Dead End Nation

Part of the Second Concourse War

**Year**
1 NAC

## Chapter 1

The Republic of Karstedt went to war half a month after Yuna graduated from basic training. The raven-haired private had barely settled into her quarters when the mobilization order came. Though she was only seventeen, and fresh out of Basic Training, Yuna carried on her duties full expecting––impatiently and with mounting anxiety––that she might be relieved of them at any moment. Members of the Ravyn family did not stay in the lower ranks for long, where their talents were wasted.

The agony of waiting so inflated her hopes and expectations that she became convinced that they would waive the age requirement for officer’s school and send her there immediately. Once she graduated, she would be the youngest female commissioned officer in the Karian Army. Ever. Younger than her mother; she had checked.

By the time someone came to get her from the firing range––where she was about to score perfectly for the fourth time in a row––she had convinced herself that her father would forgo the formality of officer's school entirely, slip her commission onto the Autarch's desk, and have her join him on his personal staff in the 1st Army. There, she could be at his side and learn from him in real time. The war of her generation, the war of national resurgence, would unfold before her very eyes. She would be a part of the force which would deliver the devastating blow which would precipitate the collapse of the galactic order keeping Karstedt down. In her wildest flights, Yuna imagined that she would make Major almost immediately. It was wartime. The Karian Army desperately needed officers, and her father was the General, after all.

Yuna was instructed by her Sergeant to report to the Company Commander. As she passed through the rows of desks packed in the small company HQ, uniformed members of the logistics, intelligence, and personnel sections gawked at her as if she were the Autarch himself. Yuna pretended not to notice.

She was ushered into the small executive office. It had windows, but these were entirely shuttered to the outside. Captain Augustin Bischoff, a man in his late thirties, was hunched over at his desk working by the light of a small desk lamp, his head jutting forward, his shoulders drawn up to his ears as if lifted by invisible strings. His officer’s saber was draped over a chair in a corner, gathering dust.

Yuna had trouble respecting an officer who led from his desk, but she snapped into a salute nonetheless. The rubber of her combat boots thudded dully against the ground.

“Private Ravyn reporting as requested, sir.”

“At ease,” Captain Bischoff said as he flung the report onto the pile, swiveled in her direction like a turret, and leaned back. He crossed his arms and looked her in the eyes.

“I've just received orders from on high. Apparently, you're going on leave until further notice. You're to clear out your things and report to General Ravyn.”

Yuna had been waiting to hear those very words.

Officer's school, it has to be, she thought, feeling warm relief and cold satisfaction in equal measure.

“Well,” Captain Biscoff cleared his throat, stood, and tugged down the front of his uniform, “I can't say a month was enough for us to get to know one-another well, but...” he circumnavigated the desk to extend his hand to her, “I know you're destined for great things. Give 'em hell for us here at Alpha Company,” He had a hopeful look on his face.

Hah, Yuna thought. She kept herself from laughing in his face, though the smirk was more difficult to hide.
Kissing my ass already, Captain?

She took his hand and shook it with a man's grip. The expression that flashed across the Captain's face hinted that he had expected her to be softer.

“I will not forget your leadership, sir,” she lathered on with a grin, “Nor the things you taught me.”

When Yuna presented herself at 1st Army Headquarters in the middle of the busy streets of Harzbeck, she was denied entry in the lobby. Her card wouldn’t work, forcing her to step out of line to go to the security counter.

“I'm sorry, private,” the Private behind the glass said, “Your badge is not on the list. You're not authorized to enter HQ.”
Yuna was sure it was a mistake. She was standing there in full dress uniform. She was packed, her duffel lung under one arm. She was ready. She needed her next assignment.

“My orders are to report to General Ravyn. It happened a few hours ago, maybe I'm just not in the system yet,” she said, doing what she could to keep her tone civil.

“Let me look you up.”

“Thank you.”

“What's your name?”

“Yuna Ravyn.”

“Spell it for me?”

The coal in Yuna's stomach flared. She leaned heavily on the counter with one arm.

“Like the General,” she snapped, “Y-U-N-A, and the last name, R-A-V-Y-N.”

“Your service code?”

Most soldiers would have had to look at their cards at this point, but Yuna knew it from memory. She made a point of it, looking him intensely in the eyes.

“S-F-5-0-4-8-5-7-8-2-3-4-7-5-4-9-0-3-1.”

“Okay, give me a moment. Ah, here we go. Yuna Josephine Ravyn, Private,” he looked impassively up at her, “It says here you're no longer on active duty.”

“Yeah, I'm being reassigned.”

