OR1-EP4: Prelude to the Millennium (20)

When a criminal trying to escape from a murder scene is surrounded by far more police or soldiers than he can handle, what he should probably do is sit down calmly for a smoke and wait for fate to decide for him, instead of trying to put up a fight - that wouldn't do anything but put a few more holes in his body and wouldn't That would not change the final outcome except to put a few more holes in themselves. If they were to judge their worth purely by the outcome, they would realize that the best option would be to fold their arms. McNeil was a true executioner in terms of kills and number of kills, and he did what killers often do in movies and returned to his car, thinking about how to get out of this hellhole. Luckily the car had not been damaged in the massive explosion that had just occurred because of the protection of the warehouse's outer wall, and there was no sign of the place being discovered by Darlton or the other African Britannians.

McNeil stood in front of the car and opened the door, from which he took out the documents he had collected and the photos and videos he had taken. They had to be delivered intact to Governor-general Herzog so that the governing body of the South African colony could rightfully crusade against these Britannians who were trying to oppose the supreme authority of the colony by force. After much thought, he decided to call a trusted acquaintance first, lest word fail to get out if something bad happened to him here.

The chemical plant was burning in a blaze that quickly engulfed the surrounding buildings and spread in the direction McNeil was heading. In addition, the reactor was becoming more and more dangerous; it could explode in a massive explosion at any time, and if it did, everything in the plant would be leveled. McNeil dialed the phone number of Governor-general Herzog's office, a number that the Governor-general himself had left in the newspaper specifically for citizens to address him directly, though not many people dared to bother His Excellency with trivial matters on weekdays.

McNeil waited patiently, he'd never had the chance to get through to this phone number before, but for some reason his instincts told him that today he'd have the chance to tell the Governor-general himself exactly what was going on here.

"This is Jacob Herzog, Governor-General of South Africa." Governor-general Herzog's slightly tired voice came from across the room.

"Your Excellency, I am McNeil." McNeil directly identified himself, "I have obtained evidence that the Rifle Association utilized this chemical plant to produce weapons and ammunition, in addition to that I have found a Britannian officer at the scene. If you think that this evidence is enough for you to convince the Colonial Assembly, I will immediately find a way to deliver the information to you."

The voice on the other end of the phone was silent for a long moment.

"I'm afraid the good news has come too late, Mr. McNeil." Governor-general Jacob Herzog sighed heavily, "Because of the intransigence of these fellows, I have decided to use the powers granted to me by the United Republics to deal with them ... Even though it will bring me the name of a traitor and a butcher, it will be worth all the cost for South Africa. "

For a long time, the major factions within the South African Colonial Assembly represented various ethnic groups from different regions speaking different languages, of which the African Britannians had always been the most powerful. As early as when Governor-general Herzog proposed the Indigenous Affirmative Action Bill, the African Britannians were at loggerheads in the Colonial Assembly on the grounds that the Affirmative Action Bill would greatly shake up the existing South African parliamentary election process and electoral structure, and that these impoverished mobile vote banks could be easily bought off, and that South Africa would be transformed into a hotbed of corruption within a few years, within the foreseeable future. But even if the African Britannians bully the Governor-general over and over again, and even send someone to assassinate Attorney Jorge Dias, who assisted the Governor-general in enacting the Bill, they cannot break with the Governor-general as long as the Governor-general is still willing to use the Britannian banner to cover himself. The African Britannians believed that Governor-general Herzog, who had been hostile to mainstream politicians in his native Europe since the beginning because of who he was, would remain their staunchest ally as long as they kept the conflict between the two sides within tolerable limits.

"You're dissolving the Colonial Assembly?" McNeil leaned against the window of the car as he watched the fire climb up another workers' dormitory, "Use the army? That would remind the public of Napoleon Bonaparte, wouldn't it?"

"Mr. McNeil, Bonaparte, even though he was an ambitious man and a liar, he managed to play the role of hypocrite for over a decade. Without Bonaparte, the First French Republic would have ceased to exist and our United Republics would have been stillborn." Governor-general Herzog looked one last time at the document on the table that required his own signature, "Sometimes people who seem to be driving everything to ruin think that what they are doing is immensely right, and they are convinced that they are saving the cause they love in their own way. But many things on earth do not have results that can be seen at the time, and it is only when all is irrevocably lost that we can know on the road to the abyss what tragedy our choices have finally created."

