Tyranny of Steel

Night fell, and before Berengar knew it, the earthen fortifications for his base camp were established. A fire was used to eliminate the encampment, as sentries stood watch in the trenches. Despite the ungodly hour, Berengar was not asleep. Instead, he was well awake, coordinating with his scouts on a possible raid of a nearby tribe.

When Berengar and his men entered an uncharted portion of the world, they treated it as a land without the rule of law. In other words, they considered the area as a hostile zone. Of course, he would not immediately open fire upon first contact, instead he had dispatched his Jaegers to silently observe the tribes from afar.

With camouflage equipment, scoped rifles, and binoculars, they were able to ascertain much information about the nearby native villages. Jaegers, much like the Jagdkommandos, were given priority when it came to modern equipment. Because of this, these men had the most recently designed uniforms and weapons.

There was even a machine gun team among each platoon of Jaegers who were dispatched to Africa. These soldiers operated a modified MG 25, which utilized a stock and pistol grip much like the MG-08/15 of Berengar's past life. The difference was this weapon was modelled off of the Vickers, so it was considerably lighter weight.

The camouflage smocks and helmet covers that these men wore were based upon the Rhodesian Brushstroke camo from Berengar's past life. However, it was modified to have a more arid coloration to match the environment of South Africa.

Berengar currently stood with the officers of his Jaeger corps, and several operatives of his Jagdkommandos, who described everything they had witnessed in great detail. They had even charted the locations of the villages they spotted on a crudely drawn map.

While the Jaegers surveyed the area, it was the Jagdkommandos who would launch the night raid on the nearby village. Thus, Major Andreas Jaeger was speaking of the operational details and explained the plan to Berengar in great detail.

"To the northeast, at roughly 5 clicks from here, there is a native village. The Jaegers have reported that they are stone age tribals, much like you had expected. From what we have gathered, they have access to a limited supply of iron, which is mostly made in the use of their weapons.

The most we will encounter are primitive flat bows that will be incapable of reaching us. Surprisingly, their village has no defenses to speak of. It is actually amazing to see a village that is completely undefended. I can't tell if these natives have no concept of war, or are simply too stupid to construct a basic palisade.

Either way, the easiest way to attack the village is to sit back, deploy a few MGs, a few mortars, and defend them with riflemen. We can fire wantonly into the night, and it will be enough to take out the majority of the village. With this hostile encampment eliminated the borders of the territory we have claimed will become more secure."

Berengar nodded his head in agreement with this plan, before giving the orders to initiate the attack.

"Very well, you may proceed as planned, Major. I look forward to your results. By the time the sun rises, I want this village that threatens our encampment to be wiped out. If the other nearby villages do not get the message, and refuse to withdraw from these lands, then we will annihilate them as well."

After saying this, Berengar saluted the Squads of Jagdkommandos who would be undertaking this operation, before departing from the war tent, and heading towards his own tent, where Honoria lie in wait for him. While his soldiers massacred a local village, he would enjoy his time in the loving arms of his beautiful wife.

Bakari was drifting off to sleep in his hut, when he noticed a red glare out the entry hole. He quickly rubbed his eyes to see if he was seeing correctly, before walking out of the building. In the sky above was a blinding red light. Though it was the illumination caused by a German flare, to him it was a foreboding sign of impending doom. As if the gods themselves had warned him that something bad was about to happen.

Other villagers gazed in astonishment, wondering what such a thing could possibly mean. Nobody knew that the flare was used to give the German Jagdkommandos who hid in the brush a means to see their targets. After everyone flooded into the village, the crack of gunfire ripped into the air, and a nearby pregnant woman was blasted through her heart. Her body shredded by the immense power of the 7.92x57mm round.

Bakari immediately hit the floor, not knowing what was happening. This was not a single shot, but one of many fired from the two machine guns that were employed by the German soldiers. Upon remembering the strange weapons wielded by the pale-skinned foreigners, Bakari could only think that his village was under attack.

These thoughts rapidly flashed through his mind as gunfire shredded the villagers by his side. He could hear the whistle of bullets as they passed him by and hit the surrounding ground. Just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, explosions erupted in the village, as mortar shells fell from the sky, and blasted huts to bits. A nearby family was torn apart by the 60mm shell that landed in their hut. Bakari immediately felt his heart bleed, as he was good friends with the family.

The chugging of the devil's paintbrush as it continued to fire its rounds into the village, caused many of the local tribals to flee for the lives, but what is it so easy to escape a cross fire? Machine guns and snipers mercilessly gunned those who ran down as they fired their shots accurately at the fleeing civilians.

Upon realizing that his village was doomed, Bakari mustered the courage to rush to his father's hut in an attempt to force the man to flee with what remained of his people. However, as he approached it, a mortar shell landed on top of the building and blasted it to pieces. His father's severed limbs flew at him and knocked him to the ground.

The man could not help but scream in horror as his own father's scorched flesh lie on top of him. He cried profusely as he tossed it away, before running for his life. There was no longer a hint of sanity in the man's mind. Even though the crowds of people were being gunned down left and right, his only thought was to escape this madness.

As he was running, Bakari was eventually knocked over by another man, and then trampled upon by the fleeing people. Before his consciousness faded, he witnessed the merciless slaughter of his people as they ran over his body in a search of safety. Then, with a sudden stomp on the face, his lights went out.

Andreas Jaeger gazed at the scene of the massacre and laughed. The village was lit ablaze, and bodies were strewn across the land. He had fought his fair share of foreigners in his tenure as a special operations soldier. From the battlefields of Europe to the rainforests of the Aztec Empire, and the mighty woodlands of New Vienna. This man had been deployed all over the world and had killed many enemies.

However, in each of those tribes and civilizations he had previously encountered, there was something to be admired. The Algonquin were notable guerilla experts; the Aztecs were mighty slavers, with a grand architecture that was astonishingly completed with stone age tools. Even the European Knights were admirable with their chivalry and noble heritage.

However, these Africans did not have the guile of the Algonquin, nor the savage ferocity of the Aztecs, and certainly not the noble heritage of the European Knights. They were truly nothing more than stone age hunter gatherers. To him, this was most certainly not a battle, and could hardly even be called a massacre. In his mind, this was nothing more than a turkey shoot, as if he were hunting wild animals for sport.

The German soldiers had become arrogant in their superiority, and prideful in their victories. To the people who could conquer the land and sea with engines of steam, such primitive tribesmen had no place in their eyes. Thus, they were far more susceptible to engaging in cruelty against the Bantu peoples of South Africa, then they were elsewhere.

Berengar ultimately would not mind this practice. He needed the land and resources in the region, and he felt that by exterminating a few villages, he could intimidate those who remained into making a mass exodus northward. To him, victory was all that mattered. Whatever lengths he needed to go through to achieve this was an afterthought.

Unlike in the Americas, Berengar could not rely on disease to wipe out the majority of natives in South Africa. He would have to find other means to free up the land for his people's settlement. Ultimately, he had decided to forcefully expel the natives from the region, and the best way to do that was through fear.

Thus, Berengar in South Africa would wage a campaign of terror that would see hundreds of thousands of natives flee northward beyond the orange river. Whether the displaced tribes would band together and resist the German conquest would remain to be seen.