AN: Credits to gdstriker, Sunny and Rainbowappleslice for revisions and feedback.
Original Chapter 12 is at the bottom of this chapter.
Rewrite Chapter 13 will feature Tanya in the CSR homeland, on a personal mission.
A fitting theme music for rewrite Chapter 12's battles, from the Albish coalition perspective: https/watch?v=fez_Aw0I4oM
1944, August 20th, Berun:
I put the newspaper back onto the table to take a bite of Visha's delicious breakfast. Even Milly had gotten tired of the boring, stalemate war in the Bharatian subcontinent with both the north and south settling for some nostalgic dug-in trench warfare, this time utilizing mountains and rivers as part of the defenses to make it even more brutal for any "over-the-top" offensives. She arrived just in time in the CSR to take photos of the final stages of the siege of Yangzhou, and the many rotting Chinese and Aegyptian corpses strewn throughout the ruined city. The Aegyptian General Amer stated he would investigate the matter and bring the incompetent officers who oversaw the slaughter to justice.
Then the photos and film recordings of the Nanjing siege came in, including an audio recording of the defiant Chinese orchestra that played through the Albish naval bombardments.
"It's like the battle of Stalingrad all over again. Two sides throw everything they have into the city, except one side has a fleet of battleships and cruisers anchored next to the city to clear entire districts with a rain of hot steel…" I absentmindedly muttered to myself.
"Hmm?" Visha looked up while pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
"Oh nothing, just having second thoughts about what I previously told the Akinese." I gloomily stared at my half-finished plate. "Telling them the Albish coalition is doomed, only for them to be right on the doorstep of the Chinese capital."
"What if the communists don't surrender after the loss of their capital? They can lead the Albish coalition on a wild goose chase and frustrate them at every step of the way."
"Then their Chairman would have fled instead of being willingly trapped in a surrounded city and thus tying his fate to the city. Perhaps the communists don't have firm political control over all of their country, or are worried about being perceived as weak."
"No firm political control or fear of showing weakness…" Visha tapped her cheek as she pondered. "Then it wouldn't make sense for them to storm South Bharat or the new republics to our east, because they would know a protracted war carries significant risks for both sides."
I nodded before taking another bite of bacon. "So what do you think may happen?"
"They have to have some backup plan by this point. The Shun Dynasty repeatedly lost Nanjing in their previous wars."
"If the Albish continues to make progress in the heart of the CSR, I may have to fly to Akishuma Dominion to personally apologize to their emperor."
"For what?" Visha tilted her head. "War is full of unpredictability and uncertainty. You picked an option that carried less risks."
"The last thing I want is his damn Privy Council of old entitled men to use my wrong prediction to drive a wedge between the Emperor and me."
1944, August 28th, Shanghai:
General Dudley Clarke stared at the maps hanging on the wall, with numerous marks of identified Chinese partisan or military activities at various locations covering the area of Nantong, Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou, with the dates of when the activity or attack occurred. Alarmingly, the activities were constantly around the clock, at least once every half hour in each city area. That wasn't including the increasingly chaotic rural areas. It didn't matter if his forces crushed an infiltration or a partisan attack when the next one would pop immediately afterward.
'This is the same thing I would do if I knew a defending force was undermanned, I would probe their defenses while also keeping them from having a good night's sleep, and keep them guessing where my concentrated attack would be…'
"What's the emergency for calling me to come all the way here?" General Arthur huffed as he stormed into Clarke's office.
"General Law refuses to listen to reason. Maybe you can persuade him to do so." Clarke turned around from his maps, and then pushed a letter from General Law for Arthur to read.
"Retreat in our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate our chances. We have won almost every battle along the way, and there is no reason to stop. Just one more push and Nanjing is ours!"
"He's getting drunk on victories, and now he's stuck in a sunk cost fallacy with the hellhole that Nanjing is proving to be." Arthur shook his head dismissively.
"The enemy knows Shanghai and Nantong is open for the taking," Clarke poured scotch into two glasses, then one to Arthur. "I lack the men and equipment to properly fortify the area while also keeping an increasingly bold local population from just overrunning my positions from the inside. And I have been reading the reports about the slogging mess in Nanjing despite Law's upbeat attitude. To the north, the communists are up to something. They keep rebuilding the railways no matter how many times they are bombed out. I am starting to suspect their aggressive yet futile gesture is just distracting our reconnaissance and bomber aircraft from something else. I feel a trap is slowly enveloping us."
"Do you need more reinforcements?" Arthur took the glass and swirled it, then took a sip.
"It's too late," Clarke dismissively shook his head. "I expect the enemy to already have plans for any coalition retreats from Nanjing to Shanghai, or emergency reinforcements in the opposite direction. We need to catch the enemy off balance and force them to react to us, by making them think there will be another naval invasion."
"Another naval invasion?"
"No, just some feints. If I can't determine what they are doing, then I can play the same deception game to regain the initiative." Clarke opened a cabinet to pull out a fresh map and unfolded it onto his cluttered desk. "It took some persuasion to an Akinese liaison officer for them to agree to have a fleet and empty transport ships loiter off the CSR's northern coastline, and for their aircraft to occasionally bomb the area. All of that is to pressure the enemy to consider the possibility of yet another amphibious landing in the north."
Clarke marked the map of the planned Akinese naval activity, then shifted his pencil to the south.
"The cities of Hangzhou and Yancheng would be our other deceptions. Capture them and make it appear as if those will become logistics hubs for separate invasions into the CSR. This will also present dilemmas to the enemy, because if they ignore it, then I will argue for launching actual invasions from those two cities."
"The Akinese distraction plan is sound. Anything to get the damn Chinese to stop throwing so many bodies at breaking our siege on Nanjing is welcomed. But taking Hangzhou and Yancheng… that is a bold plan to share with me." Arthur finished his glass. "What do you need from me for this?"
Clarke poured another drink into Arthur's empty glass. "It has come to my attention that over 10,000 Australian and American volunteers, and a small American navy fleet with 2 carriers recently arrived in Akitsushima Dominion. It's kind of hard to miss when the translated Akinese newspapers complained about how rowdy the sailors and marines are."
"You want them for your schemes?"
"Yes, under my command so you can focus on commanding the Americans already at Nanjing. I will also be speaking to the Australian command, but having your support will be beneficial as General Law would much rather shove everything into Nanjing."
Arthur downed the second drink as Clarke sipped his, then cleared his throat. "If the unspeakable happens in Nanjing and Shanghai is lost, will Hangzhou and Yanchen be our alternative retreat locations?"
"When you return to Nanjing, I need you to privately pass the word to General Law that in the event of a radio broadcast telling him to retreat to Hangzhou and Yancheng, he is to send sacrificial diversionary forces to both while continuing to retreat to Shanghai." Clarke sketched on the map showing the actual and deceptive routes. "And if the radio broadcast tells him to retreat to Shanghai instead, he is to do the opposite."
Arthur nodded. "He may protest, but I have the authority to immediately pull out my boys from Nanjing if he doesn't cooperate."
There was a knock on the door, and Clarke immediately grabbed the door handle to swing it open.
"Ah…" the surprised aide regained his bearings and then handed a letter to Clarke. "Admiral Cunningham had this letter for you."
Clarke ripped it open and read it out loud on the spot.
"While I agree with your concerns, the politicians back in Londinium share General Law's enthusiasm and have pressured the Admiralty to keep our fleet anchored in the river, especially next to Nanjing. They insisted our naval presence is essential for seeking the Chinese Soviet Republic's unconditional surrender."
"It seems General Law isn't the only one enthusiastic about this war…" Arthur cracked a small smile as Clarke crumpled up the letter in frustration.
1944, September 9th, somewhere outside of Shanghai, at early dawn:
Luo and his entourage walked alongside the construction site as the workers finished putting the camouflage nets and other concealing props back in place.
"We will have the heavy artillery in position within two days, and the smaller artillery and rocket artillery will all be in position in about four days. The sandbags and bamboo supports have already been assembled nearby to quickly build the embankments to protect our heavy artillery from the ships' return fire. Anti-air guns and their augmented mage crews will be in position within this week." General Cheng Qian confidently stated.
"When can we begin the operation?" Luo looked around nervously.
"In about two weeks," An unsuspecting Cheng smiled.
"We don't have two weeks anymore. We need to launch it in less than a week."
"We still need to train the various regular and mage forces for their roles, otherwise our attack will be an uncoordinated and uncontrollable chaos."
Luo barked at Cheng in frustration, in a hushed tone. "And now the enemy is preparing for new naval invasions! If I redeploy forces to garrison the entire coastline, we won't have enough men to trap the foreigners and extinguish them! I would rather sacrifice everything to shatter the enemy than let them take Nanjing or escape!"
"You plan to defeat the Albish coalition here and then swing north to deal with the new threats?"
"Of course," Luo smiled as if he was invited to a feast. "Because they are all spread out now and going off in different directions, we will crush one manageable piece at a time."
1944, September 14th, inside Nanjing, at dusk:
The armored half-track, scarred by bullet impacts and covered in dried blood, rumbled as the palace's gates appeared in sight; the driver carefully navigating through the ruined streets and piles of rubble.
"Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder why there has been an absence of Chinese artillery guns?" General Law hummed to himself. "Even their mortars are a rarity…"
Caldwell, paying no attention to Law's self-talk, snapped a photo just as an adjacent tank fired into an already burning temple, triggering its slow collapse.
Then figures were seen fleeing from the temple, prompting the halftrack gunner to cut them down.
"That looks like the last of the enemy resistance outside of the north gate entrance area," General Law then took a sip of his tea from a canteen as he watched machine gun fire pepper the top of the walls to force the Chinese defenders' heads down. "Now we need to just open up the palace gate because they would have barricaded it by now…"
A ship's main battery shells screamed through the sky, with one of them directly hitting a section of the wall next to the gate.
"Going around the door, literally." General Law chuckled as he heard the bricks tumble in the growing dust cloud, and then he barked at his radioman. "Tell the sailors to cease firing into the palace! We're going in!"
"Admiral Cunningham said we are clear to enter the palace. They're shifting naval bombardments outside of the city."
"Outside?"
"Something about the enemy reinforcements threatening to break our outside defense line. General Arthur and Poulin requested all available naval and air support for their positions."
"Damn, we don't have much time…" General Law scowled as the halftrack continued trudging forward in the dust cloud.
