Infantry female soldier from the Royal Army of the Kingdom of Aeth, in anti-partisan service as occupation forces in the kingdom of Toran, to reemplace the Moldoon Republic troopers -who invaded and conquered Toran- needed to fight against the Vornan Confederation armies.
The Female regiments of the Kingdom of Aeth aren't front-line units, and normally are tasked with rear duties where is unlikely that there will be actual fighting or problems, and many of the members -like Ms. Pella here- joined them as the Aeth draft laws allowed another adult, provided they passed the physical and mental exams, to take the place of another person in the draft.
Many female's volunteer to serve in the war, to avoid their brothers, sons and fathers to be send to the front, taking their place in the rear guard.
( drawing by Shabazik )
All is Quiet
by Achast,
Leaning against the wooden railing of the guard tower, Pella looked out over the forest surrounding the camp. Out of the corner of her eye, Pella saw the red sun sinking behind the hills to the west, painting the evening sky a bright panoply of colors.
The young woman turned from the beautiful sight to pull a cardboard packet of cigarettes from a pocket on her uniform tunic and stuck one in her mouth. Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out a small, brass lighter and lit it.
After a few introspective puffs, Pella exhaled a stream of blue-grey smoke hanging visibly in the cold evening air. This far south, it didn't get as cold as it did elsewhere. Back in Pella's home town the snow was knee deep, or at least it had been when she'd gotten her last letter.
Never the less, it was cold enough Pella's breath would have smoked even without her cigarette and she was glad for the blue-grey wool uniform she was wearing. In a week or two, they would probably start getting snow on the ground.
Pella was startled by the sound of boot on wood as someone started climbing the ladder to the guard tower. Hurriedly, Pella stamped out her cigarette on the railing and tossed the crumbled butt off. If Sergeant Kollim caught her, or any of the other soldiers smoking up here on duty, there'd be hell to pay.
Luckily, for her, it wasn't the Sergeant, but a young soldier from Pella's platoon named Yadeth. "Hey, Pella!" she said, cheerfully, climbing into the observation platform of the tower. "Kollim sent me to relieve you. Did you spot any Partisans?"
"Oh sure, a whole army of them, sneaking around in the woods. They're getting ready for an attack, any second now…" Pella said sarcastically. Both women grinned. The partisans were widely regarded as something of a joke among the soldiers of the occupation army.
They were a motely group of local farmers and townsfolk angry at some injustice or another committed by the invaders, along with a few regular soldiers who'd found themselves behind enemy lines during the occupation and had decided to keep fighting. They took potshots at the occasional supply convoy, and made life hell for any locals who worked with the occupation army, but attacking an army garrison? Not likely.
In theory, the sentries up in the watchtowers ringing the camp were supposed to be on the lookout for such an attack. But since no one in the garrison seriously expected the partisans to try something that stupid, sentry duty was considered a good time to take a nap or have a discreet smoke, out of sight of the Sergeants and officers. Better than peeling potatoes or chopping firewood at least, or drilling under the glare of the noncoms, marching in endless squares till it felt like your legs would fall off…
Pella slowly climbed down the tower. She paused at the bottom, hoping to drag out her unofficial break as long as she could before some woman with gold braid on her uniform dragged her off on some new, pointless task that just had to be done that very instant.
While she stalled, Pella glanced through the barbed wire fence that circled the garrison. Outside the camp there was a clearing, cut out of the forest, at most a dozen yards, shorter in some places, from the fence to the forest itself, an impenetrable mass of tall evergreens, standing like a wall against any encroachment. Joking aside, Pella thought, a whole army could hide there. Amateur soldier, though she was, Pella would have been a lot happier had they cleared the trees back a little further.
But the job of clearing back the forest before had fallen to the POW's who'd built the rest of the camp, a mixture of local Toran troops captured during the occupation, some Vornan troops taken after the confederacy's abortive attempt to liberate their ally last spring, as well as a couple local partisans, who'd been caught taken potshots at the invading force with the family shotgun.
