Saunders had quickly fixed the biggest problem they had and all the stuff they were going to need was going to arrive over the course of the next few days. New rifles, ammunition and artillery pieces were coming in. Armored cars with cannons on them were also being constructed and shipped to Saunders as part of the deal, however that wasn't the only issue Saunders was still facing. Many of the students were demoralized and those that joined were inexperienced. Many of them didn't know a thing or two about handling rifles.
"Our ranks have swelled, and we are dealing with ten thousand volunteers on such short notice. We need to be able to train these people up so we can continue the fight." Lola began speaking to Kay, Megumi and Alexandra. Alexandra knew that they needed to train these newcomers up as they needed to figure out what kind of situation they were dealing with.
"We should give these students a chance. We're still in the middle of resupplying the entire school army here. We need to figure out how we can train these students up, The Dual Alliance has launched another attack against Anzio, Yogurt Academy is attacking along with Kuromorimine against St. Gloriana and BC Freedom again. And Kebab wants to face off against us." Alexandra told Lola that they shouldn't underestimate what the students were capable of. "Question is, who's going to train them while we're gone?"
"I'll train them as best as I can." Nicholas told the students that he was willing to train the newcomers while Alexandra and her friends went off to launch their offensive on Kebab High School. Alexandra turned to Nicholas although she remained suspicious of him.
"Okay we'll give you our trust. Wish us luck for the victory." Alexandra told Nicholas. Nicholas nodded as Alexandra knew she needed to take her most experienced students with her as a means of fighting Kebab. Alexandra and the more experienced of her group were going to fight Ankara again as a means of applying more pressure on her. Nicholas was left to help train up thousands of raw recruits to get them into fighting shape.
Ankara was going to fight Saunders again. However, she was in a state of agitation as the students were scrambling around in the winter snow. She looked behind to see her supplies were dwindling. One of her friends came over as she had news, it wasn't good.
"Ankara, we don't have much ammunition for the artillery left. We've used up most of our stocks trying to fight off Earl Gray and her landing force at Gallipoli, with her out of the way, we decided to take a look at what we have and we're almost out, we're praying that the mountains will help keep Saunders at bay and hopefully reduce their advance to a crawl." She told Ankara that they needed to try to blunt the Saunders advance as much as they could and use attrition to wear them down as a means of a winning strategy. Their supplies to deal heavy damage to Saunders were almost out and the students didn't know if they were going to be able to hold Saunders back.
"Should we try launching any sort of assault campaigns?" Ankara asked her students if they knew what they were going to do. No answer from them as Ankara was trying to figure out how she can try to deal heavy damage to Saunders. "Nothing, I need an answer from you." Ankara called out.
"We should make our shots count then; we see no way of trying to keep Saunders back for very long." Her friend told Ankara; it looked like they weren't going to be doing much to fight against Saunders. Meanwhile Alexandra was watching from afar with a pair of binoculars. Her students had brought up some of the 305mm cannons they had in storage as they were going to be targeting the artillery.
"Okay, we sense that Kebab has been weakened down so we're going to launch a two-stage assault on them. The first goal of ours is to capture their base at Erzurum to drive them further into the mountains. We heard that Kebab isn't able to replace its ammunition losses in time so we're going to use the time to catch them off balance and drive their front back." Alexandra told the students in her group that they were going to be pushing up and making their advance to the location she wanted to capture. She turned to Lola who was going to be put to the test. "Lola, you have the task of capturing the port city of Trabzon. You will be given a cavalry squadron as well as three armored cars to accomplish this task."
"I'll do my best to capture the port city." Lola told Alexandra. Megumi strode up to the group while helping escort two horses to them. She gave one of them to Lola.
"Lola, your horse is ready, we're going to begin bombarding the positions as Alexandra is moving out with the infantry. Lola mounted the horse as news was starting to come from Jajka.
"Alexandra, this is Jajka, we're getting bombarded by the enemy as they are using the artillery to blunt the advance, we need help with the counter batteries along with cavalry to break through." Jajka began speaking to Alexandra that they needed help. Alexandra began to think about it for a moment as this was going to need some kind of action to help break through the front.