"They made an opening for us!" Colonel Churchill's shrill voice echoed as the dust cloud settled. "Into the breach men!"
"This one will go into the history books!" Caldwell smiled as she flipped open her film recorder just before the colonel grabbed an American flag off of a tank that was behind the half-track.
Then the colonel also grabbed the Allied Kingdom flag off of the half-track and ran towards the breached wall with both flags, shouting "Into the breach men! For God and King!"
A mob of Albish and American soldiers were immediately behind the colonel as they also rushed in.
Caldwell flipped off her film recorder, then in a bubbly enthusiastic voice, she asked, "Are we also going in?"
"Take me through the breach after our tank is through!" General Law pointed forward, then he turned around to signal the tank commander to push ahead.
"Yes sir!" The half-track driver shouted back.
"Could we actually win this war?" Caldwell looked up in the sky at a low formation of Albish planes flying overhead as the sun began to set.
"Too early to celebrate, my darling." General Law chuckled. "First I need to have a word with their so-called Chairman."
As the tank rumbled through the breach, signal flares came flying from the palace interior and burned into the sky.
Outside of Nanjing, shortly after sunset:
Luo peered through the telescope, watching the unsuspecting Albish battleships pummel the arriving Chinese reinforcements.
"The partisans and rioters have launched their attacks on the enemy's rear positions across the entire front," Cheng walked up to Luo with a telegram. "Zhenjiang, Taizhou, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, Nantong, Shanghai, and the surrounding towns and rural areas are up in flames from the mass uprisings. The enemy's reserve forces are fully distracted now."
"Just in time," Luo wearily smiled.
The railway artillery guns roared in anger for the first time in months, letting loose a volley of high explosive shells with brightly glowing heavy armor-piercing magic casting, greatly accelerated with the tripled content of powder bags. It took entire groups of sacrificial augmented C-tier mages and a handful of regular mages to cast the magic on the ammunition before the battle. About a third of the shells' explosive content was replaced with magic absorbers to hold the powerful spells in place.
"Ships are so easy to hit when they're anchored in the same spot since morning and our guns had a direct line of sight…" Luo's smile grew as every shell hit almost exactly where the Frankish naval advisors recommended.
Below the ships' main battery turrets, at the waterline.
Except for one shell, which annoyingly exploded inside an artillery gun's breech and vaporized the entire assembly, and everyone who was around it. But it was an acceptable risk from stuffing so much powder and magic into them.
In an instant, three battleships and one battlecruiser or heavy cruiser threw their forward or aft main turrets into the air from their powder magazines being ignited by the shells that sliced through the armor layers. One battleship remained unscathed thanks to that artillery gun's catastrophic misfire. The chains of explosions spectacularly illuminated the night sky for witnesses kilometers away. Some of the turrets crashed into the water, while the others fell back on top of the ruined ships engulfed in flames and smoke. The magazine detonation further ripped open the shells' entry holes at the waterline into giant gashes, which were a blessing and a curse. A blessing that the massive flooding rapidly extinguished the raging interior fires. A curse that the flooding leads to sinking, especially with the numerous collapsed or ruptured bulkheads and decks.
'Some or all of those ships may be able to eventually recover to resume firing with their remaining turrets if they stop the simultaneous fire and flooding. But there are plenty of other ships to worry about…'
1 battleship, 5 battlecruisers or heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, 10 destroyers, and 13 frigates remained. All of their turrets ominously slowly turned away from the burning Nanjing and toward their new threats. Their anchor chains' loud clanking echoed across the river as the anchors pulled up from the river bottom.
Then there were the many dozens of various transport and supply vessels that sustained the foreign army, but those would be dealt with after the warships were neutralized.
Luo swung his telescope over to one of his guns, observing hundreds of men frantically repositioning the gun to a new target and pulling ropes to operate pulleys to load a second shell with a normal amount of powder. The battle plan after the initial strike called for three armor-piercing shells on each intact battleship, two shells for each cruiser, and a single explosive shell on the smaller and lighter armored ships. Meanwhile, other laborers also in the hundreds piled additional sandbags and support beams onto the existing embankments to absorb the expected incoming naval shells, now that camouflaging is no longer needed.
But he knew the Albish ships would be returning fire by the time his artillery guns could fire their second volley. And after his guns fired their second volley, their positions would be perfectly pinpointed by alert observers compared to the initial shock of the surprise.
"I see enemy mages flying from Nanjing towards us," Cheng called over while looking over the shoulders of the magic detector operators. "It looks like the enemy fleet recalled them."
Luo panned his telescope to the far east and west of the river.
"There they are…" Luo let out a sigh. "I am sorry I had to feed all of them to the butcher, but I can't lose my artillery."
He saw dark figures of the dense formations of rowboats and motorboats making their way towards the still immobile fleet. Then a frigate's volley hit the water in front of them and threw large splashes of water into the air. Some of the figures jumped off their boats and into the water, presumably the diver mages and their underwater charges.
"Cheng!" Luo gestured frantically towards the small boats. "They've been spotted! Signal the rest of our artillery!"
"Yes sir!" Cheng pushed a button to talk on the radio set. "Launch green fireworks!"
As the destroyers and frigates turned their attention toward the slow-moving mass of small boats, Luo's concealed rocket artillery platforms and light artillery guns fired their salvos as soon as their crews saw the green fireworks whistle into the air and explode.
The rockets and small shells landed everywhere among the densely grouped Albish ships. While they had no hope of penetrating the armor, keeping the Albish crews buttoned up inside of their ships instead of manning the exposed machine guns and light cannons to shred the small boats was all Luo needed to accomplish. Damaging the various exposed and unarmored components such as radar dishes, radio antennas, fire control optics, and open-top light cannon placements was an added bonus.
The frigates and destroyers quickly shifted their gunnery focus on the rocket and light artillery pieces, silencing them one by one. The battleship and cruisers fired their salvos at the suspected railway artillery guns' locations.
Luo mentally tuned out the screams of the laborers and gun crew members who were hit by the explosions. He had plenty of bodies on standby to replace the losses.
All that mattered was the railway artillery guns to keep firing.
The railway artillery guns fired their second salvo of three shells.
'They silenced one of my guns; this is unfortunate.'
The last remaining battleship was struck three times along the length of the propulsion spaces at the waterline, rapidly plunging the ship into darkness as the lights shut off and the main turrets ceased moving from the loss of electricity. Unknown to the Chinese, the last battleship was the HMS Invincible.
"Just the cruisers and the smaller ships to clean up," Luo nervously chewed his lip as he observed the motorboats with mortars wildly fire their shells in the general direction of the ships.
"We're losing our light artillery!" Cheng shouted in panic, as the buzzing of approaching Albish aircraft was heard.
"We gave them four dilemmas and they picked three to focus on. Nothing we can do to make them change that." Luo shrugged his shoulders while watching the mage crew guided and operated anti-aircraft cannons open fire to drive away aircraft. "That leaves them wide open to our diver mages to finish the job. Our anti-air crews should buy enough time against their air force and aerial mages."
Then the fourth railway artillery gun fired its delayed shell, which sliced into a targeted heavy cruiser's unarmored superstructure and blew the bridge and rest of the upper level apart, showering the rest of the ship and surrounding ships with metal fragments. The midsection tower with the radar systems toppled over into the water.
"That was a terrible hit, they should have gone for the waterline." Luo sneered.
Cheng looked over with his binoculars. "That fourth gun was damaged and I see hundreds of dead or wounded lying around it. The replacement crew got a round off, which is impressive."
Then another salvo of Albish shells hit the same gun again, completely demolishing the railway gun for good.
"Never mind…" Cheng slowly put down his binoculars.
Back at the Nanjing palace, moments prior:
Caldwell blinked her eyes in amazement as the half-track came to a stop.
"Is that the Chairman?!" She gestured towards the Outer Court's balcony, before taking a photo of the man with a megaphone shouting in Chinese at the palace defenders. The fires consuming the wooden buildings around the palace ground provided the necessary background lighting for a photo, although an eerie one.
"Shoot the balcony!" General Law screamed at the adjacent tank commander.
Just as the tank in front of the half-track was about to aim, the entire night sky was illuminated from the direction of the river, shortly followed by a loud rumbling of the shockwaves echoing through the city.
Then the Chairman disappeared back into the building before the tank gunner regained his senses and fired their shell into the balcony.
"We will storm the Outer Court to verify the Chairman is either wounded or dead!" General Law shouted into his radio. "I am not going to risk having him slip away!"
"This is Admiral Cunningham broadcasting on all frequencies." General Law's radio crackled. "All aircraft and mages immediately proceed to the river. The Royal Navy is in a sticky situation. All of our battleships are out of action."
General Law was about to continue rallying his men when something caught his sight.
The unstoppable Colonel Churchill had finally been severely wounded and was now being carried away in a stretcher.
General Law got off the half-track to help load Churchill onboard.
"It's just a flesh wound…" Churchill groaned as one of the men tightened the tourniquet on his missing left leg.
"This is General Poulin!" The radio crackled again. "Where's our naval fire support?! Our defenses are collapsing! My men are in retreat! The Chinese reinforcements will be in the city soon!"
"General, where are you going?" Caldwell panickingly breathed as General Law began to jog forward towards the building, who turned around briefly to look at her.
"I have my destiny to meet. I made it this far and I am not leaving empty-handed. You and Churchill will head back to the river with some escorts, and make sure he's taken care of." General Law then turned back towards the building and pointed forward with his pistol. "14th motorized company, with me! Fix bayonets!"
Caldwell let out a depressed sigh as she recorded a film of General Law and the company charged into the building, while the half-track and tank reversed away.
"I hope this won't be the last known sighting of General Law…" She said to herself as the gunshots and screams echoed from the building's inside, indicating a massive close-quarters battle was taking place inside.
At one of the railway artillery positions:
"Sir, that cruiser's lights just turned back on!" A spotting crew member called out.
"Give us the bearing and range! We'll finish it for good!" Major Shichang shouted back, then turned his attention to the gunnery crew. "Load armor-piercing shell!"
"Our comrades are already on board and breaking in!"
Shichang walked up to the top of the embankment and put his binoculars to his eyes. "You morons, the cruiser's turrets started turning! Marshal Luo specifically directed us to sink combat capable ships, even if our boarding crews were swarming them! Good soldiers follow orders!"