No sooner had the prisoners run up the barracks, guard towers, and strung the fence surrounding it all, than they'd been shipped to Moldoon to serve as labor in the large armament factories producing materiel for the war effort.
Pella frowned as she shouldered her rifle and started back towards the barracks were her platoon bunked. The War. It had only been going on for two and a half years now, but she almost couldn't remember a time before it. Her memories of life during peacetime were vague and half-formed, like a half-remembered dream.
The War had started, officially, over the abduction of a Vornan princess and whether or not Moldoon Republic had trained and supplied the men who'd kidnapped her and tried to ransom her back to the Electors. Certainly the men had been in the Republican Army, but who hadn't. In that country, every man, and more than a few women, served their three years in the regulars, before going into the reserve.
It had really begin, because Moldoon and the Vornan Confederacy hated each other, always had. They'd been fighting for centuries, and this was just the latest fight. And unfortunately, Pella's home country of Aeth, the currently occupied kingdom of Toran, and half a dozen other minor states allied to one or the other of the two greater powers, had been dragged into the new conflict.
Fairly early in the war, Moldoon had invaded Toran, quickly occupying the small kingdom, trying to flank around Vornan's frontier fortifications. The Confederate Forces had managed to halt Moldoon's advance just short of Vornan itself, but with the winter setting in, had been unable to drive the invaders back.
A large portion of Toran's army, as well as the Toran queen and her daughters, had been overwhelmed before they could flee to Vornan and captured. The royal family was being held as hostages in their own palace, while thousands of their soldiers languished in large POW camps or had been sent to Moldoon in forced labor battalions.
The Electors of Vornan had vowed to liberate their ally. They'd smuggled thousands of rifles across enemy lines to sustain the growing local resistance to the occupation, while sending thousands of their countries young men and women to be killed or captured trying to break the Republican Army's lines.
It was because of the growing partisan movement that Pella and the rest of the women in her small garrison were here. Officially, the Aeth troops had been brought in to occupy Toran in the hope that the locals might be more compliant garrisoned by troops who hadn't just conquered them, from a country they didn't have a long history of being invaded by.
Really, they'd been sent to free up experienced, veteran Moldoon soldiers for duty at the front. Any effect it had on the locals was purely a bonus, as far as the Moldoon General Staff was concerned. When the war had entered its second year, with the high commands of all the belligerent nations realizing the war was going to be much longer then they'd expected, thousands of young men had been drafted on both sides, among them, Pella's brother.
Aeth draft laws allowed another adult, provided they passed the physical and mental exams, to take the place of another person in the draft. Pella had volunteered in the place of her brother. If she admitted it, it wasn't exactly bravery on her part, but simple pragmatism.
If her brother had been drafted, he'd have been placed in a front line combat unit and thrown into the meat grinder the war was quickly becoming. Pella, on the other hand, would be, and was, put in one of all-female battalions the Aeth army kept around for rear garrison duty, freeing up real soldiers to fight. If she was lucky, she'd get through the war without seeing a single enemy and go home.
Thus far, it had worked out all right. She'd only been in combat once. Her squad had run into a group of partisans while out patrolling the woods. Pella had been so scared of actually hitting anyone; she fired wildly into the air the whole time, trying to scare them off. It must have worked. The two sides had trade shots for about half an hour before the partisans had slunk off into the woods, without a single person killed or wounded on either side as far as she knew.
As Pella circled around the main parade ground, heading for the barracks, she noticed half a dozen young women standing at ease around a black staff car. In contrast to the Aeth soldier's blue-grey uniforms, these women wore the black uniforms of Moldoon. And unlike the amateur, rear-garrison soldiers of Pella's unit, they had the lean, tense air of combat veterans to them, like wolves amongst house pets.
These women must have been the honor guard for the visiting general. According to the grapevine, General Krizah of the Moldoon 5th Army was about to launch a major attack in the spring, and had come to talk with the Commandant to ensure the garrison could keep the partisans from disrupting her supply lines. The sergeants had been screaming at Pella and the other soldiers all day, trying to make the camp presentable for the general.
