In Jules Year 914, on September 9th, at Shostka, the headquarters of the Ante Army's First Guard Mechanized Division, it was 2300 hours.
Pavlov lifted his wristwatch and glanced at it, "There probably won't be any telegrams tonight. It looks like Argesukov has finally fallen."
The telegrams Pavlov referred to were the open-code ones from Argesukov that had been nonstop since early August―Argesukov's codebooks had all been destroyed, leaving them no choice but to send messages in the clear.
The content of the telegrams was very brief, essentially "This is Argesukov, we are still fighting." For a while, Argesukov's radio station also repeatedly broadcasted this sentence over shortwave, and it could be picked up by all radios in Ante.
But this broadcast had been interrupted for almost half a month now.