"Yes sir…"
As Shichang made his way back down, an adjacent railway artillery position disappeared into a cloud of dust and fire when the restored cruiser and three smaller ships hurled their salvos at it.
"Load faster! Faster!" Shichang screamed as another shell struck the sandbag embankment he had just stood at just moments ago, tearing a chunk out of it and sending a large volume of dirt flying into the air.
Meanwhile, in the dining and galley area of the HMS Gloucester light cruiser:
Inside the power-diverted pitch-black room, an Albish officer with an arm in a sling was singing "God Save the King". The loud thumping of the restored main turrets firing their salvos were felt and heard by everyone.
"Come on lads, we will hold them here to buy our gunnery boys more time! The Chinese are not getting away with sinking our battleships and killing our brothers!" An Albish sailor yelled while gesturing at the barricaded hatch that was glowing red and orange from being melted on the other side.
Long live our noble King
God save the King
An augmented mage kicked open the almost molten hatch and was immediately met with hurled pots of boiling and smoking grease, fats, and oil. While he did have his shield up, it only provided enough insulation to reduce it from a lethal burn to an incredibly painful one.
Send him victorious...
The hot, flammable liquids came in contact with the pieces of the red hot hatch lying on the floor and ignited into an inferno that lit up the dark room, which was enough to overwhelm his weak shield.
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
"And that's how you make fish n' chips!" One of the Albish cooks yelled, just as the power was restored and the lightbulbs flickered back on in the room.
God save the King...
Suddenly a burst of shotgun and submachine gun fire from the other side of the raging fire shredded the cook and three other people.
O Lord our God arise...
Two grenades came flying in. An Albish defender threw their body onto the first grenade to absorb the blast. The second grenade ricocheted off of a table, then a wall and then rolled into a corner where many of the wounded Albish crew members were taking refuge.
Scatter his enemies...
Blood-curdling screams echoed in the room moments before the grenade went off.
And make them fall...
The next augmented mage charged through and plowed through one of the barricades from his momentum, crushing two Albish crew members against another barricade.
Confound their politics...
The marines concentrated gunfire into the mage to overwhelm his shield, but that allowed more augmented mages to storm through the fire and into the dining area unopposed. The singing officer fired his revolver one-handed.
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all
The marines exchanged gunfire with the augmented mages and the sailors continued operating makeshift weapons or hurling projectiles. Some of the sailors had also hooked up the fire hoses to the ship's firefighting water line to spray at the augmented mages with high-pressure water.
Thy choicest gifts in store
On he be pleased to pour
An augmented mage who got close was splashed with a bucket of boiling beef tallow and a few matches. Because the mage had concentrated much of hismana into the shielding, that allowed him to temporarily shrug off the fire and charge straight into a group of Albish defenders to give them all a fiery bear hug.
Long may he reign...
The Albish sailors manning the firehose sprayed at the burning augmented mage in panic, but they quickly learned the hard way of why water is never to be used against grease fire as they instead ended up spreading the fire.
May he defend our laws...
Some of the defenders focused their gunfire on the human torch before it could hug more of them, distracting them from the other augmented mages. Screams echoed in the dining area from multiple people flailing around on fire before being gunned down in the crossfire. The singing officer took a bullet to the stomach but got back up and propped himself up against the wall to resume singing.
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the King
The augmented mages' superior firepower increasingly suppressed the Albish defenders, especially with the shotgun mages using physical enhancement and reflex spells to dramatically speed up their shotgun firing and reloading to shower the entire dining area with rapid-fire buckshots. The augmented mages began to advance into the galley after finishing off the last of the Albish defenders in the dining area.
God save all dressed in green
Long live our noble King
God save the King
Send him victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the King
The entire room was suddenly consumed by a massive fireball that tore through the decks and bulkheads, instantly vaporizing everyone. Outside, onboard the magazine-detonated ship or in the adjacent waters, a few hundred bodies of the Chinese boarding crew were sent flying everywhere, many in pieces.
Simultaneously, onboard another ship…
As the Chinese soldiers rounded the corner with their lanterns, they saw Captain Cay calmly sitting on a footstool in the dark.
They hesitated, seeing the obvious high-ranking uniform.
"Welcome aboard the HMS Invincible." The captain lighted his cigar. "I never thought I would see the day where the Royal Navy would hastily abandon a disabled battleship and leave us to wolves like you."
He then took a deep draw of the smoke and the cigar burned eerily in the dark as the soldiers slowly approached him, one of them unrolling a coil of rope to bound him up.
"Rule, Britannia! Rule the waves."
He threw a cigar into a pile of cordite explosive powder, with a trail of it running all the way down the levels.
The panicking soldiers riddled the smiling captain with bullets as the bright flames speedily followed the powder trail to the opened main magazines.
At the river surface:
Yang Humin gasped for breath after pushing her way past the floating corpses, body parts, smashed pieces of the small boats, and various other debris to get to the water surface. Or more like a blood and oil surface.
She blinked in shock and horror as she watched a battleship covered in boarding soldiers erupt into a fiery fireball alongside the already burning light cruiser. The soldiers were introduced to the same flying competition as the doomed boarding crew of the light cruiser. She flinched when one of the bodies flopped onto the floating corpses right next to her, never hitting the water directly.
"What do we do now?" Another mage surfaced close to her. She couldn't find his face amidst all of the dead bodies, oil and blood.
"We used up all of our explosives…" Yang looked around the scene of carnage, with the many burning ships casting a light over the rapidly retreating Albish fleet, the numerous sinking or disabled ships that fell victim to the railway artillery fire or the underwater magnetic charges, and the burning craters of the ruined railway artillery guns.
Yang craned her head towards the sky. "I see enemy mages above us, but it looks like they are also retreating. I think our work is done for the night. Tomorrow is going to be busy."
"Hopefully we can find some clean water to wash in because I'm not sleeping in this filth…" the other mage muttered.
As more of the underwater mages surfaced, they slowly made their way through the river of death to solid ground.
In the distance was a thundering sea of Chinese reinforcements pouring into the city, no longer held in check by naval gunfire. Their chants and shouts were no longer masked by naval gunfire as well.
Off the coast of Shanghai, the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire:
Shusheng vomited as soon as he reached the surface deck, covered in gore and blood from the Albish crew that he spent the past half hour smashing into pulp with his sledgehammer. The mages who noticed him were shocked at his unusual endurance.
"Are you okay?" Peliun looked on with worry.
He wiped away his mouth. "I-It's not my blood. I… I think I'm fine. Just a bit tired and sick, but it doesn't feel like I'm dying."
He looked around and saw many other augmented mages sitting or lying down on the deck, obviously in pain from overuse of the energy liquids.
"That's impossible, how are you still alive?!" Peliun shouted in disbelief.
He would've shrugged were it not for his heaving shoulders. "I don't know!" He hacked and coughed as he spit out yet another string of reddened spittle "Argh, my pack is feeling a bit light, I might need a refill. And I think I need to replace my orb, it's malfunctioning."
"We didn't bring any spare tanks or orbs, but you can take my pack because clearly, you used more liquid than I did." Peliun prepared to take off his backpack. "I can't use any more of this without joining the rest of those struggling people."
"Were the other boarding crews successful?"
"No answers to our voice spell."
"Then that means we're the only boarding crew out of many who survived…" Shusheng looked out at the water. "We were told to delay the Albish fleet outside of Shanghai, but I don't know if we succeeded."
Then a magic voice spell came in. "Any surviving boarding crews return to the land. The mission is a failure. The Albish relief fleet has entered the mouth of the Yangtze River."
Then Shusheng's narrowed his eyes in suspicion at what he was seeing.
"You see those white streaks in the water that are coming towards us? What are those?..."
Onboard the HMS Pandora submarine:
"Two direct hits. That cruiser won't last for long," an officer reported to the captain as the cruiser in the distance visibly rolled from the torpedo impacts.
"Those communists weren't here to just sink our ships. They wanted to take them as prizes and reverse engineer them to build their own navy!" the captain sneered. "Fire another volley! Send them to Davy Jones's locker!"
Right after the submarine launched another salvo, the periscope operator's face turned white. "Captain, a few of their mages are going up in the sky and they're heading straight for us! And we have a swimmer from the cruiser gunning for us!"
Kyoto airport, Akishuma Dominion, the next day in the early morning:
There was a small Akinese entourage waiting for me when I stepped off the plane.
I immediately bowed to them, but their shock and confusion surprised me.
I had advised them to take the wrong course of action, so why are they suddenly telling me there is no need to bow?
"I have come here to personally apologize to the Emperor," I spoke in Akinese. "When is he available?"
"Apologize? For what?" Hiroshi Oshima looked around at his unsure colleagues and then at me.
"For telling him it would be disastrous if he tried to retake Joseon," I slightly tilted my head to the side in confusion.
"He wants to thank you for the right decision."
"…What?"
"The Albish coalition is in full retreat from Nanjing. The entire river from Nanjing to Shanghai became a death trap for their fleet, as the Chinese launched a major counterattack. Shanghai is in danger of falling to Chinese control, both from the inside by partisans and rioters, and from the outside by a besieging army. The Albish are now begging for our assistance to rescue their trapped forces."
Time seemed to slowly pass by as I took in the information.
Millie! She was with General Law in Nanjing! I had to save her!
"The Emperor would like to invite you to a tea ceremony," Oshima smiled, beckoning towards a waiting car.
I pointed back towards the plane. "I have a friend I need to rescue. She was last known to be in Nanjing. Send word to Berun that I need at least two mage battalions to head to Shanghai, and any other mobile forces would be welcomed. I need at least one mage battalion to assist in the defense of Shanghai, and another one with me to search for my friend. Assistance from your military would also be greatly appreciated."
"Who is this friend who you hold so dear?" Oshima began to sweat as his colleagues rapidly discussed amongst each other before breaking off to report back the sudden turn of events.
"Millicent Caldwell," I smiled before briskly walking back to my plane.
In Aegyptus, at one of the five palaces:
King Ismail stuffed chunks of lamb meat into his mouth, while a few European women were also seated at the table for lunch.
Commander-in-Chief, Haidar Mahdi Pash walked into the banquet hall as Ismail finished chewing and swallowing his food.
"What is so important that you have to interrupt my lovely lunch?" Ismail took a sip of his wine to wash down the food.
