AN:
Credits to Gremlin Jack and perfect_shade for helping me with revising the chapter.
A map of North and South Bharat is located in the [ "The Cold War" (Youjo Senki/Saga of Tanya the Evil) ] SpaceBattles thread as FF won't allow direct image links.
1943, March 10th, Berun:
The commies had been in a hurry over the past few months and dropped their pretense of secrecy. It seems that they weren't quite ready to attack as I had feared back in January. Unfortunately the Allied Kingdom kept procrastinating and only put up a token force in South Bharat, and the Unified States was content to sit on the sideline to "monitor the situation". At least we got the Abish navy's attention with our two carriers in Bharati Ocean.
I flipped to the next page of the newspaper. I wasn't expecting Miss Caldwell to have a front row seat of Gandhi's death and have photos of what will kick off the Bharati War. Now they're covering the first two to four pages of various newspapers.
North Bharat is demanding South Bharat to hand over the "murderer" as the deserter had knifed three border guards to make their way to the border fence without being detected, and then two border guards were killed and two others wounded in the following shootout. They blamed the deserter for being responsible for Gandhi's death. They also demanded that South Bharat turn over the border guards that helped Miss Caldwell "evade justice" because she violated their strict journalism censorship laws.
South Bharat demanded that North Bharat hand over their border guards for investigation into the death of Gandhi, and claimed that North Bharat's hostility towards journalists was why Miss Caldwell feared for her life.
Elya reported that both sides have been moving forces toward the border areas in response to each others' escalation of force, and their border patrol activities have dramatically increased. The only public statement from the CSR was an urge to both sides to come to a peaceful agreement, which is probably some sort of a half-hearted attempt at claiming neutrality.
The commies have the perfect excuse to kick off the war. I could tell Mr. Lloyd was very concerned when I met him earlier today. At least the Francios Republic is now committed and is pulling up any forces they could spare to send them to Bharat, which still isn't a lot ever since they had to downsize and restructure their military. Instead of the peace treaty dictating their new military structure, it was their still recovering economy that forced them to change things.
What if I go down there myself to meditate for the dispute as a neutral third party? It might buy time for the Allied Kingdom and Francios Republic to start reallocating forces to South Bharat. Time to bother Mr. Lloyd again to get the two sides to at least agree to talk to each other beyond just issuing fiery statements.
1943, May 17th:
I had laid out a contingency plan where if the war goes really bad for South Bharat, the Diet would vote on a bill that would allow volunteers throughout OZEV to support South Bharat with Germania footing the bill. That was in order to get around the problem with the rest of OZEV being focused on the new republics' security, which I didn't mind because there's no way of knowing if Bharat is just a decoy from something bigger on the Rus front. Unfortunately the Diet was hesitant in fully committing Germania to a far away war so we would have to make do with a limited expeditionary force. The Akitsushima Dominion said they could send over their navy and a small number of volunteers as well. The bill would also include funding for humanitarian aid. I wasn't going to make the bill public in case the two Bharats come to a peace agreement, but It's nice to know that the details would already be hammered out to reduce the delay of voting for the bill.
And regarding the Unified States, they saw no need to get involved with the war. I did learn that Neumann was actually attached to one of the carrier task forces. I asked their ambassador to send over Birgit Johansson as a neutral observer. I was told that she would be coming over within a week.
General Lergen and I agreed that if there was one general that could handle expeditionary warfare, limited logistics, a superior enemy, an area where very few locals knew our language, unfamiliar terrain where our usual military doctrines might not be applicable, and a very independent command, it would be General Von Romel. After all, a good HR manager puts people into positions where they will excel at. I detest the idiots that set up good employees to fail and then act surprised when they get the predictable results. On the plus side for Romel, this time the Allied Kingdom wasn't going to choke his supply lines.
