Chapter 17: New World 2

"Whoo-hoo~" accompanied by a mellifluous whistle, an ocean liner with rolling black smoke slowly drew alongside, and bare-chested sailors with white turbans shouted and dropped their cables.

"Sir, we're here." An Arab crewman with a white cravat and a large beard walked towards the iron staircase, then turned towards the cabin and knocked on the door of a room located in Class A on the fourth floor.

"Got it." A slurred reply came from the door of the room, then with a pattering sound the door opened and a tall man in a white Arab robe with a suitcase wrapped tightly around his head came out of the room.

"May Allah bless you." The Arab crewman nodded his head in greeting to the man.

The man looked uncomfortable with this greeting but did nod reluctantly before stepping off the ship's ladder and walking along the trestle towards the shore.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Looking around at the Arabs coming and going with their camels, and the Ottoman soldiers patrolling back and forth with their Mauser 1888s on their backs, and incidentally yelling at street vendors, the man felt a bit of a time warp.

"Hey, you, what are you doing?" Perhaps sensing the man's abnormality, two Ottoman soldiers approached the man.

"I ..." The man heard the other man's gibberish in Arabic and had to wave his hand as if he couldn't hear and in the process stuffed his hand into the pocket of his robe, which contained a loaded pistol.

"Take off your mask. Quickly." The two Ottoman soldiers were alert and one unholstered and loaded his rifle, then slowly closed in.

As a confrontation looked inevitable, a man in a grey robe leading a camel suddenly came forward and stepped between the two sides.

"Sir, this is my distant cousin who studied in Germany and has come back to help me take over the family business this time. Excuse us." The grey-robed man smiled companionably as he pulled a wad of golden Reichsmarks from his pocket and shoved them at the soldier.

"Cousin, Germany, you speak German?" After taking the money, the soldier put away his rifle, but still asked suspiciously.

"𝘠𝘦𝘴 𝘚𝘪𝘳, 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘎𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺." The man blurted out. (TN: 𝘈𝘯𝘺 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩. 𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘎𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯.)

Hearing such standard German, the two Ottoman soldiers were reassured.

"Then get going and don't linger at the docks, we have received a tip-off that there may have been British spies mixed in recently."

"Yes, yes, we will leave immediately." The grey-robed man nodded and watched the soldier leave, then looked at the man and said in English, "Welcome to Turkey, Mr Lawrence."

"Uh, I'm not Lawrence ..." The man was about to explain but was signalled to stop. (TN: Only true gamers know what this world is.)

"This is not the place to talk, come with me, we have a long way to go." The grey-robed man gestured to the camel kneeling on the ground to one side.

"All right." The man nodded and straddled the camel, the grey-robed man also mounted the front camel and the two slowly walked out of the port city to the sound of the camel's bell.

"Now you can put your hood down. Mr Lawrence." After leaving the city and entering the desert, the grey-robed man took a water bladder from the back of his camel, poured a mouthful into it, and then threw it to the man behind him.

"Thanks, but I'm not Lawrence, you can call me Ethan Hunt." The man unbuckled his hood and it was none other than Ethan who explained to the man before taking the water bladder and filling it with a swig.

"Well, wine?"

"Yes, the best wine the Bedouins have to offer." The grey-robed man turned his head to look at Ethan, "Whatever your name is Lawrence or Ethan, you're here to help us anyway, right."

"That's true." Ethan took another swig of wine, then wiped his mouth and tossed the water bladder back to the grey-robed man.

This time across Ethan's dumbfounded batch, he opened his eyes to find himself in an Egyptian military camp with a beige flag flying above it, four or five Austin armoured vehicles that he had only seen in museums parked in the camp, and soldiers in the camp armed mostly with Lee Enfield MK-1 bolt-action rifles.

"World War I?" A still dazed Ethan didn't wait for him to get his bearings before he was put on a bus to the port by orderlies pushing through the door.

And it wasn't until he was on board that Ethan figured out that he appeared to be replacing a celebrity known as the shit-stirrer of the Middle East, Lawrence, known as the Lawrence of Arabia.

In all honesty, Ethan had a high opinion of this man, because he had been stirring up the Middle East for decades on his own, and no one else could have done that, but if he had done what Lawrence did, well, sorry, I'm the best at saying no to them, especially the Brits.

