Starlance

The Conflict

One by one, the others began to open up. Good. Communication, exchange. “Nice to have someone with more than basic medical expertise. Here’s hoping we don’t need you.” Yekaterina raised the empty glass in a mock toast in Bethan’s direction as the other woman revealed an impressive range of experiences and traits, “And an explosives guy, okay, glad to hear that. I’m going to leave any potential demolition stuff to you, my track record with that... isn’t great.” There was a brief, yet perceptible pause as she thought of a way to phrase it without using words such as ‘clusterfuck’ and ‘stereotypical Russian disaster’ “And sorry, no fistfights with bears. Wildest thing I’ve wrestled were shitfaced Londoners.” The Russian chuckled. Hayden’s resume was also a cause for optimism, apparently full service in special forces, unlike Bethan’s unfortunately aborted training, under the paranoid canuck’s belt. With her turn to speak, she leaned in closer so she could lower her voice a bit, seeing no reason to openly flaunt different allegiances that might make people question their presence and motives, masking the motion by reaching for the bottle and pouring herself another shot. “As for me, I’m Main Intelligence Directorate special forces, you’re probably more familiar with the old designation, GRU. A door kicker by training. Mechanical, ballistic, explosive, thermal, the lot. Not like we’ll need, or find for the matter, more than irons here. Aside from that, I’m originally motorized infantry, so I’m pretty familiar with the operation and basic maintenance of vehicles, mainly older Soviet trucks and four by fours, and speak German.”

Their little bonding was interrupted by the arrival of a corporate-looking type. Guy looked like he had more money than Ukraine. Definitely looked out of place in a country like this. She hadn’t even noticed his arrival. Idiot, pay attention. His offer seemed decent though. They couldn’t afford to be picky this early on, so a simple-looking task to bring a guy over - with no penalty for damaged goods no less - seemed like a continuation of the good fortune smiling upon them, compared to the shitfest that was personal protection, frontline combat or other grunt work assignments they could’ve been saddled with as unproven new hires, each with a hundred and one ways it could go horribly wrong. Of course this could still get complicated. Uncooperative driver, driver in the middle of transporting half a platoon of COGS-affiliated mercs, driver getting killed by some passer by for looking at him in a weird way... After witnessing a convoy of mercs throwing fliers tied to rocks at vehicles on the highway, she had a feeling everything was on the table, at least it would seem that way until they got used to how things were in Matanbai.

Standing up to see Victor, the Russian nodded at the offer. “20 diamonds doesn’t tell us tourists much. What’s that worth, can you give us some examples? And is haggling with traders the norm here like in, say, Tunisia, or is it frowned upon?” She wanted to know, not even bothering with attempting to hide how clueless she was about how things in Matanbai worked, inwardly wishing unspeakable things on the person who sent her into the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, Africa, with what could not be by any metric considered adequate intelligence. “Wouldn’t happen to have a picture of the driver, would you?” she asked, trying to remember if Gunther’s truck had any markings like the one presented on it. That would’ve been an ironic twist.

The Conflict

@FourtyTwo No worries, means I have more to work with.

The Conflict

At last, the air of paranoia and distrust was dispersed. Now they were in business. Even the impossible could be a mere inconvenience with a good enough plan of action, equipment and some luck. Luck they seemed to be having so far and equipment was beyond their control for now, but now that they were all on the same page about what they were here to do, they could figure out at least a rough outline of how to go about it. Bringing her bag over from her previous table, Yekaterina sat down, shaking her head slightly at the waiter’s explanation of Matanbai’s economical situation. “Gemstones for pocket change. ‘Abundant’ he calls them. With what those must be worth back in the civilized world, we get our hands on a few of those, we could disappear in Argentina and forget this whole clusterfuck.” the Russian chuckled when the waiter left.

