The Cold War (2024 rewrite, replaced 66K words and first 9 chapters) Chapter 5: Hammer to a facade (2024 rewrite), a youjo senki: saga of tanya the evil fanfic

AN: Credits to gdstriker and perfect_shade for the revisions.

Chapter 54 still remains delayed with a reviewer. I am releasing this rewrite in the meantime.

Fanfiction site doesn't allow images or links to images. My story on Spacebattle and Archive of Our Own has map drawings showing the locations discussed in this chapter.

The old chapter 5 is at the bottom of this page.

1943, May 24th, in one of Aegyptus's palaces:

Ambassador Michael Powell tapped his foot, then stopped himself, as he waited for King Ismail to finish reading the proposal.

"Your reward for me sending my people to an overseas slaughterhouse, is some money?" King Ismail stared incredulously as Powell straightened his tie. "I have five palaces filled with wonders around the world, your government still owes me well over 400 million pounds from the decades of war debts, and you think some pocket change is going to convince me?"

'And that's why we need to end this mess in the Bharatian subcontinent as soon as possible, to avoid turning that 400 million into 800 million…' Powell thought to himself as he reached down to his suitcase and pulled it up onto the desk.

"What's this about?" King Ismail glared at Powell.

Not replying, Powell opened his briefcase.

"I see you have spies everywhere…" King Ismail said with a hint of annoyance and anger.

"You overestimated us, it wasn't that hard." Powell indifferently shrugged. "The only thing you accomplished with your three, no, four different spy agencies is that they are too incompetent and too busy bickering amongst each other to ever pose a threat to you. That also means they are too incompetent to keep a lid on foreigners, scheming politicians, nationalists, communists, religious zealots and others that seek to overthrow you in a bloody revolution. I didn't mention your military because they too are noticeably crippled."

Powell retrieved photographs and documents of King Ismail's South Bharat visit, and showed them to the king. "It would be a shame if the press around the world knew what exactly happened in South Bharat. The real cause of the religious riot, which has manifested into an ongoing political drama that has been distracting South Bharat's politicians, military and its people from the real problem, which is North Bharat. And I shouldn't have to remind you of your domestic enemies that would seek to exploit the overseas troubles that you caused in your partying wake."

"Blackmail? Really?!" King Ismail roared with laughter. "When the Rus tried to blackmail me back a few years ago, I told them to share the recording with the rest of the world, of me having an orgy with lovely Rus women for days! And also give a personal copy to me!"

Powell pushed up his glasses. "I am aware your cousin, Prince Abdel Kader, has been scheming to oust you from power. Perhaps I could help you with that, or help him instead. After all, he wouldn't make a move if he knew we wouldn't recognize his rule and would instead seek to counter-coup him. Or at the very least refuse to give the debt payments to him on the basis of him illegally seizing power, denying him a cushy future of remodeling your five palaces."

"Tell me something new about my pathetic cousin," King Ismail snorted. "He's been trying for about a decade now, and his attempts are amateurish. He only exists because I allow it, and every failed attempt from him just reinforces that he's incompetent, and exposes those who were disloyal to me for foolishly working with him."

Powell looked visibly annoyed at this point. "You have two options. Agree with my demands. Or His Majesty will see to it that you are barred from entering any of Europe or the Unified States. The public uproar over you clumsily igniting riots and a war by stealing religious statues would help ensure that. My colleagues and superiors are already furious at you causing trouble in a region that is important to us. I am well aware of your love of partying overseas."

As King Ismail heavily breathed, barely containing his rage, Powell continued nonchalantly. "And speaking of your cousin, he also exists because I allow it and my Majesty has instructed me to do what is necessary, so making any moves against him would be inadvisable. He will only launch a coup if I allow it, and it will only succeed if I allow it should you continue to resist. I will push as hard as it takes on the weight scale to force him onto your throne, if it comes to that."

Powell then pointed at a window, which King Ismail walked over to look outside. "You see that convoy of armored cars parked next to your palace? One of them has your cousin sitting in it."

King Ismail remained silent as Powell finished his statement. "You wouldn't want our debt repayment to go to your cousin while you are barred from even seeking asylum in Europe or Unified States, would you? To spend the rest of your life in some remote refuge, never able to party like what you have been doing. And never able to step foot into Aegyptus again with everyone being paid by your wealth that your cousin would have seized after the coup."

There was a moment of silence, only broken by King Ismail's continued heavy breathing.