Despite Visha's incessant pleading, I got on a flight to South Bharat with a few staff members, after North and South Bharat had agreed to peace talks. Besides, Zettour, still the Foriegn Minister of Germania, needed a minor surgery in Berun so I wasn't willing to send him across the world into a dicey situation when he should be resting. I figured my presence could help convince both sides to have cooler heads. Mr. Lloyd had passed the word along to his colleague Allen Shone at Albion's embassy in South Bharat to make preparations for my diplomatic team. I also packed a flight suit, my rifle and some ammunition, just in case if Being X decides to try something funny.
We made a stop in Aegyptus for a meal and refueling before continuing the journey. I didn't want to deal with public attention so I put on a disguise. My practice with disguises is paying off as no one would ever suspect it is me, and combined with stealth casting, not even standard magic detectors would be able to pick up on the deception. I remember seeing Neumann's face when he saw my disguise back when I wanted to visit the market to gauge the public's mood. There was someone that came up to us to ask if they could get an autograph from the Chancellor, but we told him that she's not with us.
One of the staff members said the negotiations should be short if the two countries intend on going to war. If that's the case, I'll be returning to Berun fairly soon.
Allen Shone and the Abish embassy staff were there to meet us. We exchanged some pleasantries and got into the embassy's car, with Allen Shone and me sharing the same vehicle.
"I saw the photos from Miss Caldwell in the newspapers. What's the sentiment in North and South Bharats?"
He pinched his nose for a second. "North Bharat initially backed off on some border skirmishes to de-escalate them, but they have become increasingly emboldened, probably because they have a better understanding of South Bharat's state of their military. In South Bharat, even before Gandhi's death there has been significant infighting between political factions, with some insisting on maintaining the status quo and others arguing that both Bharats should be reunited under South Bharat's rule. There has also been a sizable minority faction that some would consider as pro-communist. After Gandhi's death, the political chaos only worsened, and that was quite evident with their foriegn ministry lacking any direction from the rest of their government. The prime minister seems to have minimal control over his own cabinet and has trouble making any solid state policies."
Lacking any directions from their government. Reminds me of Mr. Lloyd's non-answers when Francois Republic was delivering shit sandwiches to my doorstep.
"What about the public sentiment in both countries, and how did it change?"
"In North Bharat, hard to say. Probably because the NKVD had taught their government on censorship, propaganda and dissident crackdowns. In South Bharat, there was generally a public indifference. After Gandhi's death, fear and anger is the best way I can describe it."
"You mentioned about the state of South Bharat's military? What emboldened North Bharat exactly?"
"Not only was there the lack of government direction, but that also affected budget decision making. According to the advisors that have been working with South Bharat's military, their military command has trouble making any decisions more than a few weeks in the future due the funding uncertainty and the government constantly redefining its strategic goals. Which is leading to deficiencies in every part of the military that you can think of, including high desertion rates due to complaints about pay and food problems. Or maybe due to rampant corruption because of how easy it would be to blame missing equipment on the budget chaos."
That's really bad. Even Germania immediately after the Empire's breakup still had competent leadership, and the Francois Republic just walked right in to try to collect their debts.
"I'm assuming our goal for the peace talks is to at least buy South Bharat a few years for them to try to stabilize?"
"Which would only be possible if North Bharat gets something valuable in return. South Bharat's nationalists would sink any peace deals that would make their country look weak and they have been insisting that they have the upper hand in the negotiations."
"And that bluff would have worked had North Bharat not been constantly testing South Bharat's military forces with the border skirmishes. If the peace talks fail and North Bharat does invade, how do you think South Bharat would hold up?"
Shone shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "South Bharat is simply not ready for war, but their prime minister has no intentions of making any concessions as he is afraid of losing the upcoming elections."
"It doesn't matter if they win the elections when most or all of the country is under the communist boot."
"He's willing to gamble that other countries will bail them out before they're overrun."
"He must be naive about the Allied Kingdom's and Francois Republic's situations, and the Unified States not having an interest in the fight."
"Or backed into a corner by his own cabinet and the parliament."
