AN: Credits to Gremlin Jack and perfect_shade for helping with revising Chapter 6.

The maps used to show the situations in Bharat and the planned military movements are located on the Spacebattles story thread. FF site won't allow me to post links to the images or the story thread.


1943, May 21st:

As I was flying, I thought over what the South Bharatian mage said. Me as a leader for South Bharat? Ridiculous. They wouldn't throw away their hard earned independence and agree to be ruled by an European leader yet again. They probably just need competent military leadership to survive this war and that's it. If I get too involved with them, the Albish might feel threatened with me sitting on their last major supply of non-communist tea. And I know that the Albish and the British in both worlds had fought wars with Jiuzhou and China over tea. Better to not get involved with the colonial game.

And then there are the purges that are still going on elsewhere. I knew that the truth about the mass killing would come out sooner or later, now I just have to deal with the source of the madness. Especially with Miss Caldwell being present.

I am so glad that I told Elya to not purge the communists back in the early years and simply prosecute them under the appropriate authorities. The scandals that she dragged the communists into were a bit too aggressive for my taste. I've always wondered why they became increasingly silent until none of the newspapers ever mentioned about them, but I figured they saw the truth of communism and stopped preaching it.

Then again, the only countries backing South Bharat are Germania and the Allied Kingdom. Well, there's also the Francois Republic, but they're more a sidekick than a major participant. I'm not sure how the Albish would respond to the massacres, but I don't have time to wait around to find out. Especially when I have no idea where the Albish embassy staff are heading to after they evacuated from the capital. South Bharat's military command was so in chaos that they didn't know where their prime minister was located, so I guess the South Bharatian mage had a point about wanting a competent leadership. What I did find was another prison shooting everyone. Thankfully the next prison superintendent was more ethical and ordered the killings to stop as soon as I told him that I would not tolerate his activity, and while he appeared to be nervous, he was more than happy to point me towards where the Minister of Home Affairs had relocated to.

Turns out he was in Satara, about 260 kilometers southeast of the now captured capital. I also learned that word of my capital defense and the complete routing of North Bharat's main mage attack force had been spreading across the country over radio. The mage that I thought died from their missing limb was actually able to surrender to South Bharatian mages and had gotten an orb recording of the NKVD mage running off and his recon group being destroyed by me.

Time to pay the minister a visit.

"What do you mean I gave the order?" the minister denied. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"And where's your prime minister?"

"I would have told you to go bother him because it would have made more sense for a head of state to meet a head of state, but I heard several hours ago that he's preparing to move again with Pune being threatened by the advancing communists. We had no solid contingency plans of what to do if the capital had to be evacuated so everyone just went everywhere. In fact, I know some people have opted to stay put in Bombay to wait for the communists to arrive to meet them."

Great, their government is completely scattered, is unable to talk to each other, and the remaining ones in the capital are probably going to defect to the obvious winning side. There's no way they are going to be able to organize a careful retreat.

"Even if you never gave the order, that still doesn't explain the recording I got on my computational orb of a prison outside of your capital that was lining up and shooting everyone. Both prison superintendents stated that the prison system is under your authority."

"A fabricated evidence."

"Try telling that to your Ablish contact when an American journalist publishes the photos and films of the butchering for Europe and the Unified States to see. Including the scene where a young girl was almost executed. You should start conducting public relations damage control yesterday."

"As the Americans said, better dead than red."

Now I'm starting to get angry at him trying to dance around the issue and pretend to be an idiot, after his government neglected their military, pushed South Bharat into war instead of making some concessions to the commies to use the extra time to build up their military so that they didn't lose their capital within the same week of the war starting, and now he's giving the commies figuratively and literally piles of ammunition for their propaganda machine. All because their prime minister and possibly other high ranking idiots naively thought the Ablish would commit their entire military to bail them out. It looks like I'm dealing with distant, insane relatives of the pre-WW1 Legadonia Entente' and Dacia's politicians. Because even they didn't just massacre every person that was remotely suspected of being pro-Empire.

