No one had expected a serious invasion. Everyone had assumed that being a territory of the Kumo Empire would be sufficient to deter any invaders.
They were wrong.
Some twenty kilometers from the actual border, sat the Ansheng Army Base– one of the few actual military posts maintained by the Army of the Bromsoll, and even still a paltry bare minimum. The only difference that separated it from a camp was the presence of two dozen small, uniform barracks that surrounded a parade ground of packed dirt. The wooden palisades that surrounded the base were at best a formality, being of so little use when the camp was located next a hill whose enfilading fire could easily target into the guts of the facility.
The handful of soldiers on watch were too few, and too weak– over half of the soldiers stationed on base themselves were transfers from the main forces located in the eastern part of the country, in what had once been called Elenerre before the invasion had been initiated: the veteran, experienced, and promising had all been drained out of the units left to guard the border, and it seemed that High Command had not given the potential threat of a foreign invasion from Eleria any real thought as those ranks were filled by the exhausted and the green. Their training had been laughable to start– what officers hadn’t been diverted to the main forces in the east were lax and uncaring– the closest thing the soldiers had for leadership was found in the handful of exhausted and usually recuperating injured NCOs.
It was not helped by the active resentment that the Corps Army of the Yasuhiro harbored for them, and with their own base being positioned a good hundred-twenty kilometers away on the main road in the route of most of the main military cargo took to reach Ansheng, they would find whole crates of promised ammunition and weapons missing. Now whether that was due to the Internal Army troops or general incompetence by the logistical command was up for debate, but what wasn’t was the resulting loathing the Ansheng men had for anyone hailing from the Internal Army. More than once angry words had turned into rifles brandished at one another, and at this point the soldiers were beginning to expect that if anyone started shooting them, it’d come from their northwest, and certainly not their south.
So when a soldier who had gone off to relieve himself in the bushes during a regular patrol came running back to the rest of his squad screaming something about an inbound infantry column, the sergeant in charge at once dismissed any idea of a foreign invasion. Instead, he ordered an orderly return to base, and without bothering to consult the officers had informed a sergeant major, who in turn rallied a platoon to meet the trespassers. They did not pack many bullets– they did not have very many to begin with, and so for their eight-round murata rifles they brought only a total of sixteen rounds per person.
From the outset, things began going wrong as they set up a position at a bend of the road– several of the fresh conscripts evidently had never walked so fast before, and they were spending more time laying on the grass trying to catch their breath instead of watching the road. And worse- they found the trespassers far along the main road from where they were expected to be, a short distance away from the village of Deishi. It occurred to the more experienced members of the force that the Internal Army liked to keep to the wilderness, where gunshots could be excused as some community’s hunters tracking animals, and thus less likely to attract the attention of the Kumo government. So what were they doing here?
And another thing. None of the soldiers could recall any the Internal Army bringing heavy arms with them: machine guns were so very difficult to disguise as some hunter, and besides, it wasn’t like the Internal Army had all that many of them– they resigned most of them to sit in their major bases near the cities, and most likely in some warehouse, still caked in cosmoline. Yet a large, ugly hunk of metal was slung over at least one person’s shoulder, and a corporal commented he was pretty sure that he saw a person behind that one carrying a stand.
The closer and more closely the Territorials looked at the advancing column, the more confused – and suspicious – they became. The whole formation looked like humans, and through the couple of binoculars that were passed between the handful of NCOs, they couldn’t spot a single hardmark on any of the faces.
“Those don’t look like any of the uniforms that any of the Armies use. They don’t even look Elenrian.” A sergeant muttered.
“It's a deception. Trying to catch us off-guard as foreign soldiers who wandered past the border,” The commanding sergeant major next to him commented.
“I’m not sure… I don’t even see any inselni amongst their ranks. That’s not a small column either, that’s gotta be at least fifty people? A whole platoon! We ought to send some warning shots. It’ll send them the right message.”
“That’s not a good idea. They’ll start shooting back, and regardless of what happens, two weeks from now we’ll hear that the Kumo Provincial Army has formally taken over High Command. No, I’m going to tell them their maps are wrong. They may be asshats, but they’re not stupid. No one wants Kumo deeper in the country than it is.” The Sergeant-major crawled up and out of the prone position he’d been lying in to a baffled expression from his junior.
“What if they’re invaders?! We don’t even know who they are–” Grumbling, the sergeant scrambled up after his superior.
“Nonsense. No one has invaded us since Kumo landed on our shores. Won’t start today, not without the whole damn world knowing in advance for weeks.” He sauntered down the hill in plain view of the column with the sergeant on his tail. The other NCOs in the platoon weren’t that concerned– no Elenrian soldier was so devoid of honor to gun down a pair of clearly unthreatening soldiers in the middle of the road.
