After you leave the medical tent you decide to drop in on Third Squad, albeit less formally than your previous visits. Get to know them properly. No matter how much you don't want to.
It's not malicious, no matter how much you dislike Atun. They're just the new meat, and so you fully expect all of them to die. You'll simply be meeting people and getting attached to them and seeing them as human and then they will die horribly. Screaming and in pain while you watch. Then you will be strong and tell the survivors to go die as well.
But getting to know them before they die is part of your job, and cowardice is not sufficient reason to shirk your duty.
You find Third Squad sprawled around their tent, finding ways to pass the time. Atun is missing, which may be for the best, but the others have clearly wasted no time making themselves comfortable in the Cove. One young man is whittling idly at a tree branch, two are playing chess, and the rest are split between watching the chess game or jeering at Osman as he sets about his punishment duty, namely cleaning equipment from yesterday's march and firefight.
You join the others watching the chess match. You're all seated on a large, flat rock overlooking the game, and the others are absorbed enough that they don't realize who you are until someone turns to ask how you think the game is going. Suddenly there is lots of saluting and elbowing each other and quiet apologies.
You smile and wave away their salutes, and soon enough you are talking about the game with the squad's Onbasi. He's a garrulous and energetic man by the name of Altan, possessed of the cheer and space of a man twice his size.
One game ends, the loser shuffles off to the bench while someone else volunteers for a match. The new man loses. As does Altan after him. And as another person stands you motion for them to wait and ask if you might have a match.
The chess-player freezes, studying you as if this is some sort of trick. Then, after a long moment, he nods and motions for you to sit. He snaps you a salute and says, "Nefer Zaki Enver, sir."
You motion for him to relax, and shake his hand. "Salaam Zaki," you say, "It's a pleasure." He smiles, a wan thing that you would rather like to see more of, and makes his first move.
You imagine yourself rather good at chess. You've played since you were a teenager and have been winning more often than you lost for some years now. You'd considered it an excellent icebreaker, even if an annoying number of the people you met playing were ethnonationalists, and had made a point to keep in practice against other officers on occasion.
So you are rather surprised that within a score of moves you are being absolutely dismantled. You're down a bishop and three pawns, you've wildly underdeveloped your pieces, and are fairly certain that you're about to lose control over the right half of the board. "Have you ever played professionally?" you ask.
"As a boy," replies Zaki, "Father made me quit." He shrugs, more in resignation than anything else. "Mate in three, Sir."
"Pardon?" you ask.
"He thought it was a game for Commoners and Slavs," replied Zaki with another, disinterested shrug, wholly missing the frown of distaste that flashes across your features. His face snaps up, making eye contact as he cringes, "Oh, you meant the-" You nod, and he swallows, then walks you through exactly how you lost.
"It was a pleasure, Nefer Zaki," you say, "I look forward to a rematch."
You shake hands and rise to rejoin the crowd on the rock, only to find Atun waiting for you. He snaps you a salute and says, "Mulazim Oziri. You're wanted at the command tent."
"Thank you for waiting, Cavus," you say, "I hope you were not there long." He grunts disapprovingly and you are quietly annoyed because surely if this was important it would have been important enough to interrupt a chess match over, no? And surely if it wasn't then it isn't worth being passive aggressive about.
But bringing it up would be rather gauche so you don't. Instead you gesture for him to lead the way and leave Third Squad to their own devices. Once you're out of earshot from third squad Atun begins to speak. "I wanted to talk to you about the unpleasantness with that marriage," he says and instantly a black wave of apprehension washes over you.
"I've made my decision, Cavus," you say, "In accordance with the laws of Emperor and Allah. I do not plan to relitigate it." Your tone is icy, perhaps more than is warranted but you know where this conversation is going. You legally cannot do anything about Atun's less pleasant attitudes but that does not mean you will tolerate them.
Naturally, Atun fails to take the hint. "I understand sir, I do. But I have to object,"he says "We can't have Arabs and Slavs doing this sort of thing. If you'd just shot him they would know that they can't marry our-" and you are in front of him, looming over him. You are quite tall when you try to be, and you imagine that Atun is realizing that now from how he recoils. How he leans away and folds in on himself and every ounce of vigor or venomous opinion disappears.
