AN: Edited by Gremlin Jack, perfect_shade, and Nla Eid.
February 8th, 1945, in the East Jiuzhou Sea:
Captain Teyanen and his mage company silently swam through the bottom of the ocean towards the harbor where the captured destroyer was docked at, his closed-circuit rebreather hissing as he looked back behind to the magnetic mines that they were carrying.
Previous reconnaissance operations revealed that the CSR had many patrolling divers wearing the early 1900's standard diving dress with their distinctive bronze diving helmets. The outer rings of the anti-torpedo nets and sea mines were configured to have limited open passages for ships to go through, and thus funnel any enemy divers through those patrolled chokepoints. The inner ring had multiple layers of nets around the ship. It was noted that the divers would constantly check the state of the nets.
The surface is just as locked down. Extensive searchlights, magic detectors and substantial anti-air cover the airspace above. They also had explosives on standby to dump into the water if underwater operators were detected, and there were the coastal artillery guns to challenge any direct naval actions.
A formidable set of defenses, but not that any of that can stop them from being here, nor will they be able to stop what is about to happen – His company will make sure of that, all they needed was the go ahead to begin the mission.
In Londinium:
Rear Admiral John Godby and Viscount Guysborough were in the Prime Minister's office as Churbull read through the message sent from Germania.
The Germanians were about to scuttle all of the captured ships that were anchored in the CSR's harbors, and were asking for permission from the ships' owners before they did so. Due to operational security reasons, it had to be a last minute notice.
"What's the status of our talks with the CSR on handing over the vessels?" Churbull asked.
"No updates yet." Guysborough said. "The last information I got from our ambassador in Bharat was that it may take a while."
"They're stalling for time." Godby interjected. "The longer those ships remain in the CSR's hands, the more time they have to gut them for all they're worth,"
That's something we cannot allow to happen. Churbull sighed and fingered for a cigar. "Give them the go ahead." He said before then finding a roll and putting it in his mouth. "What's the progress of the firebombing operations and the naval bombardment?"
"A portion of Peking, including most of the Forbidden City, is burning." Godby said. "Although it appears the CSR is still committed to concentrating their anti-aircraft defenses around their coastal guns and the captured ships. As for the naval bombardment, Admiral Cunningham had his fleet disengage after a single salvo when the coastal guns returned fire. He said he will not engage without air support to suppress the coastal guns."
Churbull hummed before lighting his cigar and then taking a puff. "Is it advancing our position in the peace talks?"
Guysborough nods. "Considering that the CSR made it clear that they want the war to end and have already made the concessions regarding North Bharat, I think the firebombing will only continue to pressure them to find an end to the war, or they give up defending the captured ships to stop us from torching every single city to ashes. As for the Forbidden City, it's just an old palace, and we probably did a favor for the communists by getting rid of a monarchy symbol." He then shakes his head. "If I had known about just how many mages the communists could pull out of their rear end and their use of augmentations, I would have never supported the blockade in the first place."
A few hours later, Viscount Guysborough raced into the Prime Minister's office, with Rear Admiral John Godby right behind him.
Churbull looked up from his papers in surprise. "It must be awfully urgent to skip all of the courtesy." he would've chuckled but the speed at which Guysborough placed a telegram report on his desk alarmed him. He picks up and reads it through. Apparently, Ambassador Allen Shone had worked out a deal where the CSR would return all of the ships in return for some concessions. Overall, the deal was relatively in favor of the Albish.
…But then there's the fact that said ships are about to get blown up.
Churbull felt like he was going to cough up his lungs when he rose and shouted: "Call off the scuttling!"
In the CSR's harbor.
By the time the news reached Londinium, Captain Teyanen's company had slipped past a few of the divers using stealth casted illusions and made their way to a section of the nets. They carefully cut through one layer of the net, and once everyone was through, they used underwater adhesives to temporarily seal it back up before then proceeded to the next layer. They had to stop and conceal their work several times to avoid detection from patrolling divers.
The same net cutting and patching process was repeated with the inner nets. But while dealing with the last two net layers. a diver suddenly dropped in from above them and landed directly on top of one of the mages. No amount of illusions would be able to hide that.