"As the war gets more and more intense, times are getting tougher for our people." The grey-robed man's words interrupted Ethan's recollection.

"Labour, taxes, our oases are being taken away, camels and horses are being requisitioned, youths are being dragged off to be soldiers, leaving only wailing children and women behind, I hope your arrival will help us change this, Mr Hunt."

"That's what I'm here for, and I haven't asked your name yet." Ethan glanced at the sun overhead, then silently pulled a bottle of sunscreen from his subspace storage box.

"Just call me Ali, I am Prince Faisal's contact and also a minor chief, my tribe has over three hundred guns led by my daughter and they are all warriors against the Ottoman." The grey-robed man called Ali was very talkative and gave Faisal a rambling account of the state of his tribe and the Ottoman garrison nearby.

"Oh, so how long will it take us to get to that prince's land?"

"That will take a week, but for now we will have to stay in my tribe for a while, as there are a number of chiefs who maintain a negative view of your arrival, so the prince hasn't thought of receiving you yet."

"I understand." Ethan smiled.

He was not required to hand in a submission, so he did, although he was not sure what he could do by coming to the timeline of the First War, but he was here to make it right, the big deal was to turn the situation upside down.

The camels were fast in the desert, but they had travelled less than sixty kilometres in a day, and the route was strictly regulated, every time they stopped to rest, there were wells covered with wood and sand, these were secret supply points known only to the oldest of the elders, important Bedouin secrets.

And Ethan, too, gradually figured out what world he had come to.

After travelling through the desert for a whole day, it was only after the moon was high above the night sky that Ali called a halt to the camels.

"Let's rest here tonight." Removing the blanket and felt from the camel's back, Ali pointed to a leeward hillside.

"OK." Ethan didn't mind either, pulling off the robe he was wearing to reveal the tropical uniform beneath, then sat down on the felt and watched Ali pack up his bedding.

"You're interested in this?" A bored Ethan fished a Smith revolver out of the case and kept fiddling with the nest of bullets when he noticed Ali eyeing the gun in his ... hands.

"Yeah ... hehehe." Ali smiled embarrassedly at the moment like a child who had seen his favourite toy.

"Here you go." Since the other party liked it.

Ethan handed the gun directly to the other party, then picked up the dairy product Ali had just poured out from the ground and took a small bite.

"How embarrassing is this." Despite the words, Ali hurriedly tucked the gun into his belt and then used a few pieces of dried food from his other pouch to soak into the milk and knead it.

"Try this, it's a mixture of yoghurt and date palm, made by my daughter herself."

Looking at the food, which was somewhat like sweet spaghetti if that's a thing.

Ethan tentatively tasted it and found that it tasted fine, the only problem is that it was all a bit more stinky.

"Sorry for the humble conditions." Ali skimmed a few bites and then started playing with the revolver again, while Ethan was more interested in the Martini Henry rifle he kept on the camel's back.

It was a Martini MK-4 rifle firing .402, the final revision of the Martini series, only it hadn't been out long before Great Britain switched to the .303 magazine-fed Lee-Metford rifle, and the Martini Henry rifles that had been in the British Army were sold to these parts of the Middle East.

Casually wiping the drool from his hands on his trousers, Ethan got up, took the Martini off the back of the camel that was already on its knees and turned it over and over, it was a gold plated one his old man had and took it with him when he had nothing better to do than take his bodyguard and a few old men hunting in the forests of Montana, so Ethan was no stranger to it.

"Is this what you guys use to fight the Ottoman?" It was 1917 and the European war was in full swing.

The Ottoman infantry was basically armed with Mauser 1903 rifles, either Mauser 1887 or Mauser with 9X-30r ammunition. The firepower was not in the same league.

"That's not bad, my tribe and the prince's army at least have rifles and machine guns from the British army, many of the tribesmen only have cutlasses and bows and arrows, but we won't give up the chance to fight those Ottoman."

Ethan then chatted with Ali about the course of the battle between the Arab partisans and the Ottoman army, and although Ali rattled on with fervour, Ethan nevertheless heard the real meaning within.

The Ottoman and the Arabs had a long-standing feud, and since oil had gradually become the liquid gold of the people, there had been no peace in this part of the Middle East.