"Soldier!" Pella muttered a curse, hopefully too soft for the officer to hear. She'd hoped to be able to get back to the barracks before sundown. Now, she'd probably spend half the night following around some officer doing all the little tasks so lofty a personage couldn't be bothered with.
Pella choked on curse as she turned and saw a Moldoon officer striding towards her. Hurriedly, she snapped to attention and saluted. The Moldoon army was famed for its strict discipline in the ranks. They said a Moldoon officer might not flog you, but that was only because she'd figured out something even worse to do with you.
"Ma'am!" Pella said, tensing up. What on earth did a Moldoon officer want with her? Pella silently cursed her luck as the older woman stepped up to her. Every other soldier nearby had suddenly become very busy with whatever, highly important tasks they were currently engaged with, or else they quickly found somewhere else to be.
"I am in the middle of a task of utmost importance. Your assistance is required. Would you please come with me?" The officer said in a voice that told Pella arguing would be pointless at best. Without waiting for an answer, the older woman spun on the heels of her leather boots and strode away. Pella bit her lip nervously and hurried after the officer.
Pella quickly realized the officer was leading her to one corner of the base, where a number of supply-sheds had been quickly run up by the soldiers a few months back, next to the wire fence. The sheds were built close together, it was impossible to see between them from the rest of the camp or the guard towers.
It also didn't help that the forest had only been cut back less than half a dozen yards from the perimeter at this area. It had struck Pella as a security risk, but the officers hadn't asked her, and Pella wasn't about to risk her neck speaking up after they'd already made the decision.
The officer led Pella behind one shed. It had been built right up against the wire, with only a narrow gap between it and the fence. The sun had finally sunk behind the western hills, ushering in the darkness of the night. All around the camp, electric lights were beginning to blink into life, lighting up the garrison, but behind the storage sheds, everything was shrouded in darkness.
As Pella's eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could make out a small knot of people, standing beside the shed. They were all young women, in a motely mixture of civilian-clothes and ragged, old, Toran-army uniforms. A hole, cut in the wire, told Pella how they'd got in the camp, but what drew her attention were the weapons, a mix of civilian and military guns, all pointed at her.
Pella's eyes widened with shock and surprise. Partisans! Not thinking, her hands involuntarily went for the rifle slung over one shoulder. She was stopped by the feel of a pistol pressed into her back as the Moldoon "officer" stepped up behind Pella and clamped one hand over Pella's mouth, cutting her shocked cry short.
"I wouldn't try anything if I were you, girl." The older woman whispered in Pella's ears. "Keep quiet, don't try anything stupid, and we won't have to hurt you." Face pale with fear, Pella nervously raised her hands in surrender, nodding. One of the other partisans, wearing a stolen Aeth uniform, stepped forward and quickly relieved Pella of her weapons.
Pella heard a soft whimper and for the first time noticed the two young women sitting at the feet of the partisans. They'd been stripped to their underwear and tightly bound hand and foot, sitting back to back. White strips of cloth kept the trussed up soldiers quiet.
The partisan finished disarming Pella and stepped back.
"What do you want from me?" Pella asked, nervously.
"Our country, you imperialist bitch!" The fake officer growled. "But for now, I think your uniform will do nicely." Pella hesitated a second, but staring down half a dozen gun barrels, she really had no choice. The young woman blushed bright red as she was forced to strip down to her underwear at gunpoint.
One of the partisans roughly grabbed each piece of her uniform as Pella took it off, and handed it to a second woman, who stripped off her civilian clothes and put Pella's clothes on in their place. The partisan set Pella's forage cap on her blonde hair, cropped short like the soldier she was pretending to be, and shouldered Pella's rifle.
Meanwhile, a third intruder produced a short coil of rope. "Turn around and cross your hands behind your back." She ordered. Glumly, Pella did so. She winced as the woman binding her wrists together pulled the rope tight and knotted it securely, the rough rope biting painfully into Pella's wrists.
"Oww!" Pella cried in pain. "You're hurting me!"
"Shut up!" The partisan growled. "You'll end up in a lot more pain if you don't keep quiet!"
