Post

2301 Hours
Somewhere outside Britson,
Heisenian Occupied Jocospor

Comrade Private First Class Andrei Legaov was tired, and he felt that he had the right to be in the situation that they were in. It might not have been the most physically exhausting job, but driving across the harsh Jocospite desert in the absolutely sweltering heat, sun beating down upon the tin can in which he and his squad sat had left him thoroughly exhausted. Humidity inside the vehicle was insane, and only the drivers of the IFV had any sort of air conditioning, and that was because they were expected to drive in shifts across the desert. He hadn't signed up for this when he had eagerly joined the army at the start of the war. He had spent far too long doing nothing, only to be suddenly ambushed by partisans every few days.

They had fought off two raids already, and the convoy he was in was down about 1/5th of the original equipment that it had, but they had only lost one truck of supplies, and even then most of them were just stuffed into the other trucks or in free spaces left by those who didn't make it. His mind went to Sergei, his brother, who was currently in some cushy job in By-The-Rocks, where the greatest threat he had was staring at those beautiful Loreauan women whilst they stared back. Personally, he didn't give much merit to the legends that all of them were cruel and cold valkyries from the north, most of them were probably just playing hard to get.

Lucky git.

Andrei checked his weapon for what felt like the 8th time this hour, sighing when it all checked out once more. He knew that these rifles were more or less impossible to destroy, short of shooting one or blowing it up. Shifting how he could, he shoved open one of the hatches to find the cool nights breeze blowing on his face. At least there was now some ventilation.

Moving as much as he could, he managed to get his head and upper torso out of the hatch, staring around to see if there was any sort of identifiable features, only to be met with the sight of a pair of towering walls of rock looming overhead in the moons pale gaze. His was vehicle number four, and a cursory inspection around found nothing interesting, but the breeze was enough to quell his desire for something interesting.

Unfortunately for him, that was when the convoy came to an abrupt stop with a catastrophic explosion.

The lead vehicle, a tank, exploded violently, careening out of control and diving off the road, into a sand bank. It may not have been completely destroyed by the AT mine that it ran over, but the left track was torn and the vehicle didn't have the horsepower to haul itself out of the ditch it was in now. The next vehicle in line, a truck, roared onwards, the driving flooring it, only for the back of the truck to be punctured by a shoulder launched weapon, the resulting explosion blasting supplies everywhere, along with the front half of the truck, a flaming inferno.

The third vehicle was an IFV, just like his own, and it chose to try and go over the burning remains of the truck, only succeeding in ramping up, then faltering on the rise as it too exploded from a shoulder launched weapon. Andrei hesitated for a second, his mind briefly going to those inside the vehicle before he scrambled up and out of his own IFV as it came to a screeching halt, illuminated by the burning wreckage that ruined his night vision.

He was vaguely aware of the heavy thumping of auto cannons, the tat-tat-tat of machine guns and the occasional heavy roar of a main gun as gunners wildly fired at the cliffs surrounding the convoy, aiming to eliminate resistance through sheer weight of shot. Somewhere far behind him, another vehicle exploded as Andrei scrambled off the road, Heisenian infantry beginning to dismount, some being shredded as bullets rained down upon them from the vast cliffs.

Scrambling for the ditch beside the road, he fell into it, finding himself joined by a few of his squad mates as they struggled to make out where the enemy were coming from. The blazing inferno of the wrecks made their night vision almost useless, and would only blind them, and only one of them had his thermals mounted. Still they fought, spraying down the cliffs, aiming at sounds, the occasional muzzle flash and the various launch points for the near constant rockets.

But inevitably they fell, leaving Andrei alone as the Heisenian resistance slowly faded away, dead, surrendering or captured. In the end, even he was captured, forced to throw away his weapon and lead to the rest of the captives by the partisans. There, he, and the rest of the Heisenians, were shot dead, and left on the road side.

Except for two. The convoy's very talkative commander and his guest, a stiff lipped intelligence officer who Resistance Captain Jakob Mainz figured had more experience torturing things out of other people than he did in taking it.

In the end he was proved right, and he was most glad he was.

The Loyalists needed to know this.

>URGENT Information<

To: General Staff Loyalist Command
From: Imperial Resistance Command

URGENT MESSAGE stop Consider all communications intercepted stop Abandon previous plans immediately stop Utilise only closed diplomatic channels stop Reason to believe spy in Loyalist camp stop Have raided a convoy and intercepted a Heisenian intelligence officer stop Extracted information about insider not identity stop Continuing to interrogate officer stop Standby for more information stop Requesting more supplies at point Foxtrot stop

Hail to the Confederation