"You know that you're just going to keep retreating until you're stuck on the southern island of Ceylon. And while I know you're also counting on the Albish to bail you out, but they're a bit tied up with their other unruly colonies that haven't broken away from them yet and I had to constantly annoy them over the months to get them to deploy a token force to your country. If your country want Germania's continued assistance and an arms deal to equip their military with newer weapons to deal with the communists' superior training they got from the Rus and CSR, and their superior numbers from drafts while your government did nothing other than give angry speeches, you are first going to rescind the slaughter order."

He laughed. "A person who burned Arene to the ground is telling me to stop killing unlawful combatants? How ironic. And I know you can't just abandon South Bharat because that would mean the entire subcontinent would be under the red banner, and the rest of Asia will fall as well. You're not in charge of telling me what to do."

He went for the nuclear option by bringing up Arene. If he thinks I'm a monster, then I'll use that to my advantage. Negotiating 101.

I lay my hand on his shoulder. I also casted a spell to dim the lights coming from the windows to darken the room. His bodyguards looked around in confusion.

"Do you feel in charge?"

That was when his stupid smile disappeared off of his face. "Guards! Arrest the chancellor!" he cried out.

I stared at his bodyguards. They looked at each other.

"Leave us."

His bodyguards took the cue and left. It was just us two now.

"You can't threaten me. Not with the Allied Kingdom here."

I raised an eyebrow in confusion. "And this gives you power over me? You don't even know where your prime minister is right now."

The smell wasn't bothering him earlier, but now it was unmistakable and couldn't be ignored. Sweat, blood, gunpowder, smoke and grime. He tried stepping away, but I shifted my hand to place it directly next to his neck to stop him and then smiled.

"Time is short so I'll make this brief. You will clean up the mess you made for me. You will go to the nearest radio station to call off the slaughter. And you will get the fuck back to work. With, or without you, North Bharat will not win this war."


Radio broadcasts across South Bharat:

"As a recommendation from the Chancellor of Germania, Tanya von Degurechaff, I declare that the extrajudicial punishments of suspected communists and enemies of the state to be rescinded effectively immediately. Anyone swept up in the mass arrests are to be freed immediately. I apologize for failing to stop the executions as I was not aware of what was actually ordered and believed that the prisoners were just being detained for state security. Anyone found continuing to perform the inhumane actions will be subject to criminal punishments from the South Bharatian government, or the Chancellor herself."


Somewhere in Hyderabad, Hyderabad State, one of the autonomous Princely states within South Bharat:

"The reason why I'm speaking to you is because unlike the Russy Federation, we believe that negotiating deals is…" the CSR mage paused for a second. "Inherently less messy than purging everyone that gets in your way. When we rose up against the corrupt and incompetent Shun dynasty, we made deals with the provincial governors to join us in our revolution and in return they kept their power and position, just under a different name. And they kept their wealth, too. Their children are now in various government positions. Although when one of those governors backstabbed us after signing the deal, and another one executed our envoy, we had their body parts redistributed, then their wealth. When the Shun dynasty came to us, we struck a deal where they would leave our lands and to never interfere with our affairs, and in return they would not be harmed."

"What do you want from me?" demanded Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam (monarch) of Hyderabad.

"We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in defeating South Bharat. You have our assurance that North Bharat will not meddle in your affairs."

"Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one."

The Nizam flicks his thumb from the back of his upper front teeth toward the CSR mage envoy.

The envoy closed the leather book cover that had a set of documents for the Nizam. "Mir Osman Ali Khan... you disappoint me."

"You can't scare me with this communism crap. I know you're going to break the deal after South Bharat is gone, and then take away my power. I want you out of my sight."

"Tell me, Mir Osman Ali Khan... what good is power... if you don't have an army to enforce it?"

The envoy pulled out a whistle and blew it. Gunshots were heard and the doors to the courtyard suddenly came crashing down.

The Nizam stumbled backward as soldiers filled his courtyard, all of them wearing red arm banners over their uniforms. "What have you done to my army?"