McNeil was in a dilemma. He should immediately flee the scene in his car and hand over the evidence to Governor-general Herzog, which would make it unnecessary for the Governor-general to play the role of the villain. However, his conscience told him that he should not have seen Nito Mariam dead. McNeil had always considered himself more than capable of handling a wide range of responsibilities, and he had seldom in his life been truly confronted with a choice that needed to be made, and he had never believed that it should be weighed by virtue of the number of people affected.

"Can we hold off?" He asked in a sharp tone, "Does it have to be done?"

"It is the last way to save South Africa from the sceptre of the monarch and the knife of the traitors, and I tell them in my own way what is meant by Senatus consultum ultimum." The Governor-general handed the document to the secretary who had walked respectfully into the office and then ordered the three officers standing by with a gesture to leave the premises, "Names don't matter, they don't care about that."

McNeil felt a paroxysm of powerlessness. He had succeeded in preventing a struggle between royalty and great nobility in the Britannian Empire from turning into a civil war, but he had been unable to prevent the situation in South Africa from developing into the worst possible scenario. It was sort of putting the cart before the horse; he'd saved a foreign monarch from a crisis while the land he himself lived in was about to be afflicted by war. He put down his cell phone, rechecked the sniper rifle in his backpack, and ran in the direction of the reactor. He was sure that Darlton would be waiting for him there, an atmosphere that these Britannians, whose brains were fried with chivalry, had always loved.

Andreas Darlton dragged Nito Mariam up the stairs and looked down at the still-burning building below with a sneer in his voice:

"You don't have to die for their cause. the EU only sees you as slaves."

"We're all slaves everywhere, what's the difference between high and low?" Nito Mariam laughed, "Are the Emperor's house slaves more noble than the merchants' house slaves? Or do you think the slaves of Britannia are freer than the slaves of the EU?"

Andreas Darlton had originally had nothing to do with this kind of work, he was an air force pilot by trade and had previously served on aircraft carriers, but he had then offended the nobles in power in the military and decided to make his way overseas to avoid persecution. The Britannian Empire had no sphere of influence outside of its home territory, and the Britannian Army in Japan was just a place for the sons of nobles to mix up their credentials, so Darlton had no choice but to come to South Africa and become a scout for the Imperial Intelligence Service. As a result, he supported the new Emperor Charles III from the bottom of his heart, and only the Emperor's new regime could save the Britannian Empire from the tyranny and incompetence of the nobility. The Emperor promised them that it would only take five years to transform the Britannian Empire. Until then, they still needed to endure, must endure, and not let the Britannian Empire become a target before the lions roared. However, Darlton couldn't be a coward again, he believed he should evacuate the place for the sake of his interests, but there was always something inexplicable within a man that drove him to act in a way that didn't match his interests.

"There are a number of non-white aristocrats in my country, but EU has never produced a non-white MP." Darlton sneered, "That's the truth."

"I guess that's just our parliamentary lords not being adaptable." Nito Mariam fell back on his word, "They could have tokenized a few positions as well, they're just too lazy to do the superficial work."

Heavy footsteps came up the rear stairs, McNeil was hurrying up the stairs. Seeing this, Darlton immediately shifted to the upper floors, retreating all the way to the top of the building. Not far away was the reactor, which could explode in a massive explosion at any moment, and the underside of the building had long since been engulfed in flames and shaking. McNeil struggled up from the bottom of the metal staircase, only to see Darlton standing at the edge of the edge with a calm demeanor, as if it wasn't him but McNeil who had been pushed to the brink.

"You did come." Darlton looked at McNeil in surprise, "The Britannians have the spirit of Britannia after all."

"I wish I never had this so-called spirit." McNeil took aim at Darlton, "Release the man and I'll let you die with honor."

"That's right, I'm a death row inmate and he's a hobo, no one will care if we both die here." Nito Mariam hurriedly picked up McNeil's words, "Don't think you can blackmail us, we are originally poor people who have nothing."