The surprised diver was quickly dispatched with a magic blade, but the diver released his deadman switch upon death, which broke the circuit with the electrical cables connecting the diver's to the instruments at the surface and thus caused a detectable drop in voltage. More divers began dropping into the water to investigate what happened to the first diver.
Teyanen gave the order to his company to kill the arriving divers, cut through the nets without sealing them, and to start planting the mines. He also broadcasted a high power voice spell to the reserve mage battalion that was hovering in the air in stealth mode.
Above the harbor:
The mage battalion commander didn't need the voice spell to swing into action. He already knew the underwater mage company's cover was blown when the harbor security scrambled to have more divers dropped into a location next to the ship and began moving their depth charges into position.
The explosive spells struck the stockpiles of depth charges and anti-aircraft ammunition, along with fuel tanks, and caused massive explosions and fires throughout the harbor. His battalion began evasive maneuvers to avoid fire from the surviving anti-aircraft guns. The underwater mage company shot out of the water and opened fire on the surprised anti-aircraft crews. Moments later, the water boiled and was launched into the air from the underwater explosions, rocking the ship and breaking the connecting walkways loose.
"Sir, look!" One of the mages catches the commander's attention as he points towards the ship, "It looks like the harbor personnel are trying to put the walkways back onto the ship and launch rowing boats to try to stop the sinking!"
The commander turns and looks down to see that there are indeed sailors getting into rowboats. "Well, blow them up!" He barks out, "They can't stop the flooding if they can't get onto the ship!" The battalion commander then prepares to move out, but Teyaben's voce spell broke in:
"Company Commander, do you sense that? I think we have enemy mages burning hard towards us. Our job is done, let's get out of here."
In Berun:
As General Lergen briefed me on the results of the operation, I felt a sense of relief. The Albish should be happy that the CSR will not threaten their dominance of the sea, and it's not like they were going to be able to rescue those ships before the ceasefire took effect. The two mage battalions from Tsushima Island acted as reserves in the event that the underwater mages were forced to go loud. While the destroyer's scuttling was a mess, the other two vessels were sunk with far less attention and the harbor defenders appeared to be unaware of our operations until the mines went off. By that point, the mages were long gone.
There were a lot of things that we had rushed, especially with the intelligence gathering. The fact that we found an extra destroyer in their possession suggested our intel on how many vessels and what types were captured may have been inaccurate. But there wasn't a whole lot we could do about that as Foreign Minister Dertinge could only delay the ceasefire for so long before the other participants might get suspicious or resume the war. And with zero deaths among my mages, I'm thankful that everything turned out perfectly.
Then my phone rang. I picked it up.
"Good evening Chancellor, this is Foreign Minister Dertinge. The Albish are demanding us to cancel our operations right now. They had a last minute breakthrough in their peace talks with the CSR handing over the captured ships."
The color ran from my face. General Lergen looked at me in confusion.
"The Albish is asking us to call off the attack." I told Lergen. "The CSR's ambassador in Bharat had agreed to hand over the captured ships, right in the middle of our mages' attack."
I could see that he lost a bit of his composure.
"Chancellor?" Foreign Minister Dertinge asked over the phone.
The worst possible two birds with one stone moment. The Albish would be furious that we sent their ships to the bottom of the harbors when the CSR was going to hand them back anyways. The CSR would also be furious that we essentially pulled down their pants and showed their incompetence to the world. Curse you Being X for the timing of all of this mess!
1945, February 9th, the next morning in the CSR:
"Before we begin…" Chairman Zhang Wentian looked around at everyone. "I want to remind everyone that this is a fact finding meeting, not a blame session. The real blame would be the Germanians that coincidentally stalled the ceasefire agreement, and then the Albish led us on for a fake deal while simultaneously our new ships were sent to the bottom of our harbors during that delay. And they did this after burning Peking and a great portion of our history and culture when we finally saw the need for peace, even if it was in their favor."
"I'm still confused about how they made it past all of our defenses." Luo Ronghuan spat. "I had a mage company probe all of the harbors' defenses and they could not get through even the outer ring without being detected. The magic detectors should have gone off if the Germanian mages were using illusions to get past our divers. Instead, the magic detectors only went off at the harbor with the destroyer when their mages started shooting. They even sank the Frankish destroyer!"