"Some of your army's leadership was more... pragmatic. They know when a war is lost. Better to split the spoils with the victorious side than to beg for scraps, or their own lives, as the losing side. They also know that North Bharat is less… forgiving, and thus would not offer anything close to what we are giving. We may or may not have given your men some gold and silver as well, and promised more out of your treasury. Treasury that you would have kept if you just said yes. It's a shame, I was hoping to settle this problem without bloodshed and thus get a better quarterly performance evaluation report for it."

As the soldiers raised their rifles at the Nizam, the envoy lifted off in the air.

"Good bye, Mir Osman Ali Khan."


1943, July 6th:

Satra and Hyderabad have fallen sometime ago. Kolhapur, Hubli, Bagalkot, Adoni, and Nalgonda are encircled. The commies are also marching directly east towards Patna and the autonomous Bastar State.

To make matters worse, many of the Princely States have either defected to the communists by declaring war on South Bharat, are embroiled in chaos from failed coups or other power struggles, or their leaders just packed up their bags to flee south. Kingdom of Jeypore defected to the communists which instantly split South Bharat in two between the southern boot of their continent and the eastern land that borders the Allied Kingdom's Burma colony. South Bharat's attempts at "restoring order" in those Princely States often varied from mixed results to complete failures. Thankfully the Kingdom of Mysore announced that they will light a torch against the darkness of communism, because they could have dramatically worsened our situation if they had also started waving the red flags.

Apparently there were still deep divisions within South Bharat's government even with the commies pressing down on them, and the Minister of Home Affairs was in the more nationalist hardline faction. The more moderate factions wrested control away from them after the extrajudicial slaughter was stopped, and they had met with me to discuss Germania's support of South Bharat.

Right before the Prime Minister resigned from the political fallout, he announced the formation of the National Defense Corps where all males aged 17 to 40 were to be drafted across the country for training in a few concentrated areas, starting with two million draftees in the first round. The interim Prime Minister changed the number to one million draftees citing logistics concerns.

With so many people drafted in such a short time period and then being ordered to march to the training concentration areas, I had to go investigate to see it for myself.

As I approached one of the marching formations, which was more like a mob, I knew something was wrong based on how they were all walking and what their faces looked like.

My translator asked one of them what was going on. The first thing the man responded was, "Do you have food?"

It didn't take long to learn that they were being barely fed. For them to march well over 100 kilometers on foot without sufficient food was complete disregard for their own men's life and grated my HR and military officer nerves. Even the Russy Federation made an attempt at feeding their men before sending them into the meat grinder!

I met one of the junior officers to ask what was going on. He said his superiors have ignored his urgent requests for more food, and instructed him to keep the draftees marching forward.

I turned to one of my aides. "Find Miss Caldwell and tell her to investigate the draftee marches, and make sure she has mage escort in case if there's something shady going on with the military. I suspect there are many more draftees that are also being deprived of food."

I turned to another one of my aides, "Get a report out to Visha that we need a lot more food shipped to South Bharat with the assumption that all one million draftees are being deprived of food. Order them from the Unified States if needed. If it turns out to be just a small problem, I'm sure the refugees would appreciate the extra food."

I flew towards Panaji, one of the staging areas for our food aid, found another marching column where the men were also short on food, and found a food truck convoy that was about 30 kilometers away. I landed on the front truck to have a talk with the driver and the guide.

"Uh, good morning Chancellor? What are you doing here?" the guide asked.

"I need this truck convoy to feed a hungry draftee march. The South Bharatian military neglected to acquire enough food for their one million drafts."

"What about the refugees?"

"Take half of the convoy to them. I'll be taking the other half."

"Yes ma'am."

We split the convoy in two, and I was going to lead half of it towards the hungry draftees. I put on my disguise using stealth casted spells and looked at myself in the mirror to check. The driver stared at me in confusion from my drastic change in appearance.

"Don't say a thing. I want to confirm a suspicion of something. If it's true, you're going to have one hell of an entertainment."

The driver nodded and we continued on the bumpy, muddy road. We had just started the monsoon season and the roads were already starting to get bad. Those river boats are going to be extremely important with the land logistics being a literal mess.

