Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology - Chapter 1160

Chapter 1160: WW1: Cape Town (6)
If he is being completely honest, Sumit Chatur was a little disappointed with his current situation. When his highness Gautam, king of Vidyanagari, sent a recruitment notice throughout the regular army to conscript soldiers for the Coalition Army formed by the Bharatiya Empire, he readily signed up without a second thought. Sumit Chatur was a person who admired the great military leaders like his highness Sarvesh, his highness Ramayya Senapati, his highness Gautam, and other kings who are all legendary generals and leaders.

It was always his dream to be like those great generals and leaders, but the moment he joined the army of Vidyanagari, he knew he would not see any conflict, at least not within his lifetime, especially not under the eyes of the Bharatiya Empire. At most, he could participate in a few joint exercises conducted within Suvarna Dvipa, and nothing more. So he saw joining the coalition army as a chance to actually fight in a large war, make a name for himself, and leave his legacy in the history books. But what was he doing now?

Cape Town, South Africa.

“Change of shift!”

“Yes!”

Sumit entered his logging of time in the logbook and passed it over to the other man.

That was a Bharatiya soldier equal to him in rank, replacing him for the next shift. For the last two days, this was what he was doing, guarding the perimeter along with the rest of the troops. He was so excited for action when he stepped onto the military vessel, but as if fate had played a joke on him, he never got the chance at all.

As soon as they came near the waters of South Africa, the navy of the empire completely obliterated the Europeans within a few hours, and the landing party, composed of special forces, quickly cleared out the harbour, and that too without needing their help.

“Brother, do you think I’ll be beaten for wishing the empire to be a little weaker?”

Lying down on the bunk bed, he couldn’t help but question his squadmate in a low voice.

A man with a broad nose, strong brow ridges, deep-set eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a strong jaw widened his eyes in surprise. The very next moment, he shot up from his bed as if electrocuted. He looked around cautiously, then let out a sigh of relief after making sure no one else was in the room.

His expression immediately turned ferocious as he leaned down, grabbed the retard on the lower bunk, and slapped him on the head. “Shut up, idiot. You’re going to get us court-martialled.”

Sumit rubbed his head vigorously. “I was only joking, brother Vajra Khatta.”

“That joke is not funny at all!”

“Tch, you can’t understand great humour at all. Alright, forget it, brother. When I was returning, I saw that a lot of ships were setting off. Oh, and it looks like a few more divisions arrived from the empire. Brother, you’re the deputy captain, do you know anything about this?”

“Hm!”

“The ships are going to attack the European colonies on the west coast of the continent, and also stop European reinforcements if they try to send any.”

“As for the troops coming in, I’m not too sure.”

“Huh!” Sumit got up from the bed. “Even you don’t know, brother, even with your rank?”

“No. The high command is probably planning something big. Anyway, I feel your wish is about to come true, so take a few hours of rest while you still can.”

Sumit’s eyes brightened. “It would have been better if you hadn’t said that at all, but now that you have, how can I rest?” He immediately jumped out of the bed and crouched down to take out his belongings.

“What are you doing?”

“Wasn’t it you who said we might see some action today? So I’m preparing. Oh, I’m so excited.”

Vajra Khatta was left speechless. In the end, he shook his head and lay back down. He was not an adrenaline junkie like his peculiar squad mate. He still needed his rest.

—

“Your Majesty, the troops have arrived. Three divisions from the mainland and two divisions from the vassal kingdoms. We currently have sixty thousand troops ready to jump into action at your word.”

Mugund Padmanabham reported with a confident, stern expression.

“Very good. Call for a meeting at the level of lieutenant colonel and above.”

“As you wish, sire!”

The meeting was convened shortly thereafter, with Vijay personally laying out the strategy for the battle. It lasted a full two hours, and by the end, the go-ahead for operations was formally declared.

Soon after, the barracks descended into chaos. Soldiers who had been resting staggered to their feet and hurriedly dressed as fast as they could. Their eyes were still red and watery, their hair dishevelled, yet none of them slowed down. Instead, with each passing second, as if sobering up, their movements only grew faster and more purposeful.