"The Albish coalition in Nanjing suffered a major naval disaster," Mahdi stopped and stood at attention. "Their entire army in that city is now trapped, along with our men."
"Are the nationalist officers also with that trapped army?"
"Um, yes?"
Ismail's eyes lit up. "Then I want all of them to disappear in the middle of the CSR's homeland. Never to return home. Cut the reinforcements and supplies immediately. And as for our men that are currently stationed in Kyushu, have them return home as well."
"What about the prisoners of war that were previously captured by the Chinese? We have received offers for their return in exchange for…"
"I could care less, all of them were disposable anyways. Not worth a single gold bar from my treasury for their return." Ismail dismissively waved his hand away. "As for the last three remaining nationalist officers that just won't die, I hope they meet their end in Nanjing. I don't want them to bring trouble back to my doorstep."
"What about the one that is in a hospital in Kyushu? He is under heavy Albish protection."
"Arrest him as soon as he leaves their custody."
"Yes my king," Mahdi bowed and then walked away, as Ismail turned his attention back to his guests.
Meanwhile at an airfield outside of Zhenjiang:
Wincing, Caldwell heard the screams from a makeshift medical tent, as Colonel Churchill's severed leg was being cauterized with fire. The smell of burning flesh drifted towards her, combined with the constant background rotten fish smell from exploded minefields, making her gag.
Blinking rapidly, she saw a new group of officers appear alongside the long line of ragged Albish sailors who were rendered homeless from the loss of their ships.
"Colonel… Anwar Naguib!" Caldwell faintly smiled, noting the three of them appeared to haven't slept in a while. "It is good to see you again. I presume there is still no time for an interview?"
"Not exactly," Anwar looked around. "Who's the senior commander in charge of here?"
"That would be General Guy Cimond," Caldwell pointed towards a building in the distance. "He took charge of the airfield defense and had all Kanatians in the area rally to this area."
"Thank you," Anwar curtly replied as he jogged towards where she pointed at.
Caldwell then turned to the other two Aegyptian officers. "And how are you two doing?"
"Led our men into the slaughter at Yangzhou, because we couldn't deviate from our orders. General Law needed his flank secured so he could focus on Nanjing and we were the ones assigned to that role." Salem began to maniacally laugh at the absurdity of the situation reversal. "When we finally pried the city out of the enemy's hands, we watched the night explosions over Nanjing and heard the chaos on the radio. To the south, we observed the Albish coalition retreat throughout the night. In the morning, we saw forward Chinese reconnaissance elements heading east. To the north of the city, the Chinese started assembling yet another army. That was when we knew it was over."
"I thought I saw another group of Aegyptians march towards the city…"
"They are under General Amer's direct command," Nasser shrugged.
"And they didn't join your retreat?"
"Their commander was unwilling to deviate from his orders to hold the city, even if it meant walking straight into the enemy while everyone else was retreating east."
Anwar came running back. "The Chinese are almost through the minefields! The Kanatians are about to retreat, but the Albish airforce using the airfield is still bombing the enemy, and needs time to evacuate the wounded and move their aircraft to other airfields in the east."
Caldwell sniffed the air. "That explains why the rotting fish smell is getting worse."
"Into the slaughter again?" Salem shook his head.
"What did the Kanatians offer?" Nasser raised an eyebrow.
"General Cimond gave me a written guarantee he would assist in publicly arguing for our case against General Amer's claims, and to look into asylum options with his country if the Albish discards us. He previously clashed with General Amer over the Joseon expedition and held him responsible for the destruction of the Kanatian forces in Joseon."
"But that's only if we survive." Salem snorted.
"Publicly discrediting General Amer and his cronies would be a nice revenge for what they have done, no matter the cost." Nasser jabbed his finger at Salem. "Our brothers in Tientsin didn't deserve to be butchered for Amer's incompetence."
"…Can I ask you about what happened in the final days in Tientsin?" Caldwell eagerly clicked her pen.
"Later," Anwar gestured impatiently. "Right now we have an airfield to save."
A few hours later, above Shanghai, in the air:
"This feels like the first few weeks of the Bharatian war," I looked down at the city engulfed in chaos. "Except even Bombay didn't have massive street battles from partisans and rioters rising up just as the communists rolled in."
"President, the Shanghai airport's air traffic controllers are struggling with the volume of flights. It could take us a while to land."
I calmly unlocked the door and pushed it to the side to open it. "When you do land, assist in the evacuation of the city. I will fly down there myself. In the meantime, let everyone know I am here. I want the communists to also know."
"Good luck, ma'am." The pilot waved as I jumped out of the plane.
As I dove through the air, I scanned the battlefields with my optical spell and could see two different problems. Inside the city was going to be dirty work, and war crimes were to be expected when the entire population was participating in an uprising as non-uniformed combatants. I was going to let the Albish deal with that mess, as I preferred not to relive the Arene Massacre memories.
On the outskirts of the city, a more conventional battle was raging. As expected, the Chinese mages were hiding among the masses of regular soldiers, only briefly revealing themselves to take a shot, then disappearing back into the masses.
But there were still some warships anchored in the river, raining shells onto the Chinese horde. Something doesn't seem right with why the communists are throwing their men into a naval artillery kill zone.
"Tanya!"
I turned around to see who called out my first name.
It was Visha. Oh good.
Wait, she's furious. Oh no.
I braced for impact as Visha crashed into me.
"Why do you keep doing this!?" Visha screamed as she pummeled me with her fists.
"I'm here to save Millie! She's trapped in Nanjing!" I gasped for breath just before she put me into a headlock. "How did you know I was going to be here?" I asked, gasping.
"As soon as we heard about the Albish disaster in Nanjing and your flight path was not too far away from it, I knew you were going to play hero again."
Visha then released me. "Also I grabbed a battalion from the mage academy before coming here. Neumann and Birgit are also on their way here with their respective battalions."
"The mage academy?!" I looked in horror at the arriving group of mages. "You brought a group of newbies into the heart of the communist homeland?!"
"They were going to have their finals." Visha nonchalantly shrugged. "I thought this would be an appropriate substitution. Besides, some of their instructors joined us to evaluate the students and to have first-hand experience of how the Chinese fight. Major Neumann's and Birgit's mage battalions are arriving from South Bharat in a few hours to join us. Also in a few days, an entire regular airborne infantry division with their helicopters will finish redeploying to Shanghai."
"Um, where are the enemy mages?" One of the students awkwardly stuttered.
"On the ground," I gestured downward." If you use your optical spell to observe the ground battles, you will see them pop in and out. They're using the regular humans to conceal themselves."
Then I saw a large group of flashes from the ground. Looks like a dispersed battalion of the communist mages!
"Scatter!" I screamed.
The shots from the communist ground mages narrowly missed us as we all scrambled in different directions. While they were numerous, I could also sense each casted bullet was relatively low on magic power. Maybe they were saving their magic and just relying on the rate of fire to try to wear us down instead of trying to quickly pierce our shields?
Then a voice spell came in.
"Germanian mages, keep baiting them so we can track their positions."
"Who is this?" Visha answered back as we dodged another volley from the ground.
"American mages under orders from Admiral Bryan of the Unified States Navy. And we have a fix on their revealed position."
"Why can't you bait them?" Visha had an annoyed tone in her retort.
"Believe us, we tried. Their communication traffic exploded when we detected the arrival of the Germanian President, or the Devil of the Rhine whom the Europeans kept calling her. I think you got their attention."
"Training battalion, be on standby to pick off any enemy mages that take off in the air!" I widely grinned, knowing what was coming for them.
Immediately after a third magic volley tried to hit us, the warships' naval gunfire salvos slammed into the revealed Chinese mage positions.
Ah, I loved the sound of artillery, and when their targets ceased to exist from accurate or overwhelming firepower. And naval vessels took those to the extreme, especially the battleships.
"Students, that is the beauty of combined arms fire and artillery superiority!" I proudly beamed a smile to them, as another chain of explosions from the naval bombardments tore up the ground, along with the damn communist mages.
Hours later, at the Albish headquarters in Shanghai:
"You're telling me all of these attacks from the Chinese were probably just a feint?" Visha's jaw dropped in horror.
"To you, it was a grueling slaughter." General Dudley Clarke continued to stare at the maps on his wall. "To them, it was Tuesday. By the way, the mages you helped annihilate around Shanghai were their bottom-tier ones. The most they could do was a high jump. There's a reason why not a single flying Chinese mage was spotted in this area."
"Isn't that the Chinese mage tactic, to hide among their regular soldiers?" I raised an eyebrow. "Although I was wondering why even when their shots did hit our mages, they only inflicted minor damage on even the Germanian academy students' shields."
"And it appears they only hide if they believe their mages are at a disadvantage because Major Green and his mage battalion…" Clarke traced his hands over to the marked area between Nangton and Changzhou, then took a deep breath. "Reported there were about half a dozen flying Chinese mage battalions who are harassing air traffic between us and the increasingly trapped coalition forces that were retreating from Nanjing. Also, the same area was seized by a large partisan force led by General Shi Yousan, and he established anti-aircraft batteries in various concealed locations to serve as fallback positions for their flying mage battalions if they encountered heavy air threats."
"And the ships retreating from Nanjing?"
"They're stuck in Changzhou," Clarke sighed, then pointed to the markings further east of the city. "During the Chinese counteroffensive in Nanjing and Shanghai, they used that distraction to establish new naval minefields covered by railway artillery guns and lighter guns that came out of nowhere and are now firmly dug-in, putting a stop to any further retreat. Or rescue from the relief Albish fleet that tried sailing up the river. And then there's the flying mage horde I mentioned about it, which makes it difficult for our flyboys to target their artillery to allow an unimpeded clearing of the mines."
"What a mess…" Visha quietly muttered.
"I should also remind you this is only a fraction of the forces they have brought to bear on the Nanjing and Shanghai theatre." Clarke then pointed at the distant cities of Hangzhou and Yancheng. "Aerial reconnaissance reported large Chinese formations rapidly marching towards those two cities to retake them from the coalition forces that recently captured them. I have already written those forces off as sacrificial losses, and acceptable losses if we can rescue the ones trapped further west of us. When those two cities collapse, the Chinese forces will reconverge towards us. I have a feeling they may decide to storm Shanghai to close off the escape route for good. And with the minimal forces I have at my disposal, I can't push outside of Shanghai to retake the initiative."