"It finally makes sense." Kang Sheng muttered. Everyone looked at him.
"Explain." Zhang Wentian motioned at Kang.
"There were unusual reports of previous engagements with the Germanian mages. How they seemed to be too good at slipping past our patrols for strike operations, ambushing our forces and just being difficult to detect in general. In direct combat, their illusions were exceptionally difficult to detect. The only way they could have gotten past the defenses is if they were casting spells without any magic emissions. And coincidentally, the Albish fleet was probing our coastal defenses which required many of our mages to be redeployed which severely delayed our mages from responding to the harbor raids."
"…Our aerial mages experimented with dedicated personnel to use large amount of regular ammunition to try to burn through the illusions by shooting all of them so the rest of our mages can avoid the flickering illusions and focus their mana on the actual mages." Luo Ronghuan added. "A few of our mages also tried dual wielding belt fed light machine guns to deal with the large number of decoys. We'll have to find something better as the mages using the regular ammunition have to get in very close range to effectively engage the illusions, resulting in unacceptable casualty rates."
"But the stealth casting, that's not pos-." Zhang Wentian was about to say when Luo Ronghuan interjected.
"Computational orbs have different levels of mana efficiency. The orbs used by unaugmented C-tier mages have to be highly efficient due to the limited mana output of the users. But they also have very low tolerance of mana power before being overloaded."
"Even with the civilian orbs, the magic detectors will still see them." Zhang Wentian said.
"We're talking about the first and only country to have developed a dual core orb." Kang Sheng responded. "Which everyone else is copying. The Americans, the Rus, OZEV members and us. And I know the Americans are using the Type 97 orb based on their mages' combat performance, while some of the coalition mages that are using single-core orbs are often at a disadvantage in raw mana output, although not as severe as the South Bharatian mages at the start of the war."
"So what can we do to defend against their stealth mages?" Zhang Wentian asked.
"Short of stealing Germania's magic detectors, I have no idea." Kang Sheng shrugged his shoulders.
"I would have wanted us to continue this war and make them all burn for the trick they pulled on us, but now that the Germanians revealed their mage capability like what we did, it won't end well." Luo Ronghuan sighed. "Now we can't pull our anti-aircraft units from the front line to defend our cities as that would just allow the Germanians to run free."
"So, what about the ships?" Zhang Wentian asked.
"We only have a single submarine that the Germanians completely missed. It was moved into a warehouse only several days ago." Luo Ronghuan motioned at the map where the submarine was located. "The rest of the captured vessels have all been shattered from the explosions. There is a high risk of them breaking apart if we try to lift them out of the water."
"And repairing them is not possible. Only the Albish has the technical knowledge, naval experience, skilled laborers, industry and drydocks to raise the sunken vessels out of the water and repair them." Li Kenong added in. "I'm afraid our only option is to scrap them for steel and other materials, while trying to recover as many critical components as possible, such as radars, radios, fire control systems and so on. Besides, our harbors are being blocked by the sunken ships."
Zhang Wentian's knuckles turned white as he breathed heavily. "Then we'll design a new submarine and mass produce it when we finish reconstruction. Hundreds if need be. We have the mage numbers to use all of them as forward deployment platforms. The coalition backed us into the corner with their overreaction to our response to their naval operations, and should not be surprised that we will do anything to get out of that corner. A bunch of hypocrites that are upset with losing a battleship in a war. If they cared about it so much, then they shouldn't be using it in combat."
He paused for a moment, then continued. "If they think we won't pursue our own navy when the coalition fleet launched multiple amphibious invasions in Bharat, Albish carrier planes conducted strategic bombings on our homeland while our coastal guns could do nothing in response and the Akinese fleet was sailing straight for Joseon, they are fools."
"I'm still suspicious of how they knew that our mages within the local area were depleted from the boarding operations." Kang Sheng said. "Their mages that were caught blowing up our destroyer would have been overwhelmed if we had enough mages to garrison all of the ports. The mage battalion that appeared out of nowhere in the air would have been visually detected by aerial mage patrols. Maybe they found a cloaking method without using magic at all?"