As we approached the marching column, a soldier ordered us to halt. Shortly afterward, the commander pulled up in his car and hopped out.

"What are in those trucks?" he demanded.

"Food for the draftees. We were told that they weren't getting enough food." I responded.

"Ah, that won't be necessary. They're fine." the commander responded as he walked up to me. He pulled out a map and circled a town. "I need your convoy to go here. With military escort."

"For what?" I asked.

"You, and the rest of the drivers will be compensated after the food is offloaded."

"To the black market?"

"Well of course."

"We won't take your money."

"That's fine, more in my pocket then. You can step out of the truck if you don't want to drive over there."

I motioned my driver to stay put while I stepped out.

"That rank and uniform you wear doesn't belong to you when you're willing to starve your men to death to line your pockets, while your country is collapsing under the boot of communism."

The commander pulled out his pistol. "Silver, or lead."

"And you don't deserve that pistol either."

"You're willing to die over some food?"

Damn, this brings back some really old memories about an accounting fraud case at my employer in my previous world. It took all of my mental strength to not use my strength enhancement spell and turn him into tenderized steak with my bare hands. "I would tell you to go to hell, but I think you're already there."

He fired the pistol, and the bullet ricocheted off of my shield. He shot again, apparently just to be sure that it wasn't some imagination, and yet again the bullet ricocheted off.

I dropped my disguise. "You've probably had surprise inspections in the past right? Including ones conducted personally by you? What do you think of the grade you got on this inspection?"

The commander dropped his pistol and stumbled backward in shock.

I walked forward and picked up his pistol. "I did say that you don't deserve the pistol, didn't I?"

Before he could say anything, I removed the magazine to throw it into the mud, cleared the chamber of any loose rounds, and used my strength enhancement spell to crush the pistol into scrap metal. I levitated in the air, then threw it at an angle that knocked the commander's cap off, with enough force that the impact broke his car's radiator, causing a plume of steam to rise.

Suddenly I noticed his pants were wet and I could smell he had soiled his pants. The rest of his men stepped away from the commander, or were staring at the broken car.

"You're going to spill every single detail about your little side business, everyone that you worked with, and everyone that you know are also running their own side business. In return, I'll let you live and not end up having to visit a hospital in the aftermath. As you said, are you willing to die over some food?"


Thanks to that sticky-fingered commander throwing everyone he knew under the bus, I had amassed quite a pile of evidence of how deep the corruption ran in the South Bharat's military. His associates shouldn't be surprised by his betrayal, there's no honor among thieves anyways. Miss Caldwell and her mage escorts were turned away at gunpoint by a mage platoon when they tried to ask questions about a food convoy being redirected, so I gave her the orb recording and the evidence over to her so she has something to write about.

If they're stealing food from their own men, how could I trust them with the arms shipment? It's probably a major reason why they keep suffering strings of defeats against the commies because they were so focused on lining their own pockets. But I can't just purge their entire military command, because that would be overstepping the boundaries in getting involved with the sovereignty of other countries.

What if I use volunteers that have fought in the war against the Russy Federation, and my marines, to train and lead the draftees? Preferably those that know Albish because some of the locals understand it, and there are translators readily available that can communicate between Albish and the local languages. I would be able to bypass South Bharat's corrupt military command entirely. Based on the amount of food shipments that came in, and additional ones that were scheduled to be shipped, I think I could take in a portion of those draftees. South Bharat has no right to complain about that because they couldn't feed their one million draftees to begin with.

And as for South Bharat's mages, well if any of them volunteers for us, I'll just have my own mages help train them. I could also crack the whip as needed. A shame that South Bharat has a shortage of artillery guns and artillery ammunition for me to conduct the classical live fire exercises.

I'll need to go find General Romel to talk about the draftee situation, as it would be his judgement to determine how many soldiers and mages he could divert to train the draftees, and the logistics for the training. The multiple different local languages is going to be a problem, but I'll just delegate that messy work to my subordinates.