I quietly took in the severity of the crisis, then turned to Visha. "We're going to need more reinforcements."
"By the way, what brought you here unexpectedly?" Clarke flatly asked, but I could sense a hint of suspicion in his question.
"Where's Millicent Caldwell?" I tapped my foot impatiently.
"All of these mages you brought, just to rescue one person?!" Clarke scoffed.
"And everyone else she is with, yes," I quickly retorted. "I would assume she is with an army, rather than trying to pull a lone survivor. I doubt she can blend in with the local Chinese population."
"She's with the Aegyptians, Kanatians, and various other retreating fragments of the Nanjing siege force. They just finished evacuating their airfield that was east of Nanjing, and are heading to Changzhou's airfield."
"I'm heading there and taking Major Neumann's and Birgit's mage battalions with me, and when the Germanian airborne infantry division arrives in this city, they will also be joining us as I will need their helicopters for the evacuation." I prepared to walk out of his office with Visha in tow. "I'm leaving the inexperienced Germanian battalion with you. Hopefully your men at Hangzhou and Yancheng hold out long enough for Germanian forces to arrive to bolster your defenses in Shanghai."
"Helicopters, interesting…" Clarke then saluted me. "I wish you luck with walking through the communist hell road."
AN:
Youtube video of a Victoria 2 multiplayer session that inspired the "just one more victory, I swear just one more victory and we'll win this war": https/watch?v=Nd-K1e6jCH4 =PLhJpK3gw2nb8ceUr-8R7AxGVfM6LLHpIF =7
https/en./wiki/Victory_disease
https/en./wiki/Groupthink
https/en./wiki/Communal_reinforcement
https/en./wiki/Confirmation_bias
(I talked with someone whose father fought in the USSR-China border conflicts. They mentioned how his father lost multiple friends and he himself had PTSD from the number of Chinese that he mowed down as a vehicle gunner. His father described the Chinese attacks as essentially just human wave rushes with minimal artillery support.)
Reference to the HMS Invincible: https/livesofthefirstworldwar..uk/lifestory/6890075
Killed in Action. Arthur Cay was Captain of HMS INVINCIBLE which suffered a magazine explosion during the Battle of Jutland. There were only 6 survivors out of a crew of over a thousand.
https/en./wiki/Hiroshi_
Reference to the Canadian general: https/en./wiki/Guy_Simonds
OLD CHAPTER 12, IGNORE THE BELOW WRITING IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SEEING WHAT MY WRITING BACK IN 2021 LOOKS LIKE
AN: Edited by Gremlin Jack, perfect_shade, and Nla Eid.
The story post on the spacebattles forum has the maps showing the movements and positions of forces.
1944, April 13th, in Berun:
I put aside a newspaper of South Bharat's government handing out awards to the volunteer army for their rescue operations. It was a messy operation and there were many casualties. I did not expect them to be so happy about throwing away their men to rescue some coalition forces. The Albish sent me a terse thank you statement, but I could definitely tell that they were upset, and that confuses me. Their boys were saved, so why are they angry about it?
I picked up the latest report of the situation along the front lines. It's a repeat of the beginning of the trench warfare that I was familiar with. While we were building our fortifications along about 4,700 kilometers, the CSR has been constantly probing to find weak spots or areas that we simply didn't have the time to get to building. The coalition switched their focus from trying to knock North Bharat out of the war entirely to holding the door shut against the CSR's incessant pounding to buy time for the defensive line constructions.
We had some close calls given the CSR light infantry's and mages' proficiency with night time infiltration tactics, such as establishing beachheads on our side of the large rivers that were part of our defensive line, but you can only use those so many times before the opposing side wises up to them. The biggest one was when they overran a mountain range that was the most northwest of Ajmer and established a large salient.
At the cost of over 50,000 casualties. And they ended up only holding the side of the mountain facing North Bharat after the coalition's counter attack. The salient itself is just begging to be encircled by a counteroffensive from us if they keep pushing in. They gained just enough land to bury their dead, although there probably wasn't much left to bury after all of the artillery shells, bombs and napalm that was rained onto the human wave assaults. Elya reported that their Minister of National Defense, Peng Dehuai, was sacked in the aftermath of that battle. Luo Ronghuan, previously the Marshal of the Army, took his place. I guess their minister was incompetent if he was the one who got the blame for the casualties and his direct subordinate was promted in his place, instead of letting a subordinate be the scapegoat. Or they had a case of office politics and internal power struggle that I'm all too familiar with in my previous life as a HR manager. I guess the communists' office politics might not be too different from the corporate world, except for possibly a lot more imprisonments and deaths for the losers.
The prototype jet bombers with their higher altitude guided bombs have also been a great asset in dealing with some of the more difficult targets. And the dedicated photo reconnaissance jets that are now giving us intel over Tibet and Afghanistan again, although I don't want my air force to be excessively reliant on those after the war is over. I remember the United States had a major diplomatic incident when their U-2 spy plane was shot down over the USSR. The CSR had increased their anti-air gun deployments over the months, and it seems that all of them are manned by mages to use their magic shells. With their limited logistics capability, it would make sense for them to maximize the kill probability with each shell or even try to hit multiple planes that are in close formation with a single shell. Their mage operated guns have been a major hazard to the older propeller driven planes and our mages.
Speaking of aircraft development, seeing the newspaper photo of our first helicopter actually being used for something useful made me giddy. The test pilot was doing his thing for a sea trial when they overheard radio chatter of someone falling off of a ship. They suspended the testing and for the first time in history, used the helicopter for search and rescue operation, and successfully retrieved the person from the water. The press was still skeptical of the "mechanical mage machine" contraption, but I wasn't deterred.
I finally had time to work through some economic reforms, especially when the war veterans are using the trade school and college tuition benefits. I had to make sure that the economy was ready for the influx of workers with technical skills and higher education. There is nothing more dangerous than having a large number of highly educated people that are unemployed or stuck working in underpaying jobs that they are severely overqualified for. That's a quick way to get communism or other extreme political activism going.
The OZEV integration treaty talks are still going on. I occasionally suggested changes or new things that the Euroskeptics in my previous world would hate, but I doubt those would be passed anyways.
I flipped through another set of reports. Oh good, Dacia reported that they are making steady progress with establishing oil rigs in Caucasia and Kazakh Republics, and the infrastructure to support the operations. The Russy Confederation and the CSR seemed fully distracted by the Bharti War. Putting a check on the expansion of communism and finally being able to sidestep the Middle East problem was worth the mounting war expenses.
My phone started ringing and I picked it up right as Visha also burst into my office.
"Chancellor!" Elya yelled out over the phone. "The CSR wants peace talks!"
Visha only needed to look at my expression before moping, "Aw, Elya beat me to that, didn't she?"
I hopped over my desk, happily skipped over to Visha and gave her a kiss.
1944, April 27th, in Bombay at the peace conference:
"Why are you dragging this war on?" Allen Shone said. "You know as well as we do that we could simply have the grand fleet blockade your nation and there is nothing you could do about it.
Liao Chenghi carefully kept his face neutral, but made sure to make a grand production of noting down some thing or another in his notebook. The important part was to draw out the pause, lest he appeared susceptible to threats of force and weaken his position. Then after an appropriate time he spoke, also ever so carefully not responding at all to the previous challenge.
"The issue is the prisoners of war and what you intend to do with them. However the proposed new borders are a concluded matter as far as the CSR is concerned. Similarly the other contentious issues with that singular exception have been resolved to our satisfaction. Which leaves your treatment of said prisoners as the only problem remaining."
"You're asking for a lot, to just release soldiers regardless of their crimes." The South Bharatian representative ground out. Discontent visibly restrained as he continued. "To let go of the men that gassed the cities of Hyderabad and Bhopal with pesticides and herbicides when the populace decided to secede from your government that started this war if I need to remind you."
"There is no proof of that. Our own records do not show anywhere that such an order was ever given." Liao retorted, outrage, truthful or not, leaking into his voice. "For all we know some corrupt commander of your own forces ordered the operation to frame our allies. Or do I need to remind you that before the Chancellor personally intervened your own soldiers were happily massacring their own dissidents and undesirables indiscriminately?!"
"We could just set the prisoners free where they are. Let them walk back over the border right past hundreds of kilometers of angry South Bharatian citizens." Zettour interjected before the glaring match between the southern representative and CSR diplomat sipping tea could devolve any further.
"We all know they'd be lynched before coming anywhere near the new border. Between scorched earth tactics and using civilians for forced labor or outright human shields, your men did a fine job of burning half of South Bharat to the ground. The South Bharatian haven't forgotten a single war crime perpetrated against them, of that I assure you. A couple public trials to appease them is just a slap on the wrist. At least compared to the Unified States seeking recompense from North Bharat for all the farms they had destroyed and the Unified States subsequently supplied food in order to stave off the worst humanitarian crisis of the century."
"And in the Arene Massacre, unlawful combatants were slaughtered." The North Bharatian representative interrupted. "Once those citizens took up arms against our army and refused to stop attacking our government and military personnel after we repeatedly warned them of the consequences, they became unlawful combatants that are not subject to laws of war. Thus they were going to die anyw-."
Liao shot the man a glare, prompting him to cease his blathering that threatened their entire operation.
Zettour for his part could now see why Degurechaff picked him for this job in her stead. He had heard through his channels that she did not like to be reminded of Arene in the slightest. He would be concerned for anyone's safety after saying that kind of thing to her face. Representative of a foreign nation or not, he wasn't sure they would be able to leave with their life intact. Their dignity certainly would have been gone once the Argent was through with them. At this point he wasn't sure how much a difference it would make. The way the talks were going they may not even be able to agree to a twelve hour cease fire to attempt to sort out more of the issues without the fighting still going on during their talks.
Meanwhile the South Bharatian was visibly fuming. Enough so for Zettour to place a hand on his shoulder as a clear sign for restraint, lest the man torpedo any chance left for finding a solution by doing something extremely foolish.
"What the North Bharat forces are doing as part of their operations are none of our business." The CSR delegate deflected any further inroads into that matter while eliciting disbelieving laughter from the Albionese ambassador.
"So, what about Burma?" Shone asked. "None of your business either?"
"It's your colony." Liao shrugged for emphasis. "What do we have to do with them?"
