Category: The Solstice War

The Fallen General (40.1)

This scene contains violence and death.

45th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Ayvarta, Tambwe-Ajdar Border — Ghede River

Despite the amount of bodies pressed to either side of the river, everyone could still hear the sloshing of the water as it rushed downstream. Everyone was silent. Breaths reached farther than bullets, and faster. Ghede was a slow conquest, and an even slower defense.

Eyes peered over boulders, around sandbags, over grass-covered outcroppings upon which they lay belly-down with scopes and binoculars, peering downhill or uphill over the stream. Shadows flitted around trees, behind bushes. The opposing fronts were separated by only the width of the Ghede. In some areas the lines were as close as a hundred meters. Had it not been for the water they could have charged bayonet-first.

Despite the water, charging bayonet-first was still the choice outcome.

In several places the Ghede was only a half-dozen meters deep, and the rhythm of the battle was predicated on this fact. Men could swim across, if given the opportunity.

Lacking the mobility to cross quickly, the dueling sides fell into a war of munitions.

On the Nochtish side, mortar tubes were gathered by the dozens. Anti-tank and artillery guns of small calibers were pushed to the line of bushes at the edge of the wood, fifty meters from the river and nearly three hundred from the nearest Ayvartan position – not much, but enough to go unnoticed. Snipers climbed to the bushy canopy and adjusted their scopes. Light M5 tanks hid behind the tree line, and adjusted their guns to the same shooting tables in use by the anti-tank guns. Across a river they were merely mobile guns. There would be not armored blitzkrieg over the water of the Ghede yet.

Lines of foxholes formed a divide eerily reminiscent of the battles of the Unification War period, where two trench lines separated by a thousand meter no-man’s-land stared at one another for months, some years, before new technology entered the picture and caused a shift. Whether the abominable but ultimately slight shift caused by chemical weapons – or the dramatic, tide-turning shift caused by the entry of Nochtish tanks.

No new technology would cause a shift here in the Ghede, and the soldiers only wished they had a professional-looking trench line. Scattered foxholes and sandbag walls were broken up by the dips and rises of the uneven riverbanks, and the intermittently rocky and sandy and grassy terrain. Riflemen scraped from various divisions, agglomerated into the new 13th Panzer Division, waited sleepily for the next offensive to be declared.

There had been a few previous build-ups and failed attacks, but the lull between them felt like years’ worth of peace. Munitions built up, and men awaited commands, but on the Nochtish side of the Ghede there was a lazy, almost contented mood, like that of a holiday. There were no Generals here, no shouting orders, just distant voices, the sporadic tossing of a few shells, and half-hearted attempts to wade into the foam.

Bullets wailed and blood splashed, but after the fact everything was easily forgotten.

Until the next build-up, the next command word, the next attack.

“Noble cause.”

When the command came the landser crouched beside the field radio box could scarcely identify it as such. He raised an eyebrow at the strange call and the handset shifted against his ear with the shaking of his hand. Turning his head, he signaled to his superiors nearby that he was on the line. He then cleared his throat, and called back.

“Say again?”

“Noble cause,” came Chief of Signals Fruehauf’s voice once more.

“Noble cause?”

Fruehauf did not reply and the line went suddenly dead.

For several moments the radio man stood staring off into the distance.

He shook his head and his wits returned to him. Noble cause was the command.

That meant this build-up was now complete, and all munitions were to be released.

“We’ve been activated.” He whispered to the nearest man. “Pass it on.”

Word spread quietly across the line. Ayvartans monitored the radio traffic, or so everyone had been told; and they could see and hear across the river fairly well during quiet periods like this one. Therefore the rallying cry could not be loud or electric. Hands and tongues passed along the command, across every gun in the 10.5 cm battery, through the hatches of every M5 Ranger, behind the shields of every 37mm doorknocker gun, to every three-man Norgler machine gun team, into every foxhole and sniper nest.

“Noble cause, we’ve been activated.”

Guns of all sizes were loaded. Discarded helmets set back on vacant heads. Bayonets lugged, for no clear purpose. Men scrambled up, looking out over the river once more. Their movements were mechanical, reflexive, their minds still catching up to the events.

Once the entire river-front had been alerted, a runner was sent back to the guns.

Infantry would fire after the mortars and cannons drew the first blood.

With his upper body bowed low the man took off running.

He made it scarcely a few meters before he heard death whistle overhead.

A column of gray smoke and dirt, seething with hot metal, blossomed behind the trenches, and the runner went flying into a nearby tree, splashing blood and flesh.

They were preempted, despite careful planning.

The Ayvartans had gotten wind of the impending attack.

No sooner had the landsers noticed their dead man that munitions started falling over their line by the dozen, exploding all along the river-front. Small mortar shells came quickest, hitting the earth hundreds a minute along every kilometer of enemy positions, casting thin plumes of smoke and dirt into the air. Fragments of metal went flying over every foxhole and trench, and men huddled to their knees to escape the airborne death.

Following the mortars came the ponderous fire of much larger guns, striking farther behind the front, smashing trees, vaporizing bushes, torching holes into the thick green canopy above. Chunks of wood like flying stakes joined the shell fragments in the air. Thousands of fragments and fast-flying debris struck shields and thick trunks and the metal armor of tanks, hitting cover with such frequency it resembled automatic fire.

Amid the thunderous pounding of the enemy artillery, Landsers scrambled to their combat positions, bracing machine guns over rocks, pulling up to the edge of the riverbank on their bellies or scarcely above their holes and raising their battle rifles. As they joined battle their green tracers flew over the water, snapping branches and biting into rocks and flying into bushes. Between the rhythmic pounding of enemy ordnance the infernal noise of the norgler machine guns filled the silence, and lit the air green.

Lines of green bullets stretched over the river, and lines of red flew back the other way.

Behind the infantry line the air stirred as the 10.5 cm batteries finally retaliated.

Within the opposing tree-line the Nochtish fighters saw bright flashes as their own shells went off on the enemy, raising their own pillars of turf and metal as they struck.

There were flashes brighter still as enemy guns lobbed shells directly over their heads.

At the center of the line, a boulder was smashed to pieces as a 122mm Ayvartan gun struck it with direct fire. Chunks of hot rock struck against helmets and sandbags.

Red machine gun tracers from the Ayvartan side bounced off rocks and kicked up lines of dirt and overflew the foxholes, chopping up bushes behind them. Men scrambled to keep under the slicing red lines, unable to hear the thock-thock-thock of the Ayvartan machine gun over the cacophony of explosives landing by the dozens all around them.

Snipers perched atop the trees briefly glanced at the fire flying under their feet before returning to their scopes. They peered across the river, trying to discern the shadows from the enemy troops. The Ayvartan’s side of the river had much less space between the water and the treeline, and the entire Ayvartan line was cloaked in the vegetation.

But the difference between a rustling branch and a shooter was obvious – one flashed red and the other did not. Aiming for the muzzle flashes, snipers shot into the dark, moving from flash to flash in the hopes of scoring a maiming hit. As positions shifted and munitions discharged, however, new flashes and new targets appeared, as if a hundred shining eyes belonging to a monster, and no real effect could be discerned.

Joining the rest of the artillery, the company of M5 Rangers assisting the river offensive dug into the forest and fired blindly into the sky and through the trees, following the coordinates on the shooting tables. Theirs was the most solipsistic work within the battle. Encased in metal, the gunner and commander could hardly see around them in the wood, and the work of shooting was purely mathematical. They were shielded entirely from retaliatory fire, and only when the tank shifted positions to protect itself did the crew seem to awaken from the mechanical slumber of shooting and loading.

In theory an enemy was being hit, but the tank crews would not know it. Even the landsers at the front line, withstanding the brunt of the enemy barrages, couldn’t tell a tank shell apart from any other artillery, much less guess at whether it was accurate. It was all explosions to them, dirt flying and metal slicing through the air and fire briefly rising and abating within seconds. Whether across the river or around them.

Fire and fragments, an atmosphere thick with smoke; everyone was awakening from their dream-like haze to the violence of the Ghede. The first injured were dragged away through the tree-line, and men rushed from behind the tanks to take up vacated holes. Guns and tanks and machine gunners took the lead from the riflemen who clumsily began the battle, and the munitions war played out over every foxhole and trench.

Across days of the mind this war raged, but in the physical realm it was only minutes.

Then the final shell crashed down on the Nochtish side. Nobody was hurt.

Slowly the fire subsided, the colored lines vanishing from the air. Silence followed. Only the crackling of dust, falling to earth, could be heard. Neither side launched an attack.

Within the hectic moment of this offensive, nobody had bothered to cross the water.

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The Fallen Front (39.1)

This scene contains descriptions of burning and violence.

35th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Ayvarta, Adjar Dominance — Bada Aso, Matumaini Street

Far in the distance, the spiraling pillar of fire and smoke reached out to the heavens, piercing the skies like a javelin hurled from hell. At the epicenter everything burned in moments, and then the fire crept through everything flammable, bursting through every gas line, every petrol tank, through cracks in the streets and roads, over roofs.

It was the most visible thing to the fleeing grenadier. There was nothing but that hellish edifice at his back, and the whistling fires that swarmed over every available surface.

In the heat the flames took the shape of demon’s hands, hungry and greedy.

He ran with all of his might as the red fingers snatched at him from all sides.

Whenever they closed he felt the burning, the agonizing, all-encompassing heat.

There was no part of his body that did not go white-hot, that did not hurt as if bubbling and warping within his skin. He felt that he would melt, even in the open street. He felt the agonizing pressure of the fires everywhere, building over his skin and inside his guts.

His helmet became hot a a frying pan and he threw it away before it cooked his brains.

His vision swam and he could only barely tell he was running by his own clumsy footfalls.

Everything around him raged and thrashed, everything tore and shook and warped.

Angry red tongues slithered from windows in a burst of glass and concrete.

Creeping orange-blue claws reached from the cracking earth to seize him.

Where there was not red fire there was black smoke that made him choke and cry.

Mid-run he searched desperately in every pouch, every pocket. He threw away everything but his gas mask, casting aside his smoking coat and his belts, and donned the object. It was hot, and it hurt, but it cleared his head, allowing him to breathe. Behind him his ammunition cooked off in its pouches. His coat slowly disintegrated in the oven.

Everything hurt. His heart pounded, his teeth chattered, and he screamed.

He screamed for release, for some measure of relief. But he found no respite.

No street numbers, no landmarks; everything wavered within the inferno.

Every second that passed, he felt, as if time was slowed around him. He felt every minute instant of pain, every touch of hurt over his flesh, a horrifying depth of pain.

Layers and layers of agony washed over him but he would not allow himself to stop.

He ran with all of his might, knowing he would be consumed if he did not take each step.

With every step he found the fires staying farther and farther behind. Sweet release!

Gathering the last of his strength, he hurled himself past the fire and into smoke.

He found his body slowly freed from the burning grip of the demons.

In front of him, wavering in the haze, was the hole in the center of Matumaini.

That hole that had been blown in by the artillery; it was the only form of cover.

He dashed for the hole, hearing laughter in his head coming from all sides.

Bada Aso’s burning demons hungered for him, hungered for everything. 

“Help! Help me!”

That voice was not the demons and was not his own. It was his mother tongue, almost forgotten in the scramble. He stopped at the edge of the aperture, and a greater human instinct overtook him. His stressed body, outside the flame, found some equilibrium, enough to pause, to take stock, to gather breath, and to scan the surroundings.

He turned his head over his shoulder and gazed into the creeping wall of fire.

How had he escaped such a thing? He did not know.

“Help me!”

Over the strange crackling sound of the flames, he heard the voice again.

Dashing away from the hole, the grenadier hurried to a nearby ruin, and pushed through the half-collapsed doorway into the rubble. The building had become a skeleton of rebar and concrete that held inside it a mound of gently smoking wood and stone from its ceilings.

There was another scream, and it was much closer. Quickly pushing away rubble, the grenadier found a comrade, trapped under a chunk of board and filler that had fallen.

“I’m here to help you! Try to slide out when I pull it up!” He shouted.

Below him, the trapped person, his face also covered by a gas mask, nodded his head. His screams subsided into gasping, quavering cries between sharp, panicked breaths.

The grenadier seized the slab of debris and lifted it with all of his strength.

From beneath the rubble the trapped soldier slipped out and dashed to the door without another word. The grenadier dropped the slab, and was about to go after him, but the trapped soldier stopped at the door. He was framed suddenly in a bright light.

In front of them, a column of fire and smoke blew skyward from the Matumaini crater.

Black smoke belched from the street and into their building, sucking out the air.

Once more the heat began to permeate their environment.

Their remaining clothes smoked.

While the trapped man stood transfixed at the door, the grenadier slowly and gently settled behind the mound of rubble, nestled into the bowels of the ruin with his arms around his knees and his legs against his chest. All of his energy had left him.

Outside the fires crept and crept, until they overtook them, and everything.

36th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Ayvarta, Adjar Occupation Zone — Kalu Hilltops, Bada Aso Outskirts

Bada Aso, jewel of the Adjar Dominance, became a ruin choked in smoke and bursting with flames. Although the fires had long since reached their peak, having risen so far that people swore to have seen them from the sea or beyond the mountains, in their place they left a pillar of smoke, a black tower that descended slowly overnight until it covered the area in a choking gloom. Inside the cloud seething red bursts flashed every other hour, whenever something new erupted, snapping like lightning contained in an earthbound sky.

There were still things to burn, and so the unseen demons unleashed from beneath Bada Aso’s earth continued to feed. Some untouched gas line, some discarded petrol container, some hidden pocket of the monstrous gas still dormant below the red-hot earth; whatever the red claws of this monster grasped, instantly and violently exploded and burned.