I should also let General Lergen know that he's about to have a lot more manpower to handle.


"She did what?" Allen Shone was stunned. "What do you mean she seized control of the draftees to build her own army?!"

"According to Miss Caldwell's publication, the Chancellor accused South Bharatian's senior military command of embezzling food from the draftees and also the food aid from Germania, and selling them to black marketers. And one of the officers attempted to execute the Chancellor as she was disguised for an undercover sting operation to investigate the food theft.

"If she intends on seizing control of South Bharat, she now has an army to do so. My god she's going to be stealing our former colony! What did the interim Prime Minister say about the Chancellor's actions?"

"Nothing sir. He refuses to comment on anything regarding the Chancellor ever since the Minister of Home Affairs called off the purge before resigning. Based on the radio broadcast, it seemed like she was holding a gun or a magic blade to his head while he was making that announcement."

"She has control of the civilian leadership. And now she's making a play for their military. We need to notify Londinium immediately."


In Berun, sometime later:

General Lergen poured himself a glass of brandy as he and Visha read the report from the Chancellor.

"She had herself purposely shot at! Twice!" Visha yelled. "I know that shooting mages is useless, that's not the point."

"That's one big gamble to get lots of recruits. That explains why she wanted all of those food aid, and she also has the arms shipments to equip them with." Lergen said before downing the entire glass. "Now she can build an army and command them to her liking instead of dealing with South Bharat's military command. But wait, there's more."

He put a telegram sheet on the table.

Visha stared at the sheet. "A proposal for a direct underwater cable between OZEV and Malagasy, and another cable between Malagasy and South Bharat. Instead of using over the air radio transmission and Albish cables to get messages through, Germania could have a secure line to both regions and it would help speed up communications. And she predicted that the war in Bharat might drag on long enough for the cables to be completed before the war ends."

"I think you get the idea of what the Chancellor has in mind for South Bharat." Lergen said.

He poured another glass and offered it to Visha.


1943, August 3rd:

To say that the situation had not developed in favor of South Bharat would be a vast understatement. The south western defense line centered around Coimbatore was forced to withdraw further south along the Nelliyampathy Hills and Anaimalai Hills. The south eastern defense line that stretched from Karur to the coastline along the river had been unable to withdraw south to Karaikudi due to the constant attacks over the river, which left a giant gap between the two lines and that has become a chaotic tug-of-war with both sides recognizing the opportunity and danger it posed for each other. On the eastern front, the commies established multiple beachheads across the Meghna, Padma, and Brahmaputra rivers before the monsoon season started and were able to hold onto most of them to exploit them for further advances, resulting in capture of Dhaka.

The only reason North Bharat's offensive had slowed significantly was due to the monsoon season that runs from June to September. Which means the rivers are at a much higher level than usual, and that should make it easier to use the river combat boats against the North Bharat, once the boats do arrive in sufficient numbers. I'm grateful that we got some prototypes out here to train the men for upcoming operations. I also invited Akitsushima Dominion to train with those boats, as they'll also be needed for riverine combat.

OZEV's first joint security council created a proposal for OZEV members to pay for our volunteers' pay and benefits to help cover the war expense, and based on Visha's report, it's likely that the members will be approving it. What I don't understand is how they're all war manics even after the grinding fight against the Rus.

As for the new volunteer army, it appears the South Bharat's military was so inept and corrupt that we ended up getting a lot more draftees than expected, and the interim Prime Minister has not bothered with another draft wave. Because we're actually giving them a sufficient amount of food, and those men were deserting in droves from the South Bharat's draft army to us. I hate to take away food from the refugees, but how am I supposed to say no to the draftees?

It was funny when the interim Prime Minister announced that anyone that had joined my volunteer army would no longer be paid by South Bharat's government, probably out of desperation to try to convince the draftees to come back to his military. I had a telegram sent to Visha to ask the Diet for emergency funding to give the draftees a small amount of pay, with the justification that if we have a local volunteer army, it would reduce the casualties of our marines and the OZEV volunteers. And the Diet approved the bill the next day.