Nonetheless, McNeil's heart remained shaken. He had made it clear that his position was that of a tool, so he would take every opportunity to save those who were also tools and suffered greatly from it. The fact that some people end up being tools cannot simply be summarized in a single sentence of moral bankruptcy. What is the root cause of moral bankruptcy? Nito Mariam could only work as a driver who could barely support his family because he could not afford to get a better education and exposure to learn more skills. Cost became a rift, and poverty is often hereditary. Nito Mariam's children would inherit this poverty as well, and continue to be the servants of others who were no different from the slaves of the Britannian Empire's past, though their masters were not fixed.

"Speaking of which, I'd like to thank you for providing us with the excuse of a lifetime." Darlton deflected his rifle slightly to bring McNeil's attention to the reactor off to the side, "In any case, the African Britannians' use of force against the EU is an act of insurrection from the legal point of view, and the Empire can't support them with confidence and boldness. However, assuming that it was Europeans with evil intentions who deliberately planted bombs in chemical plants in order to cause accidents and kill Britannian civilians, then the African Britannians' resistance is a just act against tyranny, and even in Europe itself, those with an excess of sympathy would highly approve of it."

"Both the natives and the African Britannians are mere tools in your eyes." McNeil was not disturbed by Darlton's words; he had long recognized the true nature of the Britannian Empire. There was no humanity between arch-enemies, and all behaviors that could be used to cause trouble for their opponents were justified. The Britannian Empire used the local natives to inflict unhealed wounds on South Africa, and then turned around and made allies with the African Britannians, who suffered the most from these destructive activities - were the African Britannians aware that their fellow Britannians were directing those natives to go and burn and loot? If the African Britannians had lost their usefulness, the Britannian Empire would have discarded them like a wild dog, leaving them to be rounded up and suppressed by the EU.

"Who is not a tool?" Darlton took a few more steps backward, this time Nito Mariam was scared to death, he was afraid that Darlton would pull him down with him, he was paralyzed on the spot, it took Darlton a lot of effort to pull him up, "Only a few people can control their own destiny, it's not like it's a shame to admit that you're a tool."

"Being the Emperor's lapdog can be spoken of so honorably by you, it seems you Britannians always have a lot of new tricks to show me." McNeil stepped forward, "I repeat, you let the man go and I can let you die with honor."

"Or what?"

"Or I will unload you, just as I slaughtered the Knight of Twelve."

"So, Adolf Nordhaug died at your hands." Darlton came to a realization, "His Imperial Majesty only thought he was missing and offered a large bounty."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Darlton flung Nito Mariam out of the way, and the black chauffeur's figure immediately disappeared over the edge of the ceiling. Quick as a flash, McNeil took a few quick steps forward and fired several shots in quick succession toward Darlton, but none of them hit their mark. Darlton, seeing that McNeil had rushed into view, swung up and punched McNeil, who caught his wrist in a death grip with his other hand. The two men fought like wrestlers or sumo wrestlers, each grabbing the other's wrist. At that moment, the noise of a propeller came from the air, and a helicopter was approaching. There was no doubt that it was certainly not coming to meet McNeil.

Andreas Darlton was overjoyed to see the arrival of friendly forces. He said mockingly to McNeil:

"You stay here and wait to be blown up into the sky, I'll see you later."

Darlton broke away from McNeil with great force and ran toward the helicopter near the top of the building. McNeil immediately picked up the pistol that had fallen to the ground and shot Darlton three times, the second shot hitting the other man in the right arm. As he attempted to continue firing, one of the gunmen poked his head out of the cabin and pointed his light machine gun in McNeil's direction. Once McNeil saw that the enemy was coming, he didn't dare to confront them head-on and hurriedly ran down the stairs along the original path to avoid the enemy bullets. He took out the sniper rifle he had hidden in his backpack, set it up on the stairs, and fired at the helicopter, but neither of them hit the target. That's when he finally began to regret that he had slacked on his combat skills during his decades as a commander, or he would have been able to shoot this helicopter down instead of watching it escape.

Only after the helicopter had completely disappeared into the distance did McNeil return to the roof of the building and search around for Nito Mariam. He soon heard the black driver's cries for help, and it turned out that the man had managed to avoid falling to the ground and becoming mincemeat by hanging impartially from the ladder used for access. But, with the present state of the fire, it would have been difficult for McNeil to get him down.