Von Sturm stood dumbfounded atop a hill in the outskirts of the city. His blonde, slightly wavy hair was disheveled, sticking up; he had not had the presence of mind to gel it back into the smart style he usually wore. He was a short, soft-faced man who looked as if too boyish, too unripe for war, and facing the devastated city, his youth seemed all the more pernicious. It made him seem smaller, helpless, easier to break where he stood.

Through his tear-swollen, reddened eyes and through the foggy lenses of his binoculars, the General watched silently as the fire and smoke carried on its implacable course.

One night’s fitful sleep was not enough to make sense of the scale of the carnage. Yesterday he was leading a triumphant assault; today he was thoroughly beaten, his forces, his battlefield, everything blasted to pieces too dramatically for even the wildest imgination. For once, he had a sense of fear so strong that it stifled his passion and a sense of confusion and helplessness that overwhelmed his pride. He had no idea what to do.

It was as if his mind had burnt away with the city, and there was only the holy awe left.

He was staring into the billowing black face of a god as it ate his city, the city out of which he was destined to lead a glorious campaign that would cement his name in history. Matumaini, the Umaiha Riverside, Penance, the central districts, the open, grassy north of the city upon which he had intended to blitz through with his tanks, all of it was buried under that black cloud and the red bursts that periodically raged enough to be seen through it.

Just after the explosion, much of the city could still be seen, in the midst of its destruction. As the survivors retreated from it, and the smoke slowly descended, everything was obscured. At the edges of the city he could see fires spreading as if fed by invisible magma.

Any farther and the cloud became too thick to really see through. He could see outlines, sometimes, when something exploded violently enough. Outlines of ruined buildings that jutted at alien angles and seemed like architecture from hell. Faces, he saw them too; groaning, hurting faces in the cloud; cheerful, mad-driven grimaces in the fires–

That might have been his own head. He was afraid to confirm these sights with others.

Nobody came to fetch him, but the movement of the sun overhead indicated to Von Sturm that a long time had passed. He had been transfixed with the flames and smoke, drawn as if out of his own body to watch the devastation unfold in a dull, quiet panic.

Slowly he pried himself from the grip of Bada Aso. He scanned the surroundings with his binoculars. He watched the road. A line of water-tank equipped Sd.Kfz B Squire half-tracks wound their way toward the city, carrying a platoon of fire-fighters armed with everything they could muster to fight the fires and look for survivors in the black poison. Water guns, shovels, asbestos suits with oxygen masks; they were diving into hell now.

In a time that felt like another world away, Bada Aso and its port were critical to the supply line running through Adjar and aiding in the push to Tambwe. Putting out the burning city was necessary, but seeing it from the hill, Von Sturm found it a hopeless task.

He felt a strange desire to reach out with his hands and stop them. To tell them to stop. To tell them that it was futile, that it couldn’t be fought, that nobody would be in there. That there was nothing here for them, on this continent, that they should’ve never–

But he stopped. Stopping them, stopping this, meant the final death of him.

What else could one call rendering irrelevant nearly a decade of one’s life?

Von Sturm felt the fear of a God much closer to him; the peril of his own existence.

There was too much inertia here to stop. Too much inertia in the wheels of those armored carriers, in the solemn hearts of those men, and in the angry, desperate need of the man with the violent, noble surname who could not now stop. There was a weight of history behind them that would– no, must, carry them all forward. In a fraction of a second, the doubt was dispelled from him, and buried, and forgotten. Because it had to be.

Von Sturm left the holy awe behind and turned his back on Bada Aso as he turned his back on all other useless things. For his simple ambitions, no introspection was necessary. His heart hardened again, encased so that it could neither breathe nor bleed in this war.

But It wouldn’t be the same as before. His hands were still shaking. His eyes were still red.

There was a chain-link in him that had been inexorably severed, just as the 1st Vorkampfer had been inexorably destroyed and Bada Aso inexorably burnt to the ground.

He returned to his command post to await his demotion, and to seize back control of his weary staff from the panic of the moment. Yelling at others would at least distract him.

Far in the background, another explosion raged within the cloud. Its sound shook him.

It was like laughter.

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THE JUSTICE OF JOHANNES JAGER II

Hey kids, this side-story contains dark and deadly dealin’s, vile villains, dangerous dames and a heapin’ helpin’ of non-stop Justice! This story ain’t got no time…for crime!

Soon as her eyes caught the light of the dawning sun creeping through holes in her tent, Schicksal threw on her field jacket and pulled up her grey uniform pants and hurried downhill. She just barely heard the trumpeter sounding the morning call for the 8th Panzer Division’s headquarters in Dbagbo, and realized she had preciously little time to lose.

She charged out to the field across the way from the base proper, splashing on the puddles left by the incessant winter rains and slipping and sliding on the muddy road. Bleary-eyed and light-headed, she was determined to be the very first at the pickup point.

There was a delivery quite dear to her heart that was about to arrive.

In order to enjoy her spoils in peace, Schicksal had to beat a certain somebody to it.

Haste prevented her from cleaning herself up much. Her mousy hair was messier than normal, framing her face in a tangle of over-long locks that was starting to pool on her shoulders — she would need a cut soon. Her dull, black eyes were ringed red, both from a failure to sleep and the stress of recent events. A collection of markings adorned her battle dress, ranging from pulled strings to stressed seams and plain open holes.

Looking back over her shoulder made it all worth it; the coast was clear. She would be the first one, and that irascible teenager was probably still in her tent, sucking her thumb.

However, as she reached the bright red signpost that had been hammered down at the road juncture downhill from the base, there was a radiant presence already waiting for the mail cart. Bouncy, wavy shoulder-length gold hair and crystalline eyes adorned a soft-skinned, exceedingly fair face that greeted the disheveled Schicksal with a delicate, maidenly smile.

“Guten Morgen!” chirped Noel Skonieczny, clapping his hands softly together.

His delicate frame was expertly clad in his black panzer ace uniform. His face and hair were very clean and shiny, and seemed unaffected by the humidity at all. And he was energetic and aware as ever, almost bouncing in place as Schicksal arrived on the scene.

Schicksal stared at him, her temples throbbing fiercely. In lieu of a guten morgen, she stiffly raised one of her hands and curled the tips of the fingers ever so slightly.

Noel rubbed his palms against one another and smiled sympathetically at her.

“Feeling a little under the weather, lovely lass? Having a rough morning?”

“How do you,” Schicksal tripped over her own words for a moment, “how do you not?”

“Sleep early, wake before the sun. That’s my tonic for good mornings.” Noel proudly said.

Schicksal stared at him incredulously. Perhaps he really was a fairy in the mythological sense.

“What are you expecting in the mail?” Noel asked, leaning forward with his hands behind his back. He flashed a shark-teethed grin for a split-second, as if a demonic aura had overtaken him as he closed in on the radio girl; but the next instant he was his lovely self again, so it must have been Schicksal’s imagination. She pondered how to respond.

“I’m getting some books.” She said. It was not entirely a fib. They were basically books.

“Ah! How lucky~! I have a few magazine subscriptions to collect.” Noel said.

At once, Schicksal dropped her guard. Could Noel also be a reader of popular fictions?

“Oh! Magazines huh? Me too! Those are my books.” Schicksal said. A tired little smile lit up her face. “I didn’t think there were any big subscription-fanatics like myself in the unit.”

“There must be more than just you and I! Magazines are truly a soldier’s literature! Thin, easy to carry, and quick to read. What more could you ask for?” Noel said, smiling.

“You’re right. I guess back home, they’re more of a niche thing.” Schicksal said.

“It depends on what type of magazine; but I’ve always loved them. I used to snatch them off stands — the mail system was too discerning for my hectic youth. It definitely helps to have a stable address to send them to now. Even if that address is just the unit number.”

Schicksal could not discern what he could mean by that last comment. It was too early.

“In any case, I hope you get what you want, Captain Skonieczny.” Schicksal said.

“Please, just call me Noel, while we bask in the glow of cheap paper.” Noel said.

Schicksal nodded weakly. She turned back to the fork in the road past the signpost, feeling more relaxed than before. Perhaps there was a boon to Noel’s flighty presence.

Meter by meter the light of the sun started to rise and filter through the nearby trees.

Soon Schicksal heard the distant sounds of hoof-falls on the dirt. Her body tensed.

She realized that the sound was not coming from further up the road, but behind them.

Almost immediately the stamping on the dirt turned tinny and weak as it grew close.

Schicksal turned her head over her shoulder and grit her teeth and closed her fists.

Approaching the road juncture was a red-headed young girl, lanky, with a sharp nose, high cheekbones and pale-pink skin that gave her a striking appearance. A long white coat draped over her grey fatigues billowed behind her as her feet crashed one after the other on the dirt. Schicksal watched with clear disdain as the girl closed toward them in a big hurry, and bent over, hands on the signpost, gasping for breath once she reached them.

Evangeline Heinrich made a big production of her exhaustion, breathing heavy, clutching her hand between her breasts, knocking her knees together, coughing periodically. Schicksal bought none of the goods she was selling; the teen was being over-dramatic.

After a few moments of retching, Evangeline raised a thumb up into the air.

“I nearly died, but I made it in time for the mail, Chief Signals Officer.” She moaned.

“Ugh! Go away!” Schicksal suddenly shouted. Noel nearly jumped back with surprise.

In an instant, Evangeline went from a picture of illness to a snake coiled for a lunge.

“Why should I? I have just as much a right as any to check the mail.” Evangeline said.

Schicksal sighed. “Really? Then do you have mail coming in at all?” She asked.

Evangeline crossed her arms. “Well; I admit, not that I know of right now, but–”

“Go away then!” Schicksal reiterated. “I know why you’re here! Nosy little brat!”

Noel raised his index finger in confusion amid the cacophony. “Umm–”

“You’re so selfish!” Evangeline shouted back. “The General told you to be nice to me!”

“No he didn’t! In fact he explicitly told you to stop being such a child!” Schicksal said.

“No you need to stop being such a child! Inability to share your things with others is a developmental faculty left behind in kindergarten, Schicksal!” Evangeline shouted back.

That little bit of medical trivia was not appreciated; Schicksal grit her teeth and growled.

Noel crossed his arms and tapped his feet. “Hey, would you two please–”

“What are you even insinuating? If anything it’s a sign of being sick of you and nothing else, you demon spawn!” Schicksal raised her voice even louder to fight back.

“Demon? You hit me once! You hit an underage girl! You’re a demon!” Evangeline said.

Schicksal was taken aback. “I didn’t hit you! I grabbed and shook you!” She shouted.

“There is no nuance to your crime! You are a horrible person, Karla Schicksal! I will tell everyone in the world how horrible and terrible you are unless you share your books!”

Noel suddenly darted in between the two girls with an exasperated look in his eyes.

“All of this acrimony is quite unbecoming of maidens such as yourselves!” Noel said.

Schicksal and Evangeline paused their bickering to give the Captain an incisive stare.

“And what would you know about that, hmm?” Evangeline shouted at him.

Noel gave her such an intense glare in response that the teen was startled to silence.

“Stay out of this, it’s between me and this stretched-out brat!” Schicksal shouted.

At once Noel’s glare turned to her and she shrank back from the vehemence in his eyes.

“As the ranking officer here; Schicksal, just accommodate her for goodness’ sakes’, she’s a child. And Heinrich, stop accosting Schicksal. Respect your superiors!” He shouted.

Evangeline and Schicksal both deployed their own dull-eyed, weary glares upon Noel.

“You sound just like General Dreschner.” Evangeline said in a low voice.

“He does. It’s almost like the General is here in spirit.” Schicksal mumbled.

Noel frowned pointedly at the two of them.

Before any additional verbal salvo could be launched, the genuine hoof-falls of the mail horse and the cranking of the mail-cart’s wooden wheels sounded from the road ahead. Everyone’s heads turned. Morale returned to the group once the horses became visible, pulling the cart up the road, off the dirt and settling beside the trees. Windows opened on all sides of the cart, and a young man stood up and began to hand out packages.

Excited, the trio put their differences aside and lined up at the cart.

Few people joined Schicksal, Evangeline and Noel; they were ahead of the line and almost alone in it, and quickly made off with their mail. In a little hill just off the road, under the intermittent shade of a teak tree, Noel and Schicksal reconvened to inspect the week’s spoils. Evangeline followed closely, trying to peek around their shoulders.

“You go first! I’m curious what the mysterious Siren likes to read.” Noel said with a grin.

Schicksal gulped. “Um, no, you go first! Gentlemen should go first, you know. Right?”

“Huh? Don’t ladies usually go first? Hmm; actually, you are correct either way. I’ll go first.”

Smiling, Noel popped open the box he had been given at the cart, and cast into the air several bundles of old newspaper cushioning. Wrapped in foil, which he gracefully ripped open, was a stack of about a dozen thin paper magazines with colorful covers.

Schicksal flipped through them desperately, growing more speechless with each.

Several of the magazines depicted reserved, elegant women in beautiful gowns and dresses, ranging from filmy evening wear that hinted at the round shadow of a pair of breasts through sheer black fabric, to dazzling red cocktail dresses that blinded the eye with golden lace trim and scrunchy, complicated skirts. One magazine boasted that the flapper look was “fated to return” and led with flapper tips; another flashy book, Succubus magazine, purported to teach within its pages, “one weird trick to keep your man coming back.”

Schicksal’s blood drained from her face. All of Noel’s books were hip girl’s magazines.

“Please don’t tell anyone about that last one, it might be too scandalous for the puritans among our ranks. It talks very frankly about sex.” Noel said, winking at Schicksal.