"Do you want to complete that sentence, Atun," you say quietly.
The rest of the walk to the command tent is mercifully silent.
The command tent itself is quiet. Most of the signalmen are dead, so to some degree you expected it. No messages and no directives from above make for a far less busy war room than the Northern Front. The wide, empty interior of the tent itself, the chairs and stools and the map upon the table are all things you are well used to. More comfortable than the norm, admittedly, with chairs taken from Kianid City and a unmarred map of the island instead of the mess of mismatched furniture and sketched notes and scattered iconography you're used to. But it is a familiar sight nonetheless.
What you don't expect is the angry Military Police officer waiting inside. You recognize Hassan Kemal by his prodigious height, prestigious moustache, and the awkward fact that he is both the head of MPs on Kianid and the Sehremini's brother. A fact that made him incredibly politically influential on the island but also meant that he had to recuse himself from most aspects of his job for fear of inviting a nepotism prosecution from an ambitious underling,
He is also furious. "What is the meaning of this, Yousuf!" calls Hasan Kemal. His face is turning an unseemly shade of red and a finger is thrust up under your chin like a bony knife. "I understand the others undermining me, but you? What did you do?"
You blink in confusion. "Nefer Muhammad was punished to the full extent of the law, Sir," you respond.
"Not him! This…abomination of an order you've saddled me with," he yells, practically flinging a crumpled missive in your face. You look at it, reading over the order as he yells.
SITUATION POLITICALLY SENSITIVE. INFORMATION BLACKOUT. RELATED INVESTIGATIONS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY QUALIFIED UNITS.
Hasan is yelling about how he thought you better than the worst sort of Young Turk and you can feel Atun bristle at it but it all feels rather unimportant. Because you get what this is. You get what this means. Command is ignoring you, they're trying to handle this quietly. Treating it as a matter of cloak and daggers and feints in the war rather than an existential threat to everyone on the island.
"I didn't do this, Hasan," you say. You've interrupted him but thankfully your words stop his tirade, "But I know why it's happening. What's the case?"
He's speechless for a moment, moustache still aquiver with repressed rage, but eventually decides that an explanation is in order. "A trio of young officers, Young Turks the lot of them. Suspected of desertion and assault. And if the old Bulgar they've put in the hospital doesn't pull through, murder," says Hasan, "Open and shut and obvious enough that even I can't be condemned for following up."
"Sir, have they been missing for less than two days? Perhaps three?" Asks Atun. Some dumb, powertripping instinct, still annoyed with his earlier comments wants to reprimand him for talking out of turn. But you recognize it for the stupid impulse it is and ignore it. "And you got the bad news this morning?"
"How did you know that?" Asks Hasan. He notices the grimace flashing between you and Atun. Gets past the indignity at being denied the chance to finally do his job long enough to recognize the tension and fear. "What's going on?"
The gears are already turning. It's three men, probably not well armed if they were off duty and beating Slavs. There may be more disappearances but you'll hear about those, and may be expected to second men to them regardless. Or there may be another engagement in the meantime, one you will be ill prepared to deal with if you overcommit, on the other hand, you've seen what this thing can do and you'd rather Kemal and a bunch of innocent MPs not get murdered trying to arrest disorderly racists.
A squad will have to do, and you have just the one in mind. "That's classified," you say, "But I'm giving you a squad of my men. They'll give you everything you need if this looks like anything out of the ordinary."
Who are you sending to aid the MPs?
[ ] First Squad. You can trust Faysal with independent action, you can trust Mehmet to know the law, you can trust the squad to bring themselves back alive.
[ ] Second Squad.. After the incident with the Russians you don't want them making high stakes, politically important decisions without oversight.
[ ] Third Squad. Atun commands your only full strength squad. If this is just some politically-inclined officers choosing a bad time to be idiots he's a good choice to de-escalate.
[ ] Fourth Squad. Elazar has communication equipment if something goes down as well as most of your heavy weapons and experience with the foe in case he runs into something nasty. Besides, having Young Turks arrested by colonial subjects is its own reward.
