Montenegro, Spring 1871
Morning broke over the Black Mountains like the hammer of a god.
The sun rose blood-red, its light spilling across the peaks and valleys, catching on the newly forged cannon that lined the courtyards below Elias's HQ.
The air was thick with the rhythm of preparation—hooves striking cobblestone, voices shouting orders, the echo of steel on steel as riflemen checked rifle bolts and tested bayonets.
Across Montenegro, the machine Elias had spent decades building was waking.
And this time, it would not sleep again.
For years now, Elias had worked in silence, in the shadows of legitimate governments, aiding their causes, eliminating crime and corruption.
While the great empires of Europe played their intricate games of diplomacy and deception, he had focused inward, at bettering his own nation, while securing the means to do so from others abroad.
The Balkans were his crucible, Montenegro his anvil.
Now, that anvil rang with the sound of industry and ambition.
In the valleys below Cetinje, the system's factories roared without pause.
The air smelled of oil and iron, the song of progress rising from the stone.
The factories, and barracks resounded with the march of troops in perfect formation, the screech of iron-cast wheels, each piece of armament steel stamped with the insignia of the new army: a double-headed eagle clutching lightning bolts.
Fifty thousand men stood ready to march—uniformed, armed, and fed not by conscription, but by design.
A professional force, one the world had yet to see the like of on the battlefield.
Each one system trained to be the very best a pre-ww1 rifleman, sniper, machine gunner, or artilleryman they could be.
Not loyal to their city, their governor, or even their king.
No they were loyal only to one man, their supreme commander, Elias.
True sons of the system.
In the war council chamber, Elias stood before a sprawling map of the Balkans.
Candles had been replaced with simple electrics, pale orange bulbs casting light over the empires of the old—Ottoman, Russian, Austrohungarian—all soon to shift and fracture.
Rex was beside him, his gray hair slicked back, his uniform immaculate as always.
Around them, the other commanders waited, silent and grim: men who had once fought under the Confederate flag, as a mercenary force, now stood once more in their battle uniforms, common black with subdued red trim.
Elias's voice was calm, almost distant.
"The Russian Tsar will march first," he said, tracing the rivers that snaked in Herzo. "Their war will inspire uprisings througout the Ottoman empire, their rebellions drawing the first Ottoman blow. We will not rush to their side—not yet. Let the Turks bleed themselves trying to crush the Serbs. While the bulk of their forces charge to meet with the russians. When they have overreached, then we strike. at the exposed soft underbelly, taking all we can into our hands in the process."
Rex folded his arms. "And where do we attack?"
"North," Elias replied, pointing toward the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. "That corridor is the key. If we take it, we split the Ottoman line between Bosnia and Kosovo. The Turks will try to reinforce through Skopje, but the terrain will strangle them, while at the same time a seperate force will go south, along the mediterranean coast, to Greece, we'll free up the entire shoreline expanding the front, while giving ourselves access to the ancient greek land, that are under 'ottoman' protection."
"And the Russians?" one of the otehrs asked. "Russia is still one of the world's great powers, smarting after their previous loss against the ottomans due to Britain and Frances intervention."
Elias smiled faintly. "The Tsar will fail once more, Britain will once more interfere with the Tsars plans by reinforcing the Ottomans, but they wont have the same reason to meddle in our own affairs, after all reclaiming european territory for the europeans is something their politicians cannot spin into a bad narritive to the people."
The officers exchanged glances.
"And as for Austria-Hungary, they will be to distracted by the rising power to their north, The German Confederation is set to win their war very soon, and with it will be the reimergence of the german nation, one that does not answer to Austria like in the days of the Holy Roman Empire."
With the map set, and the pieces beginning to move, Elias called an end to this war council.
~
Outside, the first trains of the Montenegrin railway thundered through the passes, engines black with soot and pride.
It had taken ten years to lay the lines through the mountains, but now, with a single whistle, Elias could move regiments from the coast to the frontier in hours instead of days.
The people called it a marvel, meanwhile he merely called it an inevitability.
At Bar Harbor, the navy readied for war.
The new ships gleamed beneath the sun—entirely built of iron, kept in secret, each hull fashioned identically.
They were not the crude steamers of the Americans, nor the lumbering relics of Ottoman design.
They were faster, sleeker, more lethal the future of naval warfare.
Their guns—six-inch rifled cannon—could tear through an Ottoman frigate at two miles' range.
Their holds empty ready to receive troops at a moments notice.
Elias's fleet would not just protect Montenegro's shores.
It would carry war to the enemy's doorstep—to Durrës, to Thessaloniki, even to the gates of Constantinople if the opportunity came to push the Ottomans from Europe once and for all.
That night, Elias stood on the balcony of his headquarters, the mountains black beneath a moonless sky.
Far below, the glow of the forges burned through the dark like a constellation come to earth.
The world was on the brink once more.
Russia the heavy weight fighter had caught it's breath and was ready for another fight, with the welterweights coming to their aid this time, as the battered and still recovering Ottoman Empire was about to come under fire from outside and within their borders.
But none would shock the world more, than when Montenegro a negligible world power, appeared on the scene with an armed force far greater than any would imagine of the small nation.
When this negligible nation state dissected the territory of an empire that had ruled for centuries.
Only to find that in the wake of this coming war, this old empire would be carved up, with nations rising from the provinces within to reshape the balkans once more.