Taijitu World Building > Modern Era Fiction

Battle Cry (1984)

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Prydania:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZtMHSOq50Q

Vince Ares eyed the man across the street. The target was wearing a long black coat, his suitcase containing what he'd been after. This was it. Months of analysis. Even the CSIB in the Confederacy had been collaborating with Prydainia's SSI on this case. One of the Confederacy's best men had even provided the final piece of the puzzle.
Ares didn't necessarily appreciate that end of things, however. He was, by his own admission, a blunt instrument. He killed people for a living. Since his days in the Royal Marines. That had defined him. Maybe he hadn't made peace with it just yet, but he'd found a way to sleep at night at least. In this business? That was a sign you were doing well.
He peered into his guidebook that gave a brief history of the city of Hayden. He was with a group of tourists from the Confederacy and colonies who were here to see some of the motherland's historic sights. He himself was dressed in a slightly worn grey suit. Suitably unremarkable. Suddenly he saw movement. The target glanced at a pocket watch and then waved to a taxi that had just turned down the street. He had to act now.

He tossed the book to the sidewalk and briskly made his way across the street. Hopefully, if he moved fast enough, he could subdue the target without a struggle. Suddenly the target looked up. His eyes locked on Vince's. The game was up.
"Shit" Ares thought, already running after the fleeing man before his mind had a chance to process the word. The target's coat was shed almost as soon as he took off, Ares drawing his pistol and yelling "get down!" at the crowd around him as he fired a warning shot into the air. The target turned a corner. Ares saw him wrestle a man out of a car as he followed, making a bee line for the vehicle as he leaped onto the hood, his torso hitting the windscreen as the car took off, his body obscuring the view of the driver.
The car weaved a few feet as Ares managed to position his gun between himself and the car, firing off a single shot. The car jerked forward as the shot target's foot slipped off the gas, Vince rolling himself to the street and quickly forcing himself up. He reached through the open driver's side window and yanked the door open, wrestling the bleeding man as he managed to get an outstretched foot on the gas and turn the key.

The target, a bullet wound in his left shoulder, fell to the ground as Ares pulled him out. "Stay down" the SSI agent hissed as he pointed his gun with one hand and grabbed the suitcase with another. He had it. Finally. He had it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'm shocked you remembered to stop the car, myself" Major Algernon, SSI quartermaster, remarked as he examined the floppy produced from the suitcase Ares had retrieved.
"Well you know" Ares answered, "we wouldn't want dead tourists on top of a major national security leak. Thinking on your feet is important you know."
"So you do think!" Algernon remarked cheerfully as he inserted the disk into the drive of the SSI mainframe. "I'm sure His Majesty sleeps well knowing that."

"Can you tell me what it is?" Ares asked as the quartermaster began to examine the schematics that flashed across the screen.
"Plans of some sort" the Major responded, scrolling down the file. "Solar technology far ahead of anything we're currently working on. It appears to be some sort of...cannon!"
"A solar cannon?" Ares asked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
"Yes and..." the Major continued, before stopping. His lips shaking. "X-77?" he asked terrified.

"Yes Major?"
"Look" the quartermaster pointed to the screen. "That chap in the CBSI that seemingly found the leak? He didn't go quite far enough. It's...I can hardly believe it."

"The Minister of Defence" Ares remarked, his voice cold, his complexion pale. "Kelman Winters."

Prydania:

"That's the problem with democracy. With people. Everyone's looking for the best in someone else and no one wants to admit the worst."

Stephen Crofts held up an issue of The Herald, the story of Kelman Winters plastered across the front.
"I often wonder, just how long the people of our great Kingdom will tolerate incompetence on the part of the Whig government" he exclaimed to a sizeable crowd in the city of Avon in southwestern Prydainia. The city was known for its lavish aristocratic town houses and growing business district. Old and new money coming together. In other words people who would, usually, lean either Whig or Tory in a national election. Crofts was looking to change that.
"The Minister of Defence" he continued, "was working to betray this country from under the nose of Prime Minister Rowan Smith for years! And not only that, he's vanished!" he screamed.
Suddenly his demeanour calmed. "Prime Minister Smith" he continued, speaking to the leader of the Whig government as if he were there, "you either knew and are a traitor, or you're incompetence justifies His Majesty's calling of this election in light of this serious breach of national security."