"I'll send some observers to South Bharat for now, just so that my military knows what to expect." King Ismail slowly turned around, his face flushed with anger. "My country needs time for recruitment and training after all. It would not be good for either of us if my people ignited anti-war protests in response to military disasters and heavy death toll. Something that would interrupt your careful plans."

"I am glad we came to an understanding of you helping to clean a mess of your own making," Powell smiled while getting up from his seat. "Cheers!"

"Cheers…" King Ismail grumbled.

The next day, somewhere in Aegyptus:

"Cholera outbreaks across the southern Nile region…" Nasser muttered as he read the newspaper, pushing aside his half finished breakfast plate of ful medames stew and domiati cheese. "And the higher ups want to prepare for large scale recruitment!"

"I had relatives that died from the previous outbreaks a few years ago, in that same exact region." Mohieddin angrily spat. "Nothing has changed."

"It was very telling when last year, some of the communities requested financial assistance with improving sanitation, and were all denied by the central government." An equally furious Salem joined the conversation.

Mohieddin looked around nervously. "Prince Abdel Kader approached me a few days ago, asking for some 'assistance' in return for 'favors'. I'm not sure what to do with him."

Nasser almost spat out his coffee when he was in the middle of drinking it. "You can't be serious. That joke? And he's asking mid-rank officers for help instead of the generals? He could be secretly working for the damn king by attracting the naive into trying to support his repeatedly failed coup attempts, which at this point I can't tell if the prince is intentionally allowing them to fail."

"And my contacts say this time he has secured Albish backing. If he gains power, we might as well as drop the facade of having some autonomy from Londinium." Salem set down his utensils. "We make our own revolution. No king. No foreign puppeteers. A true republic, with voting rights for all so that no one's voice is left out."

"What about the prince?" Mohieddin looked uncertain. "He could still make his own moves even without us."

"Unless the Albish sends a full invasion force, he won't make it far without popular support and us acting against him." Nasser chorted, then frowned. "The corrupt king would also for once make a good use of his wealth to undercut the prince's moves."

"After his repeated failures, at this point anyone that approaches him is automatically under suspicion…" Salem trailed off, then a wide smile emerged across his face. "Let's use that to our advantage. We should maintain the bare minimum contact to know when the prince will be launching his coup, so that we could time our actions to be shortly afterwards as they expect whoever wins the first coup attempt will be in a weakened condition."

"And if I get in trouble?" Mohieddin glanced around nervously.

"We're all taking big risks here," Salem nodded. "The government seems to be content with jailing people that tried working with the prince in order to use them to discredit any opposition against the king. The only ones that were executed were the ones who actually conducted violence. If we succeed, then we'll bail you out of prison. If we fail, well, you'll be watching our executions from your prison because a revolution will terrify the king and his loyalists."

"Possibly the Albish as well," Nasser added. "I know land reform is very popular amongst almost all of the people in the rural areas, but I've seen the Albish misinterpret political activists' land reforms as a communist agenda, if those activists were not specifically pro-Albish. And the hammer from Londinium usually follows."

Nasser then let out a deep sigh. "I might not like your plan, but I don't see any other good options. There is a low risk alternative we could conduct for now."

"That is?…" Salem looked on with interest.

"We organize relief efforts in response to the outbreaks," Nasser smiled. "That will help win popular support among people. Or at the very least save lives when those above us have no interest."

"I like that idea!" Mohieddin shouted in glee. "I'll reach out to my contacts in military medicine for volunteers and for any supplies and equipment they could 'reallocate'."

Mohieddin then paused for a moment. "Wouldn't the government get worried about us making them look bad? What plans do we have for that?"

"We'll portray it as doing our service of protecting the country, and that diseases are also our enemy." Salem chuckled. "If they are already fumbling with the disease outbreak containment and treatment efforts, I expect any of their attempts to crack down on our volunteer services to be hamfisted and backfire on them spectacularly."

Meanwhile in South Bharat, Bombay, at the Albish embassy:

As the staff scrambled around to sort what documents to pack with them, and which ones to burn, I finished inspecting my LmG-40 aerial mage assault rifle just as Shone stepped into the room.

"Taking matters into your own hands?" Shone looked up and down at my military attire that I was wearing.

"If the NKVD was the one that planned that bombing of the peace talks to ignite a war, I guess we're going to have to teach the morons a lesson. The hard way. Again." I loaded my rifle and racked it. "With how fast the city of Nashik fell, by the time I go back to Berun to restart mobilization and the first Germanian forces arrive, I'm not sure if even half of South Bharat would still be intact, assuming they didn't surrender first. Any positive news from overseas to cheer me up?"

