SIBERITE! Exhausted from the battle, we came home to yet more bad news. The General had died while we were away. I was crushed. Sadly, there is rarely time to mourn on the battlefield, and this was no exception, owing to the intense politicking and outcry that followed Powell giving himself a field promotion to General and overall commander of the mission. Other than Powell and his cronies, I don’t think that many of the troops felt that this was a good decision. My troops thought that I should be the one in command, and I’m sure that the soldiers under the other regional commanders thought the same way of their commanding officers. Chaos and mutiny weren’t an acceptable outcome, however, and I told my troops that this was for the best, although I didn’t really feel it in my heart. Powell ordered us to take over command of the siberite mining station at Ovsjenko. It has been a Russian base for siberite research and mining when Powell’s troops had overrun the base. However, a Russian counterstrike had resulted in heavy damage to the base and the mining equipment. Now that Powell was in overall command, he didn’t have time to go attend to the base himself, and needed me to go there and fortify is against another Russian strike, which was sure to come all too soon. When we arrived, some engineers diverted from Alpha were busy building a storage facility. The building was to serve as a drop off point for siberite mined at the Ovsjenko base. Once it was finished, they led me to Ovsjenko, a few hundred meters to the south. Unfortunately, the base there was in terrible shape. There wasn’t much left of it, just a damaged storage shed and some last stand bunkers. Sergeant Grant, who was in charge of the base, apologized at the state of the facility and handed command over to me. I congratulated him on beating back the Russians and got to the hard work of rebuilding. We repaired the damaged buildings and started expanding the base as quickly as we were able to. First a laboratory so that we could develop some detectors to find the siberite deposits that we knew to be in the area and some light defenses. Once we had located the deposit and built some new mining equipment, we really started to ramp up base development. A new armory, an oil power station, and some oil derricks (I) were first, followed by more defensive entrenching, all the while moving siberite out to, and new building materials in from, the terminal building. When we ran out of materials, Powell said that he could get us some, but that we would need to get a full load of siberite to the terminal to make it worth the risk, some sixty(60) crystals in all. That wasn’t going to be easy, because the mining was going so slowly, so I put some pressure on the scientists to make some improvements to our mining technologies. Knowing that the defenses that we had then were all that we were going to have for a while, I diverted some people from engineering into soldiery and staffed the bunkers. And none too soon, since in almost no time, one of the lookouts spotted a Russian strike force moving our way. The Russians started their attack using rocket launchers, which would put and end to the defensive properties of the bunker rather quickly, so I moved more troops in that direction, managing to kill them just before an Russian vehicle attacked the base from the south. We finished it off, retrenched and expanded our search perimeter, hoping to get more warning the next time that the Russians decided to attack. At this point, I expedited building a workshop. We would need our vehicles repaired, and quickly, if the Russians weren’t to wear us down in the near future. I started transferring the first load of Powell’s shipment, and set everyone else to repairing and upgrading their equipment. Anticipating a similar attack to the last one, I posted most of the soldiers in the bunker that had been attacked previously. This time, however, the Russians manages to get their timing right, and we were attacked simultaneously by soldiers at the bunker, a tank from the south, and long range bombardment by a “Katyuscha” rocket platform. It was touch and go for a while, but we managed to finish them off and capture the rocket platform in the process. I had some of our scientists go off and socialize some of the local apes for some labor, since we needed all of the manpower that we could possibly muster in order to keep fighting off the Russian attacks, which were not long in coming. We barely managed to end it, but got lucky and managed to capture two more Russian vehicles, one with heavy cannon, and another rocket launcher. Finally, Powell’s trucks got here with our supplies, and took away the siberite that we had managed to collect(III). As they were rolling off, a junior officer told me that there was an unidentified man on the radio, wanting to talk to the base commander. Since the Russian attacks looked to be over for the time being, I decided to take the call. The man managed to tell me, in severely broken English, that he was interested in making a trade, some of our excess oil for their mortar technology. Some mortars would be awfully helpful, and we were at full base strength, so I decided to take the risk and agree to the deal. They acknowledged, and said that they would be at the base in just a few minutes. The soldiers that arrived were wearing the same uniforms as the forces that had attacked us at Delta, but again, they had no insignia, and thus their nationality was difficult to guess. In return for the oil that I gave them, the built for us another armory stocked with mortars(II). They also had another business proposition, one that I unfortunately declined. They said that they had secret information about the Russians that they would be willing to trade for more raw materials. Thinking that this might be a trap, I told them no and invited them to leave, a decision that I would come to regret. Soon after that, there was a closely spaced series of Russian attacks. Our base proved even more difficult to attack with the mortars, so they tried a different tactic. They decided to attack the terminal(IV), in hopes that they could draw off some support. But I had thought ahead a detached a small group of troops to defend the terminal, and they were able to cut their little visit rather short. Moments later, Powell called us and reported that the Russians had abandoned stratagems, and were attacking this base overwhelming force. We were to abandon it, taking all of the siberite that we can carry, and withdraw to the terminal, where we’ll be picked up and carried to safety by a convoy of trucks.

Introduction Mission 1 Mission 2 Mission 3 Mission 4 Mission 5 Mission 6 Mission 7 Mission 8 Mission 9 Mission 10 Mission 11 Decision Mission 12 Mission 13 Mission 14 Mission 15