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-Kharkiv, People's Republic of Ukraine-
The sun dipped just below the horizon, and its rays shone past the bombed-out remains of a few buildings in a small town on the outskirts of Kharkiv to illuminate a couple of soldiers gathered around a fire. A soldier, patched, worn hat emblazoned with a bright red metal star, stood up, took up a nearby stick, and pushed around some wood in the fire. "Andrei, quit messing with that radio and get some more firewood." The man whose name was Andrei, fiddling with electronics in his lap, replied "Hold on, I've almost got it how I want it." The man standing up sighed, and threw the stick into the fire. He walked into the nearby group of trees. After a short silence, Andrei exclaimed and twisted a wire into position. The radio immediately began producing a song in a foreign language, interspersed by bursts of static.
"Oh, I know this one! Come back, check it out!" He waved to his fellow soldier in the trees. "It's all over, but the crying... and nobody's crying but me~" he began singing in heavily accented English. The man who went to get firewood turned back just long enough to shake his head, when a sudden crack resounded through the ruins.
The expression of mild disappointment and amusement frozen onto his face, the soldier fell limply forward.
Andrei immediately threw the radio off of him, silencing its somber notes, and picked up his gun. He ran as fast as he could. All the way away, he heard continuous cracks as bricks fell out of houses and holes appeared in the dirt around him. He cowered in the doorway of a building some distance away, waiting for the sounds to stop.
He pushed open the door of what used to be a restaurant, plates and silverware dropped askance around the floor, and a scent of dust and decay thick in the air. Trying to make as little noise as possible, he moved to the back entrance he had seen earlier. The crunching of detritus under the floor worried him, though, but he thought it would take sometime before whoever it was caught up with him. Pushing open the door, he looked carefully to the left and right. Convinced the coast was clear, he took one step out of the building.
A knife stabbed into him from the back, and the world went dark.
---
A woman in a black motorcycle jacket and skirt took out a handkerchief and wiped off her knife, glancing disdainfully at the man now laying quietly in the dust. "A Russian, as per usual. Do they have any actually Ukrainian soldiers, or can they not find any that actually want to work for them?" She briefly smirked, before she turned on her small radio. "Чорна (Chorna) here."
"About time, Чорна. I was beginning to think something unfortunate might have happened."
"As if, Colonel. There was a patrol where the data didn't indicate there would be, so it was necessary to eliminate them. It's unfortunate, because it might cause trouble for me later on, but nothing can be done."
"Understood. Our agent has verified that the target is headed to the rendezvous point on schedule. Consider the operation underway."
"Very well, I won't disappoint you."
"You had better not. The country could very well be dependent on this mission. Leonid out."
Чорна, or Khrystyna Yehorivna as her name actually was, turned off the radio and returned it to her jacket pocket. Picking up her old Mosin-Nagant Model 1891/30, she slung it over her back. Most of the regular infantry had been issued the new Zroya rifles, but she had requested to keep hers as it was much better suited to the work that she usually carried out either as a battlefield sniper or in her new capacity as one of the Ukrainian State's elite special forces troops, the Pryznyach. She had put a lot of work into it to keep it purring nicely, so she'd be damned if they took it away from her for one of those peashooters that couldn't hit much farther than 300 meters.
Smiling at her work, she jogged back to her motorcycle. "Just a little bit farther, old girl." She kicked a broken chair out of her way and revved the engine, heading east towards the city.
---
"Come on, old man, get out of the car." Khrystyna adjusted her sight slightly and leaned farther against the wall of an old, disused office complex. Her target was none other than the General Secretary of the People's Republic of Ukraine himself, the 69-year-old Hryhoriy Hrynko. "You've done enough blasted damage to our motherland, now your time has come to pay the price."
Below, the armored car stopped at a small condominium complex. Hryhoriy was allegedly going to visit some important civilian official or other, she could hardly care less. Nothing was more important than the moment-
A crack sounded through the city street, and yet another communist was dead.
Khrystyna quickly replaced her rifle on her back and ran out of the room. Here was the final task that awaited her... to somehow make it out of the city alive.
-Kiev, Ukrainian State-
"Anastasiya!" "Anastasiya Artemivna!"
Anastasiya was vaguely aware of someone calling her name. She shook off the sleep that clung to her mind, becoming aware of the fact that she was in a chair looking out of the window.
"Yes, Yeva? My apologies, I was deep in thought." Anastasiya turned around to look at her personal maidservant, who was watching her attentively.
