct." Answered Marcellus, doing his best to sound diplomatic about discussing a persons execution in front of them."

"But then old Corpse-Bits says that he'd like to have a look at you first. Of course it makes no odds to me, so off he goes. Next thing I know he's back bending my ear, saying 'oh but we could find a use for her', and 'isn't it a shame to be wasting talent at a time like this' as though abandoning difficult positions is a rare knack that we should encourage. Well, for whatever reason, he's cashed in his favour upon you my dear, so you get another chance."

"Another chance..."

"You lost us Portus Felix, so now you can damned well go and win it back. Put her in charge of the right flank Marcellus, and make sure that she has plenty of your contraptions. By God, we'll blast those devil worshipping bastards back where they came from. Now, I must be off. Supper with the city elders. Got to butter them up if we'll ever get this rationing approved."

And with that, Metaxas abruptly turned about and walked off - leaving Marcellus and Eudokia together.

"Does... does he always talk like that?" Eudokia asked, not quite believing that her life had been spared by little more than a piece of paper and a glance from a disfigured bald man.

"Yes, I'm rather afraid he does. All the time." answered the Shirerithian. "Now, a word to the wise. A man like Laqi Hyrrion doesn't go out on a limb to help people out of the kindness of a heart he no longer has. If he's done a favour for you, he'll be expecting one in return... no, not like that. He doesn't work that way - at least he probably hasn't in a very long while. Just say that, when he cashes in his favour with you you may not be thanking him for today."

"Should I be thanking him for nominating me for a suicide mission?" She didn't know what had prompted that outburst of candour, but right now she could barely bring herself to care.

"With his exception, we've all got to die sometime. And it's got to be better than dying in a ditch, shot by your own side. Now, let's see if we can't get you some proper clothes - and someone to check over that eye, you do realise there's blood seeping through."

And at that point Eudokia allowed herself to be led from the courtyard and back into an uncertain future.

Andreas Metaxas | Mesazōn of Constancia | Exkoubitorōn Theos

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Jonas
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Re: Portus Felix Aftermath

Post by Jonas »

OOC: Just wanted to say I love your story. An interesting read. :)
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
Joseph Bartholomeus des Vinandy-Windsor, Prince-Regent of Batavia
Jin San, Diwang of Jingdao, Duke of Kildare

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Basileusa Cleo
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Re: Portus Felix Aftermath

Post by Basileusa Cleo »

Jonas wrote:OOC: Just wanted to say I love your story. An interesting read. :)
:up1:
Basileusa Megaliótate Cleo
Autokrateira of Constancia


(Co-Ruler)


Déspoina of the Basileusian town of Petros

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