But their concern grew as the entire approaching column splintered and scattered at the sight of the sergeant major alone, fleeing into the cover of the nearby trees with their rifles raised. The sergeant-major paused too– these didn’t look like Crown at all, and with mounting alarm, he heard shouting in an unknown language as the strange troops racked their rifle bolts back. He raised his hands to try and calm them–
The first bullet tore straight through the thin fabric of his uniform, and through the wool of the dress underneath, and just under the collarbone, straight into a lung. With shock and bulging eyes, he stumbled backwards– and then the second bullet slammed into him, just as he raised his head, in the neck.
He tried to scream, but he choked on the blood that rapidly flooded his larynx, and could do nothing as he lost balance and collapsed to the ground, clutching at his wound. Next to him, the sergeant head jolted back, and he crumpled to the ground motionless.
With immeasurable pain, he managed to convulse his body towards the direction of the hill where his men: the white puffs of the cordite from fired muzzles greeted him back from the knoll, and between the din of gunshots, orders in Tanhua being shouted about brought hope that the discipline and training of the Bromsoll Army was still in command. But whatever hope anyone had was lost in the rhythmic thunder of the machine gun as it unleashed a burst towards the hill, and followed by a close second that raked the top of the hill in lead.
Whether or not the bullets hit anyone, anything, was irrelevant. Morale had descended into panic as the shooting had begun, and as the ammunition ran dry, the men had been starting to despair. Several soldiers were already on the brink of retreat when the machine gun opened up– all it did was confirm their fear into action.
Without orders, the men turned about and ran for it– for the trees, down the road, it did not matter. The remaining officers knew a lost cause when they saw one, and resorted to damage control: They ordered all of their remaining soldiers to follow them into retreat. With some hope, they might still make it back to base to warn the rest of the forces there.
An utter rout.
Some three hundred years ago, Elenrian forces halted the advance of invading Niaoren troops as they charged northwards in the swirling smoke of the dying Sanshan Empire. Whether it was thanks to the remaining members of the Imperial Army, the ferocity of militant Expeditions who marched into hostile territory to burn supply lines, or simply because the Niaoren themselves were beaten into exhaustion, Elenria’s core heartlands had been punctured, but not shattered. The muskets eventually fell silent, the war banners folded up and tucked neatly into their cases at the community shrines, and so Elenria had staggered onwards into the new century, bloodied but intact.
In the aftermath of gore-soaked fields and smoldering villages, Elenria’s remaining leaders counted what was left of the military, scraping together a force that they named the Border Army. With time and despite a civil war against the old nobility that was closely followed by Kumosenkan’s invasion, some ten thousand dejected soldiers staggered to their perch on a border that resembled the smallest Elenria had been in eons. Led by a commander whose ambitions were more political than practical, reforms were slow, but basic supplies proved even slower, always arriving in a mere trickle.
The soldiers guarding the border did not even make up a full division: in total, only three regiments guarded this portion of the entire border out of normally assigned four divisions, and those left were made up of the disgraced, the exhausted, and the fresh but inexperienced, spread out far amongst remote outposts, far-flung camps, and scattered bases.
Those who had made it back from the initial encounter had done so mostly on horseback– no one asked if they had been stolen from the local villages or not. They didn’t have time to. And though some raised questions about those who were trying to make their way back on foot, an eventual agreement between the NCOs judged they simply were in no position to wait for them.
They’d abandoned the army base immediately. There was no point in trying to hold it: there were just too many invading troops, and too few Territorials to fight. And that wasn’t taking into account how isolated the base was from the main road– any intelligent officer would realize the Territorials there were little threat and just go around and encircle them, starving them more than they already were. No, better to retreat to the major fork in the road, where they could take advantage of the larger hills and dense forest for protection, and call for help from the local Regimental Headquarters located some dozen miles to the west, in Yalfen.
Evacuating their belongings wasn’t a very difficult or time-consuming deal, considering how little there was, save for the sick and wounded, who found themselves heaved on stretchers and wagons as the whole population of the base promptly formed into four scattered columns and began northwards on the main road, hoping that the enemy army would be too tired to pursue them. They took with them what little ammunition and food had been in the stores, setting the rest aflame before the last column departed.
Their movement was sluggish and delayed despite their desperation, and with the sergeant-major’s death, the command had fallen to the purview of a master sergeant, second-class, a younger Crown human named Jien. Though he had very much “attended” the military college, practical experience was in the lacking department– and so was common sense, some of the other NCOs felt. It wasn’t a huge surprise: he was from one of the more politically-savvy communities: good desk jockey, but not a soldier. “I can already hear his calls,” an older NCO muttered to a private. “Conservative and unwilling to try anything daring. Scared of anything new.”
At the head of the column, the lead elements looked up tiredly at approaching horses: the messengers they’d sent about an hour ago were finally back, and they strained on their saddles to lean over and make their reports to Jien. Their shoulders sagged, and their hands trembled; as the officers and men exchanged glances, one of the soldiers began their report, as well as they could as the canteen in their hand shook.