"Not possible, I also ordered blacked out gliders to be tested against the searchlights on a cloudy day, and they couldn't get through." Luo Ronghuan replied. "At least one of the harbors would have visually detected the flying mages. And I was told I was being excessively paranoid about protecting our prizes with how short we were on mages."
"Do you think someone in our government or military had provided the information about the state of our mage forces to Germania or the coalition?" Zhang Wentian asked.
"I don't know." Kang Sheng responded. "But I would like to task Wang Ming with conducting investigations just as a precaution."
"You have my approval. If there are any internal threats to our homeland, they will need to be eliminated."
"One last thing. How should we respond to the protests that are happening around the country?" Kang Sheng asked. "The people are angry, and it seems that many of them want to continue the war out of vengeance due to the Albish bombings, and to some extent, the Germanians denying what little victory we had against the Albish."
Zhang Wentian paused for a few seconds. "I understand, but now is not the time. Shut down the pro-war protests and run propaganda to remind people that we first need to rebuild and modernize our country to take on the imperialists on a more equal footing. Do you have an update on the political situation within Germania?"
"The Chancellor has some visible internal dissent against her based on reports from the Frankish agents passed along by the NKVD and the Germanian newspapers that have been reporting on the Chancellor's and Deputy Chancellor's… unusual love. Their power is not absolute as it seems."
"Have the NKVD and Frankish agents carefully influence Germania's politics, even if it means working with the conservative opposition against the Chancellor. An enemy of our enemy is our temporary friend, and given how well she has ruled for years, any replacement of her can't be worse for us."
1945, February 12th, in Londinium:
Viscount Guysborough entered the Prime Minister's office. Churbull was staring out of his window, his cigar having been long burnt out.
"It is done." Guysborough sighed. "The war is officially over."
"What is the fate of our ships now that they're at the bottom of the harbors?" Churbull softly asked.
"They gave us an ultimatum." Guysborough said. "Show them how to safely raise the wrecks out of the water before the rust rapidly sets in and build all of the supporting infrastructure to repair the ships which range from deep drydocks to factories to produce replacement parts. That would effectively hand them all of the blueprints on how to operate a modern navy. Or they'll scrap the sunken ships because the wrecks are blocking their harbors."
Churbull crushed his cigar into the ashtray. "All because of the delays in communication across the world. I can understand why the Germanians were unable to recall their attack as their mages were already in the deep of it, but it's frustrating. I wonder if there's a coincidence in the timing of all of this. How the Germanians informed us of their operation right before our ambassador was shaking hands with the communist ambassador, and their mages had blown up the ships with minimal delay."
"Well, with 3 vessels scuttled as reported by the Germanians, which matches how many we know were in the CSR's possession, they had very limited time to reverse engineer the ships, so they wouldn't have the opportunity to build a fleet that could threaten us."
"That deal could have helped temper both sides. Now the CSR has no incentive to stop them from continuing to seize control of colonies. They stated that they didn't care if we recognized the sovereignty of Burma and other countries, and the fate of Burma would be "decided by His Majesty's military force instead of drawing an arbitrary line". They don't need warships when they can use ships and boats filled with mages, or for some of the islands, take a short flight across the ocean. The Middle East is right next to the Russy Confederation, Afghanistan and North Bharat." Churbull responded. "They would have been forced to be much more cautious about flipping colonies if we were trading with them and escorting their merchant ships. I'm still open to selling them oil if it means keeping them from interfering with our colonies."
Guysborough sighed. "That's unlikely as their ambassador accused us of dealing in bad faith by intentionally stalling the ceasefire to allow the Germanians' adventure, and said they would not trust us with any further deals. They're furious at us firebombing their capital, then sinking the ships right when the firebombing was already enough to convince them to seek peace."
"And the Chancellor had set up South Bharat to be in a perfect condition where if her 'soft' influence doesn't work, her volunteer army that is larger, better equipped, and far better trained and led, will make short work of South Bharat's own army to take over." Churbull spat. "What a bloody mess she led us into. Isolated from South Bharat and hated by the CSR."