Shone cleared his throat. "The Diet in Germania approved funding for deploying a volunteer army to South Bharat, along with humanitarian aid and arms shipment. Somehow a funding bill for new boat factories to produce combat boats was also included in that. Your… lover has been holding public rallies, telling people to follow you into South Bharat. The rest of OZEV are planning their own actions. Akitsushima Dominion is deploying a small naval task force with marine complements. And as for back in Londinium, panic among the ministers."

"At least the rest of the world is waking up to yet another war." I got up from my chair and powered up my orb. "We'll just have to buy time for outside help to arrive. Now if you excuse me, there are some communists I need to kill. I wouldn't want them to show up at your embassy while your staff is still sorting out their evacuation."

"I wish you luck," Shone nodded as he opened a window for me.

"Could you send a message for me?" As I hovered into the air.

"What is it?"

"Tell Viktoriya Serebryakov that I'm probably not going to make it back for her special dinner, and that I am sorry for breaking my promise."

Then I rocketed out of the window and into the sky. Hopefully Major Neumann and his girlfriend Birgit, previously 'tourists' and now 'volunteer advisers to South Bharat's military', are still in the area by the time I arrive at the rally point.

After flying for several minutes, I sensed magic signatures that didn't match South Bharatian mages, and one of them was clearly a Rus mage. It must be a reconnaissance group that is poking forward.

As I rapidly approached the distant formation, 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 the Rus mage.

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. But I also need my warm up after almost a year of not killing communists.

Northern outskirts of Bombay, up in the sky:

Major Neumann reloaded his rifle when he noticed a Chinese mage brandishing an ax suddenly charged towards a South Bharatian mage battalion commander.

"Fallback and keep your distance!" Neumann shouted. "You won't win that fight!"

Upon seeing that the South Bharatian commander was not going to listen, he tried to aim his rifle as the two mages clashed, but couldn't get a clear shot into the flurry of movements. The South Bharatian commander blocked the ax with their rifle and knocked it out of the Chinese mage's hands.

Several bullets whizzed by, prompting Neumann to switch his attention to shooting at North Bharatian mages that were firing at his general direction.

When he looked back at the melee after clicking empty on his magazine, he got a glimpse of the commander's helmet and head being caved in by the Chinese mage's rifle swing, which broke the rifle in half. The mage then used the broken rifle pieces to impale two arriving South Bharatian mages that tried to save their commander, and then locked eyes with Neumann.

Oh, no…

Neumann fumbled with inserting a fresh magazine into his rife as the Chinese mage charged at him with just a bayonet in hand.

A sudden burst of gunfire evaporated the incoming mage's head before Neumann could aim his rifle.

"Are you alright dear?" Birgit reloaded her rifle and resumed firing.

"I'm fine," He smiled, then frowned as he looked behind him. "The South Bharatians, they look like they are ready to rout."

"That's a problem because it looks like we were only holding off their reconnaissance force," Birgit sighed. "A lot more enemies are coming in."

'We had only barely beaten off their probing attacks. And now they bring out the hammer.' Neumann grumbled to himself.

"We might have to retreat," Neumann looked on with concern. "The disparity of numbers, training, orbs and rifles between our allies and the communists is too much."

Suddenly he heard his old commander's voice and almost soiled himself.

'She is terrifying with her stealth spells… I didn't even sense her coming!'

"Who says we're retreating?!" Degurechaff's voice boomed. "Where's the commander for the South Bharatian mages? I want to speak to him about the routing South Bharatian mages that I intercepted along the way and had to force them at gunpoint to rally with me!"

"He died right before you arrived," he shifted his glance off to the side.

"Damn those dozen of communists that tried slowing me down, and one of them got away with just a missing arm!" She screeched. "Where are the Albish mages anyways, wouldn't they have taken charge?"

Neumann sighed, already knowing what happened to the poor fools that tried stopping her, before answering her. "They withdrew enmass to protect the evacuating Albish embassy after a CSR and two NKVD mage battalions broke through elsewhere to beeline for the embassy."

Degurechaff then let off a volley of long range fire, and he could see two mage figures fall out of the sky, over 1.5 kilometers away. He also sensed one less active Rus and Chinese magic signatures.

That suddenly brought the main enemy mage force to a halt, and he then sensed a large burst of encrypted voice spells between the Rus and Chinese mages, as if an argument broke out.