"I've also been hearing about the Allied Kingdom's other colonies having their problems. I'm assuming those problems have been keeping the Allied Kingdom's military preoccupied?"
Allen Shone looked away and sighed. He then spoke up several seconds later. "You're not recording this conversation are you?"
"Of course not."
"This remains between us. I don't see an easy end to the colonies' unrest, but Londinium will not let go of their colonies without a fight. Nor will they significantly expand the military because they are afraid of the potential backlash from having the country go into a wartime economy again. Previously they had no problems justifying it because the first war was to save Europe from the Empire's dominance and the second war was to save Europe from Russy Federation's dominance. A wartime economy to dominate the oversea natives might not go over as well.
If only Mr. Lloyd was this open in our previous interactions, it would have made everything so much more simpler. I'll need to remember to have a gift sent to Mr. Shone for actually getting straight to the point instead of feeding me more non-answers and empty promises.
"So what should we do to stabilize South Bharat in the event of an invasion? We already have both of our navies in the waters adjacent to Bharat. Can your carrier planes bomb supply lines? Target bridges and such to slow the combat either way and stall for time in the worst case? A map that shows strategic areas would also be useful, including for mages."
"I'm afraid they might need a large amount of foreign intervention to buy time for their military to reorganize. Hopefully an invasion would force South Bharat's government to unite under a common goal of survival and actually get things done. And speaking of waters, I've been told by our navy that North Bharat has started putting sea mines in the ocean, just far enough to prevent battleships from shelling their coastline. At least they have the courtesy of using warning buoys to warn where the minefields are located and keep their ports open for now."
Sometime after this war, I'll need to work on an international update on the territorial waters definition. The currently commonly accepted standard was three nautical miles from the coastline. In fact, that's going to be a major problem when offshore oil and gas drilling becomes common. There were still many fights over territorial water definitions in my previous world, such as China and their neighbors.
"If they're mining their own waters, then that means they're almost ready for war and want to deter any naval invasions against them while they're invading South Bharat. I can ask the Diet for Germania to ship their obsolete weapons and equipment to South Bharat should war break out, and OZEV to also ship their obsolete inventory. Once we meet with South Bharat's government, I want to determine how to help get their military back in shape because even the best equipment will be useless in the hands of poorly trained and motivated men. What about the Allied Kingdom?"
"I'll make arrangements to ask Londinium to match the contribution. I'm sure we have some old inventory to spare to keep the communists at bay. But I don't think they will consider expanding the military until the communist threat to South Bharat becomes very clear."
Shortly after we arrived at the embassy, someone ran up to us.
"There are major battles raging across the border area! We don't know who was the first one to fire the shot or cross the border. The diplomatic groups from both Bharats accused each other of starting the war and have walked out."
Curse you Being X!
"Well that was a waste of our time." I muttered while Allen Shone facepalmed.
I turned to the staff member who had made the comment about negotiation expectations. "You were right, the negotiations were indeed short."
He responded, "Actually Chancellor, the negotiations weren't short, because there were none to begin w- OOF."
Another staff member had stomped on his foot.
I chucked a bit. "Technically correct is the best kind of correct."
1943, May 20th, at the outskirts of Bombay:
I always suspected that South Bharat's military was unprepared and that their government was wildly optimistic of their situation. I thought I would never see another country pull a Dacia, but in about a week, the frontline has already shifted right to the doorstep of the capital and their army is a complete mess from the constant routing. And that's with North Bharat's mages still using large quantities of pre-WW1 equipment. Even the Legadonia put up a much better fight against the Empire than this self-inflicted disaster. Sure we blockaded North Bharat and operated with air superiority in the high altitude, but that didn't seem to faze the commies. In fact they started to lay down naval mines around their coastal areas, and I recommended to my navy to intensify their mine clearing exercises in response. I've done all I could with international politics from here, so it was either I fly back to Berun, or inspire South Bharat to not capitulate and let the commies take over the entire subcontinent.
