Sample — Syahdan Spear

US-China Rivalry turns hot when a Southeast Asian oil kingdom turns to chaos.

One of my upcoming military fiction novels, Syahdan Speardepicts a fictional conflict set in a Southeast Asian oil kingdom. It follows the perspective Specialist Jack Numa, US Army; Keziah Crawford-Lee, USMC; and Staff Sergeant Yunus Zakaria, Syahdani Royal ARmed Forces as they go through the first conventional conflict Southeast Asia has seen indecades.

Syahdan attempts to depict this fictional conflict both as a strategic/tactical projection as well as a realistic depiction of the personal experiences of service members.

Reflecting on interviews and other secondary sources given by current and former service members in areas of conflict such as Iraq (2003–2011; 2014-today), Afghanistan (2001–2021), Vietnam (tropic area of interest, 1965–1972), Aceh (Indonesian military, 2002–2006), and eastern Indonesia (2004-present)

Syahdan Spear will be published on Google Books, Amazon Kindle, and other platforms in the near future.

Enjoy the Sample!

KELOR CITY, KINGDOM OF SYAHDAN
LATE APRIL 2022

Yunus Zakariya had never wanted to be a professional soldier. All he wanted to do was to do good for the people around him, and to protect the ones that he loved. After graduating from high school, he was enrolled in the University College of BMS, located in Bandar Malik Syahdan, capital of Syahdan. He went to study law, and it was a prestigious program where he would get 3 years of education in Syahdan and 1 year in some of the best colleges of Southeast Asia, including universities in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia.

However, he was always interested in the army, but he always thought that it was more honorable to serve as a ‘citizen-soldier’ instead of a professional soldier — called only in times of war and emergency, though having a civilian life of his own. So he enlisted in the ‘Student Reserves Regiment’, a body of reservist soldiers recruited from university students. Following three months of training and several months worth of weekly specialist training, he became a reserve soldier of the Syahdan Royal Army.

But eventually, that honorable service he liked to speak of finally came true. Since 2019, Syahdan has been in constant crisis; so what happened was that he had to cut his legal studies short and was mobilized.

Since his mobilization, he had witnessed history unfold in front of his very eyes. He had witnessed with his own eyes the coup against the corrupt King Ali, and enforced the changes made by his overthrower, King Hasan. His reserve unit, renamed as the 78th Support Company — consisting of intelligence analysts, logisticians, planners, and military police — then became a sort of police force, holding down riots, performing security details on protests, and helping the efforts against the Covid-19 pandemic, which he gladly did. Through this time, he managed to finish his bachelor’s degree in law, through the patchy internet connection of a military camp.

But since 2021, with the economy in a massive downturn, things just got worse. With the rising power of Islamists and reactionary movements against the anti-corruption reforms of the new King Hasan, an insurgency broke out in the northern parts of South Syahdan Island. And because of that, he was sent to war.

As part of a full-spectrum warfare operation against the Islamist ‘Darul Islam’, the 78th Support Company was sent to Kelor City — the city nearest to the rebellion’s heartlands — to complement the headquarters unit of Lieutenant Colonel Ramlan’s 11th Infantry Regiment. Then-Staff Sergeant (Res) Yusuf Zakariya led an intelligence section in that unit. Being exposed to all kinds of sensitive information, he was notified of the seriousness of the situation.

As the military operation progressed, the Syahdan Royal Army was experiencing setback after setback. They had lost the northern islands to both the Islamists and a sudden socialist rebellion. Many of their troops still held loyalties to the overthrown king and had turned their coats against the reformer King Hasan — joining either the socialist rebels or the Islamist Darul Islam. And because of this, the military was rife with mistrust and political purges.

Intrigue among military leadership always brought low morale. This did not at all help as the fighting became harder: the enemy, having a significant number of former Royal army personnel, was much better than they anticipated.

Patrols were ambushed, with the unlucky ones held captive and used as propaganda by Darul Islam. Darul Islam and Royal army troops also skirmished heavily in the central highlands and countryside, while American and Syahdan Standard Oil refineries became subject to enemy raids.

Syahdan, once a rich oil kingdom with one of the highest welfare rankings in Asia, was now a tattered shadow of its former self… Sunken into the depths of civil war. Its cities had become ruined ghost towns as many people fled the country, and businesses, except the food and arms business, were ground to a halt.

And Staff Sergeant Yunus Zakariya had decided that his dreams to become a prospective international legal scholar had now turned to dust. What replaced it were accompanying infantrymen on patrols, data sheets of enemy movements, interrogation records, and going through endless patrol reports, which he turned in his analysis and recommendations to his superiors.