The even more hilarious and sad situation was when I was told a major reason why we had even more defections from the South Bharat's army to ours despite the low pay, was because we were actually paying them instead of the corrupt commanders taking a slice or all of the soldiers' pay for themselves.

We were able to make use of the new army to hold both defensive perimeters, and General Romel had new volunteers from OZEV assigned to the carrier task forces and Germania's islands to undergo impromptu amphibious assault training, as the marines and the more experienced volunteers were still needed to train the local recuits. Volunteer mages that were good swimmers were also assigned for the underwater training.

Local intelligence reports strongly suggested that North Bharat's forces were severely overextended, and although there is still the presence of the NKVD and CSR, their observed amount of personnel used on the frontline is relatively small. They just need a good shock to break them. A repeat of the Inchon landing in the Korean War against North Bharat would do the trick, although we would need two simultaneous landings on the opposite sides of Bharat given the much larger size of the country. I had sent out a message to Akitsushima Dominion's ambassador in Berun for them to provide some navy advisors to help General Romel plan the naval invasions.

Visha also sent me a letter begging me to stay away from the frontline. Apparently my actions have ended up all over the newspapers in Europe and Unified States.

I could see why she thinks I'm putting myself in danger. But considering that the enemy mages always keep their distance to avoid tangling with me and I always have escape routes if they decide to give chase, I'm not too concerned. It seems that they all adopted Green's strategy of "keep your distance" when dealing with me. Their old single core orbs severely limited their ability to try to chase me down, while I'm not willing to run towards them in case they just happen to be hovering directly over an ambush waiting for me. With this stalemate, sometimes I do administrative paperwork on a clipboard while loitering in the air.

It's also gotten to the point where the commies' command posts are well concealed with hidden cables connecting to radio transmitters that are located miles away, have multiple hidden escape routes, or surrounded by an entire field of anti-air batteries located too far away to hit with artillery fire. I have to give them credit for taking precautions to avoid decapitation strikes. I don't mind because that means I can justify loitering around instead of putting myself in danger.

I did have to take some extra precautions when the commies started assembling an entire battalion of mages equipped with the Type 97 Orbs and semiautomatic rifles, and it appears their only mission is to keep an eye on me. I wonder how many copies of the Type 97 orbs did the Rus produce and stockpile to hand over to North Bharat, as I doubt North Bharat has the local manufacturing capability to make those. I was always close to a Germania mage battalion in those situations so if they wanted to give me chase, they would have to deal with my mages first.

There was one time where two or three battalions chased after me during the night time. Normally I would have made every effort to avoid such a situation, except General Romel came up with an idea where I would simply lead the enemy battalions straight into a trap while a Germanian mage battalion operating in stealth mode would be shadowing the enemy mages in case anything goes wrong. He had reported that the Germanian Navy was onboard with the plan. As long as I maintained a higher speed than what their orbs could reach, they would never be able to get within range to land an accurate hit on me. I also used decoys to frustrate them. I didn't detect any NKVD or CSR mages in the battalions so my guess is someone in the North Bharat military had lost their patience and wanted me dead at any cost.

I was more than happy to lure them over the ocean and straight into a pre-prepared line of destroyers to see how effective my ships' heavy anti-air armaments are. The destroyers had all of their lights turned off and did not open fire until the commies were about a kilometer away. The looks on those commies' faces when the destroyers switched on their searchlights right before the cannons open fired was priceless. I love it when I can delegate all of the heavy work to my subordinates, and in this case, wiping out the battalions in a single battle without having to fire a single shot.

Most of the survivors surrendered when my mages dropped their stealth mode to sandwich the enemy mages against the destroyers' anti-air fire instead of letting them freely retreat.

Nevertheless, all of that didn't really matter because the South Bharat's military was too weak to take advantage of the commie mages' restrained operations.


General Romel and a mage aide walked into the war conference room that was attended by several countries' military representatives. Germania's navy and the Akitsushima Dominion's navy worked out an amphibious landing plan that would try to minimize the usage of the roads during the monsoon season.