The British, the French, the Germans, the Ottoman, they all wanted the liquid gold under their command and the Arabs may not have known much about the days ahead, but they understood that what they had was an inexhaustible treasure trove, so they were more inclined to sit on their hands.

After the two men had finished talking about the situation and the war, Ali introduced his tribe, which was located in the central region of Syria.

Their tribe consisted of about two thousand people and had over three hundred completely disengaged tribal warriors, who usually lived by herding camels and of course horses, originally their tribe lived dutifully in their own territory, but then the Ottoman railway was built right on their doorstep and under the threat of machine guns and howitzers.

Ali's people had to leave their ancestral land behind and run away.

"Alas, times have changed, the Ottoman army with its buggies carrying machine guns and infantry can run faster than we can, and our horses still need rest, the cars just need refuelling, and there are trains to transport their troops by rail, the war machine, eating away at our land step by step." At this point, Ali was actually speechless, while Ethan yawned in boredom.

"I'll tell you what, you sleep first and I'll keep watch for half of the night." Looking at his watch and realising it was close to two in the morning Ethan hurriedly interrupted Ali's narrative, he still had a journey to make tomorrow.

After the first half of the night, feeling a little tired, Ethan woke Ali up, pulled back the blanket, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

I don't know how long he slept, but in his daze Ethan suddenly heard a dull sound of gunfire, and subconsciously rolled over and got up, grabbing his hand for his pistol, only to remember that he had given his revolver to Ali.

"Ali, what's happening?" Ethan got up to find Ali had climbed up the hill at some point and was looking out into the distance.

"They're attacking the Ottoman railway." Ali pointed to the white light bursting upon the distant horizon, "That's Armoured Ottoman trains firing."

"Armoured trains?" Ethan pulled out his binoculars, but the distance was so great that even the Atlas's high magnification white light binoculars couldn't see a thing, only a flash after flash and the dull sound of gunfire and artillery could be heard.

And Ethan could hear that the gunfire was subsiding, and it looked like the unsuspecting Bedouin guerrillas had been wiped out by the firepower of the train.

"Alas, that is why we need your help, Mr Hunt."

"I am here to help you." Ethan closed his binoculars, then pulled out his datapad and wrote down a note prioritising the trains.

"It's still early Mr Hunt, there's still time to get some sleep, we've got a whole day ahead of us tomorrow." Ali cradled his rifle in his arms before sitting down against the camel, "I'll keep watch. I'll call you in the morning."

After riding his camel for another full day, Ethan came upon a gorge with rocky hills where Ali's tribe had migrated.

"The chief has returned." Before he could get close to the gorge, a head wrapped in yellow cloth suddenly appeared above it, looking down at Ali and then shouting into the gorge.

Soon a puff of smoke lifted from the gorge and then a dozen horsemen raced out to meet them.

"Father."

The closer one of the horsemen at the head got, the closer Ethan realised it was a woman with tattoos covering her face.

"Zara, this is my daughter, and this is Mr Hunt from Cairo." Ali introduced with a smile.

"Hello, Mr Hunt, welcome to Syria." The woman called Zara simply nodded lightly and ignored Ethan, instead of driving her horse to Ali's side.

"What's wrong?" Ali asked when he saw his daughter's unsettled face.

"The tribe went to attack that Armoured train yesterday, they lost all their tribal warriors, and then after dawn today the Ottoman desert troops attacked the remaining women, children and old people." A flicker of indignation crossed Zara's face.

"May the dead rest in peace." Ali was also a little sad to hear this, he knew the chief of the tribe and the two had clashed before over the water well, but the other man was also a man of the cloth and he had not expected to fall to the Ottomans' guns anyway.

"We have to act, father, destroy that train, the Ottoman war machine will kill us all sooner or later."

"I know, but going with just the lot of us is just hitting a stone with an egg, you'll be sifted by the Ottoman contingent before you even get close to that armoured train." Ali sighed, "We are not to be counted on, now it is up to Prince Faisal's army to see if they have the strength."

"But father."

"Well, say no more, Zara, Mr Hunt and I are tired after a long day's journey, go and tell them to prepare something to eat." Ali scowled, shooing his daughter away, then looked at Ethan, "I'm sorry, but the situation now makes it necessary for us to have men, women and children all on board."

"I understand." Ethan nodded, the European theatre would be much the same.

