OR1-EP2: Battle of Rhodesia (18)

Michael McNeil seemed to be having a long dream. He saw before him an endless corridor leading to the light ahead, and he was not sure what awaited him at the end of it. When he was fully bathed in light, McNeil, who had a hard time opening his eyes, saw electric lights on the ceiling. He realized that he was unconscious all over his body, only his mind was able to stay awake for a while, but he soon drifted back into darkness.

A nurse appeared in his field of vision, and when the other man saw him open his eyes, he rushed to shout at the people outside:

"Quickly come in and take a look! He's awake ..."

However, McNeil only heard half of the words before his consciousness faded again. When he was once more fully awake, the first thing that appeared before his eyes was a fat face, the owner of which appeared to be naive, unlike those who shared the same physique as him, who were generally repulsive. The young man who was attending to him at his bedside was still wearing a vestment, and a gold cross hung around his neck, which McNeil guessed was probably a gold-plated impostor.

"You're awake, ah?" Father Alexandros Palaskas said to McNeil with a smile, "I thought you would have to sleep for at least a few more days, but I didn't expect you to recover so quickly. They were right, there is something abnormal about your physique, it's almost like you don't look like an ordinary person."

McNeil didn't want to answer his question. He felt like all the bones in his body were falling apart and a fire was lit in his throat that burned him to the point where he just wanted to get off the floor and run around wildly more than once. The last time he'd been carried into the ICU had been for an illness, not an injury, and McNeil couldn't remember when he'd actually been hurt. What puzzled him was why Father Palaskas, who was supposed to be back in Europe, was still here. The likable fat priest had once said that he had only come to South Africa specifically to deal with the murder of his good friend Jorge Diaz, and that he would leave once the investigation of the case was over.

"... I've been praying for you every hour this whole time, and it looks like God heard me." Priest Palaskas was still babbling on about nutrient-less nonsense to McNeil, "They say you hit your head in the river and were unconscious, and if it weren't for the soldiers downriver who happened to come across you, the consequences would have been nothing short of horrific ..."

"Give some water, now."

Palaskas froze and ran outside to pour McNeil a glass of water. He carefully placed the top of the bottle to McNeil's mouth, lest he pour water into McNeil's clothes if he was not careful in his handling. After McNeil had finished drinking the water, Father Palaskas put the bottle aside and was about to continue talking when he was interrupted by McNeil again.

"Why have you appeared here? I remember that you have already returned to Europe."

An embarrassed smile welled up on that face of the priest's, an expression that McNeil was sure came from the heart. Some people were naturally bad at disguises, like Adalbert Herzog or the priest in front of him, and they belonged to that category of honest people who would always reveal themselves. It would be hard for them to talk nonsense to others. The priest rested his chubby hands on his lap and said hesitantly:

"Originally, I was supposed to go back soon. However, there is an activity there in the church that needs me to attend ... Specifically, it is to go to the Britannian Empire to participate in a public service activity. As you know, I don't want to waste more time on rushing, so I'm just going to leave directly from South Africa ..."

"Right, I mean, why are you here?" McNeil, despite being wrapped up in a mummy, was still in his right mind. He had been found by soldiers, and the person in charge of guarding him would have been some officer or soldier, not Palaskas, a priest who was a representative of the Church. Indeed, no state would want to keep the Church in a role where it could interfere in important matters.

"It was the governor who commissioned me to come to you." Seeing the situation, Palaskas directly mentioned Governor-general Herzog, "You also do not need to be alarmed, I do not have the heart to tell outsiders the intelligence of the army ... I have always been dedicated to the work of serving the Lord. When the governor-general heard that your unit had been completely wiped out, he thought there was something fishy going on, so he gave orders that the last survivors must be preserved. He was afraid that the people involved in the defense forces were going to kill and kill, so he asked me to come under his banner to look after you, so that those people could throw in the towel."

McNeil laughed, a forced laugh. His windpipe and lungs were suffering unspeakable pain as he made the expression.

