32 replies to this topic

[General Kirkov]

Chapter XIV


“Ahhh lookie a Chinese trench line, sucks to be them, spin up the 25!” The forward LAV commander of the 3rd recon element for the coalition army commanded. It was pitch black and apparently the Chinese did not have NVGs. The LAVs however had thermal and night vision capability. The 25 vehicles in his command group opened up destroy the fortifications and the trenches leaving little left. “This is 3 Romeo, Chinese forward positions eliminated move up.” The main force pressed forward without opposition, however a large enemy armoured division awaited them not so far away.

******

“Enemy armour approaches comrade major.” Sergeant Ping reported at what point should we open fire?” “When they are within 300 meters prepare SABOT rounds have our infantry ready for their attack.” Major Chan said in a low voice.
“British Leopard dead ahead, aim and don’t miss… FIRE!” The Chinese tank commander ordered seconds later the Brit tank’s turret flew 50 feet in the air in a massive fireball several more British and Russian MBTs were hit. Seconds later several Kodiak and German Jagdmammut -Tank-killers retaliated on the poorly situated ambush location. The Russian and Chinese infantry had a go at each other a firefight that lasted 40 minutes or so until the BMPs were able to loop around and finish the Chinese defenders.

The first Coalition officer on site was 2Lt. Lioned followed shortly by Sgt. Borokov who was bickering with Pvt. Knolwes on what their kill count was at. Both had gunned down several troops guarding the CP. “I have found map and radio and Chinese troop strength the General will be most pleased.” The Russian officer said.
“That’s all fine and dandy sir, but your sergeant here says he has 42 kills and I have 37 when it is clear that I have 38 and he has 33!” Knolwes said.
“You must have failed math class because I winning in kill count.” The Sergeant replied.
“Actually you are tied at 40 I am keeping count on notepad.” Lioned closed the debate as he pulled out a pad with two columns one with “USA” on top and another with “Glorious Russian Army” next to it.
“Sir, I contest your objectivity.” Knolwes laughed.

Just then Kirkov entered the “Bunker” and upon seeing that the Russian/American team had captured the CP he ordered promotions for all. “Ha they have almost nothing left in theatre I have ordered constant bombardment by Tupolev, Frogfoot and Spetre aircraft, they have but one main force left. It is larger than our group but I still have one final card to play.”

******

“Comrade Colonel I believe we may have to consider a surrender to the Russians… They are massing an assault and in time they will strike at our anti-air troops and equipment rendering our position open to their air assaults.” Captain Ming reported to his CO.

“Unacceptable Ming! I will not surrender to this mixed force, they are divided and their leader is a psychopath! I acknowledge that his tactics have met him with luck, but it will run out, I have fortified our position that he will need a force three times its current size to win a decisive battle!” Zue said rather uncomfortably.

******

“Sir this is not good, the Canadian reconnaissance commander reported, they have heavy AA batteries, anti-tank weapons, front-line bunkers, watchtowers, Overlord tanks, about 300 Battlemasters and Dragon tanks and a shit load of infantry.”
“An interesting challenge to be certain, if we can take down the AA we can bombard them and I can send in the 200 Mil-24s I have been hiding from everyone and provide close support for our final push.” Kirkov pondered. “I have received word that an American Special Operations General will be with us in a matter of hours with his special Humvees…”
“Howdy Comrade Russian where can I find your CO” General Thorn asked in a slow voice to a Canadian infantry trooper in his winter camouflage.
“Well first off sir, don’t call me comrade I’m not a goddamn commie, second I’m not a fucking Russian and third General Kirkov is in the forward CP over there.” The Canadian private pointed to the captured Chinese position. “Ain’t that a Chink position?” Thorn inquired. “Yeah and we captured it now it’s a Russian/Canadian/German/British and now/Yank position.” The private finished as he walked back to his post.

As the American General walked in and saluted Kirkov’s mixed staff came to attention as the Russian general turned about and returned it. “Take a seat comrade Thorn. We were just discussing how to best assault the last Chinese bastion.” “You mean their Alamo sir, gosh why don’t you just bomb the crap out of it, it seems to have worked for you in the past.” He replied tersely he didn’t like being called comrade especially after being lectured by the kid walking post.
“Well first I have several problems with “Bombing the Crap” out of them, they have many anti-air units and I have no more bombs for a while supply chain is… long.” Kirkov answered calmly. “I know you! You led that group that kicked my ass the last war and you were a fucking major!” “Yes and now I am a Colonel General who outranks you Major General Thorn. My plan includes using your elite troops to disable their AA so I can send attack helicopters to destroy their forward fortifications and pour in with my armour and Mechanized Infantry. While they are dealing with that assault speztnas soldiers will infiltrate their base and take out their communications, sabotage their heavy units and hide until the main force breaches to strike again and spread confusion.” He announced his plan.
“That all looks nice on paper’ the British Col. spoke up’ but can it work?”
“Ja I think we can pull off this operation, my men are angered over the last ambush and want blood.”
“Ditto on our part.” The Canadian Lt. Col announced.
“You want blood than you got it, I just hope your Chopper Pilots are up to it.” Thorn said.
“Then we move at first light. The LAVs will screen General Thorn just incase something goes wron…” “Nothing will go wrong Comrade Col. General Thorn growled.
“Fine you have your orders, carry them out. Dismissed” Kirkov ordered.