"Speaking of South Bharat, they asked us what to do with the volunteer army." Guysborough said.
Churbull pondered, then spoke, "Any choices they make are bad ones. If they try to disband the volunteer army and keep their original one, the volunteer army will launch a coup to retain their power. Combining the two entirely different military structures together would be a nightmare, and there's a good chance that the volunteer army will win out in that messy merger. Keeping a parallel military structure would just delay the inevitable."
"They do have elections coming up." Guysborough said. "While the Chancellor may preach about democracy, we should be expecting her to influence their elections so she doesn't have to use her volunteer army to seize control. She is obsessed with maintaining a positive public image, except for her affairs with her deputy Chancellor that North Bharat's propaganda calls the Chancellor 'Tanya von Degenerate' and 'Queen of Queers'."
Churbull cracked a smile, "The one thing that we could agree with. And what would we be doing?"
"We fight fire with fire. They will be interfering with the elections. We should do the same." Guysborough paused for a second. "Then there is the Alsace-Lorraine's referendum that is coming up. The worst outcome is feeding more territory to Germania, and the Chancellor had demonstrated great competence with annexing or allying with her neighbors. We may have to help the frogs with this referendum."
Churbull sat down, opened a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a full glass. After he finished his drink, he said "My time here will be very short. I will be handing in my resignation to call for an immediate election. I agree with you, but if my successor wants no part of that, then be prepared to immediately cease our activities."
1945, February 16th, In Berun:
I had been following Green's case after Elya's Albish cult reported he was being made a scapegoat for the Admiralty's inquiry board. They were accusing him of cowardice, failure to hold out long enough for the HMS Warspite's formation to arrive in time to repel the communist mages before they could board the ships, and abandoning the ships. He argued that there was little he could do when most of the mages under his command were sent off elsewhere, but it appeared the inquiry board ignored that. I wouldn't blame him for abandoning the HMS Prince of Wales. If I was in a similar situation, unless I had my Type 95 Orb with me, I probably would have retreated instead of throwing a company from my 203rd mage battalion into that meat grinder, and definitely wouldn't have stuck around if I was just down to three mages when a mob of augmented mages just showed up with their heavy machine guns.
A real shame. His military career is all but over with his inevitable second demotion, and even after he gets out, he's going to have a hard time finding a job compared to other officers that were honorably discharged.
I'll need to ask Elya if she has contact information with aerial lacrosse team managers so they can send a letter to Green offering him a position in their team or management. If it helps bring excitement to the professional aerial lacrosse scene and it gives him a new, rewarding career, well that's what I would call a win-win.
And then there's the Albish leadership turmoil as well after Churbull's resignation. It seems that Clement Attle will likely become the next Prime Minister.
I grabbed the next report from my inbox. Glancing through it, it appears Foreign Minister Dertinge has been negotiating an arms deal with a few European countries now that OZEV can resume limited military downsizing, while still keeping an eye on the new republics for the inevitable resurgence in insurgency now that the CSR and the Rus are done with the war in Bharat. The Francois Republic, Allied Kingdom, Ispagna and Lothiern wanted to make use of our combat boats and helicopters for their counterinsurgency wars in their colonies. The Allied Kingdom instead requested to license our helicopter production.
Whatever. If they want to continue fighting their losing wars and pay me in the process, that's not my concern as long as they don't do something too stupid.
1945, March 9th, in Berun:
General Lergen, Elya, Visha and I were going over Akitsushima Dominion's proposal.
"Yonaguni, Okinawa, Tsushima and Hokkaido…" I muttered. "They certainly want our bases to be the first ones to be hit if the communists try to attack."
"Considering how vulnerable those locations are in the event of a war between the CSR and Akitsushima Dominion, they should only have light military presence and be more focused on intelligence gathering and early warning." General Lergen said. "The Akinese should be able to hold out long enough for our fleet to be mobilized and sail over to the Pacific Ocean. The Unified States and Allied Kingdom would likely be nervous of the prospect of the CSR no longer having constraints on their influence over the Pacific Ocean should the Akinese fall."