That was the least of Schicksal’s concerns. Holding the magazines, she felt like the absolute squarest woman on the planet; she was so square she could practically be bolted onto the Befehlspanzer as an extra armor kit. She had thought there were still flappers around, but suddenly they had vanished long enough to now be poised to return? And all of the women on the covers looked supernaturally stylish in the same way Noel did and Schicksal didn’t.

How was Noel such a fashionable person? How was she so unfashionable?

Worse still, Noel was probably too happening to care about pulp magazines!

She would look like an utter baby if she showed him the funny books!

“I see you are transfixed with them! They’re always on top of new trends.” Noel said.

Schicksal nodded dumbly, pretending to flip through Succubus magazine and blushing fiercely beet-red whenever she caught sight of the erotic illustrations within its pages.

For her part, Evangeline seemed completely unperturbed by Noel’s subscriptions.

“My mom was a flapper back when it was new.” She said, looking idly at a magazine.

“Flapping will never die.” Noel said matter-of-factly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Schicksal returned the magazines and then stood shaking in place, holding her own package in a vice-like grip. She felt she had truly ran herself into a corner this time.

Her mind started digging in concrete for excuses, however weak, to avoid having to–

“Schicksal, I want to see the new Tales issue! Open it up!” Evangeline said.

“Shut up!” Schicksal snapped back, raising the box suddenly over her head.

Noel’s eyes narrowed. He delivered that deadly glare from before against Schicksal.

“Ahem,” Noel cleared his throat, “please be gentle with our medic, Schicksal.”

Schicksal set the box back down. She sighed deeply; like pulling a bandage from a painful scab, she ripped the box open in one quick motion and without looking at it. Evangeline then practically lunged at her, and pulled out the offending material without regard for the atmosphere. She tore the foil away and then stuck her tongue out in disgust at the cover.

“Ugh. Ugh!” Evangeline turned her cheek on the latest issue of Astonishing Tales!

Noel looked over her shoulder, while Schicksal stood frozen with the box still in hand.

“Oh, huh, that’s a pulp book, isn’t it? Who’s the handsome man on the cover?” He asked.

“It’s just Johannes Jager.” Evangeline said in a dismissive tone of voice. “Again.”

She thrust the magazine toward Noel like it was a filthy thing, and sulked openly.

Noel flipped through a few pages. Schicksal got to see the cover between his fingers.

It was Johannes Jager alright, dressed in his flashy white uniform, cape, hat and mask, aiming a firearm through a broken window and toward a danger invisible to the reader. Much like in the past few issues the front cover promised twenty action-packed pages, in addition to six new half-page illustrations, along with a new contest (details inside) and the announcement of a paperback release. It was a very Jager-centric issue.

Schicksal wearily stared from the cover to the Captain’s face, anticipating disdain and mockery. She was surprised to find Noel lighting up with a gentle smile as he inspected the book. “It’s so nostalgic! It reminds me of the funny books I used to steal as a kid.”

“Well, actually, Noel, funny books are different from magazines like Tales, which are considered adventure books.” Schicksal said meekly, unable to resist correcting him.

Noel nodded his head idly and turned the book around, pointing to the cover illustration.

“Hey, would you mind reading this guy’s story to me? He looks cute.” Noel said.

It was an odd request and phrased in an odd way. It didn’t sit right with her at all.

“Cute? Johannes Jager is a rugged exemplar of justice, is what he is!” Schicksal replied.

Noel grinned that shark-like grin of his once more. “Do go on.” He said in a sultry voice.

Schicksal felt oddly flustered. “I’ll read it if you stop talking like that about him.”

“Deal.”

“Hey! Wait!”

Evangeline jumped in from the sidelines, her hands balled up into fists, her feet stomping.

“Read Secret Man too! Read Secret Man to me Schicksal! Or just let me borrow it after and read it myself! Then I promise I’ll forgive you for that time you hit me.” She said.

“I don’t care if you forgive me or not.” Schicksal said. “But fine, whatever, I’ll read it too.”

Evangeline clapped her hands. Her protests and demands vanished in childish glee.

Accommodating her certainly worked wonders sometimes.

Schicksal sat down with her back to the teak tree, and raised the magazine to her face.

She flipped through the first few pages and got to Johannes Jager. Noel and Evangeline sat at her sides, looking over at the pictures and perking their ears up to hear her narration. With everyone ready, Schicksal took in a breath and began to read the story.

In the pitch-black of Rhinea’s haunting nights, Johannes Jager hunted for his prey. All around him the dark screamed of Dangers, and lent its vicious bosoms to succor his Foes. But it was a different beast that he hunted today: not an opium pusher or a murderer or a robber or a communist, but a thief. But not any thief: a thief on a Grand and Deadly scale!

Though the night would spring every trap in its bag to protect its own, our white-clad crusader was not beguiled by the black-clad shadows. With his signature cap and cape, with his many tools in his snow-white jacket, Johannes Jager plunged ahead. Nothing would turn him from his Righteous course! Justice burnt in his chest and vengeance sang in the wake of his footfalls as he trudged through the snow-covered main streets of the city.

These should have been the paths most shining with the Light of the freest nation on Aer; but the world of 2042 was not so right and not so simple anymore. Deadly dealings and dirty money were hidden here in plain sight. Under the ignorant eyes of Nocht’s day-walking innocents, festered a Rapacious criminal world that had already thieved too much!

“I remember too clearly the day when the Syndicate took my Mother, and then my Sister, and then my soon-to-be-bride. Never again!” thought Johannes Jager, as he charged forth to inflict Morality on this debauched night. He had to do what he must; what was Right!

On this night Johannes Jager would not trawl the alleys, but the heart of the city, where hard-working working class men made their marks through their hard work; but as Johannes learned on his last outing, their hard work was being Compromised, as were their Marks! Johannes Jager flitted through the dark toward an imposing warehouse, tall and brutal, with broken windows and a barren yard, fenced off, perhaps condemned. But not unoccupied.

From the snowbank straddling the warehouse grounds, Jager saw light flickering behind a window! He stole from the snowbank, through a hole slashed at the bottom of the fence, and took cover behind a stack of empty barrels. He peered through the ground floor windows and found nothing inside but the midnight dark. He had to go higher.

So he steeled himself, and clambered up the wobbling barrels, his footing insured by his indomitable will, and leaped through the window once he made it atop. He withdrew his trusty zwitscherer pistol, entrusted to him by his dead captain in the Force, and drew the weapon — on thin air! There was a candle, and a complicated machine, all left alone in a barren room on the warehouse’s vast and empty second floor. Not a soul breathed inside.

Until a door slammed open behind our hero unexpectedly!

Jager spun like a bullet and turned his gun on the door.

There he found not the foes he sought, but a surprising ally!

It was the fresh-faced young cadet from the police academy, Jonas Edelweiss! He raised his hands when Jager held him up, and relaxed once our hero stowed his weapon. The boy was breathing heavily, having clearly ran a marathon to meet him  — but how? Jager had received information of a printing operation in this place. How did Edelweiss know?

“There’s no time Johannes! You’ve been set up! The Syndicate has planted a bomb here! They are taking their stock to the docks and pushing it out of reach!” Jonas shouted.

Instantly Johannes Jager knew where that bomb was — inside the machine, a printing press, stripped of its precious, stolen printing irons and innocently left behind as if by carelessness rather than Contrivance! He could almost feel the black beating heart of the Bomb ticking and ticking in the bowels of the machine! Without a moment to spare, Jager threw himself forward, taking Edelweiss in his arms and rolling down the stairs in one acrobatic leap!

Behind him blossomed a hungry flower of flames that swept across the warehouse! Johannes Jager rolled down the steps, the heat of the flames and the shock of the explosion propelling him through a fire escape window set against the staircase landing! With Edelweiss in his arms, Jager hit the snow-covered ground, safe as the fires hungrily devoured the warehouse and any remaining evidence of wrongdoing with it!

“Thanks for the warning, kid. Kept me from cookin’.” Johannes Jager said.

Edelweiss nodded his head and pointed out to the street. “There’s no time to lose Jager! I have a car we can take to the docks. Don’t ask how I got this info, but we gotta hurry!”

Johannes smelled Trouble all over this — trouble Edelweiss had gotten himself into. But the boy had a good heart, and he had risked his Life to save Jager’s. Trusting his guts, Jager extended the same trust to Edelweiss and followed the young lad out to his car.

They rushed up the street, and around a corner, where Edelweiss had hidden his vehicle in an alley. As he grabbed his keys and fumbled with the door, Johannes heard the sound of an engine in the distance, and knew then that they would not yet have a respite from Evil!

“Get in!” Edelweiss called out, and they hurried into the car. Edelweiss turned his key, hit the accelerator and darted out of the alleyway and down the warehouses. From behind, thin and long and bright beams of light from a pair of headlights almost blinded them!

Suddenly a truck revealed itself, sleek and black, with windows tinted so that its driver could not be seen, and a raised canopy blocking any view of its cargo. Putting all of its horsepower into the pursuit, the truck chased Edelweiss and Johannes down the broad warehouse streets. Edelweiss pounded the gas pedal to the very bottom of the car floor, and it was all he could do to keep ahead of his menacing Foe, persisting in its deadly chase!

“Keep ahead of him, kid; I’ll give the driver a big red light for you.” Jager said.

Rolling down the window, Johannes Jager drew his pistol, leaned out of the passenger seat, and popped three shots at the pursuing truck. He hit a headlight and put it out, but the body and windows resisted his furious blows — bulletproof glass and an armored body!

Our hero’s detective intuition immediately discerned the true Nature of the foe!

“Edelweiss, evasive maneuvers, that car is Not A Car!” Johannes Jager alerted his driver.

As if aware that its deadly ruse had been discerned, the so-called “truck” behind our hero suddenly shed its canopy and revealed a hidden tank gun of a deadly fifty millimeters of shooting caliber affixed to the bed, peering over the cab to spit its deadly fire!

This was no truck, but an armored car! Bristling with armor and weapons, it surged forth!

Edelweiss gasped as he spotted the implement, and veered the car toward the street, smashing through a newspaper box to avoid a blazing shot from the vile enemy that crashed past them and smashed apart a fire hydrant! Desperately swinging the steering wheel, Edelweiss forced the car off the street and across the road once more, steering around a light post to avoid another deadly attack. Behind them the tank-car continued its pursuit, smoke billowing the red-hot barrel of its gun as it prepared for another swing.

“Johannes, I can’t shake them like this! You have to do Something!” Edelweiss shouted.

Johannes Jager leaned out of the car again, watching the gun barrel for the next shot. It flashed, and the gigantic bullet flew past the car, close enough to slice off one of Edelweiss’ side mirrors and briefly disorient him! But Jager had his Plan clear in mind now!

“Keep it steady kid, I’m gonna give our chances of survival…a shot in the arm.”

Edelweiss gulped down his fear and hit the brakes.

Johannes Jager aimed his gun just as he anticipated the next flash of the cannon.

He fired one perfectly aimed shot into the deadly gun barrel!

Therein the small but fast and true bullet of his Zwitcherer pistol fouled the internal workings of the cannon, and interfered with the next shot just as the evil gunners were taking it! Everything happened in the blink of an eye: in a bright pillar of flames the truck exploded and rocketed toward the sky, coming back down in pieces of scorched debris!

“Even with all that armor you still had a…glass jaw.” Johannes said, grinning proudly.

Edelweiss laughed and picked up speed once again.

Within minutes they made it to the sea, travelling down the container parks built around the docks and their own storage warehouses. They left the car behind, and though he had reservations about endangering the boy, Johannes Jager nonetheless followed Edelweiss through the dark and devilish docks. Though not nearly as adept at stealth or combat as Jager, the boy knew where the Foul meeting of the Syndicate would take place.

Johannes Jager thought to himself that he still did not know where the young lad had acquired this Dangerous information, that surely only members of the Syndicate could have known, for the Syndicate was as secretive and guarded as it was greedy and powerful.

But he trusted Edelweiss, who as a Cadet and therefore a burgeoning Force For Good.

Crawling through the seaside paths they found a sinister building near the fisherman’s pier at the far edge of the docks, where the concrete ceded space to rocky beaches and slushy waters. Johannes commanded Edelweiss to stay behind and play lookout, while he stalked ahead, using the crates to cover his brilliant white-clad form as he approached a meeting of several Armed Thugs, hurriedly stashing evidence of their misdeeds into crates and bags.

Johannes Jager peered over a barrel, and saw It, the evidence he knew he would find this night: mounds and mounds of counterfeit Republiksmark bills ready to ship out to Bhakor!

And that was not all! He found in the hands of one of the villains, the silver printing plates used to create these Official marks for Unofficial purpose! And that villain holding them was none other than his vile nemesis, The Blacksmith! Known as such for his “forging” ways, the burly, black apron clad man in his signature welding mask, was adept at counterfeiting, bootlegging, and other disruptive schemes that tarnished the innocent Free Market!

His heart burning with the fierce anger of Vengeance, Johannes Jager steeled himself for battle. Knowing that he had to take the Blacksmith alive in order to find information about the dreaded Syndicate, Jager planned his attack, scanning the surroundings for every possible advantage. His eyes darted to a red canister on the far wall — a fire extinguisher!

“Men, gather the marks, and be quick, we do not want to be late,” shouted the Blacksmith in a grainy, low, machine-like voice through his welding mask, “the sooner we embark for the islands, the sooner we will reap massive profits from nothing but cheap paper and–”

Suddenly Johannes Jager leaped atop the barrel, interrupting the Blacksmith’s speech, and took a well-aimed shot at the fire extinguisher! Under this vicious assault, the extinguisher exploded! Metal and fire sprayed over the Armed Thugs and threw them bloodily over the mounds of paper marks. But the Blacksmith was unharmed! Charging into the fray, the villain drew his vicious hammer and swept toward Johannes Jager with an eye to kill!