Turning tail to Berun right after arriving in Bharat would be a cowardly move. I want to retire, but not to be known for running away when things get tough. I know I made that promise to Visha, but in my defense, had North and South Bharat started shooting BEFORE I arrived, or at least waited until after I left, I wouldn't be dragged into defending their capital while my staff and the Albish embassy evacuate.
I didn't want to destroy North Bharat though. It's clear to me that they're just disposable puppets to be used by the NKVD, who are probably thinking of themselves as the rebel alliance in that Star Wars movie, and the CSR, who wants to spread their love to all of their neighbors. So much wasted economic potential in this pointless war that could have been settled with some pen and paper. Now the only thing I can do is to force North Bharat to come to the negotiating table, which would probably only happen after their rapid advance is reversed and they lose large portions of their military. If they repeat Francois Republic's La Resistance and retreat into the mountains and jungles to drag out the war, I'm going to stop being reasonable.
Elya reported that there was no significant shift in the activities along the Russy border or in the new republics, other than the CSR-backed factions besieging Moskva. Visha said the Diet had approved the volunteer funding, humanitarian aid shipments and arms shipment, and that the Akitsushima Dominion was sending over their navy with a small force. I'm hoping we can delay North Bharat for a bit of time, at least to give the demoralized South Bharatian army some morale boost and time to organize. It's a good thing I packed my flight suit and some ammunition before flying down here.
I had a feeling that I'm going to be down here for a while, so I made arrangements for a secure courier service and a team for encoding and decoding messages with the maximum possible security so I can still do some administrative work instead of offloading them all onto Visha. There would have been less admin work if the Diet had gotten around to electing a President, but according to Visha, now they're arguing that because Germania is in a conflict with North Bharat, the Enabling Act still remains in effect. Lazy idiots.
I was told that it would take over an hour to decode and encode each letter, but I told them to deal with it. If Albion wants to try to read my messages sent over their cables, I want them to invest so much into their decryption that even if they do read the messages, they won't get their return on investment. I also put out instructions for the most classified material to only be sent via Elya's handpicked courier team.
During my flights over South Bharat, I noticed their relatively few road and rail infrastructure. The Albish really optimized their former colony for wealth extraction, and not much else. But they did have plenty of rivers, which means there are many opportunities for riverine combat and river amphibious landing operations. And controlling the rivers would certainly help with the logistics, especially with the upcoming monsoon season that would turn unpaved roads into mud fields. Romel said my notes just confirmed what he had suspected as he had his own mages and aircraft to conduct reconnaissance, and he had read an Ablish travel guide map for a pre-independent Bharat. He requested a time sensitive order for large boats with low draft, sufficient armoring against small arms fire, and 20mm anti-air cannons to deal with enemy mages. And also an order for inflatable rafts and high speed motor boats. I had a telegram sent to Visha to help General Lergen expedite the orders.
Anyways, enough delay, time to meet up with Major Neumann.
And of course a group of mages are in my way.
Then one of them sped away from the area at 563 kilometers per hour, which is the Type 97 orb's top speed if one didn't want to remove the limiters. It's probably one of those NKVD mages.
That was when I heard a North Bharatian mage use an unencrypted voice spell in broken Albish.
"Why you run?"
encrypted static
"It is one mage. We outnumber it."
encrypted static
"What's a Rhine?"
I almost felt sorry for them.
Major Neumann was nervous about this battle. He had a single battalion of Germania mages with the 11th and 23rd battalions of South Bharatian mages, both of which were down to about half strength. His forces had recently dealt with probing attacks from the North Bharatian mages, and now they brought up their main force. Up against him were approximately six battalions of North Bharatian mages, and an NKVD mage platoon and a CSR mage company among them that appeared to be acting as commanders.