"So you're saying you are not backing the rebels in Burma bordering your country? Nor are you building a railway line and several roads through said border region?" Shone responded, nearly hissed. "Then that simplifies how we will deal with both tremendously. Seeing how you're not involved in either."
"We are so sorry for not killing or arresting all of the Buddhist monks in our lands so that they would not travel into a Buddhist majority region. That they possibly may seek to establish their own country together with their new neighbors is an internal affair to Burma and not our responsibility."
"As for the road construction and railway building?" Liao asked only to answer the rhetorical question the next moment. "There were no border guards to ask for business visas when our people sought to expand into the area and offered to build the required infrastructure for their businesses. If you reassert control of the area, of course, they would pay the required taxes for operation."
"Gentlemen," John Foster, the US representative, raised his voice at this point along with his hands in appeasement while Shone was gritting his teeth. "We should all calm down for a moment and agree to a temporary ceasefire. There is no need for people killing each other even as we negotiate. Let us halt the fighting first, then resolve our remaining issues."
This elicited nods around the group. The fact that the man had been trying to stay out of the thick of it, playing the arbiter, certainly helped to have people not see him as a biased mediator despite his government's own interests in the matter.
For now they could all agree to buy some more time. And now the South Bharatian representative asked about war reparations which instantly kicked off a shouting match between him and the North Bharatian representative.
Zettour contemplated opening up a bottle. Liao and Allen certainly looked like they needed it. Youngsters being new to a global war they weren't sure how to stop anymore… funny how it is a literal youngster who first suggested the situation unraveling before him.
In the CSR:
"We can't keep this war running for years." Zhang Wentian groaned. "The Great Leap Forward was called off when Li ordered fuel rationing to keep the tanks and transport planes running."
"We won't need the transport planes as much when the two railways are completed." Li Kenong responded.
"And what will the coalition do by that point?" Zhang Wentian asked.
"They have already started rebuilding South Bharat, with a focus on heavy industry as the Unified States is committed to keep the food aid flowing so South Bharat's labor force can focus on infrastructure construction and factory work instead of rebuilding the destroyed farms. They're also still expanding the defensive line." Kang Sheng said. "It's a repeat of the 'race to the sea' trench warfare that Eurpe had back in the 1920's, and they had years of experience in that. It would be insane for us to play their game."
"North and South Bharat still want to keep fighting." Luo Ronghuan said. "You've seen the public claims from both. North Bharat wants the restoration back to the original borders, and South Bharat wants North Bharat entirely gone for what their encircled army has done. We all know that both positions are a fantasy."
There was a knock on the door.
"Enter." Zhang Wentian said.
An aide poked his head in. "Chairman, there is an urgent message for you. Directly from Liao Chengzhi."
"Read it then." Zhang Wentian gestured at the aide, who retrieved a piece of paper.
"Liao Chengzhi says that the Albish is committed to conducting a naval invasion of us should the peace talks fail."
There was a stunned silence in the room.
"We all know what happened the last time they did that." Luo Ronghuan muttered.
"They gave poison, opium, to the already sick Shun Dynasty, with their soldiers that marched into the capital after invading us up our rivers..." Kang Sheng gritted his teeth.
Zhang Wentian turned to Luo Ronghuan. "Luo Ronghuan, you will make preparations to attack the Albish fleet should they sail into our waters. I am aware that we don't have a navy, but we do have a lot of mages. The Germanians demonstrated that boarding actions are still an option in their knockout blow against the Francois Republic's navy, and that mages can be used underwater."
"That reminds me, the NKVD had recently sent us high performance boat engine production schematics with the help of their Frankish agents, the ones that were used to power the coalition's riverine fleet. They said it was a gift for not abandoning North Bharat at the peace talks." Kang Sheng announced. "That could allow our augmented C-tier mages to swarm and board enemy ships as they can't fly, and swimming would be too slow."
"The Albish has been more talk than action for a while." Li Kenong responded with skepticism. "Why worry about an empty threat?"
Zhang Wentian spoke up before Luo Ronghuan could say something. "We don't have a navy, and their fleet is close by. They don't need to get in the range of our coastal batteries to blockade us, and we all know our coastal defenses were only designed to deter small invasion forces, not against a sustained engagement against battleships and aircraft from multiple carriers. They can bomb our railroads to prevent our railway guns from being moved around quickly. The Albish would be pressured by their domestic politics to save face after losing Bharat and are on the verge of losing Burma. It's a low risk option for them to demonstrate their strength."
"What if they were bluffing?"
"Then we would have hundreds of augmented C-tier mages for very short term usage, and we can attack their ships anchored off the coast of Bharat with pirate mages. I wouldn't be surprised if the coalition had gotten complacent with their ships around North Bharat. Speaking of the augmented C-tier mages, Luo Ronghuan, do you have any updates on them?"
Luo Ronghuan shuffled through a stack of paper before finding the one he needed. "We had good successes with using the augmented C-tier mages with operating M1938 76 millimeter, M1939 85 millimeter, and KS-19 100 millimeter air defense guns. As long as they do not exceed 30 seconds of heavy mana usage in a single session, they can fully recover within several days without needing hospitalization while a fresh crew takes their place. The severity of side effects scale exponentially with the energy liquid usage. A few C-tier mages have demonstrated unusually high tolerance to the side effects and can safely operate for more than a minute, so we had pulled them from the front lines to study how their bodies are metabolizing the energy liquids. We also have a surplus of the augmented C-tier mages so we never had an issue with going into a fatigue spiral. Although that is partially also due to anti-aircraft ammunition shortages. This freed up our B and A tier mages for other operations."
"Does the coalition have any idea of our augmented mages?"
"Unlikely. The augmented mages wear heavy clothing to hide the tubes connecting their backpacks to their necks. Kang Sheng has assured me that our state secrets are secure."
Kang Sheng nodded as Luo Ronghuan finished speaking.
"How many mages can we use for boarding actions against the Albish fleet?" Zhang Wentian asked.
Luo Ronghuan again flipped through his papers and did some quick math on a blank sheet of paper. "We can pull about two hundred augmented C-tier mages off the front line within a month by using the Rus transport planes without affecting our anti-aircraft defenses. There are many unaugmented C-tier mages that are serving in combat, so I intend on prioritizing recruiting those that have the best combat records, preferably those who had also been in urban combat, and fly them out using the transport planes."
He paused for a moment as if he was thinking of something, "I'm not exactly sure how long training will take as we have never used augmented mages in direct combat. Once they complete their training, we can send them back to the frontline until they're needed, and call in the next group of untrained mages. The longer we drag on the peace talks, the more time we have to train the mages before the Albish sends in their fleet."
Taking a sip of tea before continuing, "For B and A tier mages, I want to prioritize those who excel in fighting in constrained spaces such as buildings, caves, or enemy defensive works, and avoiding enemy anti-aircraft fire. I intend to intensively train them for as long as possible to be the tip of the spear. I don't want to pull more than too many A and B tier mages off the front line, especially when we have a limited amount of Type 97 orbs to go around. We don't want to tip off the coalition that we're sending a large number of mages somewhere else."
"Kang, send me the production schematics. I'll come up with an estimate of how many motor boats we could build so Luo knows how many augmented mages he can use for the boat assaults. " Li Kenong said while Kang and Luo nodded in agreement. "We do have plenty of existing sailboats that can be retrofitted with engines, so it'll be the engine manufacturing that would be the bottleneck."
"I'll have some information fabricated about unrest in the Xinjiang province and northern part of Tibet. As long as the Rus planes and mages are flying towards that direction, they won't suspect anything about our force redeployment for "riot control" measures." Kang Sheng suggested while waving his hand at the map. "They're not stupid enough to try to send a photo reconnisance jet that deep into our territory. And if they try, then I'm sure Luo Ronghuan can come up with a plan to make sure that plane has a one way flight. I've always wanted to see how they can fly so fast without propellers."
"And I can have our soldiers be informed about supply shortages." Luo Ronghuan said. "It might lower morale, but that would provide yet another cover for reduced mage activity levels. Kang Sheng, could you help me with finding Frankish naval advisors that had experience with the Germanian mages' boarding actions, preferably those that hate the Albish, and also ex-pirates who could give some advice on dealing with uncooperative ships? I need to build up an instructor staff to teach the mages. Li Kenong, I will need some ships so I can convert them into training platforms. The Francois Republic's destroyer will also be turned into a training platform. I'm assuming the destroyer's layout will share some similarities with the Albish destroyers, and maybe the Frankish naval advisors would also have an idea of what the Albish destroyers look like on the inside."
Kang Sheng smiled. "It will be done. Also, speaking of ships, I'll have informants keep an eye on the Albish fleet movement."
Li Kenong scribbled in his notes. "That should be straightforward. I'll also make preparations to ensure that we have the parts and the medical staff for the augmentation surgeries. The Type 97 orb production should be able to allow us to equip over 100 mages in a few months, while still having a sufficient number of the orbs for front line usage as well." He pauses in his writing in thought before looking up, "Also, we need to get in touch with Rus engineers to help us modify at least 100 Type 97 orbs to safely operate underwater"
Zhang Wentian nodded and then looked at everyone. "Begin at once. This will be a high priority task for all of us."
1944, July 4th, in Berun
I sighed as I read the latest transcripts of the "peace talks". It was way too early to celebrate. Every time one issue would be addressed, another sticking point would be found by either side. And of course the communists were very keen on avoiding any war crime trials. At least North Bharat dropped the idea of returning back to the original borders when they demonstrated their inability to seriously threaten the defensive lines.
Speaking of the defensive lines, the "race to the sea and mountains" trench warfare is still going on because neither side could come to an agreement over a lasting ceasefire, and there are plenty of fortifications that we have to build to deal with the communists that are still trying to outflank our forces.
I heard a knock on the door, and I looked up to the clock.. The Akinese ambassador is here for a scheduled meeting, and apparently it's something very important.
"Come on in."
An aide opened the door and the ambassador stepped into my office. I got out of my seat for us to bow to each other. Pleasantries were exchanged and I invited him to take a seat, he accepted but his situation didn't last for long.
"Chancellor, may I ask if you have an appropriate room to discuss highly secretive matters?" he asked.
I raised an eyebrow. Now I'm curious as to what the Akitsushima Dominion has been planning for them to be this cautious. I lead the way to the soundproofed room adjacent to my office, and once inside, I put up a privacy spell.