"Were you now? You were so long in answering that I was half convinced you had fallen asleep in your chair."
Anastasiya blushed, and chuckled so as to cover it up. "Now, now, that's quite silly." Yeva looked concerned, and continued, "You have been working so much recently, I wouldn't be surprised. You really ought to take a rest, you need not take all of your father's burden onto yourself so quickly."
"That's where you're wrong, Yeva," she replied. "On the contrary, I should be taking it on even faster. No one will take me seriously if I do not. It would be that way even if I was a young man, but I'm not, so even more so."
"If you say so, your highness." Yeva appeared to have not changed her mind, but she continued anyway. "The Ground Forces Command has need of you."
"Very well." Anastasiya stood up, adjusted her dress, and took Yeva's arm. "Lead the way."
---
Anastasiya entered the war room to the sound of shouting.
"-your underhanded plan may not make the slightest difference!" "Sure, but at least I did something. What was your brilliant plan to unite Ukraine, to sit on your ass?"
Upon noticing her entry, the belligerents in the room froze for a moment, and then stood at attention along with the rest of those who had been merely observing the fight. The two most senior members of the Ukrainian Royal Army, General-Polkhovniks Valentyn Stefanovych and Ruslan Mykolovych, after a moment gestured for the remaining officers in the room to sit down. Valentyn quickly began to try to explain the situation. "Your highness-"
"Your Provisional Highness, you mean. She hasn't even been crowned yet," interrupted Ruslan.
"It doesn't matter in the slightest. She's still the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, by the constitution, not to mention the crown princess. Or have you forgotten that minor detail?" Valentyn gave him a pointed glare. Ruslan glared back, then let it drop. "Anyway, your highness, we have a considerable dilemma on our hands. Normally, as you have seen fit to leave the military matters to us until your coronation, we would have not bothered you with this issue, but we have reached an impasse which we have been unable to resolve."
Ruslan picked up the thread of the explanation. "We received word that the General Secretary of the People's Republic of Ukraine, that vile old man, was headed to a meeting with a commissar in the city of Kharkiv. The window of opportunity was very small, so there wasn't time to consult the whole chain of command. The officer in charge of the Pryznyach-"
"That's the Ukrainian special forces unit, correct? I've only heard stories from my father," Anastasiya interrupted.
"Indeed, we've done the best we can to keep them under wraps." Ruslan looked slightly irritated, but continued. "The officer in charge, a Colonel Viktor, gave the go-ahead for an assassination. Since the People's Republic is hardly an internationally recognized state, we felt that it was more akin to eliminating the leader of a rebel organization on our own soil." Now it was Valentyn's turn to glare disapprovingly at Ruslan. "The Republican command structure is in disarray, what with the intense centralization of power in his person. There are multiple factions jockeying for power within their Soviet. As such, we thought it would be the optimal time to renew our offensive and eliminate the travesty that is our eastern neighbor for good."
Valentyn followed by saying, "I completely disagree. There are factions within the Soviet that would be at least willing to consider working with us. I don't agree that such an important decision should have been left to a lower-level command, but the least we can do is not unfairly take advantage of it. There's no honour in it."
"That's quite enough information, thanks," Anastasiya replied. She put her finger to her lip and thought for a few moments. "While I may not have necessarily approved of this plan, it certainly turned out to our advantage, no? I see no choice but to exploit it to the utmost. The other countries in the world will not take us seriously if we cannot keep even our own country in order. In order for that to be the case, Ukraine must be reunified. No, it will be reunified. And it is our job to make it so." She looked around, seeing the generals on Ruslan's side and even a few previously on Valentyn's side nodding. "The world looks at us with dismay and condescension, one of the remnant states that sprung out of the Imperial collapse. The stagnant old government in St. Petersburg no doubt seeks to reassert control eventually. We have no legitimacy except that which comes from our national identity, and so we must bolster that at any cost."
"And so, my decision is this. Begin the offensive."
"Yes, your highness." went the chorus of voices.
"Very good. Carry on," Anastasiya saluted to them, and then swiftly departed, the voices of eager discussion rising behind her.
Ruslan looked at Valentyn with an expression of amusement. "I've only said this about one other in my life, and she's my wife, but it must be said: she's a hell of a woman."
"I'm inclined to concur," replied Valentyn, opening the folder of war plans. "This country will either become great, or fail miserably and fall under another's sway again. Time will tell."