"The Governor-general is flattering them. They wouldn't have the guts to do that." McNeil sneered, "If the Colonel or anyone else had such tactics, the problem of the natives would have been solved a long time ago and they wouldn't have to worry about any news leaking out to the press ... as long as they did dare to eliminate anyone in the know. Unfortunately, they can't."

Despite Father Palaskas' praise of McNeil's strong physique, the badly injured McNeil dutifully stayed in bed for the entire day, during which time Father Palaskas bought newspapers and dictated the news from them for him. McNeil noted that almost all of the mainstream media outlets were reporting on the massive fire on the reservation, which the military claimed had caused significant casualties and had decided to keep the northern border sealed off. With an instinct developed over the years, McNeil concluded that the defense forces had taken an unanticipated hit, so much so that they had to continue to move troops north in order to quell the natives who were on the move. They may have expected all sorts of contingencies, but they didn't expect anyone to start a fire at this time of year. Numerous natives died in the fires, and the remaining natives, desperate to save their lives, attacked the defense lines, but naturally the result was an attack on the rocks. Colonel Carl Duttmann had been worried about the truth being revealed, and it seemed that now he could rest easy - everyone's attention was on the fire, and no one would have guessed that the army intended to completely annihilate the natives.

The next day, when McNeil insisted on going for a walk, a hostile crowd of doctors and nurses descended on the ward, blocking the door and preventing him from leaving. This patient has no legal status at all, is the Governor-general's request for the key protection of the wounded, if he has anything wrong, the Governor-general may be angry at the medical staff or the hospital itself. McNeil saw this and had to continue to lie down on his bed and pretend to be sick. He complained to Palaskas that he felt perfectly well, and yet he had to be cared for in the same way as a half-dead, seriously wounded man.

"This is something you should not say to outsiders ... only if you let everyone think that you have been under resuscitation and treatment, you are safe." Father Palaskas peeled an apple in his hand, his eyes staring daggers at a theology book sitting on the bedside table, frightening McNeil into thinking that the impudent priest was going to cut into his own hand at any moment.

"Don't you ever get tired of looking at books like this all day?"

"People have different interests, Mr. McNeil." Father Palaskas said with a smile, "There are those who like to exercise, and to the casual observer they look like they are paying for exhaustion; there are those who like to read, and so outsiders call them nerds; and perhaps there are those who spend their time on things that do not benefit them, and no one but they themselves can understand the pleasure of it... ..." said Father Palaskas, touching the crucifix hanging around his neck, "As for me ... I'm a lazy man who didn't want to worry about making a living, so I came to the Church to be a good-for-nothing idler. "

Palaskas, who worked primarily in Europe, also spoke to McNeil about what he had seen in Europe. After entering the third century of the Republican Calendar, the ethos of Europe proper had changed considerably, drunkenness had become the norm, and most people were uninspired and muddling along, surviving only because the current EU relied on knocking the bones of the colonies to provide welfare benefits for the natives, and once the colonies began to falter, the superior living conditions of the native citizens would be affected as well. Not only does the Council of Forty in Paris (the body of over 200 people known as the Senate) know this, but so do the colonial bodies across Africa, yet both sides are coincidentally playing ostrich, each wanting to leave the problem to the other. Since the EU had never allowed African-born citizens to serve as local supreme governors, the bigwigs parachuted into Africa from European soil often faced all kinds of denunciations and difficulties, which hindered the Parisian side from solving the problems effectively to a considerable extent. Jacob Herzog's becoming governor of South Africa was a shot in the arm for the Afrikaners, but all his efforts so far have not been to satisfy the appetite of the African Britannians, but rather for the overall balance point of view, which is starting to make his foundations shaky as well.

"Perhaps their faith is empty." McNeil thought back to what he'd seen in New Adana, "I wonder what we're fighting for ... in exchange for giving them the chance to spit on us behind our backs?"