And Ethan took a look at these tribal warriors of Ali's, they all looked quite thin and carried a variety of weapons, from Ross rifles to Mausers, there was even one with a Winchester 1895 rifle, God knows how this kind of stuff, produced exclusively for the Maoists, had made it to the Middle East.

A small stream flowed from a crevice beneath a rocky hill, then through the tents and pens and into the ground, with rolling tents deeper into the canyon and a one-man trail cut out on either side of the canyon cliffs overhead, with a few sentries standing on it at the moment.

The commotion of Ali's return alerted the tent-holders, men, women and children alike, to come out and greet them, and from time to time Ali pulled out some of the rough sugar cubes he had bought from the city and handed them out to the boisterous children.

Ali's tent was at the far end of the ravine, the best location, where the wind did not blow in and the sun did not shine too much, and outside the tent, a few servants were working on the roast meat on the campfire, while Ali's wives and daughters were standing outside the tent waiting for the arrival of the man.

"Go and have a good wash first, I know you English have a habit of bathing and so do we, come out for dinner afterwards and tomorrow we'll talk about how we can work together." Ali waved his hand and pointed to a smaller double tent to the side of his tent, which, if nothing else, was where Ethan would be staying for the time being.

"Good." Ethan didn't say much and carried his own suitcase into the tent, the inside of the tent wasn't very big, just a small table, the yellow sand on the floor was very soft so another layer of felt was laid down, it was a bit soft when you stepped on it, his bed was in a small suite inside, it wasn't really a bed, it was a bunk covered with four or five layers of blankets, there was a paraffin lamp hanging next to it and a large wooden bucket full of water that was radiating heat at the moment.

"Tomorrow we'll start as guerrillas." Three times he stripped off his clothes, and Ethan got into the bucket and got comfortable, muttering to himself.

...... ...... ...

Since he had come to help the Arabs defeat the Ottomans, it was not natural for Ethan to come and sleep and eat.

He got up before dawn the next day and then found Ali, who was drinking his milk tea and offered to check the weaponry of their tribe first.

"Weaponry?" Ali nodded and then took Ethan himself to their improvised arsenal.

"No, these are all our equipment now."

Ethan nodded and looked at the less than a hundred firearms of various types lying in front of him, and sat down directly on the floor to check the condition.

Seeing Ethan's extremely skilful dismantling and calibration of these rifles, Ali was a bit embarrassed, he initially thought that Ethan was just a person who came here to provide information or something, but it turned out that the other party did not seem to be a fancy person.

After spending more than an hour checking all the weapons, Ethan casually wiped the stains in his hands on Ali's robe and then said, "There are a dozen Mauser firing pins broken, the sights on Louis' machine guns are also broken, and your ammunition is also confusing, .303 and 7.92 are mixed and loaded, are you sure you can hit it? "

"Ah, that."

"Ugh." Ethan could only sigh at the sight of his opponent.

Casually grabbing a martini rifle that still worked and a handful of 10mm martini cartridges, Ethan took the lead and headed out the door.

"Mr Hunt, where are you going?"

"To see how good your tribal warriors are, and besides, in a crowded place, it's better to address me as Lawrence." Ethan raised his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, the sun shone on him, the shadow covering Ali completely, and with the backlighting, Ali could faintly see a golden glow on him.

"Why are you called Lawrence?"

"Because from now on, I'll be Lawrence of Arabia."

Although Ali nominally had over three hundred guns (meaning combatants), excluding a bunch of herding patrols, the whole tribe currently had less than a hundred and fifty men, and what was more, Ali hadn't organized these men, so they just rushed into battle in a huddle, with no tactics to speak of.

Only Ali's daughter was a good marksman, she had grown up shooting guns.

"Confusing formation, uneven fighting ability and poor training." Looking at the crooked formation of the tribal warriors, Ethan could only continue to take out his notebook and write (he didn't take out his datapad because there were too many people)

"Mr Lawrence, I heard you are a famous marksman in England, can you give us a show?" A tribal warrior shouted loudly after gabbing for a while with the man beside him.

"Yes. What would you like to see?" Ethan was overjoyed, a godsend, he was about to tell these guys what a true partisan was when you popped up.

"Anything you're good at."

"OK."

Ethan looked up at the sun, which would have been rising high enough that the shooting conditions were quite a bit better than they had just been, and in case the other guy didn't obey again, Ethan chose to shoot against the light.