Accepting the free drink, she raised the glass before taking a careful sip.“Za zdorov'ye, Damn, this actually has some taste. And you’ll excuse me if I don’t put too much trust in local infrastructure. I’ve seen the roads here. Much like blacktop, I’d be surprised if cell coverage extended too far beyond the biggest cities. A lot of the comm towers around the country could be private networks owned by the mining corporations. Not great if you want to sneak information by them.”

Sean’s story sparked some interest. “Honestly, it seems it isn’t much of a problem to throw intel off for someone this big. ‘Tis a sad state of things, but scumbags aren’t strangers to political connections, and knowing the right people can get you places no amount of firepower ever could. Doubt he would’ve gotten this big without some envelopes delivered to the right people in the first place.” She spoke confidently, perhaps with some experience given her home country, “And if he keeps a small team and keeps on the move? Wouldn’t surprise me if this guy - if it is indeed one guy and not a group of people under one pseudonym - was once in our line of work.” Facing a group of salty Gulf War veterans or an ex Soviet officer who cut his teeth selling Red Army equipment after ‘91 wasn’t a cheerful prospect.

“And as to what they’ll have us do? Probably the same things as the people who almost took your heads off were doing for COGS. Asset protection, maybe messing with the competition.” the Russian finished her whisky, turning to face a light to read the engraving on the bottom of the glass. “I’ll hazard a guess and say we’re a grade above the usual merc. Probably our biggest asset, we’d do well to capitalize upon that. Like you said, we’ll likely need to get to higher echelons if we want a realistic chance of learning what we want to know. With a bit of luck, which seems to be on our side thus far, there’ll be an opportunity to shine. Get us noticed. Hopefully without too much recognition from anyone but our current bosses. Don’t think most of these mercs would think twice about putting us in the dirt if they felt like we were a threat to their paycheck.” She set the glass back down, “And speaking of assets: Any of you bring something special to the table? Knowledge, skills, anything helpful the others should know about? Certainly easier convincing them we’re more useful kept together when we know what and who the others are, not to mention actually working together.”

The Conflict

The Canadian’s paperwork and last question were a good sign. One found, that was the first task of the day done and dusted. Lucky as they might have been, that was still the easy part. Finding someone who was looking for you was one thing, finding someone going to great lengths to not be found was another. Now the only remaining variable were the Britons.

As Hayden started getting squirrely, the Russian shifted her weight forward, her own hand inching toward her side where her ‘Gesha’ was concealed by her jacket. She wasn’t sure about trying to draw and fire faster than the other merc with a weapon she was unfamiliar with if he got aggressive, but with just a few paces between them felt confident she could close the distance and get up in his face fast enough to buy herself a precious second or two to act.

That plan suffered a significant setback when the Welsh woman drew on Hayden. This group needed to calm the fuck down before they made the Challeneger’s tenth launch look like a relative success. That thing at least got off the launch pad. Fortunately, the Irishman was of a more agreeable disposition - a welcome change from what seemed to be the norm here - taking a diplomatic approach and confirming their goals also matched hers. She took a few steps back, waiting for the standoff to be resolved, her right hand still hovering around her holster. As the air cleared and she was addressed, she raised her hands in an attempt to prevent more guns being pointed.

“I’ve been given something similar. ‘Go here, find the others, kill the target. What, don’t know who the others are? Don’t care, figure it out, bye.’ or something along those lines. I don’t have it in writing, the people back home wanted maximum deniability, but they agree this country has a hyena problem and sent me to help take care of it, for reasons I’m neither important nor politically active enough to know.” She tried to explain without giving away more than necessary, “So, it might be a good idea to put that away.” Yekaterina slowly pointed to the Canadian’s Hi-Power and Bethan’s Sig. “We’re all friends here, and the moment someone sees this going on there’s bound to be questions I don’t think we can answer to our hosts’ satisfaction. Don’t even try to pretend your covers still hold up after this.” She indicated Hayden’s red cross lapel pin.