"I figured the Rus and Chinese mages were in charge of their cannon fodder North Bharatian mages," She smiled. "If they're smart, they would retreat so I can head back to the embassy to bail out the Albish."

"They might be cannon fodder, but they are consistently better than the South Bharatian mages, both in one vs one and massed fire engagements." Neumann tried to caution her.

Two of the North Bharatian mage battalions retreated with the NKVD mage platoon, while the CSR mages charged forward at Degurechaff using their maximum speed with the other four mage battalions trailing behind them.

"Time to put down the rabid dogs that are leading the flock of sheep!" Degurechaff snarled as she charged at the communists alone, to Neumann's horror.

"I guess they're not familiar with the term 'Devil of the Rhine'. That's their loss." Birgit chuckled. "I got a recorder spell running. This will be interesting."

"11th and 23rd mage battalions, advance half a kilometer and engage! Rest of you, stay with me and provide supporting fire!" He called out in near panic.

As I darted in different vectors while advancing towards them, I also scheduled my maneuvers ahead of time using my orb so that my rifle would be aiming exactly where I needed to, and threw out the occasional decoys.

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, Chinese mages were struggling to land any hits as I downed one after the next, and as I got closer, I could visually confirm that they were using bolt-action rifles. That would explain why their rate of fire was pathetically low for what started off as a group of 10 hostiles.

The North Bharatian mages that were foolish enough to stick around for the slaughter had finally made up their mind to begin moving up, only to scatter off in different directions when a dozen Albish fighters dove down for their rocket runs. I'll give them credit for recognizing the rocket barrage threat and reacting to it, but splitting up in this context gives me the opening to finish off the Chinese mages.

"They're fixing bayonets… I see what they're going to do." I smiled in glee.

From the frying pan, into the incinerator!

I charged at them as I manically laughed at their mistake while selecting my rifle to full auto, abruptly jerking upward when they were only a few meters away from me and spraying their heads with bullets at point blank range, shattering their shields and sending skull and brain matters everywhere.

The last remaining Chinese 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. 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. Seeing that he had a sword at his side, I grabbed it and charged at one of the North Bharatian mages to slice them down vertically.

As the other North Bharatian mages brought their rifles about to fire at me, I was prepared to deploy illusions when a volley of bullets tore through them.

Briefly glancing back, I could see that the previously wavering South Bharatian mages had found their courage to join me in battle, with Neumann and Birgit leading them. Finally, something to distract the commies so they couldn't just concentrate fire in my general vicinity!

I let out a magic amplified warcry, then charged at the disorganized North Bharatian mages that were struggling to regroup and fight back effectively now that all of the Chinese mages were dead, the NKVD mages had abandoned them, the Albish fighters were still loitering off in the distance waiting for an opportunity, and for once they were going up against an enemy that wasn't retreating.

Normally I wouldn't be this reckless, but 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 commies were starting to panic as they exchanged gunfire with the South Bharatian mages, while I moved off to the flank to avoid being caught in the crossfire and to force the North Bharatians to respond to me. 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.

As I rapidly approached the commies, something seemed to click and they rapidly bunched up into a dense, blobbed formation to pour as much lead as possible in my general direction, completely disregarding the continuing hail of bullets from the South Bharatians. I suppose I'm doing something right if they were more fearful of me, than the part where they were being picked apart by the unopposed South Bharatians.

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 commies 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 inbound 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 into the stunned group, and then flew in to finish any remaining survivors.

The remaining commies' morale finally shattered and they all fled in different directions, not wanting to become part of the rain of corpses and body parts.

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.

"President, 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 European War where no matter how many victories we won, the Empire was still losing the war anyways.

"What about the Albish embassy?"

"When I asked the Albish pilots about that as they were leaving, they said they saw the embassy's buildings and surrounding grounds were engulfed in flames while they were flying by."

"One hell of an emergency destruction plan, or battle," I whistled. "I hope Ambassador Shone made it out alive from that mess."

I looked down to scan the chaos on the ground, and noticed someone familiar standing on a flat rooftop with a film recorder and a camera. Of course it had to be Millie, 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 Millie.

"Ah, uh, nice to meet you again President!" She sputtered.

"Remember Millie? 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 and Birgit. Millie took some aerial photos of the rapidly advancing North Bharatian army that were beginning to make their way through the city. Spots of fires could be seen, primarily at what appeared to be government building locations. It seems the Albish embassy wasn't the only one that met an inferno fate.

