A Young Woman's Political Record 41 (Patreon)

AN1: Here we go...

ooOoo

March 19, 1941

Koenig moved carefully through the chaos of the Russy camp. The quarter moon was dim in the sky above, but the fires of the supply depot gave more than enough light to see by. While most of the crowd was moving towards the fire, either to help or to gawk at the spectacle, he was able to pick his way through the stream of people and head for the edge of camp.

To be honest, he was a little disappointed. The stockpile here on the western edge of the Russy Federation hadn't had time to grow to the extent of the great supply depots he'd seen back in Sibyria. He would have liked to give the Rus time to gather more valuable material in one place, but it would be sloppy to try and mingle with the enemy army for too long. Besides, he needed to create widespread chaos.

Fortunately, the guards out west weren't any more observant than the guards in the east, and the goods were just as flammable. Once he'd managed to sneak back out and join the crowd, he hadn't even needed to use any magic to disappear.

The light around him had dimmed considerably by the time he reached the edge of the camp. He bit back a sigh. The fire really didn't measure up.

There should have been a sentry watching the camp's perimeter, but it seemed that Teyanen had arrived ahead of him.

Koenig and the small group with him were soon able to make out the silhouettes of their companions. And their bounty for the night. The Russy Federation still used cavalry troops as scouts and, in a pinch, mounted infantry. While Koenig had been causing trouble, Teyanen's job had been to take advantage of the situation to make off with the best of the stabled horseflesh.

He just loved it when a plan came together. Koenig gave Teyanen a clap on the shoulder before swinging himself up on the lead horse. The rest of the men were mounted soon after, and he led them on a steady trot to the east.

ooOoo

March 21, 1941

Rhiner Neumann had been nervous when the Chancellor had asked him to take command of a mage battalion. The promotion to major was nice and all, but when foreign events were transpiring that were enough to make Tanya von Degurechaff nervous, only a crazy man would be relaxed.

He'd had more practical concerns, too. He hadn't spent enough time hanging out at the Magical Academy to know much about his new subordinates. He also didn't know how they would react to being put under the command of somebody whose essential qualification, to be frank, was his personal history with the chancellor. Fortunately, the aura of the 203rd still had some sway, greatly easing his path.

He'd also been nervous about taking over a full battalion. There he was lucky that commanding mages mostly came down to common sense. He'd led the kids through some training exercises and they'd handled their opponents well enough. He could only hope that they weren't going easy on the old man out of courtesy or respect. The Francois Republic certainly wouldn't have much of either to spare.

Working as the chancellor's bodyguard had been the perfect job. All he'd had to do was follow her around all day. Nobody in the country wanted to take a shot at her, and if somebody had been crazy enough to do it, his only job would've been to try to arrest the poor fool before the chancellor killed him. He'd enjoyed regular meals, he'd gotten a hot shower every day, and he'd gone to sleep every night in his own bed.

Commanding a battalion in peacetime wasn't too much of a change. He'd had to move to military housing, but he still had hot meals and a hot shower every day, and he always got to sleep in his own bed. He even got to order the kids around and show off in front of Birgit. It was a pretty decent job. In peacetime.

Now that war had broken out, he found himself hovering over the village of Witterschlick in the company of eighty other mages, maintaining control of the airspace over the defenses blocking the path to Bonnburg. All well and good, if not for the eight hundred enemy mages that had just flown into view. They were still far out of range, but mages could cover ground in a hurry.

"Rhine control, this is Fairy 01," Neumann radioed in, "we have visual on Francois Republic mages. Over."

The kids in his battalion had been honored to be given the call sign that used to belong to the Argent. Neumann hadn't had the heart to tell them how much she had hated it.

"Rhine control, roger. Fairy 01, maintain position, over."

Neumann clicked his tongue. If one of those paper pushers back at headquarters had screwed up the schedule, there was a real danger that this could turn into a pure mage on mage fight. That was the last thing he wanted. Claiming that one Germanian soldier was worth ten enemies was for the propaganda department and maybe the Argent Silver. It wasn't supposed to be the basis for military planning.