With this out of the way, she nodded along as Bethan laid out her plan, “I agree we hitch our wagon to these people for the time being, but how do we ensure they won’t separate us again? In a way it could be beneficial, different things to be learned North and South, but communication could be a problem in that case.”

The Conflict

Speaking to her guide was even less useful than speaking to Gunther, as he rebuffed her probing with a polite, yet somewhat curt “All will be explained soon.” Her newfound companions on the other hand, offered something of interest, however temporary their company might turn out to be. Time to strike the iron while it’s hot. Phrases like ‘This fucking job…’ and ‘...the other operatives.’ sounded promising. Despite the fact that they all seemed to be just as out of the loop as she was, maybe there would finally be some answers. After all, Jawline didn’t say anything about not talking to others. Neither of them looked like the driftwood that accumulated in places like this because the rest of the world rejected it, these people looked like they still had a clear purpose in mind. The Welsh-sounding woman, Bethan, pretty much confirmed that, even if there might have been some internal friction in that pair.

’All Operatives are tasked to arrive in the capital of Tangayi before beginning their mission.’

Could it really be that easy? If so, where was this luck in Chechnya? And was finding the closest thing to an actual ghost even doable with four people, or would a small team allow them to move under the radar more easily, if it was really them she was supposed to be working with?

“Oh my, where’d you find this wonderful bundle of joy?” She turned to Sean with a chuckle after his and Bethan’s spat. “But back to the subject of introductions, I’m Yekaterina.” The Russian stood up and walked to the center of the table triangle, looking toward the British pair with an offered hand. “The cheerful one has a point though.” She gestured to Bethan after handshakes were done or ignored for a few seconds, lowering her voice. “And even if we’re all seated here by coincidence and our goals in this cesspit of a country, whatever they may be, are completely unrelated, that itself doesn’t necessarily prevent us from helping each other. I think it’s safe to assume people don’t last long here on their own, with or without patronage. I doubt the exchange rate between natural resources and merc lives is favorable with either faction.”

“So, what’s on your mind?” She decided to take a risk by questioning Hayden directly, “What’s that ‘fucking job’ that’s getting complicated?” Having spent her early childhood years under Brezhnev’s rule, she had been raised with the mindset that asking too many questions led to misfortune, but the alternative was tiptoeing around it and getting nowhere.

The Conflict

The tables are in the garden or the building?

The Conflict

Yekaterina was about to reply to the driver’s question when gunfire reached them from somewhere up the stream of traffic. She pressed herself flat against the truck to give the roving display of recklessness a wide berth. Normally, she would’ve been worried about where and when the bullets would fall back down, but she didn’t have time for that today as a grenade-like object landed right beside the driver, placing her well within the kill zone by the explosion’s overpressure alone. Stuck prone under the truck, poor Gunther was dead to rights and she only had two, maybe three seconds to change her fate from ‘dead’ to ‘maimed’. Yekaterina took off towards the front of the truck, silently counting as she did.

One. Two.

She threw herself into the drainage ditch, shallow as it was, but minimal cover was better than none whatsoever. Between that and the truck’s left front wheel, the amount of shrapnel that would reach her should be reduced by a not insignificant percentage.

Three. Four.

What?

Five. Six.

The Russian chanced lifting her head up to glance back, her gaze meeting the driver’s, looking as befuddled as she was as he crawled from underneath the ZIL. “Fuck that for a joke.” she cursed under her breath, dusting herself off as she rounded the truck again, careful not to get run over. A flyer tied to a rock and thrown from a moving car puzzled the mind. That was something unlikely to happen even in Russia on a Friday night, and she considered herself fortunate the advertillerist aimed true and didn’t hit her instead. But since someone went through all that effort to get the flyer to them, it’d be impolite not to read it. The driver was already handing it to her anyway

A corporate cookout at the SAMC headquarters? The office should be reasonably easy to find, and sounded like a place mercenaries could be found at. Mercenaries looking for work perhaps, but what of those who already had a task in their mind? It was an option, a good fallback if nothing else. Having skimmed the offered piece of paper, she shoved it into a pocket of her windbreaker and flashed the driver a smile. “Change wheel now, change job later.” She spoke German, leaving out some articles and ignoring conjugation to match the driver’s speech as best as she could, holding her hand out, “I’ll help, give light.” she said, more a demand than an offer. “Go here often? This normal in Matanbai?”