Pella was unable to reply, because another partisan took the opportunity to stuff a balled up wad of cloth into Pella's mouth. She Mmmmppphhh'ed softly as a strip of cloth was tied between her lips, holding her gag in. Meanwhile, the first partisan looped a couple coils of rope around Pella's chest, pining her arms tightly to her back, and moved on to bind her legs.
In only a few short minutes, Pella was just another bound and gagged captive siting on the ground beside the other prisoners. They grunted sympathetically into their gags, which was about all they, or Pella, could do at the moment.
Pella shivered in the cold air. A wool uniform didn't do one much good when someone else was wearing it. The three half naked captives huddled close together, trying to conserve as much heat as they could.
Meanwhile, one of the partisans, wearing a faded patched uniform of a Toran officer, obviously the leader of this raid, spoke to the three raiders wearing stolen uniforms. "Ok, go get, say, two more soldiers and bring them back. One of us will have to stay to guard the prisoners while we go collect the general."
"Yes, lieutenant Raka!" They chorused. The three fake soldiers slipped quietly away towards the base proper, leaving the three remaining partisans to watch over their captives. So that was what they're after!" Pella thought to herself.
They were infiltrating the camp to abduct the Moldoon General during her meeting with the Commandant. General Krizah was the architect behind what would hopefully be Moldoon's main theatre of war in the spring. If the partisans could capture the general and get her across front lines to the Vornan military, Moldoon would have to cancel the attack, or else risk attacking an enemy who knew their every move in advance!
A couple minutes later, the fake soldiers returned with two more young women in tow. Pella and her two fellow captives could only watch helplessly, and groan in disappointment, as her comrades were surprised by the partisans and captured.
As the two new prisoners were forced to strip down to their underwear, Pella realized she recognized the two red-faced women. The tall redhead with a pale face full of freckles was Liann, who'd volunteered for the same reason as Pella, to keep her father out of the front lines.
The short, slim brunette beside her, was Milnen, who'd lied about her age to volunteer in the army, seeking adventure and hoping to see a bit of world outside the small provincial village where she lived and the boring farmer's son her parents had picked out for her. They mmmppphhh'ed miserably into their gags, seeing Pella and the other two soldiers bound and gagged, as they were trussed up, sitting back to back, beside her.
The leader of the partisans, Raka and another woman quickly changed into their uniforms. Pella noticed the former Toran officer carefully fold her patched uniform and put it, almost reverently in her pack.
"Alright, let's go meet the general!" Raka said. She handed the reaming partisan in civilian clothes a short barreled submachine gun. "Make sure our other guests don't wonder off, Tollim."
Pella winced. The submachine gun could fill all of them with lead in seconds, and at this range, there was nothing the captives could do but their captors were in a charitable mood. The grim faced woman holding it didn't look very charitable. She nodded to Raka as the rest of the partisans slipped silently away…
( All is Quiet - Part 2 )
Pella chewed miserably into her gag as the minutes dragged by. Her arms and legs had long ago fallen asleep. The dirt and rock strewn ground of the camp wasn't the best place to sit for a long period of time. A couple stones pressed uncomfortably into Pella's backside through the thin fabric of her panties.
Every time she shifted, trying to clear the ground beneath her, though, their guard growled at her to keep still and stay quiet, aiming her submachine gun in Pella's direction to drive the point home.
Outside the camp, bright yellow searchlights slowly swept over the ground around the camp, but behind the sheds, the five prisoners and their guard were in pitch darkness. There was a new moon tonight, a perfect for something like this.
Out of the shadows, suddenly, the other raiders appeared. Four of the women carried long bundles of cloth. As they set them down, Pella noticed the wrapped bundles were squirming and kicking and softly moaning. They must have been more captives.
The partisans unwrapped their new prisoners. The four women inside had been bound hand and foot and gagged. One, an older woman, Pella recognized as the Commandant. The younger girl beside her was her aide.
The other two captives wore Moldoon uniforms. One of the women had a long, thin, white scar across one cheek, likely acquired in a duel. She must have been the general, and the other woman beside her, a guard. The guard had a livid bruise on the side of her head where she'd been knocked out.