"400 metres and I'm not making any special, you just used a Mauser, I'll use a Mauser too."

After confirming that the target had been set up, Ethan pulled the bolt and loaded the gun, fired one shot to confirm the trajectory, then after calibrating the weapon according to the data from the first shot, fired four shots in quick succession, followed by a standard diamond-shaped gap in that wooden target four hundred metres away.

A thunderous round of applause followed and one man was defeated.

"I wish to compete with Mr Lawrence in a fistfight." Another one who was not afraid to die stepped forward.

A minute later, the unlucky man who couldn't breathe after being slashed in the throat by Ethan's palm was dragged aside to rest.

"Any more?"

Anyway, after showing off their muscles, these warriors of Ali's looked at Ethan in a different light, even Ali's daughter was all excited, not because she was attracted by Ethan's good looks of course, but because she thought he could help her along to blow up the train.

"Blow up a train? Not even close." Ethan shook his head knowing she was planning, he had just asked carefully and these guys were simply a mob with guns, not even close to being soldiers.

"They're not ready, Zara, fighting a war is not a tribal conflict, every death of your people needs to be your responsibility." Ethan pulled out a pen and book and began to write up his plan for the integration of the armed men under Ali.

Ethan streamlined the combatants and finally picked out less than fifty tribal warriors who could read a little, write their names and were between 20 and 30 years old, and after dividing them into two groups, Ethan declared that the Bedouin desert guerrillas were officially formed.

Now that it was an army, it had to find something to sacrifice to the flag, but because of the guerrillas' really low fighting ability, Ethan thought it would be better to do this task himself.

"Zara, which is the nearest Ottoman stronghold to us?"

"It's a train water station 50 kilometres away, there are about thirty Ottoman soldiers, they have Armoured Land Cruisers and Maxim machine guns and are part of the Ottoman desert contingent." Zara was a little puzzled but gave Ethan the briefing.

"OK, inform everyone in the guerrilla group to bring two days' dry rations after lunch and we'll go end the gun emplacement."

"??"

Ali was also dumbfounded, wasn't it an inspection of his troops, how did it become an end to a gun emplacement.

"Fight instead of practice, I don't have much time, but I can still teach these men of yours a few tricks."

"Then, Zara, you follow suit and learn well from Mr Hunt, don't spend all your time thinking about blowing up trains."

"Father. That Armoured train ..." Zara was about to say something else but was stopped by Ethan.

"You'll get your chance later, for now, learn how to use what you have to your advantage."

...... ...... ...

The desert was never the Ottomans' home turf, in fact, they, even after penetrating deep into the desert, only built camps around water sources and railway lines, and then used this as a base to clear out the nearby Arab tribes.

While the Arabs also relied on the cover of the desert to ambush and strike hard at the Ottomans' logistical lines by day and night, limited, of course, to squeezing the soft ones.

This in the eyes of the Arabs, who lacked heavy firepower, this water supply station with two Maxim's was certainly no soft touch.

If Ethan had been left alone, he would have pulled out his subspace RPG and sent all the men to the heaven but he had fifty nervous and bewildered followers with him, and it was better to teach a man to fish than to give him one but he wasn't worried that the soldiers would learn everything he taught them, for one thing, the literacy rate was a big problem.

With guns on shoulders and horses tied to horses, the group roared along, arriving at the dunes diagonally opposite the water supply station in the late afternoon.

With binoculars in hand, Ethan cautiously poked his head out over the dune and observed his target.

"Are we going to launch an attack?" Zara, also dressed in rustic yellow, poked her head out and looked into the camp.

"No, Zara, this is the first practical lesson of the day, and I've come to tell you that a competent hunter is never in a hurry." Ethan glanced at his watch.

"Everyone eat something first, remember not to make any noise, and calm the horses too."

"But aren't we here to fight the Ottomans?"

"Yes, but it's not time yet." Ethan pointed to the westering sun, "We attack in the early hours of the morning when the Ottomans will be at their most sleepy state."

"And, if you want to take care of that Wolf King(the armoured train) you speak of, then take to heart everything I say from now on."

.......................

{Guys, we are 17 chapters in its the ripe time to give some reviews. I hope you the story is to your liking and will give good reviews. I need rating for this story as well so please write some reviews.

Thank you.}