But no matter how fast they moved, before most of them could even finish dressing, an oddball private had already run to the assembly ground beside the harbour, where waves crashed against the wooden platform, sending up fine mists of seawater. The man stopped at the assembly point, fully dressed and fully equipped, rigid like a spear, as if even an earthquake in the next moment would not make him waver.

“Squad 15, PR32, Sumit Chatur, reporting for duty, sir!”

In truth, there was no one standing in front of him. Even the senior officers had yet to arrive at the assembly point. For a while, he stood alone, watched by soldiers posted along the perimeter, who looked at him as though he were some sort of a fool.

Gradually, people began to gather one by one, and soon he was swallowed by the presence of the assembled soldiers.

When the lieutenant general finally arrived in person, Sumit was absolutely thrilled. He etched every instruction the general gave deep into his mind, even though they were simple commands he already knew. After all, he had no intention of remaining a private forever. He wanted to become a general, a legend.

—

Prakrit bowed to the Murti of Hanuman devoutly, applied the Tilak of victory, and resolutely got onto the basket of the hot air balloon.

“Everything is packed, captain, best of luck.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Prakrit saluted back, took over the packed bag, which had been inspected so that everything was present in it before the mission, and tightly tied it to his back.

Without hesitation, he then increased the fuel output, and the flame burned more intensely, lifting the hot air balloon into the air.

Simultaneously, two other balloons lifted right beside him, going higher and higher.

Prakrit could see the fellow operators were waving at him, so he waved back with a smile and focused his complete attention on steering the balloon.

Currently, the winds in Cape Town are in a transitional phase, making them erratic and unpredictable. Thankfully, because it is a transition period, the wind speeds remain mostly moderate.

What Prakrit has to do, therefore, is feel the wind. If it blows against him, he must pedal the bicycle attached to the basket, which drives the propeller spinning at the back to counteract the resistance. If the wind turns favourable, he can simply ease off and take a brief rest.

Thankfully, the wind did not work against him this time. He made it well into the city before encountering any opposing currents, and once he reached his destination, he lowered the balloon’s altitude slightly to stabilise it, since winds at lower altitudes were far calmer.

He roughly got the entire view of the city in his eyes, so without hesitation, he took out the telescope from his bag and started looking. Identifying the Europeans is quite easy. In fact, they make it quite easy themselves, because all of them are dressed in uniforms. They have flags of various European countries attached to the buildings. He knew the Europeans did such a thing because they were not aware that the Bharatiya would be using hot air balloons, but it had nothing to do with Prakrit. All he had to do was do his job.

He divided the entire city into a graph and looked into one cell of the graph at a time so that he could observe the whole city more efficiently. Sure enough, in his imaginary graph, a large group of military activity was observed in the XY coordinate 7,4. Without hesitation, he turned on the camera so that it could capture the image of the whole city, while he took out a piece of paper, drew the rough coordinates in his mind onto the paper in the form of a graph, and started looking for the other military bases.

—

“Huh! What is that?”

A civilian widened his mouth and looked at the horizon with a disbelieving gaze, as if what he was seeing was not reality at all.

“Hey, what are you doing? Move forward.” A tall, burly white man angrily snapped at the civilian’s head, but when he saw the large blue balloon floating in the sky at the horizon, his expression stiffened, and all colour left his face.

“General, General.” He ran, panicked.

Barely a minute later, Hendrick Van Nassau came running out of the building in a hurry. Looking at the balloon, his expression was ugly. “The Bharatiyas are trying to assassinate us. Quick, pack up everything. We will change the location, let’s go further inland.”

His mind moved quickly, and an idea popped into his mind. “Let’s move north; we can find reinforcements there.”

“In the meantime, squadrons 4, 6, and 8 quickly shoot down that balloon. Use fast horses to get closer. Quick, move, move, move.”

The European stronghold was immediately boiling.