The ambassador seems to be satisfied by the security and begins to speak: "We are concerned about the well-being of the Joseon under the communist rule with them showing a disregard for their own people's lives, and our own security if the war continues." The ambassador spoke. "Our homeland is only a short distance away from Joseon, and while we have a navy and airforce, they have many mages and bottomless manpower to try something."
"They still would take heavy casualties from trying to rush across the waters from boarding your ships or bypassing them." I responded with a slight confusion. "No amphibious operation can be successful without first dealing with the navy that is blocking the path."
The ambassador continued. "We had a wargame exercise where we determined that our fleet could be vulnerable against tens of thousands of small crafts across a large area with a large number of supporting enemy mages. Especially in the case of a surprise attack with minimal heavy units as they have shown in Bharat. Our fleet was originally designed in the event of a war against European powers or the Unified States, with the assumption that our fleet would be going up against cruisers and battleships. Even if we destroy most of the small crafts in the open water, the survivors that make it across could still inflict considerable destruction and casualties, especially with their mages. It would be an embarrassment to our country and the Emperor."
I've studied enough Japanese history to know exactly what Akitsushima Dominion intends on doing. The Emperor may have purged his army leadership, but I'm assuming the navy was relatively unaffected. And now the militants have the opportunity to restart their colonial ambitions by taking back the land that they had been occupying before the Rus pushed them off of it.
"While an invasion of Joseon would catch the CSR entirely by surprise as I'm assuming much of their military is deployed in Bharat or in the western part of the Russy Confederation, it would be a serious escalation of the ongoing war." I said.
The ambassador looked shocked for a brief moment but quickly regained composure. "Invade Joseon? The Rus pushed us off of the land with overwhelming industrial power. The CSR could do the same with their manpower and mages."
Ah, I see why they were hesitant to invade Joseon. They wanted to know how much I would support them. Could we win a world war against the CSR? It would be a long and bloody conflict. I am not interested in a repeat of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and those cannibalistic commies had already been hardened by their war in Sibyria.
Then again, the CSR has invaded through the neutral country of Afghanistan and helped themselves with most of Burma. If the Akitsushima Dominion succeeds in their operation, it would definitely force the CSR to finally sign a peace treaty. If it fails, well, that would certainly get rid of the last of the militants in the Akitsushima Dominion with them getting kicked off of Joseon for the second time. As long as the CSR doesn't try to somehow counter-invade, I can let the Akitsushima Dominion fail. I still needed to worry about how the rest of the world would see Germania though.
I pointed at Tsushima Island on the map.
"I can't have my military join in the invasion as that would risk triggering a war with the Russy Confederation and threaten the new republics next to the Rus. But, I can have one or two battalions of mages as "observers" to garrison that island, and a few destroyers as there isn't much of a need for surface ships in the Bharatian War. They will be tasked with dealing with any communists that attempt to cross the ocean to conduct raids on your homeland as a retaliatory strike, while remaining far outside of CSR's and Joseon's territorial waters. Our destroyers' heavy anti-air armaments will easily deal with mages and small crafts."
"That is good to hear."
"Under three conditions. If the peace talks are successful, I won't allow that operation to happen, and there will be no attempts from your country to interfere with the peace talks. As for the third one, there will be a democracy established in the Joseon to ensure our international credibility."
"I'll consult with my superiors with your requests. We intend on maintaining a strictly observation role for the peace talks." The ambassador responded. "The CSR would have strong opinions if we joined in the discussion."
1944, July 25th, somewhere next to the Bohai Sea:
Chen Shusheng was not expecting his life to turn out this way.
When he had first joined the military, he was tested for magic potential like any other recruit. He had such little magic potential that a nurse joked that if there was a D-tier mage class, he would be categorized as that.
Then sometime after surviving the Battle of Ajmer where every single one of his friends were killed, along with his entire battalion being wiped out with him being the last remaining person in the battalion, an officer told him that he was going home. He had expected to die in that battle and not suffer from the nightmares of the Sibyrian war anymore, but instead he would get more nightmares for years to come.
Well, that officer was technically telling the truth about going home. Because as soon as he got off the transport plane, it became very clear that the military had other plans for him, and many others. Now he understood why people were seemingly randomly being selected for "reassignments" and were never seen or heard again.
They were all marched to a hospital where after a brief administrative processing and a medical screening, a group of them at a time would be taken to another room to be stripped naked, scrubbed with disinfectants, and then marched to the numerous operating rooms where the doctors and their staff would perform the same surgery over and over again.
When he woke up from the surgery, he was given a booklet on how to take proper care of himself to avoid complications with the augmentations and was sent to another facility to begin a crash course in mage training.
On the first day of the class, the instructor walked in. And of course his instructor was Yang Huimin, the girl he met while they were marching through Afghanistan.
They both locked eyes for about a second, before she turned her attention to the chalkboard to begin their lessons.
1944, July 28th, Berun:
I was looking at photos of the first Albish jet fighters taking off from an airfield in South Bharat on July 27th. They called it the Gloster Meteor.
"Foreign Minister Dertinge, what did the Unified States say about our offer to sell our early jet fighter models that did not receive engine upgrades and other improvements, and the early engine models that were leftovers from our aircraft upgrading?"
He smiled. "They said that our jets outperformed their prototypes and would be willing to buy them."
"Did the BND tell you anything regarding the Unified States' prototype jets?" I asked, with a bit of confusion in my mind now. Elya had not informed me about the Unified States also pursuing their own jet engines.
"They said they were not aware of the Americans developing their own jets." Dertinge shrugged his shoulders.
Hmm, I'm curious how that one slipped past the BND.
"And the Albish? I'm sure they made their offers to the Unified States."
The Foreign Minister nods, "They did. But the Americans preferred combat-tested aircraft and engines with known deficiencies, known troubleshooting methods and known maintenance requirements They were hesitant to accept the Allied Kingdom's relatively new designs that may have unknown deficiencies."
"What are the Americans offering for our hardware?"
He smiled. "If we also train their pilots and aircrews, and assist them in the licensed production of the aircraft and the parts that go into the aircraft, they agreed to wipe away a large portion of our Second Europan War debts. We still have the tooling for the previous engine model that can be shipped over to the Unified States."
Arming a fellow anti-communist country with secondhand hardware and having some of the debt weight taken off of our back. Now that's a win-win!
1944, October 1st, somewhere next to the Bohai Sea:
Chen Shusheng looked at his new equipment now that the course began to cover some practical applications. It was a heavy backpack that contained the pump, tanks, a wire connected a wrist panel to the backpack, and surplus inventory single core orb. In the event of their death, the orb's self-destruction would ignite an incendiary charge next to the tanks and burn up the entire backpack or at least the energy liquids to deny any reverse-engineering opportunities for the enemy.
The practical examples were to only last for very short durations as they still needed to continue to study even while recovering from the side effects. Too much usage would put them in agony for days, or worse, a visit to the hospital.
After inspecting the backpack's interior parts, he put on the backpack and connected the two tubes to the ports that were surgically implanted on the lower portion of his neck. He then opened the cover for the wrist panel and selected the low mana pump setting. There was a button for the high mana usage, and if pressed down for a few seconds, it would cause the pump to run at maximum capacity, which only had a few seconds of safe operation and thus was only meant for suicidal or last resort usage. In order to fly, heavy usage was required, but the curriculum was not going to teach that, so instead they would be later learning how to perform long distance jumps with light mana usage.
As soon as the energy liquid began to course through his body, he felt a sickening surge. He focused his mind and casted the shield spell. It flickered a lot, but when his partner tossed a ball at it, it bounced off of it.
"For a first time try, that is very good." Yang Huimin said, humming before she walked off to comment on other students' attempts at forming a shield.
1944, October 18th, somewhere next to the Bohai Sea:
Luo Ronghuan watched the target ship with his binoculars. A few of the Frankish advisors suggested having the explosives detonate at some depth below the ship to "break its keel" instead of directly attaching the explosives to the hull. They had conducted small lab model scales, but this would be the first time where they would try the keel-breaking method. They also had reinforced the hull to simulate a battleship's hull based on the Frankish advisors' inputs.
The underwater mages emerged from the water after previously being undetected by magic detectors from the CSR, Russy Confederation, Francois Republic, and commercial grade detectors. They then went airborne, and soon he saw the ship get pushed upward by three underwater explosions, and then fall back down into the water. About a fourth of the ship broke off and sank separately. The rest of the ship had visible cracks in the hull.
"Would there be any way for the Albish crew to save a ship in that condition?" he asked.
A translator spoke to one of the Frankish advisors, and then returned the answer to Luo Ronghuan.
"Much of the crew would be injured or killed from the shock. And even if the ship didn't break apart, there would be hundreds of small leaks everywhere which means simply shutting flood containment doors won't work compared to containing a single large leak. That's assuming the flood containment structures themselves haven't been damaged from the shock."
Luo Ronghuan smiled. The Albish had dominated the ocean for decades, and their foreign policy significantly benefited from that, at the expense of everyone else on the receiving end of their booming barrages and the following landing of their Royal Marines. Now they were going to be directly challenged should they attack the CSR.
1944, December 24th, somewhere next to the Bohai Sea in the afternoon (morning in Berun):
With training over, graduation done with, and everyone being given three days of leave before boarding the trains to take them back to the front lines, Chen Shusheng's heart was racing. He had asked Yang Huimin out on a date, and she said yes. She agreed to meet him at a restaurant, and even though it would have easily cost him a week's worth of his pay for some of the fancier dishes, he had no regrets about it.
Word had gotten out relatively quick. Maybe she had told one of her friends about the date, and from that point the rumors kicked off. A few of his classmates had given him a hard time about waiting until right after graduation to officially date an instructor. One of them came up to him.
"How did you two meet anyways?"
"We were both marching through Afghanistan." Shusheng responded.
"Ah, that makes sense. Too busy marching to North Bharat to make love." the classmate teased.
"I wonder what would be worse, the commander making an example of us for "good order and discipline", or both of our families screeching at us?"
"I think I would rather take double punishments than to let the families find out." the classmate shrugged.
1944, December 24th, in Berun at around noon:
I let out a deep sigh as I read the latest reports.
The peace talks have officially failed, and it ended with a bang from both sides. Although everyone could see the writing on the wall with both sides repeatedly walking out and minimal progress being made while the war still raged on.
