Gems Shine Better Free

[The_Oan_Isles]

There was something that drew people to Lapis. According to Opal, he was beautiful and loving hin was an honour. He was handsome in the rugged sort of way. His skin was rough and his facial hair was wiry. He was big built. His muscles were large. His hands were big in and rough.

He was a man. A real man. He was strong, hardworking, loyal, and simple. His needs were simple. His aspirations were simple. He had asked for little and made do, laughing. Although he was not loquacious, he enjoyed laughing. He had a deep and loud voice that projected the sound of his laughter.

It was infectious - the way he laughed. He doesn’t laugh anymore. Prison was, well, prison. You had to watch your back. You had to abandon your morals and ethics and do what you had to in order to survive. As the sanctions got heavy, supplies ran low. They would spend days without bathing.

He stank. They all stank. With no water to flush the toilets, the place smelt of human excrement. He smiled now. Just smiled. He did not laugh. He just smiled. Lapis was inside him. The old Lapis was still there. He was kept alive by hope. A bird chirping in the distance or leaves rustling from afar were distant reminders that he was still alive, that he had to be strong.

One day, something strange happened. There were no officers. The prisoners woke up and there was no one there to open up their cells. The gates were locked. The offices were empty. The usual condescending “Wakey, wakey, sleepy heads!” was missing.

They waited for hours, but nothing happened. Something was awfully wrong…

[The_Oan_Isles]

— Begin quote from ____

Your hands are rough
You furrow your brow in thought
You restrain your power when you hold a child
And unleash it when you hold me.

I should defy you.
I should be a feminist.
Then I find myself watching my figure
Changing my walk
Watching how I speak
Wondering if I ironed your socks.

Then I hate you.
I hate how you treat me, just a woman
I look at how you look at her
I observe how you stiffen when I ask you if she’s pretty

Then I hurl words.
My throat burns
I am satisfied.
I should leave
I don’t

Somehow I’m back to ironing your socks
To preparing your dinner
To hoping you succeed
To praying for your safety
To letting you eat first
To hoping you enjoy your food

Because I love how you pray
How your short ineloquent exchange with God
Is an brief and intimate expostion
Of how much you care for me

I look at your chest rise and fall
As we lie together
At how your nostrils open and close
As you breathe
And I look at how
There’s nothing we would not do
For dark men

— End quote

[edit_reason]Minor correction[/edit_reason]

[The_Oan_Isles]

Opal cried a little more than usual these days. It was usually a once a year occurrence. She had cried a lot this year. But today’s tears were bitter and sweet. She was holding her children: a boy and two girls. The boy was older and the girls were twins. She enveloped them in her arms. They sank their tear and snot covered faces in her dress. Warmth radiated to and from them. They did not speak. They stood there for several minutes. They were a mess. They were happy. But there was something at the back of their mind. Their happiness was jot complete. Lapis was not here with them.

Opal had been reading Aroha’s poems. She thought Aroha was a miserable poet. She also was like many people. She had a preconceived idea of what poetry was meant to sound like and what it was meant to be about. When she read “For Dark Men”, she was immediately thrust back into a time when life was simpler. She had not seen him in months, weeks perhaps. She wasn’t sure. What struck her most is how unfamiliar he seemed.

She felt as though she had fallen in love with a dream. The features were obscured by the blurry lenses of time. She was changing. She was letting things go. She was letting him slip through her fingers. All she did was watch and listen to Moissanite to talk about the election. She held her son’s face in her hands and lifted it towards her.

He looked nothing like his father. All her children looked like her. She tried to trace their faces for that rugged handsomeness that their fathee possesses, but all she saw was her own unexceptional beauty looking at her with confusion. She took their bags and led them inside the house.

[The_Oan_Isles]

There was speculation that the Agate Prison had been abandoned and the prisoners were locked inside. Agate Prison held political prisoners. It held the leaders of the National Liberation Movement. One of them was Lapis Lazuli. The Oan Isles had had an agreement with the Diamond Authority to detain the political prisoners in humane conditions.

Although they were treated poorly, the extent of the degradation of their health and abuse of their rights was ameliorated by this simple agreement. Letters could get in, a small but consistent supply of food and water could reach them. Over a few days, no truck left or entered the building. The prison staff could not be reached. In fact the number had been disconnected.