The sun dipped just below the horizon, and its rays shone past the bombed-out remains of a few buildings in a small town on the outskirts of Kharkiv to illuminate a couple of soldiers gathered around a fire. A soldier, patched, worn hat emblazoned with a bright red metal star, stood up, took up a nearby stick, and pushed around some wood in the fire. "Andrei, quit messing with that radio and get some more firewood." The man whose name was Andrei, fiddling with electronics in his lap, replied "Hold on, I've almost got it how I want it." The man standing up sighed, and threw the stick into the fire. He walked into the nearby group of trees. After a short silence, Andrei exclaimed and twisted a wire into position. The radio immediately began producing a song in a foreign language, interspersed by bursts of static.
"Oh, I know this one! Come back, check it out!" He waved to his fellow soldier in the trees. "It's all over, but the crying... and nobody's crying but me~" he began singing in heavily accented English. The man who went to get firewood turned back just long enough to shake his head, when a sudden crack resounded through the ruins.
The expression of mild disappointment and amusement frozen onto his face, the soldier fell limply forward.
Andrei immediately threw the radio off of him, silencing its somber notes, and picked up his gun. He ran as fast as he could. All the way away, he heard continuous cracks as bricks fell out of houses and holes appeared in the dirt around him. He cowered in the doorway of a building some distance away, waiting for the sounds to stop.
He pushed open the door of what used to be a restaurant, plates and silverware dropped askance around the floor, and a scent of dust and decay thick in the air. Trying to make as little noise as possible, he moved to the back entrance he had seen earlier. The crunching of detritus under the floor worried him, though, but he thought it would take sometime before whoever it was caught up with him. Pushing open the door, he looked carefully to the left and right. Convinced the coast was clear, he took one step out of the building.
A knife stabbed into him from the back, and the world went dark.
---
A woman in a black motorcycle jacket and skirt took out a handkerchief and wiped off her knife, glancing disdainfully at the man now laying quietly in the dust. "A Russian, as per usual. Do they have any actually Ukrainian soldiers, or can they not find any that actually want to work for them?" She briefly smirked, before she turned on her small radio. "Чорна (Chorna) here."
"About time, Чорна. I was beginning to think something unfortunate might have happened."
"As if, Colonel. There was a patrol where the data didn't indicate there would be, so it was necessary to eliminate them. It's unfortunate, because it might cause trouble for me later on, but nothing can be done."
"Understood. Our agent has verified that the target is headed to the rendezvous point on schedule. Consider the operation underway."
"Very well, I won't disappoint you."
"You had better not. The country could very well be dependent on this mission. Leonid out."
Чорна, or Khrystyna Yehorivna as her name actually was, turned off the radio and returned it to her jacket pocket. Picking up her old Mosin-Nagant Model 1891/30, she slung it over her back. Most of the regular infantry had been issued the new Zroya rifles, but she had requested to keep hers as it was much better suited to the work that she usually carried out either as a battlefield sniper or in her new capacity as one of the Ukrainian State's elite special forces troops, the Pryznyach. She had put a lot of work into it to keep it purring nicely, so she'd be damned if they took it away from her for one of those peashooters that couldn't hit much farther than 300 meters.
Smiling at her work, she jogged back to her motorcycle. "Just a little bit farther, old girl." She kicked a broken chair out of her way and revved the engine, heading east towards the city.
---
"Come on, old man, get out of the car." Khrystyna adjusted her sight slightly and leaned farther against the wall of an old, disused office complex. Her target was none other than the General Secretary of the People's Republic of Ukraine himself, the 69-year-old Hryhoriy Hrynko. "You've done enough blasted damage to our motherland, now your time has come to pay the price."
Below, the armored car stopped at a small condominium complex. Hryhoriy was allegedly going to visit some important civilian official or other, she could hardly care less. Nothing was more important than the moment-
A crack sounded through the city street, and yet another communist was dead.
Khrystyna quickly replaced her rifle on her back and ran out of the room. Here was the final task that awaited her... to somehow make it out of the city alive.
-Kiev, Ukrainian State-
"Anastasiya!" "Anastasiya Artemivna!"
Anastasiya was vaguely aware of someone calling her name. She shook off the sleep that clung to her mind, becoming aware of the fact that she was in a chair looking out of the window.
"Yes, Yeva? My apologies, I was deep in thought." Anastasiya turned around to look at her personal maidservant, who was watching her attentively.