---

Talking to Gunther as they removed the dead tire didn’t yield any results, and as she stopped asking questions he turned to complaining about his shitty lot in life. 30 minutes of work and two hours of driving later, she finally stood in the capital. Gunther refused to take her to the SAMC headquarters directly, wisely choosing to replace the busted tire and be on his merry way out of this shithole back home as fast as possible. At least she would stretch her muscles after half a day of sitting near motionless.

The city itself looked better than the impression her briefing left her with. Besides the amount of guns being higher than rural Texas and the average education of those who wielded them equal or lower than Chechnya. The SAMC headquarters was another nail in the coffin of that illusion of normalcy, looking more like an unusually luxurious forward operating base than a corporate office. Some distance away from the gate, she made sure her sidearm wasn’t printing, wrapped the halligan in a spare shirt and buried it as deep in her backpack as she could and fished the flyer out of her pocket before approaching.

“Privet! Was told there was a shindig around here, is this the place?” she spoke to the merc at the gate, waving the flyer.
“Oui. Name?”
“Yekaterina Belyayeva.” she introduced herself, “Need that spelled out?” she added with a raised brow.
The guard declined with a chuckle and directed her to the garden. He didn’t have to, the noise and smell of meat and grease was easy to follow. She positioned herself within earshot of the only Russian she could hear - a trio of ex-marines from Vladivostok who by the look and sound of it spent a few years in prison. There was also French, German, a few languages she couldn’t recognize and a wide variety of English, from Yankees through Aussies and Irish to something that sounded like Wales. “Quite a menagerie.” the fourth Russian muttered to herself in English, taking in the scene.

The Conflict

Location: Somewhere along the Nambo-Balilon Highway, Matanbai

The ZIL-131 shuddered as the driver released the clutch too early again.

She, along with eight other people, had been cooped up in the back of that flatbed since they left Upington over seven hours ago, and by now was convinced the transmission would sooner break free of its mountings, bust through the cab floor and slap the driver for his sins than they would reach the capital where she’d been instructed to go. Only problem was: The briefing did not mention where to go from there or how to contact the rest of the team tasked with hunting down this ‘Hyena’. The driver may have been told by the agent who hired him where exactly to drop her off, or so she hoped.

Speaking of the team, that was another unknown she could only speculate about. Not being told anything told her they weren’t Russian. She heard good things from her comrades who worked a joint op in Kosovo with Green Berets, but would she be given that sort of work after the Chechen Incident? The Devil would sooner rollerblade to work. That left either locals, or mercs. And while members of the local armed forces ought to be able to speak at least English, or even German in the Namibians’ case, she couldn’t find a reason for the Kremlin to care. Helping out a mining corporation in a land rich with diamonds, oil, uranium and whatnot in a deniable manner, on the other hand, that held more water in her mind.

A crunch as the driver missed yet another shift. At this rate the gears would be smooth before Christmas.

If she’d at least had proper equipment for this, but even that didn’t pan out. Her lockpicks stayed in Samara, confiscated by some busybody still shaking in his boots in the wake of ‘9/11’ as the event came to be known. The issued sidearm may have been brand new, but only qualified as ‘cutting edge’ in the sense that she cut her thumb on the magazine when her fingers slipped loading it. The fact that hers was clearly an early production model, as evidenced by the tool marks that gave the impression of the polymer frame having been made by hand with a chisel and the worker’s own teeth, didn’t help. She got lucky with the halligan at least, in that one hardware store in the entirety of Upington that carried this sort of tools. Whoever her team were supposed to be in the near future, at least she wouldn’t have to explain why they got someone trained for a given role who was unable to carry out said role.