General Romel suspected that the Allied Kingdom had pulled some serious strings for Ispagna, Lothiern, Legadonia Entente, Kanata, Commonwealth Australia and a small Unified States volunteer force to join the coalition against North Bharat. He noted that it would have been so much easier if the entire coalition was present at the start of the war instead of Albion, Francois Republic and OZEV fighting with one hand tied behind their back. He wasn't sure what inspired Albion to suddenly become more active with asking others for help with the war. He knew there was no way the Chancellor was going to allow OZEV to commit their entire military to Bharat with the insurgency flaring up across all of the new republics, the Moskva still being under siege by CSR-backed factions, and the Diet still wanting to reduce military spending. South Bharat's and Akitsushima Dominion's representatives were also present.

Henry Law, General of the Allied Kingdom Expeditionary Force, and General Poulin, the Francois Republic's military representative, glared at Romel for a moment before General Law began his proposal.

"We could reinforce the existing perimeters and begin a counter-attack. Meanwhile an amphibious landing force at Karachi will head straight for their capital, Multan."

"The march to their capital would be about 900 kilometers long with only one main route to get to it, which would make it trivial for them to keep delaying us every step of the way." The South Bharat representative responded. "And they have more major cities to fall back to. The monsoon season will leave the roads in a messy condition."

"From the naval intel reports I got, North Bharat had intensified their mining of the waters around Karachi to the point where our minesweepers would struggle to clear most of them without being detected, and that would alert the communists to a possible naval invasion." General Romel said as his aide displayed discovered minefields on the map using their orb. "Also, counter attacking without breaking their cohesion first will allow them to continuously fall back behind defensible terrain, such as flooded rivers."

"What do you propose?" General Law demanded.

"Three amphibious landings. One at Bombay which will march towards Hyderabad. They have put down naval mines around Bombay, but it's not as extensive compared to Karachi's waters and our divers and our underwater mages can clear the mines so North Bharat isn't alerted by the presence of minesweeper ships. In fact, we can have the minesweeper ships go after other locations to fool the communists into thinking that the amphibious landings would be conducted in other locations."

"Underwater mages?" one of the representatives asked.

"Their Chancellor did express interest in that concept with her World Cup interview. She was telling us what she would be doing." another person laughed.

General Romel continued on. "The second one will sail up the Krishna River as the flooded rivers will allow our lightened destroyers to demolish any resistance, then further up the river using our large number of riverine combat boats. There are also mines at the mouth of the river, but that shouldn't be a problem. Using the river will reduce the distance we have to cover using muddy roads. A small force will sail as far up the river as possible to establish delaying actions against any retreating communist forces that approach Hyderabad, Kalaburagi, and Vijayapura. If the retreating communists want to bypass the skirmishers, they will have to travel through the mountainous western region toward Pune, and by that time, the first amphibious landing's defenses around Pune should be ready to receive the attacks. North Bharat's southern army would need to march the full 1000 kilometers to break out of the trap while also fighting rear guard actions from the counter attacking South Bharat's army. We only need to cover about half of the distance assuming both the first and second landings can cover about 500 kilometers each. The communists would need a miracle to outrun us. If they decide to continue their offensive in hopes of overrunning the defensive perimeters, then we can start marching north and south to put pressure on North Bharat and their trapped armies."

Full length of Krishna River:

The aide displayed more sets of markings on another map as the Akitsushima Dominion representative began his proposal.

"The third amphibious assault led by us will go up the Meghna, Padma, and Brahmaputra rivers. According to locals, those three rivers are deep enough for Kaibōkans and lightened destroyers to sail up them to prevent the communists from retreating back across those rivers."

"What are Kaibōkans?" General Poulin asked.

"Sea defense ship. Smaller version of destroyers. We'll land our forces on the western side to attack North Bharat's rear areas while their eastern army is trapped, although our ability to advance will be hampered by our small amount of infantry. The riverine combat boats will also be useful for advancing up the smaller rivers."

There were discussions between the representatives.