"Rhine control, this is Fairy 01," Neumann replied. "If our escorts don't arrive soon, we might end up dancing by ourselves. Over."

"Fairy 01, this is Rhine Actual," the familiar voice of Mattheus Weiss said, recognizable even over the military radio. "Relax, this operation has been meticulously planned. I'm jealous that you get to participate in it. Over."

"You could always come take my spot," Neumann said. "Over."

He would have pushed harder for promotions over the last few years if he'd realized that generals got to stay in the safety of the back lines even after the shooting started. Well, he would have if he'd realized the shooting was going to start up again.

"After the work you put in to whip that battalion into shape?" Weiss asked. "I couldn't live with myself. Over."

To live with yourself, you had to live through the battle. Something that was much easier from the general's chair. Fortunately, Neumann was spared from the need to respond by the drone of engines finally coming closer from behind.

He had to admit, the air force might take their sweet time, but they could also put on a show. Over two hundred of the new Fw 190 planes were flying towards them, divided into two groups. Half flew above them, taking the usual role of top cover. The other half flew by just below Neumann's group, braving the flight level that was usually considered to be magical territory. Each group of one hundred was spread out across the sky in a slightly ragged rectangle, but no plane was more than a hundred meters ahead of any other. Each plane had two missiles hanging from each wing.

Neumann led his men to follow after the planes had swept by. They fell into formation with little fuss, which allowed him to turn his attention to the eighty-first mage in their flight group. Birgit Johansson, American aerial mage and, officially, a neutral observer of the fight to come.

She wouldn't be firing a shot in the coming battle, just taking a recording with her flight orb that she'd be allowed to share with the Americans. This had been arranged in exchange for some kind of political concession. At least, he thought so. The letter he'd received notifying him of the arrangement had not only been signed by the chancellor herself, her signature had been accompanied by a little doodle of the chancellor winking at him and giving a thumbs up.

It was a little scary how much the woman's mood had improved since the war started.

Neumann shook off the thought. "Make sure you're recording. You don't want to miss this."

"Oh?" Birgit asked, smiling. "What should I watch for?"

"The end of an era," Neumann said, before returning his attention to the air ahead. The Germanian airplanes had put about half a kilometer between themselves and his mages, and they were still about five kilometers from the Francois Republic's forces. He took a moment to assess the battlefield.

Now that they were closer, he could pick out more details. The lead element of the enemy forces was made up of four battalions of Frankish mages. Above and behind them was a great mass of colonial mages, sprinkled here and there with the white faces of Frankish officers. Both groups were maintaining their altitude right around 3,000 meters, just as Neumann was. The Frankish airplanes were streaming overhead at six thousand meters, a mix of fighters and bombers that stretched backwards as far as he could see.

No doubt they wanted to sweep the Germanians from the skies and get to work dismantling the fortifications below. The airplanes were set on a direct course against the higher flying group of Germanian planes. The mage force, though, would have to get through the lower group of Germanian airplanes before they could come to grips with Neumann's forces.

Traditionally, the key for a mage facing off against a fighter plane was patience. Your average mage could put a lethal explosive spell on an airplane from about seven hundred meters. Maybe eight hundred, if they were charging at each other head on. Meanwhile, the plane's guns couldn't seriously threaten a mage until they got inside five hundred meters, at least. So the key from the mage's point of view was to maintain a stable firing platform, put together a solid explosive spell, and then hold your fire until the airplane entered killing range.

Well, that, and to make sure everybody didn't all pick out the same target. No doubt the Francois were scrambling to assign a relatively even number of mages to fire at each of the oncoming planes.

Usually airplanes would look to make use of their altitude advantage, either forcing mages to climb to them or swooping in to attack in a steep dive. It was harder to hit an enemy coming in from above, and the speed from the dive helped the planes to get away after they took their shot.