“That’s not it. The system is saying you've been honorably discharged. You're no longer in the military, miss. You have no orders or clearance to be here.”

“But––that's not possible!”

“That’s what the system says. Now, I'm sorry, but you'll need to get out line so I can tend to the people behind you.”

“But––”

“Miss,” he said in a condescending way that infuriated her even more, “Do I need to call the guard to show you where the exit is?”

Yuna stared at him disbelievingly for a few moments, then drew back within herself.

“No,” she hissed, her stomach burning, “That won't be necessary.”

Yuna was barely conscious of having gotten out of line, or of having crumbled into a bench in the nearby park. It was a small playground, a single lot in the middle of the smog, noise, and traffic of the city streets. It had a tennis court, a sandbox, and a playstructure. There was a war on, but neighborhood mothers still came with their children, tugging at their shawls and chatting while the children scaled the playstructure. On that day, the boys were playing soldier, dressed in power armor made out of cardboard boxes. Yuna was the only one there over the age of ten and under the age of twenty-five.
Her thoughts racing, her legs liquid and burning, hot rage pumping like fire through her veins, Yuna tried to make sense of what she had just experienced. She took out her army PDA. She wanted that Private punished. She wanted him court martialed––thrown out of the army.

*Discharged?! We'll see who's been discharged by the end of today.*

She prepared a message to her father.

**Yuna R.**

Sir––I'm at the HQ to report to you as ordered

The people at the door won't let me in. They say

I've been discharged??

Yuna pressed send, the word blurring a little as she did so. Then, she put the PDA away. She knew that if she let herself type any more, her father wouldn't read it.
Stop being such a drama queen.

She had wanted to type more. She had wanted him to know how confused and terrified she felt––how angry and humiliated––how sad, wounded, and small. Yuna waited for a reply. She knew she could be waiting for a long time. She watched the children dive in and out of the playstructure, shouting “Bang! Bang!” as they waved around toy rifles and fake hardlight blades. Beyond, the noise of the busy streets pressed in around her, the hum of engines, the ticking of streetcars, the roar of atmocraft passing ahead to land at the nearby strip. She dared not open her PDA again, except to check the time. If she opened it, she would be risking sending her father another message, one that might be more revealing about how she felt than the two question marks. Or worse, she would try to call him while he was on duty.

*Get your feelings under control right now, Yuna Ravyn, or I swear by the Mother...*

Two question marks had been too much, she quickly realized. She had written the text too hastily, too emotionally. He'd pick up on it. He'd compare her to her brothers and chastise her. He'd think she wasn't ready to become an officer, that she was too emotional, that she was incapable of being a good soldier because she was the only Ravyn of this generation born a woman.

*We Ravyns have no time for weakness. That is the reality. You are not exempt just because you're a woman. Either you're a Ravyn like your mother, and act like it, or...*

Yuna felt hot tears crowding out her eyes. Before she understood what was happening, she was shaking and sobbing in a public square, in full view of everyone else. What had she done to make her father think her unworthy? Had he finally pulled the plug on her? Was she no longer a Ravyn?

Then, Yuna Ravyn snapped to her feet. She swallowed her sobs and tore at the wetness rolling down her cheeks with her sleeve. She couldn't help it. She needed to cry. She needed to hide, somewhere nobody would be able to see that she was not strong enough to keep it in. She spedwalked into the streets, damming up the tide at best she could. She found a public restroom, paid the fee, locked herself in, and slid to the floor.

Her father's reply came hours later, when the sun had started to come down and it was getting cold.

Go home
Will meet w/ you there

Yuna did as she was told. Numb and exhausted, her eyes puffy, her stomach heavy as a rock, she took the metro at 53rd street and 8th to Lamburg Station, changing lines to the 4th which took her north to Graste.

It was a neighborhood populated primarily with crummy apartment buildings built as government works projects decades prior. The district’s warehouses and empty factories used to house the city's meatpacking industry before it was moved offworld. Now, the neighborhood was used to house military personnel, though some still clung to their old tenements. Every block was ringed by fences and watched by soldiers in fatigues, their black rifles never far away. Signs warning of cameras and surveillance were everywhere. One rusted sign on a gas station on the side of the road reminded passersby of the legal penalty for arson. Its paint was almost completely scratched off.

Yuna presented herself at the checkpoint in front of her father's building.
Please tell me I'm still going to be able to get in here.

“Name?” the soldier in the booth asked gruffly.

“Ravyn, Yuna.”

“Can I see your I.D.?”