Yalfen had been attacked. Horrid metal and fabric things swooped down from the sky with engines that rattled with a buglike chatter, and upon the city’s busy streets and central square, dropped metal eggs that had burst in plums of dust and shrapnel, cutting down the adults, elders, and children with an indiscriminate brutality. Carriages, stalls, and wagons hit by the blast caught fire, and if not for the brick construction of the city, the chaos would have left a raging inferno in its wake.
What assets of the military in the city had scrambled about in an absolute circus with most of the soldiers having been on regular patrols around the city, and took uncoordinated, random potshots with little to no organization. With each strafing run and bomb that hit, their will to stay and shoot faltered, and morale completely disintegrated. The soldiers turned and ran for the narrow alleyways, leaving only a handful of the especially disciplined and brave soldiers to peek out from corners and windows with a quick snapshot before diving back behind cover.
But the planes weren’t done. They turned around a second time and dove toward the fleeing crowds, dumping hundreds of bullets from their machine guns into the streets below. In their panic, the fleeing crowd turned to a stampede, pushing, and shoving. Someone fell, and as people stumbled over one another in their haste to run away, the planes swept again upon them from behind, the operators squeezing the triggers of their guns as the crosshairs lined up upon the streets once more. The larger ones, with two engines, banked around into a circle over the square, and the two nests at their front and rear, fitted with machine guns, dumped belts of lead directly into any discernible target. Windows, alleyways, doorways. The shrines, the restaurants, the school, the square itself– it seemed that anything that dared move was shot at, guided by the omniscient eyes of a bird of prey that were emblazoned on the tips of their wings.
Bullets ricocheted off the walls of the alleyways, and between the walls that they had hoped would protect them, pieces of shrapnel bounded into the huddled masses, bringing more panic to those there as some attempted to shove their way out, while others attempted to move deeper inside the shadows in hope of more protection there.
The screaming that so much pierced the air moments ago was drowned out in the chatter of the machines as they swept past, and up. The pilots looked out and down, circling about– the piles of bodies that now crammed the alleys and streets were still, and those other runners who weren’t dead had already run away, but if they looked closely, they could see people staggering to their feet. One gripped his plane’s throttle, and guided it forwards, drifting his crosshairs towards a distant figure as it half-turned towards the approaching rattle of the engine–
And then suddenly he pulled up, as a hand extended from the cockpit of a plane at the front, and with a sweeping motion, pointed south. The planes drifted into a formation, not unlike that of a migrating flock of birds, and in minutes, the engines' buzz died away to the crackle of burning roofs and the cries of the wounded.
Battered and shaken, the soldiers had only just finally assembled at the Regimental headquarters when the riders from the Third Battalion finally arrived at the eastern end of the city, bringing with them horrific news of their own. Instead, they found themselves riding through streets lined with the dead, bullet holes peppering the walls of buildings end to end and the sobbing of mothers and fathers clutching their slain children in their arms.
At the Army headquarters, they found only worse news.
The battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, lay on the floor weeping, unresponsive to anything. To try and force him to his feet only resulted in wild screaming and flailing, and finally the major beneath him took charge and gave the officer up as a lost cause. “Instruct the retreating company to dig in at the crossroads towards Yalfen,” she instructed the riders. “I will mobilize the soldiers in the meantime to join you as soon as possible, but you must defend against any and all advance screening attacks.”
To her other officers, she ordered the surviving troops to organize into a standard marching column immediately but did not move the camp deployed in the city. Victory against this magnitude of invasion, she felt, would be impossible without reinforcements, especially if those planes came back. A fighting retreat back into Yalfen, where the city walls and brick construction could protect defenders would be the best option.
To her chagrin, she found the telegraph station had been hit, and the equipment destroyed by a bomb. But word had to get to the regimental headquarters, and the Territorial Army at large– she ordered five fishing boats north to the northeast towards the Regimental headquarters at Vono. Several volunteer inselni civilian messengers were similarly dispatched northeast, in the hopes that the wind might be against their back and bring them to the city faster. With some luck, the Battalion might hold out long enough for relief to come by rail.
She turned back to the task at hand. “Warrant officer? Bring me the city’s administrator, and chief constable. We need to fortify the southern approaches to the main city center as quickly as possible.”
Back at the crossroads, a situation had developed. Scouts posted at the northeast of the formation while the rest of the forces dug into the dirt spotted an approaching column– but seeing an Elenrian military pennant flowing from the flag at the head of the formation, they informed Jien that reinforcements had arrived, and a big one at that, only for the column to get closer and the more modern rifles and uniforms of the Internal Army to show up in the binoculars of the scouts.
Any relief Jien had previously dissolved as he cast a wary look towards down the southern road. He’d already posted up several hundred light infantry there, plus most of the conscripts to act as an ambush force up on the forested hill. If the Internal Army soldiers meant to engage them, there would be no chance of him making a successful defense here.
He turned towards the northeastern road and broke into a run.
“Sir?!” A scout cried, half getting up from his roost on the hill.
He waved the soldier down. “Stay here! Keep an eye on the road! We must buy time for Yalfen to prepare defenses!”