The one group in the air that was breaking from established doctrine were the Germanian fighters that kept to a straight and level course straight at the enemy mages. Given their numerical disadvantage, it would usually be suicide. If any of the Frankish mages were put off by the strange behavior, it didn't show in their response. They stayed in their tight formations and held their fire, waiting for the right moment to strike.

The traditional calculation, of course, didn't account for Germania's air to air missile program. Neumann had seen a demonstration and received a rather chilling technical briefing. The new missile could be fired from two, even three kilometers away and still present a lethal threat to its target.

It wasn't a perfect mage killer. Between illusions and an aerial mage's range of motion, a mage who knew what he was up against could make it very hard for a pilot to put a missile on target. A mage with no idea what was coming, though... well, Neumann was just glad that he was on the right side of the upcoming barrage.

The Germanian fighters held their fire as they closed within three kilometers. There was no action as they swept inside two and a half klicks. The order must have been to fire at two kilometers, as the first volley of missiles flew out as they reached that distance. One hundred missiles, streaking towards the oncoming mages. Then another hundred, and another, and another.

Some of the Frankish mages started trying to dodge, but it was far too late. The first round of missiles obscured their formation in a hail of shrapnel and a shroud of smoke. They were still flying forward though, breaking back into sight just in time for the next volley of missiles to strike home. It was like watching a macabre stop motion photograph play out on an enormous canvas.

Up above, the fighters had loosed their missiles on the Frankish aircraft, but Neumann's focus was on the magical fight. A great number of mages had just been blasted from the sky, and the remainder had lost most of their sense of organization. Individual mages were engaged in their own evasive maneuvers, and many had simply stopped advancing or even started to run as the missiles struck home.

"Triangle formation, one, two three," Neumann ordered, "hit that group high on our right."

With that, company one would take point, while two and three would guard their flanks. The first order of business was to take out anyone trying to get the enemy organized. They were still outnumbered, after all, even after the devastating opening strike. In order to secure victory and, more importantly, keep himself safe, they needed to keep the enemy scattered and pursue defeat in detail.

The low block of Germanian airplanes, their work done for the moment, dropped their missile launchers broke off to the sides. They'd circle back and join the scrum once they had a chance to gain altitude. Neumann's battalion, like a dog let off the leash, accelerated forward. A few heartbeats later, the other Germanian mage battalion followed suit, heading for the most organized group of enemies on the left.

Neumann, for his part, slowed down along with the rest of his command platoon. They'd keep their distance and supervise the battle. If there was one thing that made his second stint in the military bearable, it was the invention of the command platoon. He couldn't imagine what he would have done if he had to keep everybody organized while he was himself under fire.

"What was that?" Birgit asked, as they floated motionless.

"I told you, the future," Neumann said. Without taking his eyes off the action, he waved down the protest he knew was coming. "I'm sure Weiss has a brochure for you. I'll just say, those guys in research and development are crazy bastards, but I'm glad they're on our side."

Encouraging note from the Chancellor or not, Neumann wasn't about to start handing out classified information in the middle of a battlefield. Most of the information was pretty much out of the bag, now that she had a recording of the missiles in action, but he'd leave it for somebody else to decide exactly which details should be shared with the Americans.

"Major!"

Neumann turned to look over at Lieutenant Meyer, one of the kids that he'd tabbed for the command track. He then followed where he was pointing to see a Germanian fighter plane diving down from above, a Francois fighter on its tail. The Germanian had dropped his missiles and was pushing his plane hard, but the enemy chasing him was getting dangerously close.

"I'm on it," Neumann said.

He brought his rifle to his shoulder and took aim. The Germanian plane was just diving down past them, about a kilometer away. The chancellor would have snapped off a piercing shot from the hip and taken the enemy pilot out with a bullet through the head, but he knew his limitations.

He prepared an explosive spell. The Germanian plane continued on its way. Just a heartbeat before the pursuer was in his sights, he pulled the trigger.

He'd muffed it pretty badly. The bullet hit the enemy plane in its tail, rather than the engine. Fortunately, he'd put enough into the spell that the ensuing explosion broke off the back third of the plane, sending it spiraling into a terminal dive.