******

Lieutenant Zeng was watching the defensive perimeter of the outpost via the command center monitoring system when he saw a group of black shapes flashed by the outer defensive line. It wasn’t really a line it was an open space watched by sleepy sentries. “Wake up you fools! Something just ran by on my screen again.” It was in fact the eight incident and each time the sentries could not see what the hell the officer was talking about so they said reported the occasional reindeer or wolf. It seemed to appease him but he was now worried, this was too frequent for animals striding across his outer defences. “I want you to remain vigilant, shoot the next fucking deer!” He ordered.
“Yes comrade lieutenant.” The sergeant commanding the series of OPs reported. What was his problem, the nearest Coalition force was 70 km away, he must have had too much tea. The sergeant was wrong these troops were Speztnas inserted by a new type of silent VTOL aircraft. And the American spec ops and Canadian LAVs were a mere 4 kms away. They were awaiting the powerplants to shut down so they could hit the towers and AA postions. The Hinds would deal with the reinforcements and the coalition army would attack 20 minutes after that.


_____________________

Sorry for the Lateness! My Godfather is getting married tomorrow and a what will we dress? crisis began, anyways enjoy!

[General Kirkov]

I have a hint for you!

Edited by General Kirkov, 26 July 2009 - 15:07.

[General Kirkov]

Double post sry, clicked add reply twice.

Edited by General Kirkov, 29 September 2008 - 17:30.

[General Kirkov]

I wasn't pleased with my work, I deleted it (again) I may never re-write any version of any Red Storm due to the over all lack of interest. The great reception to pretty much anything I used to write has dropped off and nothing really has changed except for a more cohesive story with an actual plot so my contributions to the writing section will cease after the Teran invasions are finished. Anyways I doubt anyone will ever read this ever so I can say what I please;

Rawr monkey poop and good riddance to toffee flavored ice cream.


To Commander JB the only one who actually commented and encouraged me to write this to the end RIP.

Edited by General Kirkov, 26 July 2009 - 15:16.

[Sharpnessism]

Some nice writing but this story seems less intense than RS I. While the Russians looked as if they had a fighting chance at winning in RSI, it's pretty clear that by chapter VII the Chinese would lose the entire war. Ending (final chapter) seemed pretty unnecessary, it would have been nice to have an epilogue for the other soldiers/generals instead of watching some Chinese guy getting beaten up since we know literally nothing about him except he was the head of state.

[General Kirkov]

Sharpnessism, on 4 Oct 2008, 9:26, said:

Some nice writing but this story seems less intense than RS I. While the Russians looked as if they had a fighting chance at winning in RSI, it's pretty clear that by chapter VII the Chinese would lose the entire war. Ending (final chapter) seemed pretty unnecessary, it would have been nice to have an epilogue for the other soldiers/generals instead of watching some Chinese guy getting beaten up since we know literally nothing about him except he was the head of state.

I agree entirely with you, RSI was much easier to write, seing that all I had to do was make Russia win, I could center my story on a few characters. With RS 2 I made a classic writters blunder early on; I did not have a character sheet(something I returned to when I started the MOF series). This made it difficult to keep track on everyone and write a dynamic story, also this was very labour intensive with chapters about twice as long as the original and I resorted to an overview rather than a heat of the battle view, something I regretted when I hit Chapter 5 or so and by then it was too late lest I re-write everything.

I felt that a turning point was needed in the story so I chose the usual middle of the war turning of the tide tactic I brought England and Canada the usual first countries to jump into a time to save a World War countries, then added Germany as a plot twist than brought in the US in the Siberia campaign.

Thanks for the feed back though and I have another set of stories (appart from the MOF which will take a hiatus after #3) something I wrote between late 200 and mid 2001 and I am simply re-writting them (with a character sheet! I still think I have one...)

-edit- I can always add a soldiers ending, I was debating it but by the time I hit chapter XIV I was getting tired and just wanted to end the war.

Edited by General Kirkov, 04 October 2008 - 13:52.

[CommanderJB]

Firstly I'd like to say you have a great story here. You obviously know what you're talking about but don't expect the reader to do the same, which is great, and something of a pitfall I've seen elsewhere. You're not afraid to show some of the nastier elements of both battles and characters, which I appreciate (even if I'm too chicken to do it myself) and it helps give depth. The older characters have obviously benefited from being explored earlier, but the newer ones work quite nicely as well, though as Soul says there were weaker examples. Also your plot is clear, doesn't wander except where it needs to, the scene balance between characters is nice and the general feel of war is carried off with considerable panache.

That's the good news. Unfortunately I do have to point out some bad news as well and I hope you'll forgive me.
There are a few spelling mistakes; while these are to an extent unavoidable proofreading is invaluable beyond belief in this regard. The thing I really take issue with however is consistent grammatical errors. There are an awful lot of places where I find your sentence structure a bit odd, plus your speech punctuation is a bit out. For example:

Quote

“YOU CAN’T KEEP ME HERE I AM A HEAD OF STATE!” The former Chinese chairman yelled at the Camera.

