Tyranny of Steel

Khorijin stood in the palace that her lover had once built for her many years ago. By now she had born Berengar five children, of which the oldest, whose name was Altan, was now in his early twenties. He had spent his youth in the Crimean Khanate watching his mother transform the once nomadic Golden Horde into a mighty power located within the Caucasus.

He had spent far less time with his father than most of Berengar's children, but had enough memories of the man to consider him family. Yet today was not a day about the German Kaiser. Today was a day about the new Khan who had just recently succeeded his mother as ruler of the Crimean Khanate.

Khorijin had decided to retire back in Kufstein, after leaving her people's fate in the hands of her eldest son. She longed to be with the man who had given her a family, and had brought her youngest children with her. Thus, she was saying goodbye to her eldest children, as she planned to take the younger ones back with her to the Reich.

Altan was a man with perfect eurasian features and was considerably handsome. He had short black hair and dark eyes, just like his mother, who gazed upon him with affection, as she hugged him in her arms, for perhaps the last time, while speaking the words that dwelled within her mind.

"You are the Khan now, and I know you will accomplish great things in this life. However, my place is no longer here with our people. I have done everything I can to leave you with a state that is prosperous. Now go forth and conquer the Caucasus like you were destined to do. The spirits in form me that our neighbors are buying weapons from India, and are preparing for war. Now is the time to strike!"

Altan gazed at his mother's beautiful appearance and smiled. She had provided a good life for him as he grew up in this palace, or perhaps he should say that his father had provided such a life for him. Regardless of semantics, he was sad to see his mother go, but she was right. Crimea was never where she wanted to be, at least not after she had fallen for the German Kaiser so many years ago. Thus, he kissed the woman on the forehead and hugged her tightly before giving her permission to leave.

"Mother, I hope you find happiness in Kufstein. I know the burden you have endured these years, being so far away from the man you love, must have been tough. Do not fret about a thing, I will lead our people to victory over our neighbors, and when you and father return, you will see that I have built a mighty empire of my own..."

Khorijin was practically in tears as she said goodbye to her eldest son, before departing from the palace she had lived in for over twenty years, with her youngest children in tow. Altan remained standing in the open doorway, watching for some time before the german car which carried his mother and siblings disappeared. Once she was gone, he let out a heavy sigh, before giving an order to his leading General who was standing in another room, watching, and waiting for his queue.

""Khada... The time has come, muster the horde, we march to war..."

The man named Khada had a cruel smile on his face, as he nodded his head in agreement with his Khan's orders, before departing from the room to inform the army of their orders.

It took no more than two weeks to muster the army of 250,000 cavalry, who marched from the capital of the Crimean Khanate to their easternmost border, where the Uzbeks lie completely oblivious that a horde had come to conquer them.

The Crimean horde consisted of individual cavalrymen armed with automatic carbines, horse-drawn carriages with heavy machine guns mounted on the back, and 7.5cm horse drawn pack howitzers, designed to easily traverse through the mountains.

Altan sat on horseback in his military uniform. With his carbine in hand, he pulled back the bolt slightly to ensure that a round was chambered before sending it home. The weapon he wielded was a modified Gewehr 27, which was modelled after the Gewehr 43, but chambered in 8x33mm Kurz, and had select fire capabilities.

This would not be a warlike the ones the Germans had waged in the past, as he held no serious technological advantage over the enemy. After all, the Indian Empire had been supplying many of their surplus weapons to the Caucasian tribes, and this meant that Altan would be fighting a foe that was near equally armed.

The one advantage he had was that his weapons were designed for mobility, making it easier for him to traverse through the mountainous landscape, than those who had inherited the more stationary weapons which the German Army once equipped decades ago.

Upon seeing that there was Uzbek tribe no more than ten kilometers out, Altan gave the order for the pack howitzers to deploy, and begin their assault on the enemy. Within minutes, the light mountain guns were detached from the horses who carried them, and armed for combat, where the thunder of guns echoed throughout the air as the 7.5cm shells bombarded the enemy's position.

As if disregarding the dangers of close artillery fire, Altan ordered his horde to advance, with carbines in hand, as he snapped the reins of his horse, and scaled down the mountain into the valley where the enemy scrambled to get their weapons loaded.

Over a hundred thousand horses charged down the hill, with automatic fire from their carbines, and heavy machine guns, which pelted the tribe of some fifty thousand Uzbeks, who were completely caught off guard by the Crimean invasion.

Altan aimed the sights of his rifle down range and squeezed his trigger, as he fired a burst of 8x33 kurz ammunition towards the enemy, who had just barely managed to get control of their rifles. The artillery fire continued to rock the encampment, blasting men to bits, as the Crimean horsemen rapidly approach the limits of the safe zone. Where eventually the echoing thunder of the 7.5cm pack howitzers ceased, with only the slow chugs of the heavy machine guns and the rapid sprays of the g27 automatic carbines crackling across the region.

As the charging horde of over a hundred thousand horsemen approached the encampment, the Uzbeks managed to get their rifles and heavy machine guns loaded, where they fired aimlessly into the large army which sought to encircle them.

Thousands of Crimean horsemen hit the dirt as bullets either hit their bodies or those of their horses, and despite the immediate danger that Altan was in, he was not undeterred as he led his army through machine gun fire, while shooting his own carbine towards the enemy.

He effortlessly aimed down his carbine, and sprayed a barrage of lead into the chest of multiple targets, all while holding onto the reins of his horse, while guiding it through machine gun fire. Eventually he depleted a magazine, where he was quick to reach into his homemade leather chest rig, and withdraw another thirty-round magazine before tossing the spent one aside.

After inserting the magazine into the carbine, he racked the charging handle and continued to fire bursts as the enemy went down. Despite the losses his army suffered in this battle, they outnumbered the enemy five to one and easily encircled the tribe before ruthlessly gunning down all the men.

As for the women and children, they were rounded up and enslaved, where they would be marched back to the lands of the Crimean Khanate to work in the fields. The battle was over almost as quickly as it had begun, and after burying their dead, the Crimean Horde packed up their supplies, and marched off to war once more. Their next target would suffer a similar fate, as would the next, until the entire territory that the nomadic Uzbek tribes occupied fell to the wrath of the Crimean Khanate.

When Berengar learned that the son of one of his concubines had begun to personally lead his armies into war against an equally equipped force, he began to feel respect for the boy, who had shown he did not fear death.

Something that several of his other sons, who ruled over vast Empires had not been able to do. Knowing this, a hint of pride emerged in Berengar's heart, thinking about when the day finally came that he perished from this world, and entered the afterlife, that he would be able to share a drink with his son Altan, to him he had been a rather distant father, and speak of the battles they had both personally participated in.

I wanted to thank you all for supporting Tyranny of Steel up to this point. From here on out, until the very end of the novel, updates are going to be less frequent with one chapter a day. Instead, I would like to invite all of you to read my new novel Interstellar Age, at https://www.webnovel.com/book/interstellar-age_ 26235247006730205

Which will be receiving my primary attention from here on out. Thank you all for the support you have shown me, and I look forward to writing novels for you all for years to come!