Neumann lowered his rifle and sighed. Either he was getting older or the planes were getting faster. Maybe both.

He turned to reassess the state of the fight. The enemy mages had been thoroughly scattered. The hammer blow from the missiles and the pressure from clearly superior Germanian mages had dissolved their organization and forced every man into an individual fight for survival. The ongoing dogfight up above, meanwhile, was starting to drift lower as time went on. He activated his communication spell.

"Companies two and three, you're free to pursue by platoon," Neumann ordered. "Company one, you're up here with me to look out for lost airplanes. Let's clean things up."

He didn't want to turn the kids completely loose to chase after the enemy as individuals. It was their first real fight, after all. As long as they stuck together in groups of four, though, they shouldn't have any trouble.

The neat triangle of thirty six mages broke up, twelve of them flying back to join him while the other twenty four broke into their six individual platoons to chase down the remnant of the Frankish mage force. Neumann waited until the first company reached him before giving his next instructions.

"Spread out a bit, and look for any of our planes that are in trouble," Neumann said. "Remember, let your target come to you. Wait until they're in range before you fire."

The advice was still good for their side of the fight. Eventually, the enemy would have their own missiles and somebody would have to come up with a better plan. He intended to secure a safe job down on the ground long before that day came to pass, though.

ooOoo

General Hénault sat in his command center, a tent nestled in the edge of the Eifel forest, and did not drum his fingers on the table. Nor did he tap his foot. He instead maintained a confident posture as he gazed serenely at the bank of monitors and transmitting equipment his staff used to keep him apprised of the progress of the battle. When he finally found himself unable to remain still, he drew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it before taking a calming drag.

The war could be decided in a matter of moments. He had ordered a general assault. Army, mages, and airplanes, all working together. After a brief artillery barrage to soften up the enemy positions, the army had pushed forward as a whole. Only the center would be making a real effort to breach the enemy's defenses. They had been given two thirds of the tanks and would have a whole aerial mage corps clearing the way for them. The remaining armor had been divided between the wings, who would focus on screening the advance and helping to exploit the breakthrough made by the center.

The units in the air would also be focusing their efforts for best effect. With eight hundred mages against eighty, all contesting a small area, the Germanian magical advantage would be nullified. And that was before factoring the mass of planes that would be helping fight for control of the air and dropping bombs on the Germanian defenses.

It was an overwhelming concentration of force, the type to shatter any who tried to stand in its way.

And yet.

And yet, as he kept an eye on the display tracking the magical battle, the only change over time was the melting away of his own men. The red dots representing Germanian mages moved with dizzying speed, but never seemed to vanish.

And yet, he received no reports of any breakthroughs at the point of attack.

Hénault took another pull of his cigarette. He still had reserves that he could commit to the fight. It would be a tragedy to fail to act when he ought to act. Unfortunately, it would be equally tragic to act before he ought.

"General," a radio operator said, turning away from his machine to give his report, "the aerial observer near Koblenz has failed to report in."

He had ordered that planes were to be in the air at all times, watching for movements towards the Eifel forest or towards Kaiserslauten. It was a vital task to provide an early warning of any possible attack on their supply line. Unfortunately, the natural arrogance of his fighter pilots had seen all too many of them take on the self-appointed mission of testing the Germanian air defenses over the Rhine. It seldom ended well.

"Direct another observer into the area," Hénault said, before finally giving in to temptation. "What news of our own aerial battle?"

That prompted a reaction from the man in front of the magical detector. He was also responsible for handling communication with the forces of the air. As soon as he turned and their eyes met, Hénault knew he wouldn't be reporting good news.

"It's... it's bad, sir," he said. "The enemy used a new weapon to start the battle. Most of the colonials have fled. What we have left won't stand up to the enemy mages for long."

Hénault nodded, then took a drag off his cigarette. As he was going to ask for more information, he was interrupted by the man in charge of communicating with the ground troops.

"Sir!" he called out. "The Germanians are attacking our left flank!"

