The Fall of Konokov

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

i.

Yuri and Alexie stared at the intelligence officer wide a searching gaze. A Royal Guardsman stopped beside him.

"If this is your idea of a joke, I will hang you from the lamp post outside this Palace" the officer turned to him and un-holstered his pistol and turned to face the Guardsman.

"Nice try, first the information was gathered three days ago, recent events saw that we waited. That gave us the opportunity to check and recheck our intelligence. It's solid." The Guardsman stood down.

Yuri and Alexie stood had a bewildered look. Eleine was finally within their grasp. Now they needed a plan.

A day later Yuri held a meeting of officers. The sole objective was to discuss her rescue.

Fecél sat clothe less in her mansion suite. Her sipped from the wine glass. She had fled to clutches of the Emperor upon discovering his actions and the attempted murder of the Konokovan Queen and her sons. His plans had mostly failed, his armies shamed. The politician's removed control of the armed forces from him unto a more skilled military leader Marshal Thornt. Upon hearing of the attack and the shame her husband had cast upon the Empire; she had divorced him. She had chosen to flee to the outlying military base for the sole reason that it was the closest military structure to Konokov's Northern border.

It was the beginning of summer when she had arrived in force with her troops, her loyalist guards, all four hundred of them. The military base itself was almost empty for unknown reasons; the runway was almost disused and the only particularly occupied building was near the centre of the base. It wasn't long before curiosity took hold and with herself being the highest ranking person on the base; she took several guards and wondered in.

Despite being divorced from the Emperor, the law stated that unless he remarried, her title remained and with his unpopularity he was unlikely to be in any woman's favour, even the wealthy high class.

The two guards remained adamant that Fecél was not to enter the room. They were outnumbered and outgunned but wouldn't pull the trigger. "No one is going to know Guardsman" she smiled as she opened the door. She looked across the room and froze. Heavily drugged, Eleine Reyik lifted her head drooling onto her tattered dress. The young princess had been kidnapped and Fecél had few illusions of the Emperors intentions for the girl. By law, marrying Eleine would make him part of the Royal Family and if Yuri and Stefan were to die or disappear, the Emperor would rule Konokov through Eleine.

It had been three months since Fecél had uncovered the princess location. Of course she had started leaking this to Konokov, they were never her enemy. Winter was here and the winds had picked up, blizzards were common. Movements in the base went minimal. In fact Fecél believed that an underground tunnel system linked the bases building for winter travel. Since discovering Eleine in captivity, Fecél had ordered her men to completely control the base, she was overseeing Eleine's captivity and had had three Imperial Guardsman executed for what evidence suggested was an attempted rape.

It was the middle of the evening when Fecél heard the light rumble of a plane overhead. She ordered the base defences be abandoned. "The Konokov's are here for their Princess and we will not stop them but if need be we will aid them", without a second thought her guards accepted and relayed the information to the guard to retreat. The night was calm, the blizzard had taken it leave but the snow was falling at an extreme rate.

ii.

Months of training had prepared them for this moment, the winter air lashed against the planes doorway. Alexie looked back. Twenty infantry, ten Royal Guard, ten Red Guard. The Royal Guard were all Battle of Penin veterans, whilst only two of Alexie's were. Almost everyone except for Alexie and two Red Guardsman were armed with submachineguns. Alexie looked at his youngest infantry volunteer, Nathan Petravick; he was sixteen and stood four inches shorter than Alexie. He was armed with a standard issues rifle as was Alexie. The planes light turned green and Alexie leaped out, the cord pulled and his parachute deployed.