“JAGEEEEEEEEEEEER!” He shouted, swinging his arms like a blunt knife blender!

“Sorry Blacksmith, but I ain’t got no time…for crime!”

Johannes Jager was not intimidated. Coolly he dashed toward the Blacksmith, and leaped over him, stepping on the man’s shoulders and away from his swing, and dropping behind him. With a deft sweep of his leg, Johannes Jager knocked the Blacksmith to the ground, and pinned him aground, applying the Long Arm of the Law to the man’s neck!

“Give it up Blacksmith!” Jager shouted, “Your iron’s hammered! You’d best start talkin’ about the Syndicate, or I’ll toss you into the sea to freeze! I’ve got no mercy for filth like you!”

As if unharmed and unapprehended, the Blacksmith burst into vicious laughter!

“Jager, it’s your white caped goose that’s cooked now! You think I’m stupid? You think we’re stupid? The Syndicate does not do anything without a Plan B. Boy, come out!”

Johannes Jager felt the cold sting of Betrayal as Edelweiss emerged from the shadows, pointing a revolver at Johannes Jager! He had a look of anguish on his face as he cocked the hammer, but Jager knew that the boy was Determined to carry out this vile fiend’s orders if necessary, and that he would shoot, for some reason that the caped knight of Nochtish justice could not understand! Where had this promising young cadet gone wrong? Why would he take orders from a monstrous pig like the Blacksmith, who did Evil?

These questions and many more questions jumped around inside Johannes’ Jager’s head, but he did as the situation demanded, and he begrudingly raised his arms from the blacksmith, and raised his arms into the air and stood. He threw a glare at Edelweiss, burning intensely with the justice that could not now be done due to the boy’s foolishness!

“I’m sorry Jager; they have my fiance! I can’t let anything happen to her. I love her!”

Of course, a dame; it was always a dame in this world of Sins. But Johannes Jager found that he could not fault the kid for his choices. If there was anything a red-blooded man had to fight for in the world it was his own deadly dame. If it would have brought back his gal, Johannes would’ve done anything, even the vilest and lowest of things, such as working for the very Syndicate that killed her! More than anyone here Johannes understood this cruel fate. As the Blacksmith gloated behind them, Jager contemplated the tragedy here.

He gave the boy a look of the utmost sympathy. “I understand kid. Do you what you gotta do for your dame. But know this…for the dames I’ve lost, I’ve gotta do what is Right.”

“You can do nothing, Jager!” shouted the Blacksmith, his metallic voice straining, “My masters knew you were snooping around, so they turned once again to the best tactic for defeating you! They took an innocent, and turned them against you, making you helpless! Now not only will I profit from my scheme, I will deliver you to the Syndicate, and become part of the Inner Circle! I will be the bootleg that’s become better than the real thing!”

Edelweiss turned his head in disgust at himself and what he Had To Do; while Jager scowled with hatred for this villain, and thought about What Is Right; and the Blacksmith with his dark iron heart, cackled maniacally over what he Had Done! How will Johannes Jager possibly escape from this predicament? Find out in the next issue of Astonishing Tales!

“Wow! What an issue!” Schicksal said, her mouth left agape, her eyes spread wide. Her heart beat quickly, full of emotion for the hero Johannes Jager and the sense of loss and justice that was intrinsically tied up in him. Her head was red-hot with anticipation and excitement.

At her side, Noel glanced at the pages with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust.

Evangeline stared at her own knees and rocked in place until the conclusion.

Shortly after the very last words were said, she threw her arms around Schicksal.

“Ok now read Secret-Man! Read Secret-Man Schicksal!” Evangeline demanded.

Schicksal shoved her away and grunted.

She started to flip the pages begrudgingly to Secret-Man.

Noel raised his hands in response. “I’m going to pass on that one, thank you.”

“You didn’t like Johannes Jager?” Schicksal said, her eyes drawing wide.

“It was certainly, um, unique.” Noel replied. “But not my cup of lager.”

“Oh c’mon!” Schicksal said, exasperated at last with the poor taste of her companions. “Tell me one thing Johannes Jager does wrong as a story, name one, Noel!”

“Crappy one-liners.” Evangeline interjected.

Noel shrugged apathetically.

He stood up from their side, took his box, and walked away with his head held high.

Schicksal grunted once more. “Hmph! What a fuddy-duddy. Can’t appreciate the greats. Right Evangeline? Show me one man not up for the testosterone-fueled adventures of–”

“I don’t blame him for hating Johannes Jager. You should’ve shown him Secret-Man.”

It took all of Schicksal’s willpower not to stuff the magazine down Evangeline’s throat.

“Be quiet if you want to listen to your childish, plebeian filth!” Schicksal shouted.

Grumbling, she began to read again. Evangeline shrugged and rested her head on Schicksal’s shoulder while the latter narrated the heady adventures of the Secret-Man.

All the while Schicksal felt extremely disgruntled with her so-called fellow soldiers.

Nobody in this entire Division had any taste for a manly, dame-mourning adventure.

The 1st Day Of Training (38.1)

46th of the Aster’s Gloom 2030 D.C.E

Tambwe Dominance — Rangda City, 8th Division Garrison, Training Field

“Welcome, noble and brave soldiers of the Bada Aso Regiment! I am Inspector General Chinedu Kimani, and henceforth I will personally oversee your training!”

Underneath the searing eye of Rangda’s noon sky there was a mass movement of people in the 8th Division Garrison, the likes of which the empty plots of land on the base’s northern side had not seen since before the Demilitarization act. Assembled between foundation outlines hidden in sparsely grassy land, standing unknowingly over floor plans that had been smashed, and now reclaimed by the soft brown dirt, several hundreds of soldiers stood in rapt attention as a tall woman in a flashy red and black uniform hailed them.

“The Battle of Bada Aso is over! We were victorious; my precious comrades, you have accomplished many feats! However, we must wipe that slate clean! There are new, greater victories to reap, and to do so, we must all take hard steps beyond Adjar’s border.”

Many a fighter had glanced at or heard of Kimani in the past, but for most this was their first time coming face to face with one of the major commanding voices in their unit. She was an impressive sight — taller than any of them, black skinned, with dark, curly hair to mid-neck level and sleek, striking features. A hint of crow’s feet around her eyes was rendered visible only by the glistening of sweat crawling down her forehead, cheek and jaw under the hot Rangdan sun. She had an air of strength and exuded professionalism; a real soldier.

“Doubtless many of you have received basic training in your firearms and grenades, in first aid, in rudimentary battle tactics. Doubtless, all of you survived Bada Aso, and have seen and fought our enemy first-hand. Yet, regardless of your ranks, and your merits, for the next week, every man and woman in front of me is once more a green Private!” She said.

Behind her a fleet of nurses, construction workers, and computers labored to set up examination tents, establish medical stations and assemble tables behind which documents of all kinds would be handed out and filled for the records staff to archive. Preliminary tests would be conducted, and information collated to help Colonel Nakar and Inspector General Kimani understand just who it was that they would lead to battle.

“Nobody can diminish your struggles, nor the sacrifices you and your comrades have made. Your past has honed you into a blade. That you stand before me, means you have been drawn from your sheathe to do battle. But right now, though you desire to cut the enemy, your edge must labor to draw their blood. It is my duty to start sharpening you, so the same cuts you dealt in Bada Aso will do more than draw blood. They will slice Nocht to pieces!”

She spoke in a strong and serious voice, and even when she raised her pitch, her affect was subtle. The Inspector General always seemed to speak in a tone both calm and intense.

Her declarations moved through the hundreds of men and women in the crowd like a wave. Everyone stood straighter and tighter when they felt her eyes over them and quivered when they heard her her voice. In their green uniforms, stripped of whatever rank markings they earned in Bada Aso, the troops of the 1st Battalion of the Askari Motor Rifle Regiment “Bada Aso” watched her every move with tense attention, and a brimming of unused energy.

In the same field where the 8th Division would perform marching drills before the war, the troops of the Bada Aso Regiment prepared for a week of short training courses.

Though the Regimental command couldn’t offer them extensive training quite yet, they would not allow them to sit around. Everyone had already lounged too much at sea. Bada Aso felt distant; but the war wasn’t over. Command wanted to keep them on their feet.

Kimani explained. “From now to the month’s end, with a break for the festival on the 48th, you will clock in 100 hours of training in infantry combat, tank-infantry cooperation, signals discipline, and much more. My staff will give you a crash course on modern combat to give you an idea of the multifaceted duties, skills and responsibilities of a soldier in maneuver warfare! I hope that you enjoyed the peaceful voyage here — because I will make you sweat here in Rangda, comrades! And it will be an inkling of what awaits you in Solstice!”

For an instant, the Inspector General flashed a little smile at the crowd of soldiers.

There was a collective gulp in response. That was a lot of hours worth of training. It appeared command counted their days at sea as a vacation, but they had not had much of an opportunity to de-stress while crammed into a troopship or a cruiser. In whispers, the crowd started to lament being driven so hard after the chaos in Bada Aso. At least some of them, however, were excited for an opportunity to learn some new fighting skills.

One such person was Gulab Kajari, standing off to the side and back of the crowd with stars in her eyes. She looked around the field and through the fence to the base, catching glimpses of tanks and guns and other equipment being brought in or serviced, perhaps to participate in the exercises. She fantasized about this training both as an opportunity to show off her energetic strengths, and to be able to brag about her elite skills later on.

Already she was a military hero! Now she could rise to the level of a battlefield legend!

“Charvi, do you know anything about this? Do you know what we’ll be doing?”

Gulab nudged her constant companion, Charvi Chadgura, but the Sergeant was nearly inanimate. On a good day, Charvi was still emotionless, but at least a little sprightly. Yesterday the two of them had helped out at the headquarters, walked around the whole base, and been yelled at by a variety of guards about where they should and shouldn’t be. Through all of that, Charvi had the same face, but her demeanor at least felt lively.

Today she slumped forward, mumbling to herself in that dry, affect-less voice of hers.

She barely seemed to pay Kimani any attention. She was mostly staring at her feet.

Acknowledging Gulab, she clapped her hands twice, softly, in quick succession, but she said nothing. Her eyes seemed fixed on her own feet, and her shoulders drooped low.

“Are you ok? Do you have heatstroke?” Gulab asked. Charvi clapped to relieve stress.

“I want to go to the post office.” Charvi replied in a barely audible voice.

Gulab crooked an eyebrow. She had not seen a post office anywhere, but she had also not seen much of the city in general — she and Charvi were bused in on the 44th along with fifty other soldiers from the port, and dropped off at the base. All they had time for (and all they were allowed to do) was registration, two meals, equipment check-in, and bunking. The day after that, on the 45th, they still weren’t allowed off-base, and took a tour of the facilities.

That must have been it; after yesterday’s tour, Charvi must have realized that the base had no available post office, and it must have made her a little depressed. Her precious hobby was stamp collecting, and being in Rangda there was an opportunity to collect new pieces. Putting all of this together, Gulab thought she had an idea of how to cheer Charvi on.

“Hey, look, we have the festival day off! You can go to the post office then.” She said.

Charvi bolted upright suddenly. She stood at attention, staring forward inexpressively.

Her head turned stiffly toward Gulab. “Are you sure? Will we really be allowed out?”

“Positive!” Gulab replied. “She said we had a break on the festival day, right? Obviously that break is for the soldiers to go out and join the festivities, otherwise what’s the point?”

Charvi pressed her hands against her cheeks. “You’re correct. You must be.”

“Trust me! We’ll have a party at the post office on that day. Just cheer up a bit, ok?”

“Yes. I admit that I felt and still feel restless, but I will be fine now. Thank you.”

When it came to Charvi, emotion was never written on her face, but it could be evident in the air around her. Her words hinted at a renewed intensity of feeling. Charvi turned her head again, and stood straighter, her legs set, her back erect, her chest out.

“I must live until that precious day.” She said.

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t live until then, but ok.”

“You never know. I must try extra hard to live until then.”

Her deadpan expression made Gulab smile. She raised a thumbs-up.

“As long as you’re feeling chipper! I’ll help out.”

Gulab petted Charvi on the shoulders and turned back around with a grin on her face.

At the conclusion of the Inspector General’s motivational speech, the soldiers were divided into several groups and pointed toward the newly-raised tents far behind them. They were big green field tents. Many of them had the telephone symbol, a handset in a black circle. A soldier who saw it was supposed to interpret that as a communications, liaison or headquarters tent, but there were a dozen strung up. So then, what did it mean?

“What the heck are those?” Gulab asked in whispers.

Charvi shrugged. “I think they’re conducting some sort of test there.”

Gulab soon found herself in a line stretching out from one of these impromptu offices.

She felt her heart thumping as everyone started to move forward into it. She could not see anyone inside, but she could see a light shining briefly through the canvas as someone exited out the back of the tent and let in sunlight. There was a little bit of chatter inside. Gulab could make out words like “official” and “documentation” and felt anxious.

“I think they’re checking papers in there.” Gulab said, looking behind herself at Charvi, who had been a step behind Gulab in the press of bodies that formed their waiting line.

“Well, they’re out of luck, because I don’t have mine.” Charvi said.

It was easy to see how those could have been lost given the events of the month.

As someone from the Kucha, where Solstice’s reach was weak, Gulab had no official papers to begin with. Her only documentation was her army sign-up forms from years ago, which she was told would be, cryptically, “good enough for anything.” She had no birth documents. This was a blessing, because it meant nobody could contradict her on anything about her identity but her family, who were far away; but might become a curse. She didn’t know.