"Well, now," Hénault said, relaxing at the prospect of open battle, "let's see how they fight without the benefit of a prepared position."

The answer, it turned out, was that they fought pretty damn well. It wasn't a surprise, of course, that the Germanians knew how to fight. What was a surprise was the sheer volume of fire that was described in report after report, not to mention the amount of enemy armor that was participating in the attack. Unless the intelligence reports had been badly wrong about the Germanian armored fleet, they had put almost everything they had into the attack. It was an unusually bold move for them.

Initially, he had harbored some hope that the attack might peter out, possibly creating a chance for his left flank to counterattack and break through. That soon proved to be wishful thinking, as every move to update the map in front of him depicting the battle had his own forces bending back while the Germanians kept moving forward. His army, which had initially been laid out in a straight line, gradually came to resemble a right angle, bending backwards from the point of the Germanian attack.

The strangest thing was that the Germanians continued pushing on their initial line of advance. They seemed to be making no effort to bend around and attack his center from behind. Indeed, some of his troops even reported that they saw Germanian infantry digging trenches, more interested in shoring up the defense of their newly gained territory than pushing home the attack.

Most peculiar. Putting so many forces into the attack should have weakened their defenses in the center. He didn't understand how they could do such a thing without any effort to pivot and take pressure off of their defenders.

Hénault stood, stepping forward to the radio operator and asking to be put through to General Poulin, the man in charge of the central assault. "General, your progress?"

"Slow," came the reply. "We could use some reinforcement to speed things along."

Hénault thought for a moment. For a proud man like Poulin to ask for reinforcements outright, the attack must have nearly ground to a halt. He could send in the reserves, but it would be dangerous to overcommit while the Germanians were menacing their flank so effectively. He could also send forward only his magical reserves in an armored car. Asking them to clear out the fortifications while the Germanians controlled the sky would mean almost certain death, but creating a breakthrough right now might be worth it.

After a moment's thought, he shook his head. It was still too soon.

"Keep pressing forward with what you have, general."

"Yes, sir."

At least Poulin still sounded confident that he would succeed, eventually. As long as they could break through to the Rhine industrial area, it wouldn't matter if the fighting had taken longer than he would have liked.

Hénault sat back down. The battle was still in the balance, but for now it was up to the men on the ground to show their valor and decide the course of history.

An hour passed. The battle was no closer to being decided. His center was fighting hard for every step forward. Men, artillery, and tanks were able to make progress, but without mages to clear the way it was agonizingly slow. Meanwhile, the Germanian push on their left had extended to the fringes of the Eifel forest itself. Hénault had shifted his men back to ward off any attempt to turn their line, and sent skirmishers to guard against infiltrators who might try to use the forest to their advantage. Both had reported the same thing: the Germanians were content to dig in and exchange desultory long range fire, showing no interest in pressing their attack.

It seemed the enemy, just like him, was waiting for a sign. Waiting for something to disrupt the equilibrium.

Disaster came in the form of a frantic radio operator.

"General! Kaiserslautern is under heavy assault!"

Hénault sprang to his feet. He looked at the map. It made no sense for the Germanians to attack Kaiserslautern while they faced utter defeat in the north, unless-

"General! Forces out of Koblenz are hitting our screening forces. They aren't sure how long they can hold on, sir!"

Hénault nodded, finding a calm settling over him as it finally clicked into place. The missing aerial observers. The Germanian efforts to fortify their newly gained positions. They weren't interested in a flanking assault. They wanted to build a pocket.

For a moment, he felt the wild urge to commit the reserves to the center and order an all out assault. If they could break through, if the men behind them could hold on, the battle could still be salvaged. Not to mention his reputation.

It was an irresponsible thought, and he tamped it down as his reason reasserted itself. Without a secure supply line, breaching the enemy defenses was meaningless. The might of his armored units would let them run wild, but only until they ran out of fuel. Any damage they could do would be a pittance compared to the loss of an entire army.

They had stepped into a trap. Now, the question was whether they could extricate themselves without suffering too much damage.