Tollim stood and walked over the partisan leader. "So what do we do with the rest of these bitches?" She asked, menacingly.
Raka frowned. "Hmmmm… Can't leave them here, now they've seen us, they could pick us out of a crowd…"
Pella felt her gut lurch as she realized the partisans were deciding whether or not to the prisoners! "MMMPPPHHH!!!" She grunted into her gag, pleading. The other captives must have come to the same conclusion, because they to, began crying into their gags, fearfully.
"I thought I told you to be quiet!" Tollim shouted at the prisoners, smacking Pella across the head. She brought her submachine gun up, ready to kill all of them. Pella cringed, expecting any moment to feel the bullet that would end her life.
Before the angry partisan could fire, Raka leapt forward and grabbed the gun barrel. "Wait!" she said, suddenly. "Someone will hear it!"
"Well then what are we going to do!" Tollim fumed. "We can't shoot them! We can't leave them behind!"
"Well then, we'll just have to take them with us!" Raka said, determinedly. "We were planning on taking the general with us anyway."
"How?" Another partisan asked. "The plan was to sneak out through the wire, same way we got in. We can't do that now. We could take one, maybe two prisoners with us, but this many is just asking for trouble. We'd be spotted by the guard towers."
"I think I may have an idea…" Raka said, thinking hurriedly. "Deva, Millna, head to the motor pool and get your hands on a supply truck. One with a canvas cover. Drive out the main gate and keep going for maybe ten minutes, then loop around and come back."
Pella listened to the discussion hopefully. She didn't know what the partisan's plan was, and she doubted it meant anything good for her and the other captive soldiers, but at the moment, she was just glad they were talking about killing them all outright anymore.
Raka turned to the supply shed they were hiding behind. "Fressiik, do you think you can get this lock open. We're going to need a few things…"
"Keep moving, partisan bitch!" Pella winced as one of the real partisans slapped her across the backside. Pella and the other captive soldiers had been roped into a long coffle at the neck, hands still tied behind their backs. Empty sandbags, stolen from the supply shed had been pulled over the captive's heads, hiding their real identities.
"What the hell is this?" Pella heard Sergeant Kollim, demand. "Sir!" she added a second later, seeing one of the partisans in the Moldoon officer's uniform.
"As you were, Sergeant. We caught these partisans attempting to infiltrate the base, probably trying to assassinate the general. They surrendered without a fight. I have orders to escort them to the nearby POW camp for interrogation. A truck has been sent to pick them by command."
"I haven't heard anything…" Kollim said. "Why hasn't the alarm been raised?"
"We believe they have allies outside the camp. If they figure out we're onto them and have captured their strike team, they may cut and run before we find them. We're trying to keep things as quiet as possible until we can find them." The partisan said. "Of course, you can discuss this with the commandant and general if you want…"
"No Ma'am."
Pella felt a tug on the coffle rope and was forced to start marching forward. She gritted her teeth, chewing bitterly on her gag. She' been unable to believe her ears when she'd heard their plan to get the captured soldiers out of the base. It was audacious, daring, stupid…
…and it was working! From the excited chatter of the soldiers on either side of her, gawking at the bound and gagged prisoners, they all bought the story. Beneath her hood, Pella's face blushed bright crimson with embarrassment. Getting captured was embarrassing enough, but getting captured like this!?!
Ahead of Pella in the coffle, General Krizah fumed, grunting angrily into her gag and struggling furiously against her bonds. A Moldoon accented soldier, one of the general's own honor guard walked over. "Quit squirming, you partisan bitch! I hope they ship all you miserable whores to the mines, to grub lead for bullets!"
Pella didn't see where the Moldoon soldier slapped the general, but Krizah shrieked in impotent fury and redoubled her efforts to get free, as all the assembled soldiers laughed at her humiliation.
The general's struggles were in vain, though. She had no chance of loosening her bonds anytime soon, and the coffle rope around her neck forced her to keep moving, or else be pulled off her feet and dragged along. The other captives trudged after her, heads bowed low in despair.