Her mind filled with nightmares in miniature, playing and replaying before her eyes as the line pushed her toward the tent flaps under the muggy heat of a Rangdan morning.

Soon Gulab stood in front of the tent flaps and heard a female clerk calling out, “Next!”

Looking over her shoulder at Charvi, Gulab wiggled her fingers in the air as a little wave. Swallowing with a gulp, she closed her eyes briefly and stepped through the tent flaps.

When she opened her eyes, the place was a little gloomy, but uncrowded and neat.

Gulab took seat at a little table, one of six. Across from her sat a dark-skinned clerk in a pristine uniform. Her frizzy hair was styled big and round, and her friendly blue eyes were heavily magnified by the lenses on her thick glasses. With a big smile on her lips, the clerk pulled a form letter from a box and set it in front of Gulab along with a loaded ink pen.

“Good morning, comrade! I’m Warrant Officer Keisha Tamsi, and I just need a little moment of your time to insure we get a good form we can file for the Regiment.” She said.

Her tone of voice was pleasantly deep. Gulab’s anxiety at being seated in such an official-looking tent, with such official-looking person, very slightly diminished. She felt less scared and more sheepish at being in front of a nice stranger on this strange errand.

“Now, before we begin, I’d just like to know your home region. Can you tell me?”

“I come from the Kucha mountains.” Gulab said.

“I see! So that means you have no official papers. Am I right?”

Gulab felt an icy stiffness going through her chest. “Yes, sorry. I have none.”

“No birth certificate or anything like that, right?”

“My birth was handled fairly sloppily. I don’t even know my exact age.”

Gulab’s voice trembled. She expected to be told to pack her bags and leave the army.

Comrade Tamsi nodded her head in response and smiled.

“I understand. It’s perfectly fine, comrade. Your army sign-up forms, and any forms we fill today, can be used as your official papers henceforth. So don’t worry about it!”

“Oh, good.” Gulab sighed with relief. That had been easy; she had worried over nothing.

“There are many villages and unincorporated territories that have less than stellar documentation. So over time, we’ve learned not to be sticklers for stamped papers.”

From the box, Tamsi withdrew a few additional forms, stacked them neatly together, and pushed the stack forward. Gulab picked up the top form. It had basic things like name, date of birth, gender. That last one gave her a fresh shot of little anxieties, but she figured she could put anything on it and that nobody would check it or care. She was right.

“Answer with anything you want for any of the fields and we will consider it wholly official with the state’s blessing — if you want to change your name even, go for it! As far as The Socialist Dominances of Solstice is concerned, everything you write there today is your official paper information as valid as anything a doctor writes at the side of a birth table.”

Comrade Tamsi sounded almost excited for Gulab to invent herself in this little tent.

Gulab, however, was not feeling terribly creative. Though she could have chosen a more feminine name, perhaps, she was rather fond of Gulab. And while she hated her father and brother, her beloved grandfather had been a Kajari, and her fun and helpful cousins were all Kajaris too, so she had nothing against her maiden name either. Thus she made her decision.

Atop the form, she proudly wrote “Gulab Kajari” and beside it, “24”, her best guess for her age, and “M” for “Mwanamke” or woman. Her hand shook a little after that. She set her birthday as the 23rd of the Lilac’s Bloom, the date she came down from the mountain.

There were other fields, such as any conditions she had, or any levels of schooling earned.

“I don’t remember exactly what I wrote on my army sign-up forms. Is that ok?”

She knew back then she had signed up as a woman too. She had made the decision to live that way a long time before she came down from the mountain. However, she still felt a little scared that the two forms would be cross-referenced in other ways. Again she overestimated the importance of the forms and the bureaucracy’s level of efforts here.

“Not at all! As a matter of fact we don’t even have access to those! They were probably burnt in Adjar to keep them from Nocht. Write anything with confidence.” Tamsi replied.

Gulab realized how perfunctory all of this was, and her heart and stomach finally settled.

No one was trying to kick her out of the army. In fact they seemed to be making every effort to keep her, and everyone in the regiment, in the army. That was reassuring. She had nowhere else to go — though she could have settled down anywhere, that meant she would not have been able to fight alongside her comrades. Alongside Charvi; she was glad to stay.

Smiling, she started scribbling down whatever came to mind for the rest of the papers.

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The 1st Regimental Headquarters (37.1)

This story segment contains violence and some frightening imagery.

45th of the Aster’s Gloom 2030 D.C.E

Tambwe Dominance — Rangda City, Red Banner Apartments

Madiha woke in the middle of the night in a bleary, dream-like haze where every angle became soft and everything except the edges of her vision was a rolling blur. Her shirt clung to her back and breast, cold and wet with a midnight sweat, and she felt a terrible headache and stomachache, borne of stress and lack of restful sleep. When she moved her fingers, hands, feet, they felt too heavy and too limp, alternating at a moment’s notice.

She heard something heavy hit the windowsill and it reverberated in her skull.

Alarmed, Madiha stumbled upright, and nearly hit her set of drawers as she made toward the open window. Her vision warped, tilted, came in and out, until it settled.

Framed in the moonlight, Kali stood guard at the windowsill, growling softly.

Half-closing her eyes, squinting to see, Madiha approached. Holding herself up by the curtains, she leaned half out of the window and scanned the street and the road.

Her eyes were aimless at first, but were then drawn in by the mask.

Across the street, the standing thing was shorter than an adult human.

It wore a fully white mask, featureless save for an inset gold face the size of a nose.

This small face on the mask had its own dull impression of a nose and tiny slitted eyes that moved haphazardly around like spinning billiard balls when stricken by the cue.

When they stopped moving they focused on her briefly. She felt their weight even from this far. Then they would roll again like a slot machine, moving inside and out of their sockets.

Everything of the creature’s face was obscured by the mask saved for a red chin and mouth, lips broken, a faint impression of white teeth. Around the edges of the mask was the black line formed by a thick hood that covered the being’s entire body save for its five long, dangling limbs that would occasionally thrash and dance like flailing noodles.

Nothing of the creature was congruous — every limb a different size, one shoulder lower than the other, one leg taller, and its visible mouth slanted to one side.

“Majini.” Madiha whispered to herself.

Her drawing of breath alerted the creature. Under its hood its thick legs stirred. It turned from the street to the window, and the little gold face on its white mask sniffed the air.

Jagged teeth burst through from between the creature’s lips in every direction.

Madiha’s recently recovered life flashed in her mind.

She felt those arms closing around her neck, a little neck, a child’s neck.

She felt the kicking and screaming, and the crunching of the mask as a brick struck the face in the middle and drew copious, filthy-smelling blood and shrieking screams.

“I killed you all.” Madiha’s jaw quivered. “I thought–”

A click-clacking, gurgling scream interrupted her.

Red spittle flew from the creature’s gnashing jaws. Hands flailing as if pulling on the air, the monsters twitched from one place to the next, hurtling toward the window. It moved like a cheetah on a full sprint, but it accelerated to a charge from a standing position in a second flat, and in an instant it tumbled from the street over the flower beds flanking the steps to the apartment building’s stairs, and slammed a pair of fists into the brick.

Its neck cracked as it craned its head to stare at the window.

Around the edges of its lips the teeth turned as if spinning on a wheel.

Madiha reached into her undershirt instinctively, but it was not her tunic, it did not have her holster. All of that was back at the foot of her bed, discarded. She drew back.

Raising a hand to her temple, she drew on the fire, the primordial fire.

Her eyes burnt, and the edges of her sight went red.

Every second the red was expanding, and smoke covered her vision.

All other Majini had perished in the heat of this ancient flame.

This one would join them.

“Kali, run!” Madiha cried out, her legs buckling as she struggled to kindle the flame.

Kali did not retreat as instructed.

It reared back on the window and drew air into its mouth.

In front of the window the creature appeared for a split second in mid-leap.

Kali breathed out the window, launching a blurring cone of barely-visible force.

Madiha could not hear the sound, but she felt it inside her head and in her gut.

Outside the window the Majini fell to the ground with a thud and let out its own cry.

At once Madiha’s concentration broke, and the flame she nursed was snuffed out.

Night’s colors returned to her surroundings, and all of the red was gone.

In its place there was only a sting and a nosebleed.

Madiha hurried to the window and found the creature’s mask shattered into bloody pieces. Its limbs were snapped and twisted by the strength of Kali’s breath, and its hood caved in at the center. Soon it began to die the Majini’s death — it disappeared slowly. As the body and cloak melted away like wax and sank through the earth itself, Madiha saw the impression of a sewn-up face flash briefly from behind the shards of white porcelain.

It was gone as if it had never existed.

Madiha gingerly reached a finger to her blood-soaked upper lip.

The pain of her own brains burning felt very real, but nothing else did.

A thin shaft of light expanded across Madiha’s window to encompass much of her room as the apartment bore the full brunt of Rangda’s dawn. At pace with the light a small, dragon-shape shadow extended across the room, the bed, and over Madiha’s face.

Madiha opened her eyes, facing the ceiling. She turned her head to face the window.

Last night felt like a dream. Some parts she could confirm, but others were ephemeral.

She touched her thin nose, and removed a pair of bloody tissue papers from it.

No more blood drew from her nostrils. And the psychic sting in her brain had passed.

She sighed. As a child she could throw several flares before feeling anything.

It seemed she would not have to start over from scratch.

As she sat up by the side of her bed, eyeing her uniform and hazily piecing back together her plans for the day, someone knocked on the door twice quickly.

The door then opened a crack, and Parinita peeked her head in cheerfully.

“I come bearing gifts!” She shouted, holding a paper bag in her hand.

Seeing Madiha sweaty and in her underwear, a little gasp escaped her glossy pink lips.

“Sorry! I shouldn’t have barged in. Should I go?”

Madiha shook her head, gently waving about her black hair, nearer to shoulder length after almost a month of new growth, and messy from her tumultuous sleep. She stood up off the bed, leaned back, raised her arms, pushed her chest forward and let out a yawn. Glistening sweat delineated the lines of lean muscle on her bare limbs, and trickled down the brown skin of her slim, toned body. She felt no hint of awkwardness.

“It’s perfectly fine.” She said, through a long exhalation. “So long as it’s just you.”

Parinita laughed, delicately covering her mouth with her hand while ogling.

“I suppose it’s alright anyway since we’re both girls–”

At the window, Kali groaned audibly and slammed its tail on the wall.

“Eep! It still doesn’t like me.” Parinita moaned, retreating further behind the door.

Madiha shot Kali a frowning look.

“It’ll have to warm up to you eventually.” She said, in the tone of a command.

Kali blew a little air from the nostrils at the edge of its beak.

Madiha shook her head at it. “Come in Parinita, don’t stay by the doorway.”

Parinita nodded. She entered, her hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing a fresh skirt and dress uniform. A light dusting of cosmetics gave her lightly bronzed skin a bit of a blush, and the reading spectacles perched on her nose made her look more a secretary than ever. She wore a skirt uniform and a pair of classy flat shoes in green to match. Though fairly fit, Parinita was slightly rounder and softer than Madiha in form, and at least ten centimeters shorter.

Examining her, Madiha felt a little thrill in her chest. She was always a lovely sight.

Closing the door behind herself, Parinita tottered up to Madiha, and put her hands on the woman’s head. Madiha felt a cooling touch seep in through her cheeks and smiled as a wonderful, relaxing feeling spread through her, touching her strained body and her too-hot heart and head. She locked eyes with her secretary as the eldritch fires invisibly dispersed.

“You are far too hot this morning, Colonel.” Parinita said, smiling faintly.

Her hands were still on Madiha’s face. Madiha reached her own hand up to touch hers.

“I’m still unsure exactly how it happened.” Madiha said. It played into the little entendre Parinita might have been setting up, but it was also true. Her memory of the past night was a fading blur. She recognized something happened, but it felt too unreal to be true.

“Just be careful with it.” Parinita said. “I might not always be around catch sight of it.”

“Someday I’m going to have to interrogate you about that.” Madiha said, smiling.

“I owe you the conversation.” Parinita replied. “But we’d need more time than we have.”

Madiha nodded. Like her, Parinita had her own illogical secrets, and she probably yearned to share them. Madiha was perhaps the only soul who could relate to the alien things Parinita must have known. But life always pulled them harshly in certain directions, and they hadn’t yet found enough peace to fully confess to one another. Each of them held pieces of the other’s puzzle; everything was strewn on the floor without interlocking.

And yet it felt like both of them could still see a lot of the picture nevertheless.

Their day would come sooner or later, but Madiha felt that they had an unspoken understanding on this matter regardless. Each was drawn to the other, sharing a kinship in and out of battle since the day they were thrust, violently, into each other’s orbit.

It was rushed, and strange, and perhaps dysfunctional. And yet it felt natural.

Had not Aer and its Moon been bound together by a cosmic disaster? That was the last science Madiha read on the subject. The two were inseparable now. It felt quite right.

Contented, Madiha replied, “I’m not worried. We’ll discuss everything when it’s right.”

Parinita nodded her head, tufts of strawberry hair bouncing just over her forehead.

In a way, Madiha felt like she already knew everything. Such was their bond now.

After lingering for several moments, their eyes, so tightly locked before, finally parted, and they set about preparing for the day. Madiha entered the adjacent bathroom to wash her face and teeth, and Parinita returned to the door, and took from a hanger outside the apartment a fresh uniform and a bundle of needed sundries that had been left for the Colonel, and set it down on the bed for her. When Madiha returned, she sat at the edge of the bed and set apart all the layers of her uniform to begin dressing up.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Madiha asked while picking out her socks. She quickly found that she had been given were women’s long stockings, which she never wore.

Sighing, she pulled them up along her long legs.