Another jolt, this time with a bang, a pull to the right and the cab drooping slightly, followed by a slow stop. The front right was flat, she knew that even before the driver could start swearing, echoing her own thoughts. Sticking her head out from the back of the truck and looking forward, she could see the driver trying to juggle fitting the hydraulic jack into the proper spot and holding a flashlight to see what he was doing. Up north, one could see faint light pollution rising over the horizon from what she assumed to be Tangayi, while the eastern sky showed the first light of the new day. With a resigned sigh, she jumped down on the ground and made her way to the driver to offer help.

The Conflict

All for equipment degradation, just worried it'll be an absolute clusterfuck for you to keep track of. Here's hoping fresh-off-the-shelf gear doesn't fall apart after a day of use like in FC2.

Which part of the country is the capital in, north or south?

The Conflict

Guards Senior Sergeant Belyayeva

Name:
Yekaterina Fedorovna Belyayeva

Age:
31

Nationality:
Russian

Service Record:

• 58th Combined Arms Army (1996 - 2000)
  • 1999: War of Dagestan
  • 2000: Second Chechen War

• 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade (2000 - 2003)
  • 2000: Kosovo
  • 2001 - 2003: Second Chechen War

MO:
Breacher. Close-quarters fighting in Chechnya, especially the Battle of Grozny, first brought the problems of clearing structures into her mind. After joining the army, she knew she might one day find herself in the middle of such conditions. The last reason was learning that extra qualifications raised the likelyhood of being admitted to special forces training were she to pursue that path. Trained in mechanical, ballistic and explosive breaching.

Infiltration Method:
She was flown to Upington, South Africa, and continued into Matanbai by a hired truck, posing as a humanitarian worker documenting the impact of the current conditions on the people of Matanbai.

Kit:
GSh-18 + 2 magazines, Halligan bar.

History:
Born and raised in Saratov, she enrolled in the Moscow State Linguistic University School of Translation and Interpretation at 18, focusing on English and German and graduated in 1996. When the First Chechen War flared up during her time there, she signed on for a reserve training program offered by the university, which eventually convinced her to join the Russian Armed Forces after graduation, ending up as a rifleman in a motorized infantry regiment.

The first years of her service were uneventful. Her first deployment occured in the War of Dagestan. Following its conclusion and return to Russia, she volunteered for a breacher course in late 1999 before the expected deployment to Chechnya. She applied for Spetsnaz in mid 2000 during R&R back in Russia, and was acepted on account of breaching training, language qualifications (English C1, German B1), driving qualification (A1, B, BE, C and CE categories), recommendation from former company commander and university education.

After passing the entry test, she was assigned to 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade based in Tolyatti, and after a brief time on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, she returned to Chechnya for counterinsurgency operations in 2001. Promoted to Senior Sergeant in 2003, taking the role of platoon sergeant. Later that year, a controlled detonation of an insurgent munitions cache went awry and swept away a not-insignificant portion of a close by village, leading to casualties among a different Spetsnaz team. Although she avoided a negligent manslaughter charge, as her squad didn't have an explosive ordnance specialist and therefore shouldn’t have been ordered to carry out such a task in the first place, five soldiers and a dozen Chechnyans were dead and some god forsaken hole that wasn't even on a map was for all intents and purposes actually erased from existence. Kremlin sent her to Matanbai to get her out of sight, judging chances of success to be minimal, thus considering the question of what to do with her solved.

Appearance:
A light-skinned, brown eyed ethnic Russian sporting medium length brown hair, measuring just under 176 cm and weighing 68 kilograms, Belyayeva is of an athletic, mesomorphic build, still noticeably thinner than many of her fellow servicemen, built more for endurance than raw power. Small scars on the left side of her face from early childhood injury.