Yuna had her government-issue identification card ready. She gave it to him. He pressed a button, and the apartment door buzzed, “Go in,” he said. Yuna rode the elevator to the top floor and then walked out into pitch darkness. She knew where to find the door, even in the dark, and was fumbling with her keys when the corridor lights finally flickered on. The apartment was small, cramped, clean––barely lived in. There was not a single object lying around; everything was in its proper place––like in a hotel room before anyone takes up residence there. Yuna had slept there many times, in the guest room when her father had no guests, in the bunks with the guards next door when he had. It was the closest thing she and her brothers had to a home. She had the key, but as she stood there in the entryway with her duffel, it didn't feel like home. Yuna checked the guest room. There were two suitcases sprawled open on the floor. Father had a guest. Next door it was, then.

By the time Yuna’s father came for her later that evening, she had managed to get a shower in and felt a little better. She had resolved under the soak that, whatever she had done to upset her father, she would take full responsibility for it––without flinching. Without, she prayed, crying. She would be disciplined and obedient.

“Yuna?” came her father's voice through the crack in her door. Yuna was lying on her bed, waiting in total darkness, scrolling through apps on her PDA.

“Yes sir?” she asked, her stomach in knots.

“Are you dressed?”

Yuna's lips formed a thin white line. It was a question he never asked her brothers before entering their quarters.

“Yes sir.”

She was wearing her fatigues, army jacket, combat boots, and had tied up her raven-black hair as short as she could to make her look more like a man, like the sons her father never scolded. She had tried to make herself look bulkier––anything to hide the perfectly defined hourglass form. The curve in her body made women on the street green with envy, but she hated it with all her being.

“There's someone in the living room who wants to meet you.”

Yuna got out of bed. Her father opened the door and turned on the lights. She couldn't hide from him now. His eyes were on her, judging her.

He was in full dress uniform––black with a black tie, with a general's four stars pinned on his epaulettes. He had a chest full of ribbons, crowned by the hereditary red and white Cross of Blood which Yuna also wore. He was clean-shaven, years of toil prematurely loosening the skin around his eyes, jaw, and cheekbones. Their eyes met, black on black, and they both stared. This was the first time they had seen each other since Yuna had left for basic training on her 17th birthday.

“You kept your hair,” he stammered, squinting, “They let you do that in basic training now?”

Yuna felt a pang of panic.

“Yes sir.”

“They’ve got men running through basic training with full heads of hair?”

“The men still have to shave their heads,” Yuna said hurriedly, feeling herself tensing, “They allow the women to keep their hair if they pin it up.”

“I see,” he opened the door, and stepped aside to let her pass, “Do you think that’s fair?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Silence hung between them as they walked the rest of the way to her father's apartment. There were two men in bright red uniforms lounging in the circle of couches in the far corner, sipping her father’s bourbon. When Yuna stepped into the circle of light thrown by the floor lamp, they stopped their conversation and rose to their feet with looks of utter shock.

“Holy hell,” the younger man said, an Amestrian major who could not have been more than thirty, “It's uncanny.”

“Well I'll be damned,” the eldest gave a little laugh. He had four gold stars on his epaulettes, which meant he was an Amestrian general. He was a man in his fifties with grave face and a syrupy, polite manner, “I thought I was seeing a ghost! Johann, you should've mentioned this,” he jabbed an aristocratic finger at Yuna and somehow managed to make it look graceful, “She's grown up to look just like her!”

“Like who?” Yuna asked, feeling a twinkle in her eye.

“Like your mother,” the general smiled kindly and offered his hand, “It's good to see you again, Yuna.”
Yuna found herself overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of his handshake––he was gripping with both hands.

“Again?” she blurted out sharply, before realizing that that was too direct for a gathering like this––too direct for anywhere but the Army. She glanced anxiously at her father, who was circling behind the couches with another bottle of bourbon. He did not seem to have noticed.

“Don't remember?” The general laughed as they sat back down, Yuna joining them, “Ah, that's alright. You were just a little girl.”

“This is Isidor von Brabrand,” her father gestured towards the general, “Patrizier of Wittershagen and General of Amestria––”

“Third Army, et cetera, et cetera...” the Patrizier generously waved off any further recitation of his many titles with a gloved hand, as if her father would ever do that. Yuna found it amusing. The Patrizier smiled at her, seeming happy that he had been able to put her at ease.

“. . . And this is Major Alfred Sauter,” he father said after an awkward pause, gesturing to the younger man.

“No titles?” Yuna smirked, meaning the joke to be at the Patrizier’s expense, but it ended up being at Alfred’s. It was only when she made eye contact with him––the first time she minded him at all––that she realized how young he really was. He could have been her age, maybe a little older judging by the lines in his face and how he held himself, like he was still trying himself on and wasn’t sure if he would return it yet to the store.