There was definitely something wrong, but it was difficult to see what it was. The Oans decided to fly an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone to survey the area. From the newly constructed base in Jewelica, they deployed the drone. Luckily, Agate Prison was on the eastern coast, facing Jewelica, so it was not difficult to quietly get the drone to take pictures of the area.

The pictures that the drone transmitted to the Oans revealed that there were no staff or other personel at the prison. The gates had been barricaded and the offices had been locked. The courtyard was empty. But the drone was able to detect signs of prisoners held in their cells.

The Oans contacted the Gemicans and asked them about the prison and the images they had seen. The Gemicans responded that the prison had been abandoned. When asked where the prisoners were, they accused the Oan Isles of illegal surveillance and infringing their sovereignty.

The Oans prepared a report and sent it to Oan news agencies. The report outlined the inhumane treatment of the prisoners and the Diamond Authority’s breach of their agreement. The report formed the basis of an assault on Gemica.

[The_Oan_Isles]

The Command of the Polynesian Defence Pact National Defence Services Headquarters received the report of the status of Agate Prison. They directed the Auroran Operations Coordinator to form a special operations task force to take rescue the priosoners. The 18th Amphibious Infantry Battalion was commissioned to take on the task. The force was deployed to Jewelica. After a day of preparation and planning, the batallion was deployed.

They left on speed boats in the cover of darkness and landed in an inconspicuous an largely overlooked cove on the island. They trekked dried themselves off and prepared their kit. They marched through the darkness, over hilly country covered with forests.

Agate Prison loomed before them. Tall walls surrounded the compound and there was barbed wire on the walls. The prison towers were unlit. The complex was eerily silent. A few of them shot their hooks over the walls and began climbing up. Using thick gloves, they pulled a section of the barbed wire apart.
They mounted the wall and jumped down. They to one of the prison towers. The knocked the handle off the wooden door and opened it. They climbed up the stairs and went to the control room at the top. They fiddled with the devices until the gate opened. Because the barricade was still up, the rest of the soldiers below used a ram to knock it down.

They entered the compound. Teams guarded the towers and key offices. The others scattered throughout the building, searching for traps or spies and mapping out the prison. Using records in the Warden’s Office, they found the different cells in which political prisoners were located. When they entered the different wings of the prison in which different prisoners were being held, they were met with a boisterous reception.

Unfortunately they were not all leaving. Nonpolitical prisoners remained in their cells. They cussed, but it made no difference. The opened the various cells and the leaders and members of the National Liberation Movement and others who had been arrested on politically motivated grounds, we taken out and escorted out of the prison.

The prison presented a strategic location foer the Oans. The other prisoners were a liability. The Oans decided to move them to a confined part of the prison complex. Naturally, they were met with opposition, but a bullet to the shoulder was an effective method of asserting the positions of power.

Half of the batallion remained in the prison and kept it as a bulwark from which they would take the rest of the island. This tactic had been employed in Jewelica before, but had been ineffective to some degree. The Polynesian Defence Pact needed to be a little more efficient that the former Oan Defence Force.

The remaining half of the battalion was divides into two groups. The first group was made up of forty men who scouted the area. The other ten were sent back to cove to rendezvous with boats that were waiting to take the ex-political prisoners to Jewelica. They began marching. The prisoners spoke of high ideals and praised the Polynesians on the way there.

When they arrived, the entered the vessels moored at the beach and headed for home, almost startled by their new found freedom. Lapis should have been happier, but we was not. He remained lugubrious, as though he was not aware he was being rescued. Although they had all suffered. He had been specifically and uniquely humiliated and tortured. With his escort being made uo of soldiers with guns, they were reminiscent of the oppressors in jail.
[hr]
When the prison had been taken. The PDP began a more conspicuous assault in the early hours of morning. The HIMS Konoa, an amphibious landing vessel of the Konoa-class, landed at the cove. Armoured personel carriers and supply transportsdrove towards the prison, and arrived within minutes. They took up residence in the prison as though it was a natural thing.

Tanks and armoured assault vehicles followed. The force had a total of 1,000 men, 40 APCs, 40 tanks, and 70 armoured assault vehicles. The ship also carried 6 fighting helicopters. They had effectively formed a beachhead on the eastern part of Gemica (which the Polynesians already began referring to as Kōhatu which was the Oan word for “gem”).