Parinita giggled at the sight. “Hopefully we can get the headquarters ready by today, I’m thinking that will take the bulk of the afternoon to do. We also need to go over our table of organization and draft some simple training programs our troops can start on soon.”

As she listened, Madiha mechanically donned a white shirt, hastily buttoned the collar, and started doing her long red tie in a simple knot; seeing this, Parinita reached suddenly down, pushed her hands aside, and finished tying it herself. Madiha was surprised.

“I know how to tie it.” She said, as her secretary’s skillful hands completed the knot.

“Think so? Give it a quick look.” Parinita cheekily said.

Madiha pulled her tie up and stared at the knot. Somehow the red and gold lines of the tie formed a complicated pattern. Parinita had managed to divide the knot into neat little quadrants. It was a much more eyecatching knot than anything Madiha knew how to do.

“Oh ho ho! You see? It’s called a lover’s knot, because it’s hard to tie it for yourself.”

Parinita stuck out her chest, satisfied with herself, while Madiha turned a little red.

Once the Colonel was fully in uniform once more, Parinita combed her hair as best as she could, and the two of them left the building side by side to get a start on the day. Parinita handed her some candied fruit and a bread roll from the bag she had brought into the room, and they ate as they went. A fuller breakfast could wait. Madiha expected to relocate to the base quickly. She started thinking about hailing a cab to take them.

Directly outside, a sleek black soft-top car with its canopy pulled back awaited them.

Behind the wheel of the car, reading a newspaper, Logia Minardo leaned back on the chair. Her uniform looked as crisp as ever, and her cheeks and lips were delicately touched with pigments, but her hair wasn’t collected into a bun. It hung down to her shoulders, a little messy, looking recently wet. Perched on her nose were a pair of shaded glasses.

The Staff Sergeant had a pen and paper in hand and was plotting out the daily crossword puzzle on the driver’s seat. When the door to the apartments opened and shut, Minardo turned her head, spotted her superiors, and waved her pen to greet them.

She pointed at the newspaper.

“Do either of you know an eight-letter word for ‘used to make instrument strings?'”

Madiha blinked hard at her, still bewildered by the vehicle, while Parinita smiled.

“Drakegut!” Parinita cheerfully replied, after less than a second’s hesitation.

At the open window to Madiha’s room, Kali shuddered violently and bowed its head.

Minardo looked down at the paper, counted the spaces, and wrote it down.

“Perfect! As a token of my gratitude, you get a free ride.” She said, winking.

Madiha tipped her head with confusion. She still could not place the car. Her companion was much more energized by the prospect. Cheering, Parinita took Madiha by the hand and led her to the vehicle, pushing her into the back seat and making a big show of sitting near her.

“We have our own chauffeur Madiha!” She chirped. “Now we’re VIPs!”

Instead of metal seats like the scout cars, this civilian model car had plush wool-stuffed seats. The back seat was especially bouncy and comfortable, with a tall, rounded backrest. A roomy interior accommodated the two passengers well, with sizable legroom. Even the floor was snazzy, softly carpeted in a gray color that complimented the shiny black exterior.

All of this was posh, but the most stunning piece on the car was the dashboard radio.

It was set into the middle of the car’s front, extending the instruments panel.

Separating the driver’s and the front passengers’ legroom was the radio’s thick box, with a printed meter and needle in a white plate on the front. A piece of paper taped to the dashboard contained a list of civilian frequencies, scribbled in Minardo’s compact and neat writing. Aware of everyone’s attention on this item, Minardo turned it up. Immediately a steady drum beat, energetic shakers and quick strings played from the large speakers.

“Wonderful, isn’t it? Very dancey!” Minardo shouted over the radio.

Parinita’s face lit up, and she clapped her hands and nodded along to the music.

“Minardo, where did you get this? How did you get this?” Madiha snapped.

Unconcerned, Minardo turned down the volume on the radio, until the drums became background noise, “It’s a M.A.W. Bijali 2030! It’s brand new, fresh out of the depots.”

She sounded quite excited, but this information only made everything more puzzling.

“That does not answer my question at all!” Madiha replied.

On the rear-view mirror, Minardo winked again. “To some people, I’m a VIP, Colonel.”

“Neither does that! What do you even mean?” Madiha demanded.

In lieu of an answer, Minardo hit the clutch, pulled the stick back, and started to gently slide out from the side of the street and onto the road. She crept little by little onto the asphalt and then corrected the nose of the car, and with the gentlest little step on the acceleration pedal, she started them forward at about fifteen kilometers per hour.

There were no other vehicles in the immediate vicinity, and few people on the streets.

Structures and pedestrians scrolled leisurely by as the car inched forward.

“Just relax, Colonel! You’re looking too high strung this morning!” Minardo said.

Madiha let go of a deep breath and dropped against the seat, defeated.

There was a bump behind them. Kali dropped onto the back of the car and laid on the rolled back canvas frame of the vehicle’s soft canopy. It yawned and purred at them.

“It better not scratch the paint!” Minardo cried out.

Kali growled lightly and made a show of retracting its claws.

Madiha said nothing.

After several minutes, Minardo finally shifted to second gear, and accelerated to a relaxing thirty kilometers per hour. They did not go the direct route to the base. Instead, Minardo seemed to delight in taking them for a very leisurely little stroll around the corner from the apartment and farther north into the urban heart of Rangda.

It felt more like riding a horse-drawn carriage than a brand new car.

“Don’t just stare ahead!” She instructed. “Give your necks some exercise! Rangda has a lot of scenery. Our ratty old base won’t go anywhere. Try to enjoy the town for a bit!”

Madiha grumbled inaudibly, annoyed at the distraction. She turned her head away.

On the adjacent street, a teenage girl, perhaps training for a dash, bolted past their car.

“Minardo, you could stand to go a little faster.” Parinita said, her enthusiasm deflated.

Up front, their driver adjusted her rearview mirror so she could see them and scowl.

“Why, I never! I’m with child! If I have an accident, what would become of my baby?”

Parinita looked puzzled, but she kept quiet, perhaps seeing as how she had already stepped on her own tongue around Minardo once before on this very subject.  She sighed.

“Well, there are better services for orphans now than ever in Ayvarta’s history.”

Madiha spoke up nonchalantly, holding her head up with a fist against her cheek and an elbow on the car door, staring at the street. She thought she sounded perfectly logical, but from the startled way that Parinita turned to stare at her, she surmised she had done wrong.

Minardo practically growled. “There wouldn’t be an orphan born at all if I was hurt badly!”

“Oh.” Madiha said. Somehow those dots had not connected fully for her before.

From her tunic, Parinita withdrew an army code booklet and tapped Madiha in the head with the book’s spine. Madiha took her scolding with as much dignity as she could muster.

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The Gloom’s Bad News

15th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Svechthan Union, Vyatka Oblast — STAVKA HQ, Polviy City

“Someone please explain this to me.”

Nadezdha Stalh pushed a file folder across her desk, toward her subordinates. She leaned back and steepled her fingers in front of her face, elbows on wood, waiting for the two women in front of her to pick it up. This gesture obscured her face, and Zhukova could not read her very pale features anymore. She knew that the Central Committee Head was angry, but that much was a given. More important was how angry and what kind of angry.

When she became dangerously truculent, Premier Stalh’s right eye would twitch.

However, with her hands and her officer’s cap in the way, it was impossible to tell.

Lieutenant General Galina Zhukova glanced left. Her usually bubbly, cheerful companion in this mess had turned demure before Nadezhda and rooted herself in place. She looked like a guilty child, hands behind her back, shifting on her feet, awaiting further scolding.

Zhukova reached out and plucked the folder from the desk. She did not open it.

“Comrade Premier,” Zhukova said calmly, “It is something inoffensive.”

“Open it!” Nadezhda said. She put down her hands against the desk.

Her face bore an almost comically petulant expression when exposed. Her charmingly thick eyebrows were downturned, her eyes half-closed. She wore a long frown on her face that accentuated the very slight age lines tracing her soft, round white cheeks. Her pure-black hair, rare for Svechthans and a sign of mixed ethnicity, fell long down the sides of her head.

She was not dangerously angry. In fact she might not even really be angry at all.

Confident now, Zhukova played along and opened the folder.

Inside was a document, bearing the signatures of Zhukova, Voroshilova, Sokolovsky and Jeremenkova. There were a few maps, some agreed upon assets that would be deployed, agreed upon dates, and the tallied results of a few votes that included some lower officers, down to the level of Colonel, including people from the Army Air Arm and Red Navy.

There was a list of ships and positions, an inquiry as to the transport or evacuation capabilities of a Rarog class Destroyer, of which they had many; the sea level metrics of various Borelian beaches and aerial photographs of the topography surrounding them; intelligence reports from spies and other sources on the forces stationed in Borelia and the fleet groups around it. None of the documents were originals, but hasty copies.

Everything was dated to the 11th, when Voroshilova had overseen the signing.

At Zhukova’s side, Voroshilova raised her hand as if in a classroom and spoke up. She was small, even for a Svechthan, yet still a little bit taller than Nadezdha, who was particularly small, even for a Svechthan. A vibrant looking woman with a svelte appearance, soft white-blue hair down to the shoulder and a winning smile, Voroshilova was a classical beauty of the continent even into her forties, and had a gentle air about her.

“Comrade Stalh, I merely thought, it would be more democratic–”

Nadezhda cut off Voroshilova’s gentle voice with her own high-pitched barking.

“DEMOCRATIC? Does this look like some collective farm to you?” Stalh shouted. She raised her hands to her face, pushed against her temples briefly, and then lashed out a judging index finger at Zhukova. “And you! I can excuse this nonsense from Voroshilova, but you should know how we do things around here, Zhukova! This is disappointing!”

Zhukova bitterly thought that, of course she could excuse a mistake from Voroshilova. Her entire tenure in the C.C. and maybe even her entire life had been spent excusing Voroshilova in various ways! It had likely become some kind of automatic reflex by this point!

She did not say this, because she had nothing against Voroshilova herself, who was present and a delicate little soul; and because Nadezhda was in a relatively pliable mood.

Nadezhda sighed audibly, a sharp sound, and her head sank toward her desk. She hit her desk a few times as if her fist was a gavel. Then she thrust upright and pointed again.

“Zhukova, I trusted you! I sent you along to prevent this kind of foolishness. You two are supposed to be gathering forces and planning an attack. You! Not the Colonels! You two need to command respect and look like you know what you’re doing!” She turned her head toward Voroshilova. “How did you even rope Sokolovsky into signing this fool’s pact?”

“I asked nicely if he had any ideas he wanted to share.” Voroshilova said softly.

Nadezhda pointed back to Zhukova, and wagged her finger toward herself.

Zhukova approached until her knees were scraping the desk.

Nadezhda snatched the paper out of her hands, an action she couldn’t have undertaken unless Zhukova was very, very close, owing to their unfavorable difference in height.

“Ugh! You got Yakov to sign? And Svechin? Your stupidity is too contagious.”

She ripped up the proposed plans for the invasion of Borelia and threw them away.

“You,” she pointed to Voroshilova, “are going to stay far away from ink pens. I’m giving Jeremenkova that authority directly. Furthermore, you,” she shifted that stabbing, overused index finger to Zhukova and grumbled, “I don’t even know what to do with you.”

“I share this sentiment.” Zhukova replied, nonplussed.

Nadezhda leaned back a little, blinking, confused. Then her eyes drew wide.

She frowned. “Don’t get cheeky with me Galina! Out! Out now!”

Zhukova turned around and nonchalantly vacated the Premier’s office. She very quickly noticed that Voroshilova stayed behind; but of course she did. Those two were like a married couple in every single way but the newspaper advert and the marriage license. Certainly they would bicker for a few moments, and then make up for a few hours after.

Outside the ground was soft with snow, and one’s feet sank into the crunchy powder. Overhead the sky was grey, and the wind blew a stark white. Zhukova covered herself up well with a thick coat and a fur cap. Tall for a Svechthan, the marker of her own mixed ethnicity, Zhukova was exactly 157 and a half centimeters tall. She had cut her loose, curly blue hair short, but it was long enough still to blow in the stiff, icy gusts.

At precisely forty years of age, Zhukova had lived long enough to see the Svechthan Revolution against Lubon. Now she was headed for the STAVKA’s military library in order to plot a second assault on the elves, this time on their home turf. The “Matter of Borelia” as it was referred to had been long since decided. They would draw first blood.

16th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Svechthan Union, Vyatka Oblast — STAVKA HQ, Polviy City

The STAVKA building was an unimpressive little monument. Standing on an irregular stylobate with six steps, the building was tucked away in an unassuming corner of the small city of Polviy, flanked by a goods shop and a small inn that served warm biscuits and honey in the mornings. Wide streets, buried in snow, led to the long, squat white building connected to a side tower one story higher than the main structure. Three stories were thickly delineated along the exterior by concrete ledges stretching below tall windows.

Wrapped up in her coat and scarf and fur cap, dusted with snow, Zhukova ambled toward the building like a blizzard-borne ghost. She climbed the steps to the double doors, which a guard shut behind her after bidding her dobroye utro! She raised her hand and waved as she walked away, in lieu of a response. Pulling away her scarf and hat, she climbed another set of steps, and turned a corner to a little door. Her office was almost more of a closet.

She hung her cold weather gear behind her, looming over her desk, and sat down.

At her desk, she collapsed over a pile of books, maps, and assorted documents.

History had chosen her as the person most recently haunted by the “Matter of Borelia.”

Borelia was a large island nation that stood between Svechtha and Lubon. It was Lubon’s last colonial subject. Ever since the eve of the Svechthan Revolution every socialist in the snow-covered land had dreamed of the destruction of the Kingdom of Lubon and the end of the existential terror that loomed over their land. So long as Lubon existed, Svechtha’s Red Army would always be faced with a mortal foe with the power to subjugate them, to strip them again of their hard-earned identity and autonomy and enslave them.