“No,” he gave a good-natured laugh, clutching his glass, “Just Alfred––nothing more, nothing less. I’m the General’s Aide-de-Camp,” he raised his glass with gusto, “At your service.”

It was a relaxed and confident enough reply, but as Yuna’s attention lingered on him, she realized how tense he was. She was looking at dark, sleepless sockets in which sat wild and turbulent brown eyes––darting, never sitting still, seemingly pursued, never at ease. Long brown razorwire hair descended down to his shoulders and framed a face obscured by the fullness of a beard. It was the beard which had made him look older at a glance.

“Major Sauter,” the Marquis chided, “Is underselling himself. He is my secret weapon, you see. He rose through the ranks of my hab business. I had a particularly indolent cousin who ran a shipping firm which suddenly began performing better than all the others––though my cousin’s habits had not changed. ‘What’s going on over there?’ I asked. Turns out, he had been taking credit for the work of a thirteen-year-old commoner––an absolutely brilliant boy, self-taught. I took him under my wing and gave him a proper education. Pretty soon, I let him run my whole business, and it’s become the most profitable in all of Amestria. It is incredible––give him any problem and he will solve it.”

Alfred sat through the Patrizier’s praise with an embarrassed smile which did not show in his eyes. He was gripping his glass tightly. There was no bourbon left in it, he had downed it all at once.

“Oh?” Yuna’s father needled, “Think he can solve this war for us?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it,” the Patrizier laughed, “I’m counting on him. I’ve only just been elected General, and I have to say––I’m a little out of my depth.”

Yuna and her father exchanged a meaningful glance.

“When you were little,” her father poured a glass of liquor and passed it to her, “Before Radthal Prep, we sent you to the Patrizier's villa in Amestria. Do you remember?”

“Oh,” Yuna said, awkwardly holding the glass. It was coming back to her now, “... So that mansion inside a habitat with the large garden, that was you?” She had always thought that estate had been in Karstedt.

“See, you do remember!” the Patrizier seemed delighted, “Me and my wife Elisa, we took good care of you,” he lifted his glass, “I'm sure with a little prodding, Ernst will remember you too. He probably still has bruises from when you two sparred. Maybe you could teach him a thing or two while you're serving in the Amestrian Army.”

“While I'm––” Yuna's choked on her bourbon. It would already have been hard enough for her to down it without swallowing it down the wrong pipe. She slammed the glass on the coffee table and gripped her throat with both hands. Suddenly, they were around her, saying soothing things as she gasped and sputtered.

“Yuna, are you okay?” she heard her father ask sternly. It sounded more like a reproach than a question.

“I’m fine,” she snapped when she could finally speak, glaring up at the Amestrian general, “I'm sorry, what?”

## Chapter 2

Prath was an agrarian planet in the outskirts of Amestria with a couple million souls on it, the personal domain of the Honorable Lord Palatine Friedrich von Prath, the leader of the majority party of the Amestrian Diet. It was not been the first planet to be attacked, but it was the first to have such a powerful patron. As a courtesy to Lord von Prath, the Diet immediately dispatched the Amestrian Third Army to protect his property, even though the planet had no military value that Yuna could see.

When the Third Army arrived on the planet, the local aristocrats––who owned all the land––petitioned that their fields and mansions be protected under the shield matrix they were deploying, that no soldiers would be quartered inside their estates, and they would have direct command over the national Amestrian forces deployed inside their fiefs. Yuna expected General Wittershagen to reject these demands out of hand. It would be unthinkable for a Karian officer to cede so much operational control over his own soldiers to local landowners, but to Yuna's amazement, he accepted these terms on the spot.

"Alfred," Yuna tugged on his arm after the talks. While the gentlemen glided into Lord von Prath's parlor for refreshments, General Wittershagen's two assistants conferred by the door, "Are you okay with this?"

Alfred seemed genuinely surprised at the question.

"Yeah? As I see it, it's a win for everyone. The nobles get a hand defending their homesteads, we get their cooperation defending Prath as a whole. They have militias which are better equipped than the national army and know the terrain better than all of us."

Yuna was too taken aback to speak.

"Yuna," Alfred said, his expression turning to concern, "What is it?"

"This would never fly in Karstedt," Yuna said sharply.

"Yeah, well Amestria's different. Besides, the Khanbaqir are savages. We've fought them off before, and so long as we've made sure everyone's inside the shields––even if they only cover part of the planet––they haven't found a way to get in."

*This is going to be a disaster,* Yuna thought as she heard the the sucking sound of champagne bottles being uncorked.