The North Bharat's mages weren't as good as compared to the Francois Republic's mages and had 1910's to 1930's era equipments such as old single-core orbs and bolt action rifles, but they were certainly better than the colonial cannon fodder mages that the Franks had scraped together in the previous war. He knew while most of them had very basic mathematical skills, they still had possibly months of training to get them up to speed to have proficient basic mage combat skills. A large number of "good enough" mages was still a force to be reckoned with, especially with the NKVD or CSR mages helping to "maintain discipline". South Bharat's mages took a mauling in the first few days of the war. And every once in a while, they would run into a decent North Bharat mage that was equipped with the Type 97 Orb and a shorter Russy semiautomatic rifle. The CSR mages were also equipped with equally old equipment, but had notably better training, especially in melee combat. He had watched one of the CSR mages break their rifle in half from caving in a South Bharatian mage's head, then stabbed two other South Bharatian mages with the broken ends of the rifle pieces, stabbed another one with his bayonet and then pulled out their sword to take on one of his Germania mages in melee. That CSR mage was only defeated when the Germania mage used their speed advantage to flee from the CSR mage, allowing other mages to gun down the melee berserker.
Meanwhile South Bharat simply did not have the same caliber or size of mage training, or the equipment quality and quantity thanks to its overall lack of military preparations, which meant Germania's and Allied Kingdom's mages and aircraft had to carry the brunt of the aerial combat. He learned fairly quickly that the South Bharat's mages were best used for massed volleys against enemy mages as they had very little close quarter battle training.
And once again the Chancellor was here to kill some communists. And of course she had also specifically invited Birgit as a neutral observer.
"Sorry I'm late. Some mages got in my way. One of them got away, but he shouldn't make it far with a missing limb." as Tanya flew in.
Neumann sighed, already knowing what happened to the poor fools.
Then he noticed a drastic increase in the voice spells being used by the communist forces. It seemed that an argument broke out. Two of the North Bharatian mage battalions retreated with the NKVD mage platoon, while the CSR mages charged forward at the Chancellor using their maximum speed with the other four mage battalions trailing behind them.
Neumann looked at Birgit, "If you haven't already started recording, you should."
And then the first three CSR mages came tumbling out of the sky at 1.5 kilometers range from the Chancellor's 3 rounds bursts with her LmG-40 aerial mage assault rifle. Coincidentally the downed mages had the short Russy semi-automatic rifles compared to some of the other CSR mages' bolt action rifles. The remaining nine returned fire while avoiding additional fire from the Chancellor, but struggled to land any hits against the rapidly advancing and evasive Chancellor who was throwing out decoys as well.
While most of them were reloading their bolt action rifles after exhausting their rifles' five bullets capacity, the Chancellor used that opportunity to down the remaining CSR mages that were equipped with semi-automatic rifles with her freshly reloaded assault rifle. Some of the North Bharatian mages paused upon seeing their commanding company being outmatched by a single mage, but the rest kept pushing on.
A dozen Germanian fighters dove down for their rocket runs against the massed mages, but the mages stopped their charge and scattered as soon as they saw the fighters. They had already learned their lesson from the first day or so of the war. The fighters pulled up upon seeing the North Bharatian mages break formations.
Neumann looked on with horror as he watched Tanya charge straight in. Now he had to commit his mages to protect the Chancellor.
"Companies one and two, follow the Chancellor! 11th and 23rd mage battalions, advance half a kilometer and engage! Company three, stay with me and provide supporting fire!" he called out.
The battle was a blur. The last remaining CSR mage finally managed to land a hit against me with an explosive spell, but his bolt action rifle clicked empty before he could land more shots to break my shield. He fixed bayonet and charged at me. Their long rifles and long bayonets reminds me of the pre-WW1 "reach" controversy where it was thought that whoever had the longer rifle and bayonet had an advantage in their bayonet charge, which that trend was quickly reversed when the trench warfare set in and soldiers were trained to parry a bayonet thrust, and he was about to learn the hard way of why.