"Neumann, how are our mages?"

"They did take some losses, but it's not catastrophic, yet."

"As long as we can fight another day, we'll be fine." I curtly replied.

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 Millie gasp in horror, while my face contorted in rage for a moment.

When we landed, some of the prison guards gave us confused looks.

I then put on a very thin smile, struggling to hold myself back from forcing the guards to join their victims in the trenches. "I would love to hear your excuse for the warcrimes, which the communists will discover."

What appeared to be the prison superintendent walked up to us as the guards parted ways.

"Move on. Nothing to see here. Please disperse. Just dealing with some enemies of the state." The prison superintendent announced.

"The President of Germania, who just cut down a few dozen enemy mages, asked a question." Neumann stepped in the way. "You should answer it. And you do not want to test her resolve."

The prison superintendent glared at me, saw the rest of the South Bharatian mages 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?" Millie asked.

"The ones that our leadership 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 Officer Candidate School.

"Including children?..." Millie 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, then pointed my rifle at the prison superintendent. "You should stop giving monstrous orders, about right now."

The prison superintendent pulled out his pistol and pointed at Millie's face. Neumann and Birgit and the guards pointed their weapons at each other. The South Bharatian mages appeared to be neutral in the standoff.

I took a deep breath to remind myself to not do anything foolish when Millie 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 me. 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, "Home Affairs Minister Savarkar! Now will you leave me alone?!"

"Wait, him? He's the one who gave the order?! I can't believe he would resort to this measure!" Millie seemed shocked.

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 me 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 performed a namaste gesture to me, "You're the leader that South Bharat needs."

AN:

One of the Egyptian breakfast cuisines: wiki/Ful_medames

Reference to the Albish ambassador: wiki/Miles_Lampson,_1st_Baron_Killearn

Farouk of Egypt had five palaces, and was also fending off coup attempts from a cousin for many years: wiki/Farouk_of_Egypt#Ascension

When a group of Iranian emissaries arrived in Cairo bearing gifts from Reza Khan such as a "diamond necklace, diamond brooch, diamond earrings", Farouk was not impressed, taking the Iranian delegation on a tour of his five palaces to show them proper royal splendor and asked if there was anything comparable in Iran.[72] Nonetheless, Farouk agreed in a joint press communique issued with Reza Khan on 26 May 1938, that Princess Fawzia would marry Crown Prince Mohammad Reza, who first learned that he was now engaged to Fawzia when he read the press release.[72]

…

Prince Mohammad Ali, had wanted Farouk to keep trying to be admitted on a full-time basis to the Royal Military Academy as a means of getting him out of the country.[32] Since under Egyptian law women could not inherit the throne, Farouk's cousin Prince Mohammad Ali was next in line to the throne. Prince Mohammad Ali was to spend the next 16 years scheming to depose Farouk so he could become king.[32]

…

Lampson personally favored deposing Farouk and putting his cousin Prince Mohammad Ali on the throne in order to keep the Wafd in power, but feared that a coup would destroy the popular legitimacy of Nahas.[53]

…

On 17 November 1938, Farouk became a father when Farida gave birth to Princess Farial, a considerable disappointment as Farouk wanted a son, all the more because he knew his cousin, Prince Mohammad Ali, was scheming to take the throne.[74]

…

Following a ministerial crisis in February 1942, the British government, through its ambassador in Egypt, Sir Miles Lampson, pressed Farouk to have a Wafd or Wafd-coalition government replace Hussein Sirri Pasha's government. Lampson had Sir Walter Monckton flown in from London to draft an abdication decree for Farouk to sign as Monckton had drafted the abdication decree for Edward VIII and it was agreed that Prince Mohammad Ali would become the new king.[99] Lampson wanted to depose Farouk, but General Robert Stone and Oliver Lyttleton both argued that if Farouk agreed to appoint Nahas Pasha prime minister that the public reaction to "throwing the boy out for giving us at 9 p.m. the answer which we should have welcomed at 6 p.m." would be highly negative.[100]