I nodded as Visha spoke up. "According to Foreign Minister Dertinge, they initially offered a base location in Formosa but he pressed for Yonaguni and Okinawa as an alternative. They were disappointed with us not having a base in Formosa."
I chuckled. "I can't blame them for wanting a sure way of dragging us into a war if their most remote possessions were being threatened. What are the communists' opinions of Formosa and Kuril Islands?"
"Both had historical claims, but that was under Jiuzhou and the Russy Federation." Elya responded. "While the CSR has been silent on the issue, Anna mentioned that during her visit at the Akitsushima Dominion, she was told by the Akinese intelligence service there had been 'local discontent' in Formosa and the CSR might be interested in exploiting that to gain control over Formosa."
I wasn't in a position to tell the Akinese of how to run their last remaining colony, so all I could hope was that they weren't going to end up giving that island to the CSR should a full blown rebellion kick off. And one more reason to avoid having our presence on that island. Although that does remind me, I need to know if I'm going to be facing a local resistance against the bases like how the American bases in my previous world occasionally were the focal point of protests. "What's the opinion within the Akitsushima Dominion now that they are on the defensive about them having Foreign military bases on their land?"
"Anna said our preference for Yonaguni and Okinawa over Formosa has caused some upset feelings. On a side note, there were people within the Aki government and military who strongly insisted that the invasion of Joseon continue even after the CSR's raids against the Albish blockades, with some arguing that there was no way the CSR could have more mages in reserve after the battle, right up until the imperial decree came in. We will have to tread carefully as it seems that the Akinese nationalists might be opposed to our bases if they thought they could still take on the CSR's mage army."
Right, I shouldn't have been surprised that there would be nationalists who would be upset that their dreams of reclaiming Joseon were shattered by the Emperor's order and now gaijins are going to establish permanent military presence in their homeland, which would likely support the pro-peace Emperor should they challenge the imperial authority.
"Speaking of Anna, any information about our proposed intel sharing of the communists?"
Elya flipped through her notes. "The Akinese requested that some of their Kenpeitai agents visit the eastern republics to gain a better understanding of the communists' activities. In return, they offered us help with establishing intel cells in Hongkong and Macau."
"Hongkong and Macau…" I hummed. "Those are owned by the Allied Kingdom and Ispagna respectively."
"We never asked for permission from the Albish when we first established our intel cells in the Bharat subcontinent." she grinned and winked at me.
"True… Though I'm assuming the Akinese have also been using Formosa locals and the Joseon expats for intel gathering against the CSR? I'm sure there are some Chinese who fled from the CSR to Formosa in order to avoid the communists' persecution, and both groups should still have contacts within the CSR and Joseon."
Elya dropped her grin. "The Akinese doesn't fully trust them given their… long history."
Ah, a long history indeed. The wounds still fester even seventy years into a different future. "What if we set up the intel cells ourselves and in return share information about the CSR, and anti-Akinese rebels? That way we can sidestep the issue of anti-communists not wanting to work with the Akinese. Anti-communists that are also actively anti-Akinese would be a complicated matter, but maybe we can redirect the Akinese's anger towards the communists by acting as neutral mediators."
As Elya scribbled her notes down, another thought came to my head.
"The Rus factions that previously fought against the CSR, there should be some in the eastern part of Sibyria, right?"
Elya nodded.
"We need to contact them as well now that we can use the Akitsushima Dominion as our base of intel operations. If we can get vision into the Russy Confederation, it would help us learn a bit more about the CSR and what their plans are for our eastern republics. And we could start expanding our intel operations west once we have a foothold within the Russy Confederation."
In the CSR:
Kang Sheng, Wang Ming and Loria were all having tea while discussing the future of the joint intelligence operations between the two countries.
After Loria said something, Wang turned to Kang to provide the translation. "The NKVD has been making headway with establishing intelligence networks in the Francois Republic. The intel cell in the Allied Kingdom is suspected of being compromised, but the secret documents continue to flow in large quantities so they're trying to determine if the provided information can be trusted. There are efforts to expand operations into Lothiern using the Frankish agents. As for the new republics, they are making some progress in recruiting local government and military members.
"What's the progress in Legadonia Entente?" Kang asked.