Much the same as they had done before; after all, Svechtha wasn’t even the real name of their nation and people. Svechtha was a self-made name, taken on during the Revolution. Their identity had been lost; utterly destroyed by the elves in ages past.

Lubon had to be crushed decisively for Svechtha to be truly free.

In order for this to be accomplished, the Borelian Colonial Authority had to be defeated. Once Borelia was freed and turned against Lubon, the Kingdom would not be able to threaten Svechtha, while the small folk would have a base from which to strike the Kingdom.

It was all well and good to have this plan. Executing it was another matter entirely.

To assault Borelia they would first need to challenge the Regia Marina around Borelia, and inflict enough damage to force open a way to the island. Once the way to the island was secured, they would have to carry out a landing operation. In order to establish a Borelian beachhead that was capable of independent operations, they needed to land at least one Army — 150,000 troops at the minimum. But Svechtha’s Red Navy was heavily focused on defense of its waters, not landing operations. They had a preponderance of submarines and destroyers, but not enough troopships for the task. They could press cargo vessels for the mission, but then they would just be short of supply ships instead.

Once all of these requirements had been met there was still the actual war to fight.

Though they had support within some of the indigenous community of Borelia, a people that had been displaced by elven colonial settlers for hundreds of years, they did not have all of them — many had been assimilated into the Colonial Authority. Some elves and elf-descendents were amenable to participating in guerilla actions, and those that could be organized for this had been. But it was a paltry asset, more useful for local intelligence than inflicting damage. And damage, on a colossal scale, was necessary.

Zhukova, Sokolovsky and Jeremenkova (with Voroshilova standing by with curious eyes) had all agreed that it was of crucial importance to destroy the Borelian oil fields some time before the actual invasion, otherwise the imbalance in supply would be swung too far in the Royal Army’s favor. During the actual eve of the invasion, it was necessary to destroy the Borelian Colonial Authority’s Air Headquarters, and inflict some kind of damage to the Regia Marina Fleet Air Arm. Without regional air superiority the Red Army stood no chance of succeeding given all of the other factors against them.

All of this and more, Zhukova had carefully considered. She could find no fault in these observations, but the main problem was not the observations. It was a small and mean woman named Nadezhda Stalh who demanded that Borelia be wiped from the map in a matter of months, right off the heels of a skirmish with Hanwa in Orchun, an island territory to the southeast that was a territory of Svechtha within the Empire’s orbit.

Nadezhda was drunk on the success of Orchun.

Hanwa had encroached, and like everyone, they believed they could take from Svechtha without a fight. Zhukova, a little-known Corps commander at the time, fought back.

Zhukova had made a terrible mistake on Orchun Island.

She had won too handily.

She had encircled and destroyed the Hanwans, defeated them like an adult pushing down a child. She had destroyed them so utterly, and so brazenly thrown tens of thousands of lives screaming into the blender, and forced Hanwa to sign a peace with Svechtha and vacate the land, air and water space around Svechtha so thoroughly, that Nadezdha took notice.

Zhukova had now become Nadezhda’s Stalh’s dream General.

And the lesson the Premier took from this victory was that Svechtha was now “ready.”

So the Borelian matter was now Zhukova’s boulder to push up a hill.

Stalh now expected her to carry people on her shoulders. People like Klementina Voroshilova, who could compose a nice speech for the troops, but not command them.

Zhukova shook her head over her desk. This was bordering on unfair.

Something then stirred beneath the mess. She heard ringing.

Clearing out the papers and books, Zhukova uncovered her telephone.

She picked it up by its shaft, put the receiver to her ear and spoke into the microphone.

“This is General Zhukova.” She said.

“I know!” Nadezdha shouted from the other end.

Zhukova sighed.

“How may I be of service, Premier?”

“Did you just get in?”

“Yes.”

“How is the weather outside?”

“Snowy.”

Nadezdha laughed raucously.

“How has your day been?”

“It just started.”

“Did you have breakfast? You’re always so downcast.”

“I’m not downcast; merely not upcast.”

Nadezhda burst out laughing again.

“Oh ho ho ho! Oh my! You can be personable when you want to be!”

“Only around persons.”

This conversation was a comedy of opposites — the boisterous, conceited voice of Nadezdha Stalh clashing with the dry, emotionless words of Galina Zhukova.

“Anyway, listen: I wanted to ask you something, Zhukova.”

Zhukova wrapped the phone cord around her finger. “Yes Premier.”

“What do you think of Voroshilova? What is your opinion?”

Zhukova rolled her eyes.

“On what level, ma’am? Political? Military? Personal?”

“Just tell me what comes to mind to describe our esteemed Marshal.”

“She is,” the General paused for a moment. When she seemed to have a fair description in her mind, she spoke again. “Voroshilova is a very pure and wholesome maiden. She has a good command of the classics, and fine taste in teas. She is a moving violinist. In her presence, I feel a sense of nostalgia, as if I was chatting with a schoolyard friend.”

Nadezdha hung up abruptly.

Upstairs, Zhukova heard something hit the floor or wall.

Zhukova could then hear footsteps moving closer a few minutes later.

Through the door, the little Premier strode through the door in her peaked cap and her little red uniform. She had her hands on her hips and craned her head to look at Zhukova. Like all Svecthans, Nadezhda was visibly no child. This was a popular stereotype, that Svechthans were a race of children. Stalh was quite visibly proportioned like an adult, albeit a short one. Her hips were rounded, her limbs their appropriate lengths, her breast mildly curved.

Her big eyebrows were turned low. She looked sulky, frowning, eyes half-closed.

She stood at the door for a moment. Zhukova pushed a chair out from behind the desk. Nadezhda approached, took the chair, and sat on it, her arms crossed. She grunted.

“Listen, Voroshilova is important to me, but, we both agree, she is no good at fighting.”

Zhukova averted her eyes.

“Oh, she is good at fighting. She is just, with all due respect, very dumb at it.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.” Nadezhda said.

Zhukova nodded. “Well, she led that pistol charge at Orchun–”

“Point taken.” Nadezhda interrupted, rubbing her forehead. “We agree.”

“We agree.” Zhukova said. Voroshilova was a good paper-pusher who choked when she had to make sweeping decisions that didn’t involve her personally doing something very stupid and reckless all by herself. She was also quick to dodge administrative responsibility. Her warrior’s heart only beat when she had an enemy in front of her.

Voroshilova would have been adequate with a horse and sabre in ages past.

In short, she was simply no good as a Marshal of a modern war.

She had gotten her position because she had personally saved Nadezhda’s life in the past. As such, when Nadezhda acceded to her position and the time came to choose a new Marshal of the Red Army to match the new Premier, Voroshilova was chosen.

“So, here is what I’m going to do about it.” Nadezhda said.

She left that sentence hanging in the air.

Zhukova nodded her head to show she was listening.

She didn’t know what to expect. She never thought Stalh would let Voroshilova go.

So she waited almost a minute for the Premier to finally finish her statement.

Once she was ready, Nadezhda raised her index finger into the air with a flourish.

She crooked a little grin and winked.

“I will appoint you to investigate our Generals, find a suitable Marshal, and we’ll promote that person, and then find Voroshilova a nice desk job somewhere! Isn’t it splendid?”

Zhukova felt as though her eyes would roll right out of their sockets.

“I will start right away, Premier.” She said in a vaguely surly voice.

19th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Svechthan Union, Vyatka Oblast — STAVKA HQ, Polviy City

Zhukova had a bundle of mostly empty documents in hand and a plan of attack in mind.

She would walk into the office, put down her report, and then tell Stalh that it was she, Zhukova, who was most suitable to become Marshal. Nobody else could do it. It was she who conquered the Hanwans at Orchun, she who wrote their books on maneuver warfare and she who was most fit to lead the Red Army henceforth. Then, as a Marshal, she would be able to delay the Borelian affair for a while with administrative nonsense.

This would, in two strokes, solve all of the Red Army’s current problems.

However, as she entered the office of the Premier she found Voroshilova already there.

She looked over her shoulder, and let out a little gasp when Zhukova approached.

At her desk, Nadezhda was rubbing down her face furiously, beet-red.

“You’re finally here!” shouted the Premier. “Look at this! Look at it!”

She practically threw the file folder at Zhukova.

Inside there were communiques from Ayvarta via radio-telephone, as well as several reports from intelligence sources, that amounted to one disastrous revelation.

Ayvarta was under attack by Nocht.

“Hundreds of thousands of imperialist troops stream into Ayvarta!”

Nadezhda was practically pulling at her own hair, with a few breaks to smash her head against her desk, and to pound her fists into the wood. Zhukova’s hands shook a little as she read the reports, though her face retained its implacable expression. For a long time, Ayvarta had been their only and most trusted ally. Despite several very dubious decisions on the part of its government, Svechtha fully supported their global positions.

In return for various forms of that support, Ayvarta shipped many, many tons of grain to the icy nation, without which that little inn beside the STAVKA HQ might not be able to give free biscuits and honey every breakfast. Maybe mushrooms and acorns if they were lucky.

“We’re all going to die.” Nadezhda moaned.

At her side, Voroshilova patted her back and shoulders gently.

“Do not be so discouraged! Our comrades will fight with all their strength!”

Nadezhda looked up at Voroshilova from her desk. She then turned her head again.

“We’re all going to die.” She repeated.

“Our own food supplies will be fine if we implement rationing right now.” Zhukova said flatly. “However, this development means, if Ayvarta cannot drive back Nocht quickly enough, we will not have the food supplies necessary to carry out the Borelian Matter.”

“So we’ll just die slowly!” Nadezhda cried.

Zhukova held her tongue. She judged Nadezhda for a lot of things, but she knew the Premier was a deeply emotional person who was prone to mood swings and that this was no fault of her own, but just how her brain was wired. It would be cruel to chastise her at the moment, but Zhukova was also not exactly the supportive type. She left the comforting up to Voroshilova, who could carry it out much more personally anyway.

While the Marshal and Premier sobbed near one another, Zhukova felt a jolt in her feet that urged her to start doing something, anything at all, to rectify the situation at hand.

“Premier, we must draft a rationing plan post-haste.” Zhukova said gently.

Nadezhda sniffled, her head sunk against the desk. Voroshilova hovered near her.

“We’ll do it. You go– do something.” groaned the Premier, still overcome with emotion.

Zhukova bowed her head and turned sharply around to the door.

Around the STAVKA building there was activity everywhere. It was clear that overnight, everything had changed. As Zhukova walked the halls she saw people in a flurry of movement. She heard desperate whispering voices around every corner, and saw faces frozen stiff in a rictus of shock and horror. There were people walking down halls aimlessly, some with file folders to deliver, some with nothing on their hands. There were people going to the wrong floors, and crowding meeting halls. Everyone knew something had to be done, but nobody knew what, so they simply did without thinking.

When she dropped in on the office of the Commissariat of Supply, the entire room was feverishly working. The computers mashed their hands on mechanical calculators; clerks telephoned union representatives, state goods stockers and collective farms to inform them of the current events and the plan moving forward; Zhukova stood at the door for a moment and then turned around. Clearly they were working hard and that was what mattered.

Freezing food distribution and sale was a necessary and precalculated first step.

She trusted Stalh and Voroshilova would recover and draft a real rationing plan.

Her next stop was at her own office. She pushed all the books and documents about Borelia piling her desk off to a corner of the room, and picked up her telephone. Turning the dial with the tip of her finger, she picked up the receiver by its cord, put it to her ear, and waited. Once connected to the radio-telephone station she delivered her orders.

“Command all Svechthan troops in Ayvarta to cooperate fully with the Ayvartan government, and to place themselves at its disposal. In the absence of Ayvartan orders of any kind, the Svechthan Joint-Training troops are to take independent measures to resist the imperialists, and to retreat or advance in defense of Solstice as necessary until a coordinated Svechthan command in Ayvarta can be established.” Zhukova said.

Acknowledging her, the radio-telephone operator began the lengthy process of disseminating these orders across the seas to the very tip of northern Ayvarta.

Hanging up the phone felt strangely final. This was the very first and very last thing she could really do for Ayvarta at the moment. She was an unfathomable amount of kilometers away from her nation’s only allies. She had now exhausted all of her current options.

Nadezhda had not been exaggerating. Without Ayvarta they very well could be dead.

Svechthan agriculture was thriving, more than it ever had under the cruel hand of the elves, but it was nowhere near enough to feed everyone. They depended on large shipments of food from Ayvarta, an exceedingly fertile land that had sun and rain year-round instead of snow. Though they could survive without Ayvartan food, the state of their agriculture was such that everyone’s share of the food would be meager. What’s more the economy might not be able to take the shock of losing the Ayvartan benefits in the long term.

In addition, Ayvarta was big and thought of as powerful and threatening. It rattled its sabers in defense of Svechtha. It was the only nation on the planet that did them this favor.

As such, all of Ayvarta’s problems were Svechtha’s problems as well.

And this war seemed like it would be their most dire problem for a very long, agonizing time. It might perhaps even be their final problem, depending on how the war swung.

For right now all Zhukova could do was sit, and try to control her thrashing heart.

29th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Svechthan Union, Vyatka Oblast — STAVKA HQ, Polviy City

Zhukova entered the little inn just to get out of the snow. A bell rang as she passed the door. Wrapped up in her coat, fur cap and fuzzy scarf, her skin shivered as she transitioned from the cold outside to the warm hearth fire of the inn lobby. Through a side door she entered the little dining area, and strode up to the counter before ringing the bell set there.