"Okay, we're on our way." Alexandra told Jajka that they were going to be helping them out at the front. She got on her horse and began to gallop off to where Jajka was fighting. The artillery guns had been neatly lined up as they were going to have the task of silencing Kebab's artillery. The 305mm siege guns began to open up as the Kebab students were firing their last few shells they had left over. They looked up to see the Saunders counter batteries singing with their incoming shells. Then the shells began to land all over with one of the artillery guns from Kebab getting taken out, for students like Ankara this position was no longer a good position to hold. She knew she needed to get out of there.
"We need to begin withdrawing to avoid getting cut off from the supply lines we have." One of the students told Ankara that they needed to begin retreating in order to save themselves. Ankara knew she needed to restore order in the ranks.
"We have to keep fighting, every town we give up means more ground we give up to the enemy. We can't keep retreating." Ankara told her students that they needed to hold their positions if it meant repelling the attack. The students got into their positions before they began firing their rifles away, what they weren't counting was the artillery which was still firing away at their counter batteries. Kay was leading Mika and Jajka along with their groups as they were preparing to assault the final positions. A couple more explosions at the enemy trench where holes were blown into the defenses. Alexandra looked on with the cavalry along with the armored cars as they had arrived. Alice and Alexei were both observing from their positions, safe from the battlefield.
"How's it going?" Alexandra asked them if they were starting to make progress.
"We're not getting very far as we're pinned down by heavy artillery and rifle fire, your artillery has answered our pleas for help, and you came along with the cavalry and the armored cars." Jajka told Alexandra how grateful she was of the situation. Alexandra nodded and decided to take charge of the situation and knew she needed to begin making a push.
"Okay armored cars get ready to move forward." Alexandra gave the order as the armored cars moved to the front of the formation. The artillery shells landed on the Kebab position. Once the smoke cleared, Alexandra knew that now was the chance to press the attack. "Armored cars forward." Alexandra commanded, the armored cars began to move up first as the ones with machine guns began firing away at the enemy positions, those that were armed with mortars, began to fire ahead to blow holes in the line. The Cavalry began moving up behind the armored cars as once they secured a breakthrough, they were going to cause as much chaos as they could in the enemy rear. The students followed up last as they were going to help secure the flanks and make sure the enemy wasn't able to counterattack and if it did, the cavalry and armored cars would be dispatched to that area to deal with the situation. Now that the Kebab students looked on ahead, they realized they weren't going to have enough strength to hold them off and Ankara knew she needed to retreat.
"Retreat everyone!" Ankara shouted; the remaining students began to fall back. Alexandra's cavalry leaped over the trenches as the fact that Ankara didn't have enough artillery shells to blunt the advance had proven to be disastrous. The only way out now was retreat. The retreat that Ankara had caused had made the front fall back and out of Erzurum leaving the town to fall into Saunders hands. For Alexandra, now came the best opportunity to try to withdraw Kebab's students from Trabzon to shore up the attack so that Lola wouldn't face heavy resistance. If it didn't work, she might as well besiege it and bombard it using the heavy artillery into their submission.
"We need to shore up the line. We can't keep fighting like this." Ankara began. She was getting scared of the fact that Saunders was breaking their lines apart into pieces.
"We need to withdraw the forces from Trabzon as they haven't seen any action and leave the rear guard for the city." Ankara gave the order for the majority of the Kebab students to get out of Trabzon to help reinforce the line to make sure Saunders wasn't able to go anywhere. The commander nodded.
"I hear ya Ankara." She told her. She hung up and began to issue orders. "Okay we're moving out from Trabzon to help shore up the front, Alexandra has broken through and it's our job to fix the mess." She told her students. The students had packed up and left to help stabilize the front. Only a small rear guard of fifty students were left behind as the garrison of a thousand students left to help patch the front together. Lola knew she needed to play the waiting game with this as she watched. She knew that Alexandra had to get bogged down by these thousand students before she made her move, if she struck too early, then the attention would be diverted to her.
"Okay we're going to wait for them to move far from this place." Lola began. She was relying on the fact that Alexandra better be drawing all the attention onto her if her attack was going to be successful. Lola was on a brown and cream horse while she looked through her binoculars. The students were marching far from Trabzon.
Alexandra meanwhile had pushed Ankara from Ezurum and was preparing to go further. She rode up on her black stallion and was ready to see who could take on. Ankara was retreating far from the front as she arrived at the next line of defense being with the thousand or so reinforcements that had arrived from Trabzon.
"How's the situation?" One of the students asked Ankara if she knew how this was turning out to be.