I moved to the side to dodge the thrust, grabbed his rifle, pulled him forward with his momentum, and had a magic blade aimed for his throat. The resulting impact took his head off and caught a few North Bharatian mages that were behind him by surprise. I noticed he had a sword at his side, and used that to stab the closest mage.
I then gunned down the other mages while they were still bringing their rifles about, and deployed illusions while intercepting another pair of them. The Germanian and South Bharatian mages that joined me in the battle were doing a good job of distracting the commies so they couldn't just concentrate fire in my general vicinity.
Normally I wouldn't be this reckless, but the leadership, skills and mage equipment disparity of the two sides was so great that all the commies needed was a disruption of their formation and constant shock to keep them in disarray. They can't use their superior numbers without risk shooting each other. Without leadership, they were nothing more than a mob.
The North Bharatian mages were starting to panic. Some of them weren't encrypting their voice spells anymore and it was clear that they were on the verge of routing. I can't blame them because the foreign agents that were acting as commanders were no longer there to lead them.
At one point I noticed about two battalion's worth of mages had grouped up into a dense formation, and were pouring as much lead as possible in my general direction. The rest of the surviving enemy mages were still disorganized. I saw the dozen fighters prepare to dive onto the densely packed group from behind, putting the sun behind their tails so that anyone who tries to spot or shoot at the planes would have to stare directly into the sun. To keep the battalion focused on me, I continued to deploy illusions and zig-zag erratically at 644 kilometers per hour while slowly closing the distance. I was tempted to rip out my Type 99 orb's limiters for even more speed, but that's just tempting Being X to make the orb explode in my face. By cutting the old thrust vector, applying a new one, and applying a second one to cancel out the inertia from the old thrust vector, they were struggling to land any hits.
To them it must have looked like I had disabled the laws of physics, and if I was going faster, it would be like someone who hacked a game and is now teleporting anywhere they please. If it wasn't for the body reinforcement spell, the forces exerted on my body would have quickly killed me.
I heard two unencrypted voice spells cry out. While I only have a basic grasp of their language, I could infer that they were asking if I was even a human and how to identify which one was actually me.
The fighters launched their rockets and pulled up. The commies were so focused on trying to keep me away from them that none of them noticed the rockets until they exploded in the middle of the group. Ah, the beauty of combined arms combat. When they temporarily ceased fire from the shock, I charged up my artillery spell shots, fired them, and then flew in to finish any remaining survivors.
The remaining commies' morale finally shattered and they all fled in different directions. I clicked my tongue. What a shameful display. I continued firing off another few bursts to land one last set of hits when Neumann came up beside me.
"Chancellor, we need to retreat. We're low on ammo and mana, and the South Bharat's army is falling back to abandon the capital."
Damn. Reminds me of too much of the First Europan War where no matter how many victories we won, the Empire was still losing the war anyways.
I looked down and noticed someone familiar standing on a flat rooftop with a film recorder and a camera. Of course it had to be Miss Caldwell, she was so focused on recording the battle that she appears to have forgotten that she was now directly on a collapsing frontline.
"Major Neumann, gather up the rest of the mages and retreat. I'll catch up to you soon. I just need to rescue an old acquaintance."
I flew down to Miss Caldwell.
"Ah, uh, nice to meet you again Chancellor!" Miss Caldwell sputtered.
"Remember Milly? Just call me Tanya. Anyways, you're a bit too close to the front line. In fact, in a short moment, you're going to end up behind the front line because the South Bharatian army is abandoning the capital. Let's get you out of here."
I picked her up, and took off into the air to catch up to Neumann. Miss Caldwell took some aerial photos of the rapidly advancing North Bharatian army that were beginning to make their way through the city.
"Neumann, how are our mages?"
"Just some minor injuries. The South Bharatian mages did take some losses."
"As long as we can fight another day, we'll be fine."
Neumann nodded in agreement.
It wasn't long before we just happened to fly over a prison complex, and there was something strange going on below.
"Neumann, let's head down there to see if they have any first aid to help treat the wounded mages."
