Jack of Harts

As Attica continued to spiral further out of control, Pineland citizens began flying to Attica on their own to help fellow citizens and their Attican allies to escape. Many of them were veterans of the Attican conflict, old men who still had contact with those they had worked with over the years. Others sought to get the Attican Christians out before the Islamic Congress killed them for the sin of converting to another religion. These mixed groups of veterans and civilians saved tens of thousands of Pineland and Attican civilians in the days before the Pineland administration stepped in. They demanded that other nations stop accepting civilian refugee flights, stopped giving planes filled with refugees clearance to launch, and began threatening to cancel the licenses of pilots that worked with these organizations if they continued to do so.

Pineland evacuated their embassy ahead of the advancing Islamic Congress troops and moved to the last free airport in Attica. With the situation rapidly accelerating further out of control, Pineland citizens and allied governments alike demanded action from the Pineland administration. They finally bowed to those demands and sent troops back into the country to secure the airport and support an evacuation of Pineland citizens and allies. When pressed on the matter, the president promised to evacuate all Pineland citizens before withdrawing the military again. He also promised Pineland’s allies that the troops would remain long enough for them to evacuate their own citizens and allies as well. And he promised the Islamic Congress that the troops would leave by the end of the month, whether all citizens and allies were evacuated or not. All of those promises could not be kept.

When Pineland’s military left Attica, they left billions in dons worth of military equipment behind for the Attican defenders to use. The Islamic Congress of Attica captured all of those weapons, making them the best-armed terrorist organization on the planet overnight. And they were in control of a nation filled with foreign aid workers, contractors, and other citizens of Pineland or their allies. Not to mention the Atticans who had worked with Pineland for twenty years. The Islamic Congress immediately began going door-to-door, looking for foreigners or those who worked with them. Stories of beatings and executions filtered out through contacts on the outside even before they conquered the capital. Centralia and other nations were quick to condemn Pineland’s administration for leaving their people in such a dangerous situation.