Wang and Loria exchanged a brief talk. Wang then turned to Kang. "Very slow. But we do know Legadonia Entente is planning to establish some sort of an union with the Baltic states, and Suomi is proving to be unreceptive towards Legadonia Entente's proposal."
"If that's the case, we should be careful with our operations against Suomi. I don't want to drive them into OZEV or Legadonia Entente's union." Kang said. "Better to keep them separate and squabbling. Divide and conquer, or whatever the Albish calls it."
"That's going to be a problem." Wang responded. "Many people in the Russy Confederation want Ulanograd back, and access to the Baltic Sea again."
"I don't know if they have noticed, but the past two times Ulanograd experienced major unrest, Legadonia Entente was quick to respond with their military for their 'peacekeeping' operations. And even if they get Ulanograd back, the Albish is paranoid about maintaining supremacy at sea and would also send in their 'peackeepers' to ensure that the Rus would never be able to establish a fleet in the Baltic Sea. They would likely blockade and bombard the city than to let it fall into the Russy Confederation's hands. I would prefer to focus on the Caucasia and Kazakh Republics as the Albish would be less likely to interfere, and denying oil to OZEV means they won't have the capacity for a sustained war."
There was a heated exchange between Wang and Loria when Wang turned to Loria to explain Kang's concerns. Loria then got up, thanked the two men for their time, and exited the room.
There was silence until Loria's footsteps could no longer be heard.
"...He said he'll take your words in consideration." Wang sighed.
Kang shrugged, "I expect him to still continue aggressive operations against Suomi, no point in trying to stop someone who is stubborn as a mule." Kang's face then hardened as he spoke in a low tone. "And the next time Loria steps into our country, make sure he doesn't try to kidnap little girls. I shouldn't be having our agents secretly rescue them from the Rus embassy and his guest house, and then telling their parents to keep silent on the situation."
'Not in my interest to upset Loria when he had previously agreed to help me deal with you, especially since you're not willing to help with operations against Sumoi to recover a very important piece of Rus culture and history.' Wang thought to himself as he nodded. 'The sacrifice of a few young girls is worth the cost of protecting our revolutionary cause from those who are communists in name only.'
AN:
Regarding "shooting illusions with lots of regular bullets", I asked about that idea in the spacebattles thread: threads/youjo-senki-fic-idea-rec-and-discussion.515293/page-282?post=80039125#post-80039125
As for dual wielding machine guns, if it's barely feasible for a regular human, it should be no problem with a strength/reflex-enhanced mage that doesn't have to worry about casting spells on each bullet: watch?v=Ti8rRTQOgZA
The real life war that the Akitsushima–Shun War of 1894 refers to: wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War
wiki/Kenpeitai
In the 1920s and the 1930s, the Kenpeitai forged various connections with certain prewar European intelligence services. Later, when Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, Japan formed formal links with the intelligence units, now under German and Italian fascists, known as the German Abwehr and the Italian Servizio Informazioni Militare. The army and the navy of Japan contacted their corresponding Wehrmacht intelligence units, Schutzstaffel (SS) or Kriegsmarine, about information on Europe and vice versa. Europe and Japan realized the benefits of the exchanges. For example, the Japanese sent data about Soviet forces in the Far East and in Operation Barbarossa from the Japanese embassy. Admiral Canaris offered aid in respect to the neutrality of Portugal in Timor.
One important contact point was at the Penang submarine base, in occupied Malaya. The base served Axis submarine forces (Italian Regia Marina, German Kriegsmarine and the Dai Nippon Teikoku Kaigun, or Imperial Japanese Navy). At regular intervals, technological and information exchanges occurred there. While these were available to them, Axis forces used the bases in Italian East Africa, the Vichy France colony of Madagascar and some officially neutral places like Portuguese India.
British spies for the USSR: wiki/Cambridge_Five
LN's Loria is based on the real life Beria. After the death of Stalin, Beria seemed the most powerful candidate to take Stalin's place. But everyone else saw him as a major threat and temporarily teamed up against him, before resuming their fights against each other for the game of throne, sorry, game of General Secretary office: watch?v=Jh5WjJ0LBlQ