"Send General Poulin the order to retreat," he ordered. "The right wing is to support him and retreat along with him. Once he's disengaged from the enemy, our reserves are to engage the Germanian flanking forces on our left to give the left wing time to withdraw."

For a moment, the staff around him was frozen in shock. Hénault gave them a sharp look. "Gentlemen! We will not win the war today for the Francois Republic. If we act quickly, though, we will not lose it, either."

That prompted a round of salutes and a bustle of activity as the great machinery of the army began to adjust itself to move in reverse. The fighting men under his command would hate the idea of retreat, when they had put so much effort into breaking through, but they were good soldiers. They could be trusted to carry out a retreat without turning into a rout, as long as Hénault could provide even half-decent leadership.

He studied the map with an internal grimace. They'd have to cover over a hundred kilometers of bad road through rough terrain just to reach the Moselle. Assuming the rest of the army could hold the bridges over the Moselle. What a mess. If they could make it, preserve the army and their toehold in Germania, the Francois Republic would still hold an advantage in the war. If they couldn't, well... they'd better make it.

His only consolation was that their pursuers would be forced to cover the same lousy terrain. It would also be his turn to seed the forest with traps and ambushes to slow down the foe. Although that might not do much, depending on the balance of magical forces.

"General," the report came, and if he were a superstitious man Hénault would have cursed the direction of his thoughts, "the enemy mages have formed up and are moving towards our location. At least two battalions."

"Send the reserve mages to engage them," he ordered. A battalion of mages with another battalion of colonials in support should at least buy some time. "Pack up the headquarters for immediate evacuation."

General Hénault didn't stand on ceremony, grabbing a map before leaving the tent at a brisk walk. It was the work of a moment to find a command car with a decent radio and direct the driver to leave immediately. Under the cover of the forest and free of any magical emissions, he should be able to slip away and continue to coordinate the retreat.

He held onto that thought for about half a kilometer before a shot from above took out the car's engine. Hénault sighed, then stepped out of the car. As a team of mages descended from on high to take him into custody, he took some solace in the fact that his army was, after all, made up of well trained, well equipped, and valiant soldiers. They should be able to drag themselves out of the trap without the help of the man who had led them into it.

ooOoo

March 21, 1941

I took a moment to look at the map that General Lergen had prepared. It didn't take a military genius to understand that having all the units in the enemy color surrounded by units in our color was probably good news.

"It worked, then?" I asked, stating the obvious to get the meeting moving. With the attendees being Elya and Visha as well as myself and General Lergen, nobody needed their hand held.

He nodded. "We're still tracking down enemy units that have gone to ground in the Eifel, but the vast majority of the northern invading army has been captured or destroyed."

"And the rest?" I asked, drawing my finger from Kaiserslautern down to Saarbrücken.

"Retreated in good order back to the Francois Republic," he said. "We can expect them to be manning their own fortified positions."

"I suppose it was too much to hope that they'd send all of their soldiers on doomed attacks," I said with a sigh.

"They only took that sort of risk because they thought they could win the war quickly," Lergen said, nodding. "They'll be more cautious, now. We're on the front foot, though. Their defenses will stiffen up as they finish mobilizing, but our forces will be growing in strength as well."

"We're winning, then?" I asked.

He nodded again. "I expect that within six to twelve months the Francois Republic will be unable to conduct combat operations on this continent."

Ordinarily, that would be enough to make a country surrender. Considering what had happened in the last war, though, I could understand why General Lergen had chosen such cautious phrasing.

Knocking a major power like the Francois Republic out of the war in six months or a year would be a major achievement. Unfortunately, it might not be good enough to let us win the war as a whole. Proud as the Pules might be of their eastern defenses, keeping the commies at bay for a whole year was a tall order. We'd undoubtedly have to shift units east to help them out, which would let the Francois Republic make a comeback, which would leave us with too many fronts to cover and not enough troops, if the last war was any guide.

Visha voiced another concern. "In six months, their blockade could really pinch our supplies."

"How is that going?" I asked.

