(This is a new beginning, and completely different direction for Desert Asp. Just testing out ideas here.)
The Battles for Hikagebashi and Caldos, the Sunshine Bridge.
Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance. -Lakota saying
My name is Richard, I am an Asp. The Guild came when I was a child, with their ships and soldiers, they brought food and clothing, education and technology. To a child in squalor, they appeared as saviors to the poor and the wretched.
Yet then came their laws, their taxes, the men who came into our home and beat my mother, shot my father for his political views, murdered my brothers because they resisted.
The labor camps came soon after. To fund their foreign conflicts and line the pockets of the social elite the youthful population of Caldos was plundered for strong arms and small limbs. To work the gears of massive industrial machines, to dig deep into the mines where small bodies could wriggle without as much difficulty, to die in foreign lands under the salvos of trained soldiers the world over, bullet shields for the experienced Guild veterans that would follow behind.
The resistance began as a small movement of Arashi nationals, people who where kept as a lower class because of their ancestral backgrounds, the languages they spoke and traditions they kept. Desert dwellers, we where seen as the worse kind of scum, barely to be considered human, given worse scraps then the fat dogs that begged at their Guild Masters feet. We, beneath contempt, where allowed enough freedom of movement that when the first blow was struck it came as such a surprise, such a shock that to even consider that the lowly dredges of the labor camp slums where rising up didn't even pass into the Guild minds.
A motor car bombing, the attack successfully assassinated the minister of finances in the city proper, a position that would at first seem insignificant, yet in typical Guilder fashion internal bickering and power struggling caused a delay in a new officials election, the cities public office pay wasn’t disseminated down at the end of the month causing several safety sectors to begin thinning down on staff and operations as the next payroll didn’t seem to be coming for some time.
Two months past, the strain on the city was evident as social services, garbage collection and sanitation departments began to collapse, their workers refusing to work without pay. Law Keepers where deployed to enforce order as several strikes began, the citizenry becoming increasingly agitated with the Guilds inability to fix something that seemed relatively easy to fix; yet the Byzantine legal system of the guild, coupled with the greed of the city officials made simple matters into Shakespearean power struggles involving vast quantities of money and prestige.
When the next attack came, it was devastating. The cities water purification units where completely and utterly destroyed. The heavy salinity in the Arcal river made drinking directly from it lethal, vast complexes had been built to remove the salt and make it safe to drink for the cities inhabitants. It had been one of the first 'graces' of the Guild occupation, their gift to the people of the Arashi, a perverted ziggurat to their power, a vessel that robbed us of our traditions and made our children weak and reliant on the offerings of the Guild. We rebels knew that we would become outcasts and villains in the eyes of our own people, yet without the guilds water, the yoke of reliance they would have to stand on their own, rediscover the ways of our people, or die.
The Guild response was brutal, entire neighborhoods where dragged out into the streets, men where shot for rumors of sympathizing with the insurgency. As Guilder oppression escalated so did our numbers swell. Strikes became more organized, more aggressive; the frequency of our raiding quickly broke the Law Keepers, the Guild elite fleeing the city as huge mobs stormed their palaces, dragging their overlords out into the streets to be lynched on the statues they had erected to honor themselves.
Yet our victory was no yet complete, it was a minor battle in a war that would rip the territory to pieces, and send thousands of souls to a fiery doom.
Raid on the Refinery
The night was chill, a rare fog had settled over the area deep in the northern rocky hills of the Arashi wastes. I crawled low to a chain link fence, hiding in a depression in the terrain caused by seasonal rains that had created a gap under the fence line through which I could easily crawl through, avoiding the lethal electrical current I could practically feel pulsing through the wires threaded into the fence.
Dressed in dark earthy tones I blended supremely well with the ruddy and barren terrain both within and outside of the factory compound, practically invisible to the casual observer, the guards stationed in their towers concerned with routine check points or with keeping warm near small heaters in well lit towers all along the perimeter.
Their complacency and routine had made planning this infiltration laughably simple, a small squad of Asps being able to monitor the coming and going of refinery shifts, guard rotations and protocols for several eventualities.