Meanwhile, his country, the proud Syahdan nation who boasted itself ‘as one of the most prosperous nations in Southeast Asia’ and ‘a beacon of governance’ to its neighboring, corruption-rife Indonesia and Malaysia… Had now turned to something akin to Syria.

If Yunus was to survive this war, and was there to see what happened after, he had to make things right.

But in early 2022, as he monitored radio activity and analyzed reports for the defense of Kelor City, things were not looking so good.

Losses were high. A resurgent Darul Islam had mysteriously developed extremely effective tactics against armor and infantry. Weekly, the Royal troops were 40–50 casualties coming from forces around Kelor City.

Not to mention, in the north, Staff Sergeant Yunus Zekariya received reports that the enemy had routed the 7th Regiment, otherwise known as the King’s Own Mechanized Rifles. During this retreat, many pieces of vital equipment were left and not destroyed. The enemy had thus taken control of significant anti-tank and anti-air equipment, including armored vehicles. This was not an isolated incident.

With the Royal Army gravely outnumbered, the ‘extremely skilled and sophisticated’ Darul Islam soldiers steamrolled through the countryside, taking town after town, wasting outpost after outpost, and encircled and destroyed every single Syahdan Royal Army unit in their way.

The questions in Yunus’ head were, how the hell did they get so good?

Did the deserting army soldiers give that much of an effect to Darul Islam? Did they have a mysterious benefactor? Or… A foreign power might be helping that?

The Americans? Impossible. Yunus had met several American ‘advisors’ in their sunglasses, beards and unbloused boots. Not to mention that the incoming crates of M-16 rifles were also marked with ‘US Army’, so the Americans must be on their side.

What if… They were… The Russians? No… Russian interests in the region were too remote, and they wouldn’t divert resources here, even the dreaded mercenaries from Wagner Group. Not with that bloody war starting with Ukraine. But if someone was paying, they wouldn’t say no for an advisory role.

How about the Chinese? That would be the perfect answer, but no way to confirm either. They have little to no real deployment experience. Unless they hired someone else…

Sucking his cigarette by his desk, Staff Sergeant Zakariya stopped his thoughts, and went back to work. It was the latest analysis over the transcript of a captured Darul Islam officer. Although the bearded, jungle camo-wearing fighter didn’t say much, and ended up being shot in the head after he started spewing out some Islamic prayers, he did confirm the testimony of 12 other detainees which ‘interviews” Zekariya had sat into.

He wrote in his report:

DI soldiers are well-trained and drilled, with general skills such as marksmanship, coordination, ambushes, deception in wooded terrain, and small unit tactics being their core emphasis. A number of troops also have had significant specialist training, such as mortar, anti-tank, and explosives. They are also familiar with most of our arsenal, whether they are the Indonesian armored vehicles Marder, Panser, GM trucks, artillery, and other weapon systems. They have also familiarized the army’s tactics and due to the lack of body armor, move faster than us.

They are logistically handicapped but have learned to live off the land. They also rely on sympathetic religious leaders in each district, who often own farms and significant tracts of land. They are their main suppliers. Their weapons and ammunition are not yet uniform, but lately we have received reports of them carrying M-16s and AKs, and are highly skilled at that, most likely captured from our troops, or supplied offshore by pirates.

Their infantry is highly-sophisticated. Their tactics evolve around well-drilled and tight-knit squads of 12–15 men. This is likely taken from our doctrine and trained by defecting military personnel. They use suppression-and-flanking maneuvers and are willing to risk their lives for the objective. Multiple accounts have also stated that their units rely on shock, with explosives and maneuver being the cornerstone of their advances.

The enemy is a highly motivated and trained foe — two dangerous attributes in any warfighting scenario. We must adjust and anticipate this accordingly.

Cleaning up the rough draft, he sent his report to his commanding officer, and was soon dispatched to those with the necessary need-to-know in the rest of the army. He closed his laptop, and packed up. He slung his 9mm Uzi submachine gun — quite common among rearline troops — went outside to get some cigarettes.

And when he stepped outside his tent, it came.

Just as he was about to go to the post exchange, whistles of mortars came in from above, and Yunus quickly scrambled for cover. The first mortar landed far away, but the second one closer, and the third one even closer. Some moments passed, as troops scrambled for cover and to get into position, but the fourth mortar landed.

Right on top of the intelligence tent.

And soon, barrages of mortar fire came in, striking down everything in its wake at the military camp he was in. He quickly jumped away, and dashed towards an old abandoned restaurant, and hid behind a ruined table. As he hid, he tried calling out to some of the soldiers who were running around hauling their rifles or bags, “Hey! Over here! Get yourself over here…!” And one person somehow saw his waves, and ran to him, and right before he got to him, a mound of dirt rose from the ground, and the soldier with him, and he just… Disappeared. And all that was left of him, was a crater on the ground, and a mist of red and a body broken beyond human recognition.