"Not very good. We got pushed out of Erzurum and we lost half of our strength. We need to be able to hold this front back." Ankara told her friends that the situation regarding the defense of the terrain wasn't in her favor. Alexandra and her horses came along as she knew she didn't want to extend her front further and decided to hunker down for the time being.
"Okay we're going to wait for Trabzon to fall before we can call it a day. I'm just going to pound this area with artillery for now." Alexandra explained that she had no plans on advancing. The artillery guns began to open fire as they were going to use their excess ammunition to keep Ankara pinned into place. The artillery guns began to fire away as this had caught Ankara off guard.
"Take cover!" Ankara shouted. She and the others began to scatter for their dugouts to take shelter from the incoming artillery. The artillery continued to rain down onto the new defensive line as it was her means of diverting her attention from Lola so Trabzon could be taken without much resistance. Alexandra was going to tease Ankara and not give her the fight she wanted.
Lola meanwhile was preparing the final assault on Trabzon. Many of the students had left that area to help patch Ankara's front together. Lola knew this was a golden opportunity to strike as the fifty or so students weren't going to be enough to hold the port.
"Okay the students have left but they are getting pummeled with artillery. Now it's our chance to move in and take the port." Lola told the group from her horse. The armored cars that had been assigned to her had begun to move up to the front. Lola's strategy was going to be the same, use the armored cars to break through the enemy lines and try to cause havoc in the rear. The infantry was going to go in last as they were going to guard the flanks. The armored car mortar began to roll forward first as it began firing at the rear guard stationed in the fortress port. The mortar rounds blew a hole in the stone walls of the fort. The machine gun cars were at the sides as a means of helping defend their offensive weapon. The mortar fired again as more of the wall was blown apart. The students at the bottom of the fort began firing away as they didn't know what was approaching them. The machine guns began to open fire, the students in the trench were starting to get cut down. Lola observed and knew that the armored cars needed some support. "Come on." She called out while raising her revolver.
Her horse went first as the other horses followed behind; the students followed up shortly afterward. The armored cars continued to fire away as the defenses of the fortress were getting ripped apart. The infantry raced out ahead while the cavalry stayed back. The Kebab students were too busy firing on the armored cars to really notice the infantry wave that was now heading to them. The students were now numbering less than forty and saw the infantry push of a couple hundred students, they were getting picked off as the armored cars continued to charge in. They decided to point the rifles at the students and began firing away to see how many students they were going to be able to take out. A couple students from Saunders began to get shot off while some hid behind cover and began firing back at the Kebab students. The armored cars knew the Kebab students were distracted as they continued to fire away, with two machine guns and a mortar advancing on them. The rear guard's defenses weren't going to hold properly as many students were getting cut down despite shooting quite a few Saunders students to blunt the advance. However, this wasn't enough, the Saunders students began to leap into the trenches, poking their enemies with their plastic bayonets while bashing their heads with the butts of their rifles. The cavalry knew the students were distracted and decided to press the attack.
"Let's capture that fortress." Lola called out, the cavalry cheered as she began to lead the charge, the cavalry squadron galloped ahead, they were going to seize the day of this battle, the armored cars and the infantry had served their purpose, now came for the real break in. Lola and the cavalry galloped up ahead and past the armored cars while they were focusing down on the infantry. The armored car blew the gates open, and this left the opening she had been waiting for. Lola galloped into the fortress town with the cavalry to no resistance. Trabzon had been taken.
With the capture of Trabzon, the offensive went as far as it could. This meant that the students needed the time to rest up and prepare for the next big offensive. Later that night, Megumi had agreed to meet up with Azumi, Earl Gray and Riccioli to discuss what plans they had for upcoming offensives. Megumi opened her computer and quickly found them.
"Hey, welcome to the conference, how are you doing Megumi?" Azumi asked Megumi how Saunders was holding up.
"We're starting to get back on our feet after the retreat that took place. We've defeated Kebab, who was weaker than we had anticipated." Megumi described the situation that had been happening.
"Good, we got the news that the Serbian gang had been completely dismantled after the Saunders retreat that happened a couple days ago. It's a good thing you were able to pick yourself up so fast." Azumi was surprised at how quickly Saunders was able to recover from this disaster.
"I know, what's the plan?" Megumi asked her friends if the three of them had any plans they would like to discuss.