"Mate, if you need manpower, we can help out." the Commonwealth Australia representative spoke up. "We don't really have many ships or transports of our own, and it seems that Bombay's traffic is going to be a dog's breakfast from everyone piling into it."

"That would be excellent. What's a 'dog's breakfast' though?" the Akitsushima Dominion representative responded.

"Of course the country who came up with the plans for the Battle of the Osfjord would also come up with this, except instead of using railroads, you're using the high level rivers against them." the Legadonia Entente representative noted.

"Shouldn't they be expecting the amphibious landings?" someone asked.

"They have nearly 3000 kilometers of coastlines and several major rivers to defend." as the aide used their orb to mark all of the areas they had to defend. "While there are ideal locations for landings, they can't heavily defend them all while throwing their weight against South Bharat, which is why they are relying so heavily on naval mines to act as an early warning system should our minesweepers aggressively remove them."

"He is right about the early warning system." Admiral Horan added. "Whenever our minesweepers would sail in, we would pick up on radio broadcasts about our minesweepers. If the minesweepers stick around for too long, that is when our reconnaissance planes spot their mages and ground forces moving in."

"I almost forgot, they may choose to redeploy their mages to delay our encirclement movements to buy time for the rest of their army to retreat, or at least save their mages. Their mages that have the Type 97 Orbs can cover the 1000 kilometers distance in about two hours if they burn hard and fast. As for the Padma river region, their mages will be able to respond almost instantly." he added in. "We should be prepared for that."

"And where would the Chancellor be during all of this? She has been doing a fine job of staring down the commie mages so they aren't causing trouble, and also insulting them by doing paperwork in the air." Douglas McArthur, General of the Unified States Volunteer Corps, asked.

"She'll be heading back to Germania shortly before the landing operations start, and it will be very public. North Bharat will commit to an all-out offensive as they would be able to use their mages unrestrained with her being gone, which will make it harder for them to retreat afterwards."

"What should we call this operation?" someone asked.

"Operation Turnstile." General Poulin laughed. "A familiar experience, this time from an unfamiliar yet welcome perspective."


AN:

Historical basis for the widespread corruption (from the wikipedia articles):

National Defense Corps incident:

406,000 drafted citizens were deployed in 49 training units,[4] then National Defense Corps soldiers were ordered to march southward on the Korean peninsula under the Chinese offensive. However, funds for food purchases were embezzled by the National Defense Corps Commander Kim Yungun (Kim Yun-keun) (Kim Yoon-keun), son-in-law of Defence minister Shin Sung-mo.[5] Approximately 300,000 men were lost to death or desertion during the three-week, 300-mile "death march".[6] By June 1951, when an investigating committee made known its findings, it was reported that some 50,000[7] to 90,000 soldiers starved to death or died of disease on the march and in the training camps.[2][5][8]

Battle of the Yalu River (1894):

Though well drilled, the Chinese had not engaged in sufficient gunnery practice beforehand. This lack of training was the direct result of a serious lack of ammunition. Corruption seems to have played a major role; many Chinese shells appear to have been filled with cement or porcelain, or were the wrong caliber and could not be fired. Philo McGiffin noted that many of the gunpowder charges were "thirteen years old and condemned."[15][2] What little ammunition there was, was to be preserved for real battle. Live ammunition training was rarely carried out. Li wanted to delay the battle against the Japanese fleet, thus allowing the Chinese more time to equip their ships with additional ammunition. However, the Imperial Court called him a coward and his recommendation was turned down.

AFSA's article on the South Vietnam's corruption, titled "Foreign Policy and the Complexities of Corruption: The Case of South Vietnam":

Why, then, did this phenomenon persist, and even grow progressively more egregious over time? The basic conditions were set at South Vietnam's birth in 1954, when the country emerged suddenly from its colonial past. With very few competent civil servants, with no functioning political system or tradition of democracy or transparency in government and with deep divides across religious, regional, ethnic and class lines, the new government built a military establishment from scratch. Few expected the state to last more than a couple of years. With the advent of active insurgency, the government of the Republic of Vietnam faced a deadly and immediate challenge that absorbed all of its attention.