They reached the main gate and the partisans roughly brought their captives to a halt. As they waited, Pella heard Raka chatting amiably with the gate sentry. When the truck to pick them up arrived, the sentry woman opened the gate for the truck without question.
Pella felt hands grab her and lift her into the back of the truck. She was roughly pushed onto one of the wood benches on the side of the back of the truck. Two other prisoners sat beside her, pressed close to fit all the prisoners inside the truck.
For a second, it seemed as if the raiders were going to get away completely free. But then, just as the partisans were piling into the truck, the camp alarm began wailing. "The general's been abducted! Stop them!" someone shouted. Before the confused sentry woman knew what was going on, the two partisans at the back of the truck grabbed the woman and pulled her inside.
"Step on it, Deva!" Raka shouted. "Get us out of here!" Pella was thrown up against the woman beside her as the truck accelerated out of the camp. Pella tensed, expecting any minute to hear the sound of bullets hitting the truck, punching easily through the soft canvas back, to hit the women crowded inside.
Fortunately, aside from a few scattered rifle shots, which all went wild, none of the soldiers fired at the fleeing truck. The machine guns up in the towers were silent, the women manning them unwilling to risk hitting their captive comrades.
Meanwhile, as they drove further into the woods, the partisans piled onto their newest captive. The sentry woman put up a struggle, but was quickly reduced to a bound and gagged captive like the rest of her fellow soldiers, kicking futilely and grunting into her gag.
Pella felt the truck lurch to one side and the ride became rougher as the driver pulled off the main road. For the better part of an hour, the military truck and its cargo of helpless captives shook its way down one narrow dirt road after another, turning almost at random, to try and throw off any pursuit.
Finally, they pulled to a halt and the partisans all piled out. Pella felt the coffle rope still around her neck tug and jerk wildly as the other captives got out of the vehicle and a second later, she felt hands grab her and haul her out of the back.
One of the partisans pulled the sack off her head as she was lowered out of the truck, before turning to the next captive woman. Pella looked around, trying to figure out where they were. They'd pulled off the narrow country road into a small clearing, seemingly in the middle of the road.
She turned, looking over her shoulder as the two partisans in the driver's compartment. With them was another captive, wearing a set of oil stained overalls. Her hands and feet had been bound and she'd been gagged and blindfolded with a pair of dirty rags. Pella recognized her as one of the mechanics from the motor pool.
"This little grease monkey here didn't want to let us take one of her trucks." The driver, Deva said, grinning. She pulled a knife from one pocket and used it to cut the rope binding the woman's legs. They hauled their captive to her feet and added her to the coffle of prisoners, right behind the frightened sentry woman.
"Cover up the truck with brush. If they don't find it, we'll come back in a couple days, and recover it. When you're done, head home and if the Moldie's ask, you've been asleep all night." Raka ordered a couple of the partisans.
"What are we going to do with them now?" Tollim asked, gesturing to the captive soldiers huddling together.
"I've got an idea…" Raka said. She waved off in one direction. "In ten minutes, half the Aeth garrison will be coming up that road, looking for us. I've got an idea to slow them down…" She whispered some instructions to the other partisans. A few of the women giggled and sniggered. They turned to their prisoners, evil expressions on their faces…
Ten minutes later, the reformed column of prisoners trudged down the road, miserably. The partisans had taken the General and Commandant out of the line and taken the two with them deeper into the woods. The partisans had also seen fit to take all of their prisoner's underwear as well, one final humiliation for their captives.
To further slow the soldiers down, the partisans had hobbled the girl's ankles. They'd also blindfolded all of them except the young woman in front who could guide her fellow soldiers back.
"Just follow that road and if you don't dawdle, you ought to make it back to your base my sunrise…" Raka said, giving the girl a slap on the butt to get her moving. Guided by the tugs on their leashes, the captives behind her had trudged along after their new leader.
Pella shivered, the cold night air raising goose bumps all across her naked skin. At least so long as the women kept moving, they wouldn't freeze; small comfort that was. Pella didn't know whether to hope they'd run into the rest of the garrison out looking for them or not. Either way, she had a feeling it was going to be a long night…