As we flew down, it was blatantly clear that there were mass executions being conducted, with piles of bodies in trenches. I heard "Oh no, not again." from Miss Caldwell.
When we landed, some of the prison guards gave us confused looks.
"Does anyone have medical supplies for some of our wounded mages? And what are you doing here?!"
What appeared to be the prison superintendent motioned two of the guards to fetch the supplies before walking up to us.
"Move on. Nothing to see here. Please disperse. Just dealing with some enemies of the state." The prison superintendent announced.
"The Chancellor asked two questions." Neumann retorted. "You only answered the first one. And you do not want to test her resolve."
The prison superintendent glared at me, saw the rest of the Germania mage battalion stare at him back, and then he opened his mouth.
"The Border Security Force gave the order, and like many other prisons that are in the direct path of the communists, I'm just following that order. Purge all political prisoners so that they don't fall in the hands of North Bharat. Intelligence Bureau has been conducting mass arrests of suspected enemies of the state to hand them over to us to purge."
That seems familiar. I think I read something about a Bodo League massacre that happened in the early part of the Korean War when the South Korean government became paranoid of suspected communist sympathizers. Over 100,000 people were executed within the first three days of the war.
"What kind of political prisoners?" Miss Caldwell asked.
"The ones that the Chancellor has expressed deep hatred for. Any suspected communists. Transporting hundreds of thousands of political prisoners is a lot of work, and that's without a communist army bearing down on us. Now if you could get going and leave us to do our duty."
Meanwhile a young girl crawled out of one of the corpse-filled trenches and cried out for mercy. That girl looked about the same age as when I went through OCS.
"Including children?..." Miss Caldwell trailed off as she was trying to comprehend the scene.
"Can't be too careful with getting rid of communists and enemies of the state I guess." The prison superintendent said.
A prison guard officer walked over to the girl and pointed a pistol at her head. I raised my rifle and blew his arm off.
The prison superintendent screamed, "What are you doing?!"
"Disarming your officer." I responded.
The prison superintendent pulled out his pistol and pointed at Miss Caldwell's face. One of my mages pointed his rifle at the superintendent, and it didn't take long for everyone to point weapons at each other, except for the South Bharatian mages that appeared to be neutral in the standoff.
I took a deep breath to remind myself to not do anything foolish when Miss Caldwell is standing right next to me. "You have gone too far." I spat.
"Good soldiers follow orders." the superintendent retorted. "I'm willing to overlook the fact that you just severely wounded one of my officers, if Miss Caldwell surrenders all of her cameras and notebooks to the Border Security Force or Intelligence Bureau."
"You have no leverage in this situation. If you harm Miss Caldwell, none of your bullets will have an effect on my mages. And then you, and the rest of your staff, will be joining the corpses in the trenches. Besides, we have our computational orbs recording this incident so even without her, we'll be broadcasting the truth after this."
The superintendent looked at the South Bharatian mages and yelled something in his native language.
The South Bharatian mages looked at each other. I could sense them having rapid communications using encrypted voice spells. As soon as the superintendent looked back at me, one of them fired a magic pistol bullet which blew the superintendent's hand and his pistol away. The rest raised their rifles at the prison guards, who immediately dropped their weapons.
"We'll provide medical aid, but first who gave you the orders?" I asked.
"Fuck you! And I'll have those traitorous mages hanged!"
"I guess you don't need medical assistance then. Should you survive and insist on refusing to name the superiors that gave you the order, you will be taking the full blame for the massacres in the inevitable tribunal and the punishments for those crimes. Meanwhile your unnamed superiors will walk as free men, and go on to establish businesses or hold high ranking government positions. You must be an extremely loyal man to allow himself to be hanged or rot away in your own prison to protect his superiors."
He was heaving for several seconds before screaming out, "Minister of Home Affairs! Now will you leave me alone?!"
The HR manager, soldier and politician in me is screaming.