As he kept waving, though, some soldiers managed to get behind his table. One fellow crawled towards him, and curled up into a fetal position, closing his ears and screaming. A woman soldier, clenched her teeth and put her hands over her head. It was an act of desperation to protect herself from the mortars and the shrapnel that flew around them.

The longest few minutes of Yusuf’s life ended abruptly.

And when he lifted his head over the cover, he saw that his entire company had been decimated. Accurate mortar fire was devastating, even more so when it was in a city, where one didn’t have the natural cover of trees, or holes they could dig into. It was only left to the low buildings, now already battered due to the long fighting and shelling, with fragments of buildings just as dangerous as the pieces of shrapnel that came from artillery or mortar rounds.

This was the heaviest fighting the company had seen, and they had actively been engaged by the enemy despite effectively being a rear echelon unit.

Yunus tapped the shoulder of the female soldier next to him. “Hey, Yasmin, it’s done,” he said, “Hey, wake up.”

She slouched down, her hands letting go, and she fell on the ground, blood trickling down the back of her head. She was a supply admin, and probably didn’t at all expect to get shot at, let alone be under a mortar barrage.

The guy next to him, however, was still alive. Though, he was jittery, shaking, still stuck in his fetal position.

Yunus turned to the floor, and saw the cigarette he was smoking on the ground, and still burning. He took it, put it in his mouth, and went on, and walked through the cratered and ruined camp.

Men picked up broken men, and medics ran around trying to treat the wounded. Stretchers were deployed and soldiers with torn uniforms hauled their wounded comrades over to the aid station. Surgeons drafted from the local, highly educated Chinese population of Kelor City, treated them. And there were a variety of them. Broken up legs, pierced arms, sucking chest wounds, heads that warranted large bandages… the lightly and critically wounded were separated as the tents (or what remained of them) were used as mobile surgical units.

And amongst all that, suddenly, someone shouted in Syahdan Malay. “They’re coming! DI! They’re coming!”

“POSITIONS! POSITIONS!” A bespectacled young officer shouted. And whatever they were doing before, they abandoned, as they occupied fighting positions. Machine gun nests set behind sandbags and rubble were manned, as rifles and submachine guns were cocked, trained against the seemingly empty road ahead.

Suddenly, amongst the line of soldiers, the mustachioed Colonel Ramlan appeared, with about a squad of troops. Like a proper officer of the line, echoing soldiers of ages old, he carried a pistol and waved his men forward. “This is it, gents! We hold!”

As tension rose, the dirty-faced soldiers of the headquarters company, man, woman, young, and old, prepared themselves.

Then someone called out, “HEY! FOOTMOBILES FRONT, 300 METERS! 300 METERS! OVER THERE BY THE WALLS!”

The machinegunner, manning a Belgian FN MAG machine gun, readied his weapon, and waited for the order, or the enemy’s shots.

Yunus looked ahead, and saw the enemy, for the first time. He had never been in a firefight so up-close. Urban firefights were the worst; history has seen to that — Stalingrad, Carentan, Aachen, Manila, Hue City, Fallujah were amongst the worst battlefields known to any fighting man, as man wrestled against man for inches of territory, up close, and personal.

The Darul Islam troops fought in a disciplined manner. They moved, low and fast, rifles ready. Some of them wore headbands with Arabic text; some of them wore helmets; most of them wore cheap camouflage uniforms that uniquely worked; and some of them wore kevlar or plate carriers from the dead of the Royal Army.

Yunus cocked his Uzi submachine gun.

As they moved low and dashed through the city blocks, and the machiengunner trained his sights, and the colonel anxiously waited for the fight of his life… It happened.

The machinegunner opened fire, blazing burst after burst of hot lead. Everyone else did too. Anything that looked like a human, still or moving, was fired upon.

But slowly, they came closer.

And closer.

And closer.

It was either they couldn’t hit any of them or that there were so many of them.

As belts and magazines expended, and enemy firepower slowly overpowered the Syahdani soldiers, Yunus realized that they were being overrun.

And that today, they were going to die.

Mowing down anything he saw in front of him, Yunus tried to conserve his ammunition, firing sparingly. As his magazines were spent, he picked up an M-16 from a downed comrade, and hosed at the enemy; and soon, that ran out too.

The enemy got closer, as he could clearly make out the uncovered faces of the swarm of DI fighters — perhaps more soldierly than the actual soldiers.

Yunus remembered he took out two, three of them at such close range. But that was the last thing he remembered. A hot blast suddenly came from behind him, and he was thrown against a wall and the downed bodies of his comrades, and that was the last thing he saw, as everything turned black.

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