With sanctions, the Gemican armed forces (which were already small) were hungry, thirsty, dirty, tired and ill equiped. They had been posted in villages and small towns on the eastern fringes of Agate County, which were outside of the urban center of Agate City. Although there were 5,000 men posted to defend the city, they fell easily.

Villages fell seconds from one another. Minor street to street gun fights were often concluded by an explosion from a tank. The enemies were either killed, injured or forced to surrender. Most surrended. They were dwarfed in both stature and firepower by the Oan and other Polynesians and conceded easily. The villages were occupied and held by several soldiers.

The forces ploughed on until Agate City loomed over the horizon. The forest had evidently been burnt down. Mines had been laid and trenches had been dug in the ground. Minesweepers cleared the path. The mines doing more to inconvenience rather than slow them down. The Gemicans threw grenades and fired shots from the cover of the buildings. The tanks and howitzers fired back. Buildings seemed to crumbled as they met their mortars. A whole three story office building collapsed from a missile.

The Gemicans had left some of their positions apparent as they sent their projectiles towsrd the advancing force. Helicopters quickly spotted these mistake and sent their payloads into the locations from whence they came. Anti air craft weapons were too slow for their slick manoeuvres and powerful engines. The helicopters managed to clear a path and isolate different units of soldiers. Infantry units were allocated to each group, taking them out. The second front surrounded the city, blocked certain roads and made quick work of the Agate City (known as Akato to the Oans) guards. In mere hours the city was captured.

In those hours, a second force had been brought in: 1,000 additional men, 40 more APCs and MBTs and 70 more armoured assault vehicles. They spread throughout the country side, the villages, towns and cities and managed to clear out soldiers, defeat different their units and take their positions. With the speed of the advance, the Oans managed to capture half of the island in a day.

Malachite City and its surrounding county (known to the Oans as Malako) was the last real stronghold of the Diamond Authority.

[The_Oan_Isles]

The pincer formation was a tactic that had been employed in warfare since the 18th century. It was named for the pincer of a crab. It surrounded its target before crushing the same way. The Oan military used the same tactic on the Gemites, known to the Oans, as the Kōhatuans.

There was a skirmish in the centre. Soldiers held their grown in the center of the pincer, firing from their howitzers, sending shells into the enemy positions. The enemy, mistakenly believing that he would encounter a column of Oan infantry and hardware. Instead the Oans did something different.

Light infantry vehicles, armoured assault vehicles and main battle tanks came charging in on the east and the west of the city. They entered the streets, using tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the public and confuse the Gemites of the presence.

Confused by the smoke and noise, they failed to identify the Oan positions until they were right on top of them. The Oans proceeded to use a second tactic called the Fox in the Coop strategy. It was named for the fox that would enter the hen house and cause confusion and chaos.

So they did the same. tear gas canisters were projected through the air like missiles causing skin and eye irritation, and generally causing confusion. The Oans implemented the second part of the tactic. They divided the enemy and isolated his position. Teams of armour would corner the enemy. Wedged in an awkward position and unable to gain reinforcements, they capitulated – after some gun fire and a shell or two.

Then they were able to identify the main or central enemy column. It would be known as the “Boss” in a video game. It could be identified by the concentration of armour and its ability to retain its unity. It required no strategem. It requires brute force – strength against strength rather than wit.

Artillery fire was exchanged. Machine guns rattled with 100-rounds-a-minute shots, sending bullets through buildings, concrete, flesh and armour. They used the buildings to conceal them. This presented a particular challenge, as it limited sight. Thus the air support was necessary.

Three multi purpose fighters flied in formation high above the clouds. As the anti air defences of the enemy were disoriented or weak, they were able to quickly swoop in at speeds of twice the speed of sound and send Hellfire missiles into the core artillery column that the enemy used. An entire MBT was blown sky high. (Well not that high, but it still went into the air, flipped over and exploded).

The Gemite forces were scattered and they were faced with another problem that Oan military hardware presented: speed and manoeuvrability. Compared to Staynish, Veikayun or East Malaysian self propelled artillery, Oan armour lacked the same punch. When employed against a weak enemy it was full of pazzazz.

The real strength of the Oan industrial complex was speed and agility. Built from a tough, but lightweight frame, and loose treads, they were able to go over various obstacles and around corners with ease. They did this with such precision, that it seemed like magic. Soon the enemies were rounded up and defeated.

The Diamond Authority, upon seeing this, they capitulated.