wiki/Farouk_of_Egypt#Decline

Egypt ended the Second World War as the richest country in the Middle East, owing largely to the high prices of cotton.[12] In 1945 in a reversal of the usual roles, Egypt was a creditor nation to the United Kingdom, with the British government owing Egypt £400 million.[12] The stark income disparities of Egyptian society meant the wealth of Egypt was very unequally distributed with the kingdom having 500 millionaires while the fellaheen lived in extreme poverty.[12] In 1945, a medical study showed that 80% of Egyptians suffered from bilharzia and ophthalmia, both diseases that were easily preventable and treatable.[12] The authors of the study noted both bilharzia and ophthalmia were spread by waterborne parasitic worms, and the prevalence of both diseases could easily be eliminated in Egypt by providing people with safe sources of drinking water. The bumbling response of the Egyptian authorities to the cholera epidemic in 1947 that killed 80,000 people was an additional cause of criticism as cholera is caused by drinking water contaminated with feces, and the entire epidemic could have been avoided if only ordinary Egyptians had sources of clean drinking water.[12] King Farouk had traditionally posed as the friend of the poor, but by 1945 such gestures that the king liked to engage in such as throwing gold coins at the fellaheen or dropping ping-pong balls from his plane that could be redeemed for candy were no longer felt to be sufficient.[12] Increasingly, demands were being made that the king should engage in social reforms instead of theatrical gestures like handing out gold coins during royal visits, and as Farouk was unwilling to consider land reform or improving the water sanitation, his popularity began to decline.[12]

"Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness" book:

Page 407-408:

Numerous assessments have found that Arab governmental bureaucracies showed all of the same patterns of behavior as their militaries, albeit without the same disastrous impact since government bureaucracies are not engaged in lethal competition with one another. For instance, in a study of the bureaucracies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan a team of mostly Arab social scientists found that "Supervisors in the Middle East tend to concentrate as much authority as possible in their own hands. Little authority is delegated. Innovation and risk taking are not reinforced. Many supervisory personnel in the Middle East prefer subordinates who keep a low profile and who 'don't rock the boat.' Subservience often brings greater rewards than hard work." The study authors found that "bureaucratic regulations in the Middle East focus on sins of commission rather than sins of omission. It is far more dangerous to stick one's neck out than it is to do nothing." They also reported that 90 percent of the senior bureaucrats interviewed in all three countries believed that "their subordinates were simply unqualified to innovate."1

In short, there is a constant tendency in Arab agencies toward highly centralized hierarchies in which authority is concentrated at the top, and rarely, if ever, delegated.2 A 2010 OECD study of human resources management practices in the Middle East found that "All of the countries are wrestling with a set of intractable HRM issues that are perceived as barriers to improved governance both inside and outside the human resource area." In particular, the study singled out across-the-board problems of "Rigid personnel systems that do not motivate or reward good performance and that rely too heavily on seniority for advancement. . . . A rigidly hierarchical, regulation based approach that places the Human Resources rulebook ahead of either the employees' best interest or the objectives at hand. Low managerial delegation and decision-making that is strongly-centralized."3

. .gov/pmc/articles/PMC6423203/

In 1943, a major malaria epidemic occurred in Egypt associated with the spread of A. arabiensis from Sudan along the Nile Valley (Malcolm et al. 2009).

In real life, the US naval medical service assisted with the chlorea epidemic response. With the Unified States having a more isolated foreign policy, they would be far less willing to help Aegyptus: . /Media/News/Article/3533326/stemming-the-tide-navy-medicine-and-the-egyptian-cholera-epidemic-of-1947/

Over the next three months cholera spread across 2,270 towns and villages in Egypt killing over half of its victims. According to one estimate over 20,000 Egyptians died of cholera.

…

By studying cholera patients, they were able to estimate "quantitatively the[ir] degree of hydration." This information enabled them to determine the necessary volume and composition of intravenous fluids needed by the patient. Application of this technique helped NAMRU-3 reduce the mortality among cholera patients at the hospital to between 5 and 7.5 percent. As a comparison, the mortality rate for cholera patients not treated by NAMRU-3 during the epidemic was a staggering 50 percent.

NAMRU-3's efforts garnered great attention throughout Egypt. On October 7, 1947, Le Phare Egyptian, a local newspaper published an editorial calling the U.S. Navy-led effort to vaccinate the country as "one of the most spectacular examples of medical cooperation in history."

This chapter was written based on how South Korea crumbled in the start of the Korean War: wiki/Korean_War#Course_of_the_war

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]

Historical basis for the massacres. The Korean War was not a pleasant time for civilians:

wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

wiki/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.

OLD CHAPTER 5, IGNORE THE BELOW WRITING IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SEEING WHAT MY WRITING BACK IN 2021 LOOKS LIKE

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.

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.

"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.

"We'll provide medical aid, but first who gave you the orders?" I asked.

"Fuck you! And I'll have those traitorous mages hanged!"

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.

"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."