While someone screaming isn't too likely to make coherent sentences, I still think it needs to be put across to the reader in a slightly different manner. I'd rewrite this as:

Quote

“YOU CAN’T KEEP ME HERE - I AM A HEAD OF STATE!” the former Chinese chairman yelled at the camera.

That pause makes all the difference to me as it outlines the two separate parts of his thought. He's making a demand and then rationalising it, and while they might run together when spoken (though you wouldn't really expect them to) typically the delineation needs to be made with the written word. Also, after the end of speech marks you never have a capital letter, unless of course you go to the next line - I learnt this only recently, but it's an important thing as it makes dialogue flow much more naturally. Even if the person is ending their sentence, you never put a full stop if you then go on to explain the line; it's always a comma. Lastly there's no reason for 'camera' to be capitalised.
If I may present another example:

Quote

“F**K!” Cpl. Knolwes Exclaimed. “Goddamn Ruskie Sergeant beat me!” Sgt. Borokov was smug about it. “Now you owe me Bottle of Vodka! And not that Smirnoff crap a good one, one actually made in Russia! And I will get you a nice bottle Snaps anyways.”

(Excuse my dislike of curse words - I get the feeling I'm going to have to learn how to swear if anyone's ever going to take fighting scenes written by me seriously, but for the moment I'm still not really willing to use it.) Some more misplaced capitalisations here (Exclaimed, Snaps, Bottle and Vodka - also the alcoholic version is spelled schnapps, of German origin. Do you have a Germanic background, per chance? As all nouns in German are of course capitalised, which save proper nouns never happens in English), but the main thing is line breaks. Once a line of speech is concluded, if someone else speaks next, there must be a line break between them.
And one last one. Sentences are complete thoughts, usually one, occasionally two. You sometimes break off in the middle of them though;

Quote

The Chinese Col. in charge of the base climbed out of the rubble of his Command Center and after a brief look at the surrounding area. His radar station was out, no electricity was being provided to the spotlights and most importantly the AA and large anti-personnel and armour weapons were powerless…

This is purely personal preference but I think 'colonel' should probably be written in full, just for the sake of fluidity in a sentence. The stranger thing however is the way the sentence stops in the middle. There's really no reason for that full stop to exist; it just doesn't do anything for the phrase. To give an annoyingly MS Word-like pair of alternatives:
From a slightly more detached point of view:

Quote

The Chinese colonel in charge of the base climbed out of the rubble of his Command Center. After a brief look at the surrounding area he could see that his radar station was out, no electricity was being provided to the spotlights and most importantly the AA and large anti-personnel and armour weapons were powerless…

From an up-close-and-personal point of view

Quote

The Chinese colonel in charge of the base climbed out of the rubble of his Command Center and took a brief look at the surrounding area. He could see that his radar station was out, no electricity was being provided to the spotlights and most importantly the AA and large anti-personnel and armour weapons were powerless…

I prefer the last one but of course it's all up to you.

Basically there's just a couple of simple things in your presentation that I think could make all the difference. Much of this is probably me; you punctuate slightly differently than I do and I respect that my opinion is just that, and not law; but there are a few rules which I believe are universal. Like I said, your story is great; I'd say you have a much firmer grip of plot than I have, and are also a lot better organised (I tend to make things up as I go along for the most part, starting out with a vague idea and coming up with the details as I write them) and it's really a good, interesting read. The one single (honest!) gripe I have plot-wise is the one Soul pointed out; save the incursions at the start China ceased feeling like a proper threat for the last while, and the tension dropped off too soon when heading toward the conclusion because of this.

Like I said, these are just my thoughts and I hope you find them valuable. I don't aim to offend but the only reason I think I make any dramatic improvements in any of my work, writing or otherwise, is when someone points out what I'm doing wrong, so I'm a strong believer in 'constructive criticism'. The choice is always yours, and please, write more!

(Also, don't know whether or not you know but Super-Kilos actually exist; the Lada or Graney-class is a heavily improved Kilo and is considered by some to be the most advanced conventional submarine type in the world.)

Edited by CommanderJB, 05 October 2008 - 06:12.

[General Kirkov]

Thanks for the feed back, yeah I try to catch the grammatical errors while I type or before posting but with something well over 12,000 words and 31 pages of text it's diffult to catch everything.




I also try to review errors after posting but obviously I occasionally missed the odd error. Also I chose my writting style in a manner that would fit the situation, the swearing between soldiers is more than common but I tried to tone it down abit.

@ the Super Kilos, no I did not know this, in fact I though I had "invented" them in RS-I.

I am really enjoying the feed back, trust me I fullly apreciate it and I am planning to post and or re-write a fan fiction series I posted on the unknown worlds forums about 8 years ago.

-edit- that is the unedited first chapter and a snapshot of my work, 31 single spaced pages.

-edit- Errors >_<

Edited by General Kirkov, 07 October 2008 - 11:33.