The Khanbaqir who besieged Prath were not the alien insectoid raiders which Amesrian militias had been fighting off for generations. When they landed and encircled the theater shield, Yuna and the rest of the staff realized that they were professionals, a mercenary army of mixed nationalities and species led by a powerful Khan bent on conquering and holding the planet. Judging from the observation reports, they had artillery capable of creating gaps in the shield. Normally, this would not be a problem, as they had enough pylons to restore the shield quickly, but the Khanbaqi also had brought a large armored siege ring which could drive into the gaps and hold them open so their troops could pass through.

Yuna believed that if these devices could be destroyed and their crews killed or captured, the Khanbaqi wouldn't be able to replace them and would be forced to abandon the Siege of Prath. In order to pull this off, Wittershagen would have to launch a surprise attack on one of the Khanbaqi's camps under cover of darkness, and to do that he would need to shift the majority of his troops to one side of the shield. She presented the plan, and both Alfred and Wittershagen had signed off on it, but when the General returned to HQ the next morning, she found him livid.

"Your plan is too risky and I will not endanger the lives of my men like that. We are staying put and waiting this out. That is my decision. Dismissed."

"But..."

"*Dismissed.*"

*RISKY?!* Yuna raged on her way out, fighting back angry tears, *Every day we sit here doing nothing, the Khanbaqi roam free through Amestrian space, more people die or get abducted, and we lose people to attrition.*

Alfred later told her that the landowners had refused to led Wittershagen transfer the national Amestrian troops from their holdings, as they feared being attacked while the troops were gone. When she went over there, she found that many of the nationals had been incorporated into the aristocrats' personal forces after having been promised higher pay and better equipment. Some of the deserters even tried to collect their pay twice, once from the local lord, once from the Amestrian government, and the lords seemed to be encouraging this behavior. Yuna tried to get these soldiers tried for desertion and fraud, but this was a non-starter with Wittershagen, who did not believe that military tribunals had jurisdiction over members of the personal staff of local notables.

Lord von Prath sang Wittershagen's praises in a major broadcasted address before the Amestrian diet. Yuna listened to it with the rest of the General's entourage as it played on the monitor in the living room of Lord von Prath's mansion. Prath embellished the General's eloquence and elegance, his tactical and personal genius, and elevated him as the model of everything an Amestrian general should be: a gentleman, courteous, dauntless in the face of danger, a father to his men, conciliatory, and mindful of the rights and privileges of others.

Yuna was about done with the speech by that point, but then von Prath began recounting one more story to illustrate the General's virtue. In this story, an ambitious Karian military advisor tried to convince General Wittershagen to throw his men into the besieging line, arguing that that would end the siege quicker, but at the cost of Amestrian lives.

"The men in power in Karstedt today are callous and cold," he said, thrusting a finger in the air, "They will sacrifice the lives of individual citizens if it will net them an advantage. That is the logic of democracy––two wolves and a sheep voting on what they will have for dinner! That is not how we do things in Amestria, and Wittershagen knows this very well."

When General Wittershagen came down the stairs, they met him with cheers and thunderous applause.

"You did it, my Lord!"

"You're a national hero!"

"They're say you're a strong candidate to be the next Palatine!"

"Everyone," he said with an affable smile and a wave of a hand, "Please, you can't attribute this all to me. I would be nothing without the hard work of my staff."

He was received the same way everywhere he went thereafter, much to Yuna's despair.

It was not all doom and gloom. As Yuna found herself growing distant from the General and the people on his staff, she increasingly went for extended walks outside of the Prath Estate. These walks helped clear her head, and after a while, she began to notice where she was. Prath was a beautiful planet, and the Zons river valley was the perfect place for a country home. The temperature was just right, the sun bright and shining, the air pure, and a gentle breeze blew. When the wind blew up from the south, it carried with it the smell of the sea.

Yuna's steps would take her from the mansion steps down a dirt path to a gravel road with fields of wheat and sugarcane beyond the wooden fences on either side. Then, there were large rolling fields of grass where cows, sheep, and horses grazed in large herds. The road led into the center of Providence, which began abruptly at a bend in the road. Providence was what Lord Prath proudly called his "capital city," his Herrath. This was absurd, since it was no bigger than a small town, consisting only of a ring of buildings around a central square park. The state house and court houses stood on opposite ends of the square, as if facing off in some battle of wits that only aristocrats could understand.

Large iron gates hemmed in the park at the center of Providence. It seemed like an imitation of one of the great city parks which had been built in Rhenburg City or on Herrath. Yuna imagined that the park must have been peaceful before their arrival, but at that moment it served to house