"Were you now? You were so long in answering that I was half convinced you had fallen asleep in your chair."
Anastasiya blushed, and chuckled so as to cover it up. "Now, now, that's quite silly." Yeva looked concerned, and continued, "You have been working so much recently, I wouldn't be surprised. You really ought to take a rest, you need not take all of your father's burden onto yourself so quickly."
"That's where you're wrong, Yeva," she replied. "On the contrary, I should be taking it on even faster. No one will take me seriously if I do not. It would be that way even if I was a young man, but I'm not, so even more so."
"If you say so, your highness." Yeva appeared to have not changed her mind, but she continued anyway. "The Ground Forces Command has need of you."
"Very well." Anastasiya stood up, adjusted her dress, and took Yeva's arm. "Lead the way."
---
Anastasiya entered the war room to the sound of shouting.
"-your underhanded plan may not make the slightest difference!" "Sure, but at least I did something. What was your brilliant plan to unite Ukraine, to sit on your ass?"
Upon noticing her entry, the belligerents in the room froze for a moment, and then stood at attention along with the rest of those who had been merely observing the fight. The two most senior members of the Ukrainian Royal Army, General-Polkhovniks Valentyn Stefanovych and Ruslan Mykolovych, after a moment gestured for the remaining officers in the room to sit down. Valentyn quickly began to try to explain the situation. "Your highness-"
"Your Provisional Highness, you mean. She hasn't even been crowned yet," interrupted Ruslan.
"It doesn't matter in the slightest. She's still the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, by the constitution, not to mention the crown princess. Or have you forgotten that minor detail?" Valentyn gave him a pointed glare. Ruslan glared back, then let it drop. "Anyway, your highness, we have a considerable dilemma on our hands. Normally, as you have seen fit to leave the military matters to us until your coronation, we would have not bothered you with this issue, but we have reached an impasse which we have been unable to resolve."
Ruslan picked up the thread of the explanation. "We received word that the General Secretary of the People's Republic of Ukraine, that vile old man, was headed to a meeting with a commissar in the city of Kharkiv. The window of opportunity was very small, so there wasn't time to consult the whole chain of command. The officer in charge of the Pryznyach-"
"That's the Ukrainian special forces unit, correct? I've only heard stories from my father," Anastasiya interrupted.
"Indeed, we've done the best we can to keep them under wraps." Ruslan looked slightly irritated, but continued. "The officer in charge, a Colonel Viktor, gave the go-ahead for an assassination. Since the People's Republic is hardly an internationally recognized state, we felt that it was more akin to eliminating the leader of a rebel organization on our own soil." Now it was Valentyn's turn to glare disapprovingly at Ruslan. "The Republican command structure is in disarray, what with the intense centralization of power in his person. There are multiple factions jockeying for power within their Soviet. As such, we thought it would be the optimal time to renew our offensive and eliminate the travesty that is our eastern neighbor for good."
Valentyn followed by saying, "I completely disagree. There are factions within the Soviet that would be at least willing to consider working with us. I don't agree that such an important decision should have been left to a lower-level command, but the least we can do is not unfairly take advantage of it. There's no honour in it."
"That's quite enough information, thanks," Anastasiya replied. She put her finger to her lip and thought for a few moments. "While I may not have necessarily approved of this plan, it certainly turned out to our advantage, no? I see no choice but to exploit it to the utmost. The other countries in the world will not take us seriously if we cannot keep even our own country in order. In order for that to be the case, Ukraine must be reunified. No, it will be reunified. And it is our job to make it so." She looked around, seeing the generals on Ruslan's side and even a few previously on Valentyn's side nodding. "The world looks at us with dismay and condescension, one of the remnant states that sprung out of the Imperial collapse. The stagnant old government in St. Petersburg no doubt seeks to reassert control eventually. We have no legitimacy except that which comes from our national identity, and so we must bolster that at any cost."
"And so, my decision is this. Begin the offensive."
"Yes, your highness." went the chorus of voices.
"Very good. Carry on," Anastasiya saluted to them, and then swiftly departed, the voices of eager discussion rising behind her.
Ruslan looked at Valentyn with an expression of amusement. "I've only said this about one other in my life, and she's my wife, but it must be said: she's a hell of a woman."
"I'm inclined to concur," replied Valentyn, opening the folder of war plans. "This country will either become great, or fail miserably and fall under another's sway again. Time will tell."