Leave him alone so he could continue butchering people? Leave him alone and be labeled as being complicit or even allowing the slaughter? Leave him alone and be labeled as a hypocrite for my hardline stance against the Russy's terror bombings on Legadonia's cities and their genocides against ethnic minorities? Leave him alone and reinforce my undeserved reputation of the Arene Massacre that I spent so many years trying to shed? Leave him alone so the communists would be able to run their propaganda printing press for decades using the slaughter as their justification to line up and shoot all of the capitalists against a wall? Leave him alone while letting my army be demoralized from watching the senseless slaughter of civilians and even children? I've had my share of firing employees for publicly embarrassing my company as expected for HR managers, but this one takes it to an entirely new level.
"No, you're going to stop the killing. And if your superiors asked why, tell them that it was the Chancellor, along with an entire Germania mage battalion, who ordered you to stop. Otherwise it'll be more than just your arm coming off. I'm going to find this minister that you speak of."
I turned to the South Bharatian mages and asked, "Why did you side with us over the superintendent?"
One of them responded, "You're the leader that South Bharat needs."
AN:
This chapter was written about a month before the Taliban took the capital of Afghanistan, so no, it was not based on the ANA's combat performance against the Taliban. It was written based on how South Korea crumbled in the start of the Korean War. From the Wikipedia article:
The KPA had a combined arms force including tanks supported by heavy artillery. The ROK had no tanks, anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery to stop such an attack. In addition, the South Koreans committed their forces in a piecemeal fashion and these were routed in a few days.[146]
On 27 June, Rhee evacuated from Seoul with some of the government. On 28 June, at 2 am, the ROK blew up the Hangang Bridge across the Han River in an attempt to stop the KPA. The bridge was detonated while 4,000 refugees were crossing it and hundreds were killed.[147][148] Destroying the bridge also trapped many ROK units north of the Han River.[146] In spite of such desperate measures, Seoul fell that same day. A number of South Korean National Assemblymen remained in Seoul when it fell, and forty-eight subsequently pledged allegiance to the North.[149]
In five days, the ROK, which had 95,000 men on 25 June, was down to less than 22,000 men. In early July, when US forces arrived, what was left of the ROK were placed under US operational command of the United Nations Command.[151]
As for the historical basis for the massacres, the Korean War was not a pleasant time for civilians, such as the Bodo League massacre and December massacres.
From the Wikipedia article on the December massacres:
On Friday, 15 December 1950, British and American Troops witnessed the execution of over 800 political prisoners in the outskirts of Seoul. Reports included truckloads of prisoners, including women and children, being unloaded and executed in the trenches where they were to be buried.[4] Five riflemen did the shooting, with the executions beginning at 7.30 am and finishing at 8.10 am. An eyewitness account describes a young boy of about 8 years old, kneeling in a trench and crying, turning to one of the guards before being shot.[5] Victims typically included alleged communists, saboteurs and murderers. While the killings were well documented by UN forces, the South Korean government continued to deny accusations that any wrongdoing had taken place.
The international community responded with outrage to news of the mass executions in the South. Globally there were calls for the Rhee regime to immediately halt the executions. Most reports suggest UN forces reacted with disgust to the mass executions. One British soldier reported that ROK soldiers proceeded to execute prisoners a mere 150 feet from their camp; he was forced to walk away when they began executing children during breakfast. UN commanders were particularly concerned that their association with the regime would undermine their mission in Korea but did little to investigate into the killings.[6] Rhee responded by pledging to end all mass executions and promised to mitigate death sentences for prisoners. While he gave assurances to UN leaders that the killings would stop and there would be thorough investigations and court martialing for guilty parties, it is difficult to assess if the executions continued out of eyesight.
Reports of mass executions continued to damage the legitimacy of the South Korean government and in turn the credibility of the United Nations intervention.[7] Mass executions generally declined following the December massacres but the Rhee regime further cemented its heavy-handed image. The massacres made easy political propaganda for communist forces and were used to denounce the regime in the South for years to come.