"We're all planning for big offensives coming up in the next few days and these plans will go to these of the following. We should have enough supplies to be able to push up to ten miles if we have enough artillery, enough tanks, infantry weapons and explosives to make the push. We're confident we can get this war finished in another week or two as we're relying on these offensives to knock out the Central Powers, The Dual Alliance should be the first one to knock out then Kebab, then Yogurt Academy and Kuromorimine will be forced to surrender as its fighting alone." Azumi explained the plan for all the major schools to prepare for simultaneous offensives to destroy Kuromorimine and they needed these offensives to work if it meant delivering a crippling blow to the Central powers' war effort.
"And any news about Count High School, we need to get them into the war on our side if we are to accomplish knocking the Dual Alliance out first?" Megumi asked. She desperately wanted them to join the war if it meant achieving objective number one. She wasn't aware about Yogurt Academy as off yet and their offensive plans.
"Progress is slow. Marina and Mizuki told us they had been observing the war and they're still on the fence with who they want to side with." Azumi began. "From the news that we have gathered, they are looking more and more likely to side with us because of the news of Mahou she had said earlier."
"So, when did she say that she would join the fight?" Megumi asked Azumi when Mahou would say that she would join the fight against the Central Powers. Azumi began to think about what she was going to say but she couldn't come up with the exact day that Mahou was going to be ready to attack.
"I have no definite answer when Mahou said she was joining, I will be keeping tabs with her to see when she was going to help us fight. She said she's considering joining but she didn't say if she was going to begin mobilizing or not." Azumi told Megumi that she didn't have any reliable sources.
"What if Kuromorimine or the Dual Alliance attacks one of us with an overwhelming force and we can't hold them back?" Earl Gray asked if they had any ideas regarding what they were going to do if the enemy decided to launch their attack against them.
"Then we'll launch the offensives on the enemy to relieve the pressure and divert their attention to the enemy to shore up the line, even if we lose more, it's a winning strategy, Kuromorimine will run out of supplies faster than we will." Azumi told them that the winning plan was to drain Kuromorimine dry of resources and therefore win. It didn't come to taking territory but simply wearing the enemy down at this point.
"Okay we're still gathering on supplies, and we won't be able to launch any major offensives for the next day or two." Megumi stated to Azumi that she had no plans for major offensives at the moment as they needed to restock their school with supplies.
"Good, keep stocking up, I'm going to begin drawing out plans for our offensive." Azumi told Megumi to continue doing what she was doing and launch the offensive when she was ready.
"Good luck to all of you. Let me know what plans we would have regarding everyone else. I'm going to spend the next day or so, training up the thousands of raw recruits we have." Megumi told them to begin planning their offensives while Megumi planned hers. She left the screen to begin heading off. Alexandra walked up to Megumi with news.
"News for you Megumi, Nelly and the Gregor legion has been formed, some of the students in the metalworking club have produced a new magazine fed rifle that uses a bipod and stripper clips feeding Arisaka ammunition. As the Gregor students are using Arisaka rifles, we might give this experimental rifle to Gregor and hopefully this would bring out some form of automatic fire to help cover them while they advance. We need to begin considering portable automatic weapons too." Alexandra described to Megumi that they had a new weapon that was going to be tested.
"How many of these experimental rifles do we have?" Megumi asked.
"We have only ten so far, the factories are making a total of twenty-five for the Gregor legion. One of those rifles per ten students." Alexandra explained the numbers of how many the Gregor students were going to be carrying.
"Good, we need to begin training up the thousands of raw recruits we have if we're going to turn the tide against Kuromorimine." Megumi nodded with approval, the students that had signed up now had rifles, they just needed to learn how to use them properly without having them break on them.
What they didn't realize was Kuromorimine's plan to bleed BC Freedom white of its defenses. The mill of the meuse was going to be activated.
[A/N]: Things are going to be taken up a notch with Kuromorimine going to launch their attack first against BC Freedom and now they are going to attack. Saunders has no idea of what is going to happen, but this will begin the massive build up to Alexandra's offensive that she, Megumi, Lola and Alexei will be planning out in secret. Chapters to the offensive: 3 left.
Also, thank you for three thousand views and counting, I wasn't expecting for this to take off as people still read it. Keep the views coming and hopefully we can get to four thousand when the offensive begins. See you later.