Just this morning the lax guard detail had performed a mock combat drill, their deployments sloppy, gun placements revealing several gaps in the defense with obvious difficulties maintaining an effective chain of command. Smoking had been common among the crew of young soldiers, the red cherry of their cigarettes revealing the location of several gun emplacements further back in the compound along with hardened positions. The lucky break had allowed us to map their locations and layout a route to the gas refineries primary plant that would avoid any pinch points or natural funnels into enemy cross fire.
With four other Asps, three long fangs and a garden snake (veterans and a newbie), we made our way to an isolated machine gun nest in a back corner away from the patrol route. One guard, his face looking fat with water and smooth shaven, young, sat alert, looking forward out over a five layer stack of sandbags while another, overweight older male, laid back with his chin tucked into his chest in a deep sleep.
The poor kid never had a chance to scream, a long fang slipped a darkened blade under his chin and severed the artery while clasping a gloved hand tight over his mouth, he struggled briefly, kicking his legs as his life quickly pumped away onto the ground while his sleeping companion was also quietly dispatched with brutal efficiency and care.
Next came their comm line, it had been noticed that in either arrogance or inexperience, the Guilder guards hadn’t made a proper comm loop, a practice the Arashi knew just from the risk of having lines severed by sharp rocks in the wastelands. With just a snip of a single wire at this point, half the camp lost communications.
I gave a sharp series of hand signals to my compatriots, sending a long fang and the gardener with the explosives while myself and the other long fang went ahead to secure our escape and monitor the refineries population for any kind of alarm.
A long ten minutes past, and it almost all came to ruin. As I turned down into an alley, dark and covered from lights by the two towering warehouses crowded closely together, I ran straight into a guardsmen who had stepped away from his post to take a piss. Piss raining everywhere he cursed and looked up, his eyes better adjusted to the dark than mine and almost shouted an alarm. I quickly covered his mouth and pushed him against the brick wall of the warehouse, fumbling for my blade as he pounded on my arm with both of his uselessly, my grip like an iron vise across his mouth and nose smothering him. To my surprise he collapsed suddenly after a brief fight, in my shock and adrenaline surged strength my first blow to silence him had cracked the guards skull against the brick wall rendering him senseless. Perhaps I should have spared him in that moment, as it did not seem as if he would rouse before the explosives cooked off, yet years of fighting and the knowledge of what would happen to myself and my compatriots, if caught, hardened my nerve and I ended his life quickly by snapping his neck around with a violent jerk, the muscles and bone giving way like rotted cords of rope.
My ruthlessness would appear to be for naught, as alarm klaxons began whirling and gun fire erupted from the east, the direction of the primary refinery. Within a breath the rest of my team came charging up sporadically firing shots behind them followed by a train of guards leaping for cover from the hail of bullets while sending a few of their own down range.
Just a look into the other long fangs eyes told me all I needed to know, with a controlled burst of fire back down range from cover we began a steady retreat into the west, relying on the panic and lack of communication to provide us with enough cover to get back to the extraction point before the timed explosives cooked off, potentially taking us out as well.
Sweat began pouring down my face, stinging my eyes as we quickly moved from one dark area to another, tossing petrol bombs into areas that had been identified as flammable to try and sow more confusion and discord. The objective now was to avoid engagements, stay hidden, get to the fence line and get the hell out. Yet like every good plan, it all went to shit the moment boots hit the ground. Two short fire fights and a dead room full of innocent, yet unfortunate refinery workers later we were near the gate line when the first explosive detonated, quickly followed by a crescendo as a chain reaction ripped through the lines, the heat and light of the blast blinding and burning my skin and eyes with the ferocity of a thousand suns.
The crack of gun fire was drowned out by the pyrotechnics and I only felt the concussion of a shot streak past my head, bringing me fully back into the present long enough to scramble under the wire last and lay an affectionately named 'asp trap' behind at the crawl space for anyone that would follow. The crude pressure activated explosive device would send out a hail of small metal objects for several meters, wounding or killing anyone within a few meters of it.
We ran into the rock hills for an hour, the light of the refinery burning like a dawn rising out of the north, bathing the country side in a yellow glow under a sky turned charcoal black with ash and debris. I looked around at my team before I heard the deep yet feminine voice of Rachael, a fellow long fang say, “Hey Dick, I think you've been shot”.
Looking down at myself I could clearly see the wetness shining from the orange light, pressing my fingers to it soliciting a sharp penetrating pain in my side. “Huh”, I said, before promptly passing out.