"Who knows?" Alessandros Palaskas looked out the window at the man-made vegetation, "Some people say that this generation is the Beat Generation, when in fact the previous generation always criticizes the next generation that way whenever a new era arrives."

"More than one generation has been labeled as such throughout the ages." McNeil and the Shriner looked at today's paper, "But there will always be those generations that will happen to hit a stormy time. They may not really fall apart, they just prove unable to shoulder the responsibility they should at an inopportune time, and the results are disastrous."

No one knows if someone let the truth slip or if the military couldn't keep up the pressure, but they half-heartedly released a portion of the facts to the media. According to these half-truths, hundreds of people from the defense and police forces were killed in the fires in total, and the army claimed that these losses were the price that had to be paid to prevent the fires from continuing to spread. It had gotten to the point where the real threat had become the fires, and neither power wanted them to grow any larger, though perhaps none of them cared about the natives. Even the media, which had always been more radical, were in no mood to count the number of indigenous deaths.

On the afternoon of the third day, Adalbert Herzog arrived at the hospital in a dusty state, and as soon as he entered, he headed for McNeil's hospital room, just in time to meet Father Palaskas, who had gone out to buy a newspaper. After exchanging pleasantries with the priest, Major Herzog went straight into the ward and sat down on the stool next to him without even greeting him. Seeing this, McNeil was not irritated and took the initiative to ask:

"How is the situation? I heard that you guys suffered a lot of damage."

"It's true that it's a bit big, so big that I don't know how to end it anymore." Major Herzog complained sadly, "The colonel himself was completely unconcerned about the defense, and he still fantasized about letting the natives run out one by one to send themselves to their deaths, but I didn't expect the natives to launch a large-scale attack that day. Although we blocked the natives' advance for a while, when another group of natives attacked the command post from behind, the colonel decisively fled and the entire chain of command was in chaos."

McNeil was aghast; he could not have guessed that Colonel Carl Duttmann would simply flee even if he had indulged his imagination in envisioning the battle in the sky. The whole plan could be said to have been hatched by the good-for-nothing officer, and for him to run away from the battle when it came down to it was truly a line of thinking that even an outsider playwright wouldn't dare to adopt.

"And ... what happened afterward?" Not bothering to pretend to be a patient, McNeil jumped out of bed and stood in front of Adalbert. Major Herzog was startled by the mummy-like appearance, and stood up and took a series of steps backward before stopping, and said heartily:

"The scene is chaos, the fronts are commanded haphazardly, and the situation is completely out of control." Major Herzog didn't look happy, "Battle results? The result of the battle is that a large number of natives were slaughtered, but our men were also killed and wounded, and they didn't have to die in vain like that, all because that guy was greedy and afraid of death... However, we can't blame him for that, because later on, Smilas, who took over the command, also fled, and said that it was a strategic retreat."

All in all, Adalbert advised McNeil to never speak to Colonel Duttmann about the mercenary commissions these days. Things were already screwed up, the entire reservation was in flames, the mess was bigger than expected, the defense forces were burnt out from top to bottom, and McNeil's visit to the colonel at this time was like providing them with an excellent scapegoat. Since there was only one survivor of the task force, outsiders would certainly have reason to think that he had used some dishonorable means to survive, and the Colonel could use that psychology to turn McNeil into a traitor and bloodthirsty madman who had abandoned his teammates. Adalbert even colorfully described the scenario in which he envisioned the colonel shirking his responsibilities: that Colonel Duttmann would claim that McNeil and the others were a bunch of money-minded killers who went on to slaughter the natives for their money, and that the army was the righteous ones tasked with stopping them.

"All the more reason for me to go and meet him." McNeil was unfazed, "I owe my life to those who died, and this can't just be glossed over."

TBC

Chapter Notes:

It's no exaggeration to say that the EU of the Code Geass worldview is probably the closest country to modern society.

Despite the absurdity of the Code Geass Mobile game's designation of the South African region as the Area 2, this setting disguises an explanation of what happened to South Africa under EU's' rule.