It ended with a bang when the Unified States and Allied Kingdom conducted day and night strategic bombing operations on North Bharat's cities and transport infrastructure to bypass the CSR's anti-air defenses and knock out North Bharat's war industry. They also bombed northern Burma as well to disrupt CSR's logistics and their railroad construction, with the Allied Kingdom justifying that as "it is still our territory". I made my usual public declaration denouncing strategic bombing because of the high collateral damage against civilians, but it was obvious that the two countries did not care for my opinion and were using those bombings to try to force the communists to come back to the peace talks.
As for OZEV and our South Bharatian volunteer army, we had been continuously expanding the fortifications. If the communists have no hope of breaking through, they will have to accept the new reality.
I grabbed another report and opened it to see what has been happening in Lucknow after the communists revealed their own "force the other side to come back to the negotiating table" solution.
They had been digging tunnels under parts of our defensive line directly north of Lucknow and filled them with explosives during the dragged out peace talks. During the strategic bombing, they lit the explosives off before having their infantry charge in. I've always suspected that the city would be difficult to hold because of the flat terrain directly north of it and being close to the Himalayas, and I was not surprised with General Romel's decision of establishing a fallback defensive line behind the Ganges River south of Lucknow. Delhi was too well defended for being such a high value city, so the communists had gone for an easier option.
They had also concentrated their 100 millimeter anti-air guns in the area beforehand and had them hidden under camouflage netting. With their mages using spells to extend the range of their shells to target our high altitude jet bombers, our air power had to deal with their anti-air defenses first before going after their advancing forces.
The only thing that somewhat stalled their advance was our artillery having a ready stockpile of incendiary rockets and shells. The reports indicated that the CSR mages are using shield spells to protect the infantry from the airburst munitions, and the infantry are also carrying bags of dry dirt to dump onto the fires for them to keep advancing. And they finally had Rus artillery guns for counter battery fire. There were also reports of occasional artillery shells that had a far bigger explosion than expected, along with magic energy being emitted from the blast, which tells me that they now have magic artillery shells for their mages to enhance. I would have loved to do something similar, except with the limited quantity of mages, I would much rather have them focus on tasks that machines and regular humans can't do, such as special operations. I can always have more advanced artillery systems. Instead of the South Bharatian forces retreating to the river defensive line, some of them announced that they would hold Lucknow to the last man. Completely illogical.
We both had been sharpening knives behind our back during the peace talks, and stabbed each other in the face at the same time. What a mess. I could use nukes to shock the communists into coming back to the negotiating tables, but if the surrender isn't an unconditional one, it would be only a matter of time before they develop their own nuclear bombs and use it against us in the future out of revenge. But an unconditional surrender might prompt them to fight on to the bitter end.
I opened yet another report.
Elya reported that the Albish leadership had become emboldened with the news of the CSR's internal struggles and have begun moving ships from the Bharatian water to the east. The Akinese ambassador said that they have privately agreed to help support the Albish naval blockade and are beginning to redeploy their navy as well after the last of their soldiers have left the Bharat subcontinent. I guess they technically would be supporting the blockade by taking Joseon away from the CSR and having their fleet around it. Can't send out ships if the coastlines and harbors are being filled with Akinese marines.
Unfortunately it appears time is starting to run out for us, and Elya was adamant that she did not have anything to pull off a repeat of Lev Bronstein's coup to destabilize CSR's leadership. I'm not surprised because if the Russy Federation was a hard target, the CSR was a much tougher one. While one could find Rus people living in OZEV with an axe to grind against the communists, the number of people who would blend into CSR's society was near impossible to find.
Meanwhile the Unified States is swinging back to their isolationism with the growing anti-war protests, and the other countries in the coalition are also facing their own war weariness problems. OZEV is also having some war weariness, but since most of the dying is from the Bharatian service members rather than OZEV thanks to our massive local volunteer army, and our defensive posture when the coalition was counter-punched during last winter, I think that is helping to soften the blow. It seems that every anti-war protest in OZEV is being met with a much larger pro-war or anti-communist protest. Elya insisted that the BND had no role with the counter protests.
I looked at today's newspaper and smiled a bit at the small positive news of our first helicopters starting to enter service. The front page had a photo of the helicopter being used to evacuate wounded people, a helicopter airlifting supplies to a mountainous area, and another helicopter deploying a squad in response to a suspected communist infiltration was on the front page. The high command was still debating over how to use the helicopters for combat operations. As far as I'm aware, the navy is planning on using depth charges and small torpedoes and the army is going for rocket pod helicopters paired with an aerial recon element so the helicopters could pop up from behind a hill, forest or building, fire a barrage, and dive back behind cover to avoid anti-aircraft fire.
1944, December 24th in CSR's evening (Berun's noon):
Chen Shusheng and Yang Huimin were walking along the waterfront after dinner. It was more expensive than he expected, but hopefully they can meet again later without paper bills flying out of his pockets.
"Where are they sending you off anyways?" Huimin asked.
"Back to North Bharat on the eastern front. They said they were going to assign me to mage sniper training once I get there. What about you?"
"They recently changed my orders. Apparently the command liked how well I taught students so they wanted me to stay to teach mages on how to operate the Type 97 orb and the next group of C-tier mages. So how did you get selected to be an augmented mage in the first place?"
"I have no idea to this day." Shusheng shrugged his shoulders. "I do remember a nurse joking that if there was a D-class mage rating, I would have belonged in that category because of how difficult it was for their instruments to pick up on magic."
"It was probably some clueless officer saying, 'Ah yes a C-tier mage, send him for surgery and training.'" she chuckled. "Hopefully your family isn't too bothered by it."
"They'll get over it. As long as I'm alive, they won't be upset. Although speaking of family, how would your family potentially react to our relationship?"
Huimin paused for a few seconds. "With the government now playing a role in deciding marriage couple selections for mages instead of just the two couples' families, it's going to be interesting. If the government doesn't approve of us being together, I'd expect pressure from both of our families because that's a lot of benefits not being available to government approved mage marriages. My mother has indirectly implied that she'll approve any marriage if the benefits are guaranteed and the man meets her minimum requirements."
"Oh? Minimum requirements?" Shusheng raised an eyebrow. "That's a bit vague. Let me guess, it's still pretty high isn't it?"
Huimin rolled her eyes in response.
"I'm not surprised." Shusheng said. "I wasn't the best at school, and I decided to follow in my father's footsteps of volunteering for the military."
"What did your mother say?" Huimin asked.
"She eventually gave up on me and hounded my siblings instead." Shusheng shrugged his shoulders.
"I originally wanted to go into mage sports. I remember reading the news article about the World Cup in Europe, and aerial lacrosse seemed like a lot of fun." Huimin said. "Unfortunately, if they're using mass surgeries for C-tier mages to fight for short durations, it's pretty hard for a B or A tier mage to avoid military service."
"Maybe after this war you can join the reserves and try for the mage sports again."
"That's something I am looking forward to. Anyways, should we meet again tomorrow morning? I heard about a great breakfast place, and then we can head to a theatre for a play performance."
"Of course! Of course!" Shusheng nodded and smiled, 'Well, there goes another one of my weekly paychecks.' He privately thought to himself.
Before he could respond, someone he recognized as one of Huimin's friends ran up to them, panting all the while. "Chen! Yang! We have to go back! There's been a change of plans and command is recalling everyone back. Something big is going to happen!"
AN:
Anyone who has played XCOM's Long War mod is probably aware of the "fatigue spiral", where sometimes your A, B, C, D, E, and F squads are all shot up or exhausted, so it's up to the fresh recruit G squad to respond to a terror mission in a country that is on the verge of leaving the XCOM council. This 30 second video sums up the fatigue spiral: watch?v=yyhnAAOIr7I
wiki/Gloster_Meteor
The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter and the Allies' only jet aircraft to achieve combat operations during the Second World War. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, pioneered by Frank Whittle and his company, Power Jets Ltd. Development of the aircraft began in 1940, although work on the engines had been under way since 1936. The Meteor first flew in 1943 and commenced operations on 27 July 1944 with No. 616 Squadron RAF.
As for how the Unified States caught Tanya and the BND by surprise: wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star
The project was so secret that only five of the more than 130 people working on it knew that they were developing a jet aircraft, and the British engineer who delivered the Goblin engine was detained by the police because Lockheed officials could not vouch for him.[6]
I'm assuming it would be easier to build a railway through the northern part of Burma than through the mountainous Tibet and then over the Himalayas: wiki/Rail_transport_in_Myanmar
Regarding the underwater explosives, I was thinking of the modern torpedoes that explode at some depth below ships to break their keels: watch?v=PW7oNYwtPpQ
wiki/Torpedo#Damage
Bubble jet effect
The bubble jet effect occurs when a mine or torpedo detonates in the water a short distance away from the targeted ship. The explosion creates a bubble in the water, and due to the difference in pressure, the bubble will collapse from the bottom. The bubble is buoyant, and so it rises towards the surface. If the bubble reaches the surface as it collapses, it can create a pillar of water that can go over a hundred meters into the air (a "columnar plume"). If conditions are right and the bubble collapses onto the ship's hull, the damage to the ship can be extremely serious; the collapsing bubble forms a high-energy jet that can break a metre-wide hole straight through the ship, flooding one or more compartments, and is capable of breaking smaller ships apart. The crew in the areas hit by the pillar are usually killed instantly. Other damage is usually limited.[64]
The Baengnyeong incident, in which ROKS Cheonan broke in half and sank off the coast South Korea in 2010, was caused by the bubble jet effect, according to an international investigation.[65] [66]
Shock effect
If the torpedo detonates at a distance from the ship, and especially under the keel, the change in water pressure causes the ship to resonate. This is frequently the most deadly type of explosion, if it is strong enough. The whole ship is dangerously shaken and everything on board is tossed around. Engines rip from their beds, cables from their holders, etc. A badly shaken ship usually sinks quickly, with hundreds, or even thousands of small leaks all over the ship and no way to power the pumps. The crew fare no better, as the violent shaking tosses them around.[64] This shaking is powerful enough to cause disabling injury to knees and other joints in the body, particularly if the affected person stands on surfaces connected directly to the hull (such as steel decks).
The resulting gas cavitation and shock-front-differential over the width of the human body is sufficient to stun or kill divers.[67]
A video that also explains how underwater explosions can crack ships' hull: watch?v=UdFNuc5XtII