"Wait here, I'll be right over!" McNeil looked at the still approaching fire and started searching his backpack. He pulled out a length of rope and tied one end of the rope to the vent pipe at the top, then flung the other end off the roof of the building. McNeil took this piece of rope and flung it toward Nito Mariam, but the rope was not long enough, and McNeil made several successive attempts to pass the rope to the Negro driver without success. He climbed to the edge with his heart in his mouth, looked at the trembling Nito Mariam, and continued to yell:

"Jump this way!"

"That's enough!" Nito Mariam stopped McNeil, "I'm hopeless, and even if I live, I won't escape being shot. You're a good man, if you survive, maybe there's a chance to save more people."

"You god damn-"

McNeil insisted that Nito Mariam jump in the direction where the rope was. The black driver made the attempt, jumping away from the ladder with all his strength, but in the end he failed to catch the end of the rope, and quickly fell in a free-fall motion into the fire below. Looking down at the fire that had just engulfed Nito Mariam, McNeil couldn't be bothered to hurt his feelings for the jobbing temporary teammate; he had to get away from this place immediately. After being scalded twice in a row by the hot staircase, McNeil made a thrilling return to the garage, started the car, and sprinted like nobody's business toward the exit, which was no longer guarded by any guards. When the car finally reached the highway back to the south, McNeil's nerves, which had been tense inside him, finally relaxed. In any case, he had already escaped the danger zone, as long as he went back to hand over the evidence to the Governor, it would be a great success.

The earth-shattering explosion pulled McNeil's emotions back from the joy of surviving. He panicked to stop the car, turned his head to look in the direction of the chemical plant, only to see a huge smoke cloud rising in the mid-air, and the ensuing gusts of wind swept across the land, wondering how many more people would be buried in the fire in this big explosion. McNeil stumbled out of the car and gazed at the still climbing smoke cloud along with the other drivers who had no idea what was going on.

"Things are getting slightly dicey." He thought to himself, "I hope Adalbert has prepared a countermeasure ahead of time."

Sure enough, McNeil was met on the obligatory road by men sent to meet him by Adalbert Herzog, who had searched away all weapons that might have brought suspicion, leaving McNeil to return to the Transvaal with only the evidence. One of the officers told McNeil, rather worriedly, that the large explosion and subsequent explosions that had occurred in northern Rhodesia had killed thousands of people, most of them civilians rather than the fire department that had been caught up in it.

The African Britannians would surely make a big deal out of this, as any media person with the slightest sense of smell would have picked up on. The next day, the morning after McNeil had just returned to the Transvaal, the media at the behest of Governor-general Herzog and the media under the control of the African Britannians made two statements that were completely at odds with each other. The mainstream media in South Africa believed that the African Britannians had caused the disaster by using their privileges for a long time and ignoring safety regulations. The African Britannians were unafraid to respond to this accusation, insisting that they had always been law-abiding and that the accident site investigation report had determined that a small group of miscreants with a paranoid hatred of the African Britannians had been responsible for the sabotage. By this time, public opinion had turned in favor of the African Britons, who were the number one power in South Africa outside of the colonial administration, and were naturally good at manipulating the media. However, by the end of the day, the situation was reversed. Governor-general Jacob Herzog, on the six o'clock news program, made public the evidence that the African Britannians were using the chemical plant as a cover for the clandestine production of arms and ammunition, not only believing that the accident was caused by the explosion of the ammunition depot, but also questioning the fact that the Britannians were destroying the evidence themselves and calling others the thieves.

Things came to a head. Governor-general Herzog formally ordered the army to proceed to Rhodesia and disband all current administrations, while at the same time he demanded that the de facto local administrators of Rhodesia rush to the Transvaal at once to make a report to the Colonial Assembly. However, the Colonial Assembly was already surrounded by the army, and no one was going to come to such a banquet. On A.T.B. June 6, 1998, and on Pavot Prairial, year 207 of Republican Calendar, Rhodesia declared on its own that it had seceded from the EU-affiliated Union of South Africa and established the Free State Rhodesia, and also issued a series of declarations including the Declaration of Independence. War was inevitable and havoc was about to fall.

OR1-EP4 END

Chapter Notes：

Fighting in a chemical plant is never a good idea.

Despite the unified command structure of the EU Army, the armies of the Autonomous Republics still have a great deal of autonomy.