“Dobroye utro!” she called out, pulling her scarf down from over her mouth.

Behind the counter appeared a little girl, barely 100 centimeters tall, who pushed a stool closer to the counter and stood on it in order to stand at eye level with Zhukova. She looked like a little doll, dressed in a blue and gold jumper and a long white shirt, her dark blue hair done with a big red kerchief. She smiled brightly and spread open her arms.

“Dobroye tovarisch!” She said. She was missing a few teeth and her pronunciation was charmingly off, clearly she was a very small child. Zhukova smiled back at her.

“My, you are a big girl, tending to the shop!” She said, putting on a soft face for the child.

“You are a big lady too!” said the child. “Did you come from the big green place?”

She pointed to the wall behind them, where a cloth map of Ayvarta hung. That was a common way to honor their allies — depictions of Ayvarta as a green paradise from which many lifesaving things were brought to Svechtha was now a common folk tradition.

“Ah, no.” Zhukova said. It was difficult to tell anyone she was a half-elf, for various reasons. “My mother was very big, you see. Bigger than me. And she didn’t have a chair!”

“Wow!” replied the child, raising her hands to her mouth in surprise.

“Could I have a honey biscuit, little one?” Zhukova finally asked.

“Oh.”

In an instant the child’s demeanor turned gloomy. She put her hands behind her back, tipped her head to one side and frowned, shifting her feet and apparently deep in thought.

“Sorry big lady, but mama says we can’t now. Because the big boats aren’t coming. Maybe in,” she showed off all the fingers on her hands, “this many days? Sorry!”

Zhukova forced herself to smile again. “That is fine. Have a good day.”

She reached over the counter, patted the child on the head, and turned to leave.

Even before she entered the inn, she realized this would probably be the result.

Her rumbling stomach just compelled her to ask. But it was fine, she told herself, ignoring the hot pangs within her belly — she would get some sweet barley in the cafeteria later. She got a fresh ration card yesterday. It was nothing too depressing.

Everyone in Svechtha seemed to be telling themselves similar things.

It was not especially working out for them.

There was an enervated mood throughout the STAVKA HQ. The dizzying activity of the 19th and 20th was well past them. Everyone had settled into the gloomy reality of the situation. Zhukova walked past people waiting on unringing phones, guards laying about staring at the wall. It was not the absence of food, not yet, for food was not absent. Everyone was still fed. It was the stress, and the idea that food could become absent.

That was enough to knock everyone across the city and country off their feet.

Zhukova, as was becoming customary, bypassed her own office and made her way to the Premier’s, where she found the woman alone, and stood at attention across from her.

Behind her desk, Nadezhda Stalh fidgeted and worried. This was their 11th day since Nocht declared War on Ayvarta and invaded it. They had limited news from the continent, but sent their support for the beleaguered nation almost on a daily basis. However, they had not yet done much to concretely support the war effort. What they had done was ration barley and fuel and rubber and a list of things Ayvarta supplied.

“Zhukova,” Nadezhda began, for she never actually greeted anyone cordially, “I’ve got some procurements plans for you to consider, particularly on those new tanks.”

“Yes Premier.” Zhukova replied.

“Take your time with them. I don’t believe they’re going anywhere yet.”

Nadezhda looked almost a caricature of depression, speaking and acting sluggishly.

She was almost an avatar for the state of the country.

There was a heavy administrative paralysis in Svechtha. They had tens of thousands of soldiers on Ayvarta for training and consultation purposes, but with Ayvarta going through political schisms, and the crisis on the mainland, it was difficult for them to mobilize. In addition, Nadezhda worried that Nocht, with whom they had a truce for the past few years, might declare war on them as well, adding to their list of enemies.

There was also a great hesitation to commit their limited resources to helping Ayvarta. It was one thing to plan an attack on Borelia when the rest of the world was relatively peaceful and Ayvartan support was implicit — and already a very difficult thing even with these factors. Borelia was relatively close, and they had the space and time to plan for such an action. It was quite another to respond to a surprise invasion by the most powerful nation in the world, happening a sea away from them, and targeting the breadbasket from which they had been drawing their food and fuel from. An attack on Ayvarta was a crippling blow to Svechthan logistics. They could starve trying to respond.

Everyone was afraid and did not know what to do. They had never planned for this.

As such, Nadezhda had for the past few weeks tried to steer the topic away from this.

Zhukova, however, was a touch optimistic. She had come here to steer the topic back.

She had been reading, and thinking, over the past week, and had come to her own conclusions about this event. Though her colleagues feared the fire, Zhukova thought that a world ablaze was just what they needed now. She felt the time had come now.

“Premier, we must stop dodging the Ayvartan question.” Zhukova said.

Nadezhda almost jumped behind her desk. “What is this all of a sudden?”

“It is true that these events have surprised us, but we are in a better position than we imagined ourselves to be.” Zhukova said, speaking dryly, without undue expression.

Nadezhda rubbed her chin and stared at her subordinate. Often, Stalh could be very stubborn and unwavering, but one of her better personality traits was an interest in new ideas, and especially, in hearing good news. Things that bordered on the idealistic, such as gigantic tanks, submersible battleships and parasite airplanes, appealed to her.

Likely she could file away Zhukova’s words into the same category as these.

“Speak your mind, Zhukova. Clearly you’ve thought about this.” Nadezhda said.

Zhukova smiled. Now that she had an audience, she let her tongue fly quite freely.

“I believe that the situation in Ayvarta could be manipulated to our benefit in all matters, if we solidify our relationship with Ayvarta while steering them toward a dramatic and rapid remilitarization, of the kind that will be needed to defeat Nocht, and more.”

Nadezhda raised her thick eyebrows. “I like this thesis so far. Please elaborate.”

It was well known among the staff who interacted with Stalh often that her skepticism was not backed by any logic — it was merely a way to pressure people to talk more.

Zhukova was quite fine with talking. She had a whole speech, almost, rehearsed.

“Premier, think about it in this way, knowing Ayvarta’s history. Ayvarta’s government did not crystallize fully until 2015, but between 2010 and 2015 Ayvarta carried rigorous collectivization of agriculture and other policies intended to improve its economic situation. Between 2015 and 2025 with its government and lands fully united in support, it vastly expanded its industrial and agricultural capacity. Since 2025, its government has been trying to slash its military industrial potential in favor of consumer goods, but those ten years of development have not just gone away — as seen in new Ayvartan technologies. Aircraft carriers do not simply grow on trees. That potential is there.”

She paused, but Nadezhda was not ready to reply. She was still at the stage of making puzzled and vaguely aggravated faces. Zhukova knew this meant she still had the floor.

“Furthermore, the Empire’s 10 Million Men do not simply go away either. Even though Ayvarta currently counts on around 1.5 million in active and reserve forces spread widely across the nation, it still retains the potential to produce those ten million soldiers. They do not go away. In fact, one can argue the potential for such an army has increased over time, even through demilitarization, because of agricultural and industrial policy between 2015 and 2025, and even beyond. Did not Ayvarta recently give us a prototype tank as part of its cooperation pacts with us, that far surpasses our own?”

Now Nadezhda was finally willing to intervene. She faked a little cough to get in a word.

“What is your angle with this, Galina? I assume this is not just a history filibuster. I know very well that in an ideal world Ayvarta could rebuild a strong army. What of it?”

Zhukova prepared to deliver the coup de grace on this contrived little meeting.

“My angle, Premier, is that Ayvarta’s military potential is untapped and vast. Should we be able to nurture Ayvarta into the juggernaut that it can become, we may yet be able to tap into that potential for our purposes. What if a fully mobilized Ayvarta with vast armies and powerful equipment, not only built goods for us and shipped food, but shipped their soldiers to support our military efforts? We would solve the Matter of Borelia overnight.”

“Why would they do such a thing? They have enough problems of their own.”

Zhukova grinned wide. “Because we could open up a second front in this ‘Solstice War’.”

Nadezhda’s thick eyebrows drew wide open as the realization slowly dawned on her.

“We could.” She said. “With their help, we could certainly do it. We are in position for it.”

“Indeed Premier. All we need is the arsenal. Ayvarta can, shall we say, rearm us too.”

“So, then,” Nadezhda pored over Zhukova’s words, “Ayvarta can grow to become,” she paused again, rubbing her chin, then her eyes drew wide. “An arsenal of socialism!”

“An arsenal of socialism indeed. Good description, Premier.” Zhukova said dryly.

Nadezhda hopped up and down in her little chair, shaking her fists and grinning wide.

She clapped her hands happily like a child and beamed, more delighted than ever.

“Indeed! Indeed! You are a genius, Zhukova! Ayvarta can help us wipe those elves off the map, and then, we shall expand socialism across the four corners of the world!”

Zhukova raised an eyebrow. “You want to take over the world, Premier?”

“Of course! Think about it — we are fighting every imperialist nation on the planet right now! When we win, we will impose our will on them all. Socialism in one country? Yeah right! We shall build socialism in one planet! All of the world will follow Lenanism-Stalhinism!”

Zhukova raised both eyebrows. She contained her real response, but still made a quip.

“Well, the Ayvartan’s form of Lenanism may contain significantly less Stalh content.”

Nadezhda glowered at her. “Anyway — Zhukova, don’t forget that I coined the term for your concepts! Arsenal of socialism. Brands and aesthetics are very important.”

Zhukova rolled her eyes. “Indeed, Premier.”

“So, we must make plans. We must support Ayvarta more strongly! We need influence with them. They must see us as valuable! Speaking of all this — Zhukova!”

Zhukova smiled and stuck her chest out. “Yes, Premier?”

“How goes our search for a new Marshal? Have you any ideas?” Nadezhda said.

Zhukova deflated immediately. “I am still searching, Premier.”

47th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Svechthan Union, Vyatka Oblast — STAVKA HQ, Polviy City

Dropping in at the little inn, Zhukova picked up her biscuit and honey and ate it on the way to the STAVKA building. As instructed, she went directly to Stalh’s desk instead of checking in at her own office and waiting to be summoned. Zhukova did not know exactly what the C.C. wanted with her, but she had an inkling of what it would be.

After all, the situation had changed and changed since the horrors of the 18th and 19th.

It had been 28 days since the Nochtish invasion of Ayvarta, and 3 days since the Ayvartan cargo ships Akkoro and Kamuy delivered a routine drop of 18,000 tons of food aid. That was about the end of the routine elements. Akkoro and Kamuy had arrived in Svechtha flanked by two Megalodon class heavy submarines, a pair of destroyers, and some corvettes. They had suffered no injury, but everyone expected as the war went on this would not be the case. Nevertheless, the small folk were overjoyed to see them.

When asked whether the next month’s food drops would be made, the Ayvartans answered in the affirmative, but could not vouch for the tonnage being as high.

As such there was a sense of jubilation in Svechtha that was tempered with the knowledge that they could not let things continue as they were. Despite the Ayvartan food drop, they would continue rationing. All food aid would be used as a buffer to support strict but fair rationing. They had to prepare for the eventuality that Ayvarta might start to deliver 3000 tons of food in one month instead of 20,000 or 30,000.

It behooved the Svechthans to be prepared; and to make themselves valuable allies.

Nadezhda’s office befit the mood. She had pinned up maps of Ayvarta, tracking the progress of the Nochtish invasion, and had put a picture of Daksha Kansal on her desk with a red ribbon around it as a strange token of solidarity. Daksha was not even the leader of Ayvarta; but Nadezhda had it in mind that she should be, and had her foreign office talking her up left and right ever since the speech Kansal delivered on the 45th.

The Premier herself, was all decked out in military uniform. At her side, Voroshilova had on a beret with a flower on it, and a fuzzy scarf decorated with the Ayvartan hydra, along with her usual marshal’s uniform with its blue tunic and pants and its ice-blue accents.

Zhukova was dressed much the same, minus the Ayvartan-themed accouterments.

“I am at your disposal, Premier.” She said, hands behind her back.

“Good! I like it when people are.” Nadezhda said. “Zhukova, I have two important things to say to you today. One relates to the other, but only one is specifically about you.”

Zhukova raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I am, um, at your disposal, Premier.” She said awkwardly.

Nadezhda blinked. “Yes, I heard that. Anyway. I have been paying careful attention to your development since Orchun, Zhukova. I knew you only vaguely before then, and that was a mistake on my part. Clearly, you are an excellent mind, unparalleled even!”

Now it was Zhukova’s turn to blink. She had come in today with a mind to argue for her promotion to Marshal, but it seemed as though she might not have to. Tempering her enthusiasm, to keep it hidden from the Premier, Zhukova allowed herself a small smile.

“Thank you, comrade Stalh. I am humbled by your praise.”

“Good, good! I like humble. Now, Zhukova, the next thing: do you like boats?”

It took a herculean effort not to openly groan in front of the Premier, and Zhukova could not entirely contain all of her disappointment and the salty feeling in her mouth that resulted. Clearly she was not being promoted to Marshal. Clearly this was something far worse.

“No.” Zhukova said in response to the question, just to be cheeky.

Nadezhda frowned. “Well, too bad for you, because you’re spending a week or two in one. I’m putting you in combat command of the forces we have on the Ayvartan Front. Only you possess the vision necessary to carry out our will on the continent.”

Zhukova’s eye twitched ever so slightly, and she felt her hands shaking at her sides.

“Voroshilova here will serve as Front headquarters command.” Nadezhda added.

Voroshilova responded with a gentle gasp, and raised a hand to cover her lips.

“I’ve never seen Ayvarta before.” Voroshilova cooed.

“You’ll like it, it has a good climate.” Nadezhda replied cheerfully.

Zhukova wanted to sink into the earth.

It seemed the Gloom was never done with its bad news.