I'd been aware that we were going to face a blockade, but most of my focus had been on the land war. And trying to woo the Legadonians. Much as they hemmed and hawed over whether Carinthia's actions made this an offensive rather than defensive war, I had the feeling that what they really wanted was to get a sense of how we were holding up before they committed. I was hoping that General Lergen's success in beating off the first invasion attempt would get them off the fence.

"It didn't really settle in place until the last couple days," Visha said, "but any drop of oil that we lose will hurt the war effort."

I nodded with a grimace. Trying to run the whole OZEV war machine off the Dacian oil fields would be a nightmare. We might be able to reconfigure our shipping to work around the blockade, but it would be impossible to maintain the same volume.

"It's basically here," she continued, drawing a line with her finger from the border between the Republic and Lothiern to the western edge of Legadonia, "to here. They're relying heavily on aerial surveillance, then sending fast ships out to intercept and redirect freight traffic."

That was troubling. Such courteous behavior made it less likely that they would offend the Unified States or Allied Kingdom. Also, such brazen conduct on the open seas made our navy look pathetic. That was the last thing that I needed when I was trying to look strong in front of Legadonia.

"Can the navy do anything about this?" I asked General Lergen. I knew that I hadn't given the navy the kind of funding that they wanted, but in absolute terms we had still spent a lot of money on them. They ought to at least be able to give the Francois Republic a bloody nose.

"The navy has planned to disrupt the blockade," he replied, "but the weather conditions haven't been right."

The weather conditions we needed to take on the whole Frankish navy was for a whirlpool to spring up out of nowhere and suck the enemy fleet to the bottom. Failing that, I was surprised my admirals were so picky about the weather conditions when it came to sniping at a destroyer or two. Well, I shouldn't micromanage.

"As long as something's planned," I said, tapping on the map along the line Visha had drawn. "This is just embarrassing."

He nodded, and I turned my attention back to the terrestrial section of the map. To win in six to twelve months should have felt satisfying, but I couldn't shake the gut feeling that it was too slow. Unfortunately, I knew that trying to dig into the details of a plan devised by General Lergen in search of inefficiencies was a fool's errand.

It really was too bad that the Francois Republic wouldn't just obediently send out the rest of its armies on the attack to be destroyed. If the whole thing could be decided in the open field, I was confident that we could win the war in six weeks, never mind six months. Unfortunately, we weren't up against morons.

"If only we could tempt them into an attack," I murmured, tapping on the border.

They had taken a chance with their initial invasion because the prize was worth it. Taking hold of the Rhine industrial area would have essentially won the war. Now that their first army had been cut down, it was all too obvious that the Rhine industrial area was out of their reach. There was no other convenient patch of Germanian land that offered the same incredible value, which meant that our enemy would refuse to take any incredible risks.

Sadly, there was no way to shift the Rhine industrial area closer to the border. Assuming that we could arrange such a situation without making the trap blatantly obvious, the cold calculus of war would push the Francois Republic towards trying their luck. If only we could dangle a juicy enough prize in front of them to make them charge out of their defensive line.

Of course, you'd have to be some kind of crazy commie to just pick up a factory and move it according to the needs of the state. Those factories had been built where they were for a reason. If you shifted them around willy-nilly, they'd lose the value that had made them such a great target to begin with.

No, we needed something else. We needed to find something that would make the Francois toss reason to the side and charge. Some kind of mobile lure.

Slowly, the finger I was tapping on the map began to slow, then go still. Damn it, was Being X sticking his nose in again, or was the twisted psyche of the Francois the result of their own environment and trauma? In the end, it didn't really matter, but I tried to be fair when I tallied up the sins I laid at the feet of Being X. Unlike him, I was a creature of reason.

I sighed. "At least I won't have to order a custom sized uniform this time."

Looking for the one person that the Francois Republic would want to capture above all else, throwing aside their sense of self-preservation... the answer was all too obvious.

ooOoo

AN2: Koenig picked up Tanya's bloodlust, Weiss her sense of responsibility, and Neumann her desire for a cushy job.