He let the firm yet calm words settle on the crowd before he continued, the black uniformed party members surrounding his pulpit.
"I won't promise you a laundry list of guarantees I can't afford like the Syndicalists. I won't promise you that we need to a return to civility and gentlemanly government like the Tories. And I won't lie to you about this country being fine and on the right track. Syndicalists will destroy us. Tories would have us living in the last century, and the Whigs will continue to betray our sovereignty abroad and compromise our nation at home. I can, however, promise you one thing..."
He paused as the crowd anticipated what he was about to say. He threw his arms up and shook his fists "Victory! Victory over forces that wish to destroy our nation. Victory over the millstones of relics, and victory over the incompetent and complacent. I promise you, Prydainia, victory in the fight to restore our national dignity!"
The crowd erupted. White party flags featuring the boar and national flags featuring the jagged cross dotted the crowd.
"I promise you victory. In many ways it is my only promise. My only proclamation. Victory over those who have led us down this Primrose Path. Vote for victory in the general election. Vote Social Commonwealth."

Sovereign Dixie:
Whitmore Manor, Birmingham, CSSD

   The television went black, the image of Crofts went with it and the room was filled with silence save for the sound of the ice rattling in President Pershing's glass. Leaning back in his seat, he looked over to CSIB Director Aaron Hawking. "Which one of our boys did you have working with the SSI on this?"

   Hawking, the older of the two men in the room, put on his glasses as he leaned over, grabbing the folder off of  the table. "Tom Clark, one of our analysts."

   "I haven't heard of him." Pershing rose with a soft grunt, and strode over to the liquor cabinet.

   "You wouldn't have, most likely. He just started last month."

    "Christ, Aaron, you put a fucking green horn on this?"

   Hawking peered over his glasses. "That greenhorn graduated top of his glass from Arsenal, and has doctorates in Poli Sci, Economics, and history. He also speaks twelve different languages."

   Pershing chuckled a bit, taking a sip of his drink as he sat back down, setting another glass down in front of Hawking.

   Aaron sighed, glancing down at the glass. He'd been on the wagon for fifteen years and during all of that time, Pershing had either not gotten the memo, or just didn't care.

   "Then bring him in, Aaron. The SSI evidently can't keep track of their own damned people, and this guy is dangerous. I expect a full briefing by the end of the day."

    Hawking nodded, "Will do, Mr. President."

Prydania:
Island of undisclosed location

"Minister, welcome. I suspect..."
"Not Minister anymore" Winters replied coolly, cutting Pietro Eisenhardt, his chief of security, off. "Though it wouldn't surprise me if the good Prime Minister refused to write me off just yet" he chuckled, recalling how easy it was to operate under Rowan Smith. It wasn't that he was incompetent. It's just that he never saw him coming.

He'd seen them coming though. He was out of the country and the fortune he had hid away seized, every asset of note from both the Ministry of Defence and his company, WintersCorp., secured before the SSI even had their man. Of course his company and reputation were in ruins. But that didn't matter. Those things belonged to the old Kelman Winters. Knighted as a peer of the realm, a respected industrial leader. Minister of Defence and a column of the Pryadainian Whig Party.
It was all gone because he wished it to be gone. He leaned across the steel railing, looking into the ship yards. Some of the most advanced technology in the world was being moulded into the shape of a fleet that would change the world forever. And the new Kelman Winters would be at the forefront. A man no longer held down by the millstone of an old, dying world. A man now led by an uncompromising vision of the future. There would be those who would fight that future, but he, his fleet, and the light of a new dawn would wipe them away.

"Mr. Winters..." Eisenhardt spoke up. "I suggest that we activate defences in the event that the Royal Navy finds us. No doubt they're already looking..."
"Fear's ever changing and evolving Pietro" Winters replied.
"Sir?"
"You're afraid because you don't fully realize the power that we have here. The power you're tasked with handling. The Prydainian government...no, the world...the world won't find us until I deem them worthy of knowing."

Eisenhardt nodded. Winters was right... the location of the operation was sufficently well hidden. And while Winters had fled Prydainia he still had his allies in the SSI and the bureaucracy, which would largely remain unchanged regardless of who won the upcoming general elections. Their technology and contacts within Prydainia would keep them hidden.

"Can you believe it Pietro? People fighting the future. When it's such a beautiful thing..."

Prydania:
July 22, 1984. The General Election.



"The Social Commonwealth Party has won a shocking victory, a majority with three hundred and eighteen seats. For only the second time in this nation's history a general election has been won by a party other then the Tories or the Whigs, the first time since the Syndicalists' lone minority government, won in 1927. The Syndicalists, for their part, also made significant gains, winning one hundred and thirty seats, putting them in line to form His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Both the Tories and the Whigs took major losses, mostly in the face of the wave of Social Commonwealth support. The Tories have been reduced to eighty-three seats while the governing Whigs have been reduced to seventy-four."


Stephen Crofts, 318

Jeremy Gill, 130

Alexander Chatham, 83

Rowan Smith, 74

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