September 12, 1892.
Two utterly ordinary Austro-Hungarian merchant ships brazenly docked in Eleele Bay. By this time, all of Eleele's residents had become East Africans.
Even the port and other infrastructure had been secretly acquired by East Africa, so the landing of the two "merchant ships" attracted no foreign attention.
"Lieutenant Gladstone, welcome to Eleele."
"Governor, I hope for your guidance in the future as well."
"We brought a battalion this time, more than six hundred men in total. I wonder if that will be enough to shoulder the military task on Kauai?" Battalion Commander Gladstone asked.
"It should be enough! We have more than six thousand people on Kauai, along with over three hundred armed personnel. That makes more than a thousand altogether. And with elites like yours present, even if the United States deploys its army, they will not be our match."
Of course, the more than three hundred men under John Crane existed in the guise of security personnel. After all, carrying firearms overseas was hardly unusual in this era.
The Kingdom of Hawaii could not restrict every nation from bringing weapons to Hawaii to conduct business. Britain, France, and the United States all maintained some military presence in Hawaii. Naturally, the Americans were the strongest. Though the United States Army was weak, its militia's combat strength was barely passable.
Battalion Commander Gladstone largely agreed with his superior's words. After all, East Africa did not think much of America's fighting strength. At the very least, compared with the Defense Force itself, the East African military certainly held little regard for it.
Since the Civil War, the United States had barely fought any wars, while the East African Army had been tempered through decades of iron and blood. The East African Army sent on this expedition to Kauai