by Kali Altsoba
She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know he’s secretly sympathetic, too. He knows that Leyla is severely hurt and not hiding it very well. Knows that she needs to rest and recover, but that she’ll do neither with needy Tedi hovering around, demanding emotional energy and physical attentions. Unless he orders the major back to HQ and away from her lover, for a while. There’s another reason. He’s sick of the war. He has watched too many of the girls and women under his command blow apart or break down. The heavy casualties he just took hit him hard. He wants and needs to find and save something good inside the horror. He sees that Leyla and Tedi are good together. He has a third reason, a daughter almost Tedi’s age back in Lentvaris. She has no interest in volunteering to serve in his or any Women’s Combat Brigade, but there’s talk these days about conscripting women as well as men. He’s moved to hear of the young sergeant’s ordeal, and her courage. He admires Leyla’s intense devotion. So he does whatever he can for them. Though he’ll never admit that at HQ or while drinking with braided, misogynist peers in the Royal Officers’ Club.
Tedi is hurt worse than either realize. The big man’s knife missed her heart, but she’s so badly traumatized and trembly she’s sent to a rear hospital to recover. She lies still, wrapped in white sheets in a sterile ward for over a week, then spends three more days resting. She takes long walks in complex Amasian rock gardens, like nothing she ever saw on Daegu. She feels a little less hollow each day. She’s cared for with genuine tenderness by local, Amasian nurses conscripted into Rikugun service. They don’t even seem to mind that she’s a “locust” invader. Sometimes they talk to her like she’s almost a normal person. They smile when they change her smart wraps. She starts to like some of them, after a week. Stops calling them “squid bitches.” Except inside her head.
They’re careful. They’re experienced after three years. They listen for intel to give to Blue resisters. And they make sure that Rikugun senior officer wounded recover more slowly, or not at all. So careful that Tedi never hears the awful things they say behind her back, about how they find her total hairlessness perverted and disgusting. Or how they “hope the bald, locust cunt dies and can’t go home, ever.” And how they “hate her bitch lover, who she just won’t shut up about.”
The longer they keep her from Leyla the more Tedi is overwhelmed with disorientation and growing homesickness. She’s surprised that she has new desire to go home to see her mother, whom she has hardly thought about in three years. She sees home clearly in her mind’s eye for the first time in those years, is reminded of it and her estranged mother by every small kindness she receives from gentle strangers, like her nurses.
She longs to return to her childhood home, where her long gone golden hair was brushed daily with unquestioning, fathomless maternal care and love, and her little sister adored her. Until she said she was going Rikugun, and leaving like her Dad and all their brothers. She fills out an application for offworld leave, ticking the box: Medical Dispensation. Then she angrily crumples the scroll, drops it on a flagstone in the rock garden, and grinds it to sparks under her heel.
She realizes that her mother’s house is too far in the distant, foreign country of her past. Having been sharply wounded, nearly dying alone, last of her whole WCB cohort from Kolno Barracks, that’s Tedi’s reality. Her past, her present, her future. Recovering in a clean RIK coastal hospital with seemingly kind nurses and silent rock gardens to walk in, that’s all merely intermission in her real life. Another vision compels her more strongly, pulling her back from peace. A growing sense that the past and the future don’t exist. Only the now matters. She must go back to true comrades and to her life in the now. Back to the love that exceeds herself. But is that Leyla or the black? As the time to depart draws near, Tedi knows there’s only one place she ever can go, ever be at home anymore.
‘I must return to Leyla.’
‘I must get back to the war.’
‘I must go home to the front.’
Part II
Thrice
It’s the start of Year Four of war on Amasia. It hasn’t gone as expected by anyone, but it’s getting progressively worse for men and women in Rikugun. Year Two ended in blunting of their first large scale offensive into the teeth of General Lian Sòng’s trenches, and the first defeat of Gross Imperium in its long and storied history. These days, that failed attack across the desert, a cut-and-thrust into The Sandbox reaching prematurely for the Panthalassa coast, is called the First Shaka Offensive. No one ever accused the prince of being a poet. Nor should they, since he prosaically termed his do-over the Second Shaka Offensive. This time he proposed a double diversion on a massive scale, first north at The Veranda, a great Alliance bulge into RIK’s black edge, then across The Sandbox again. The main blow was to be struck into the central plains, straight over the great grasslands. It went in even though both diversions failed before it started. It’s just what Oetkerts do.
Instead of a successful diversion to draw Alliance reserves and ARGs north, Rikugun suffered a sharp setback at the hinge of The Veranda. The woeful ACU 22nd Marine Division unexpectedly stood and held when a single rapido position in the center of the attack never stopped firing, until dead and demoralized RIK piled around in heaps and enough time was bought for Sòng to counterattack with armor and skycraft. Two days later, Oetkert ordered Phase Two of his three part plan, regardless of the colossal failure in the north. A second diversion failure met him in Tornado Alley, where once again Alliance troops stood and no ARG was pulled away from Lian Sòng’s heavily defended central position.
By turning aside the second Sandbox diversion, Enthusiastics proved that they were ACU elite, a match even for Gross Imperium. It helped that they had a biotech advantage, luminous biofilm exposed advancing Rikugun to predawn ambush and hidden fougasse and octopus pot AI guns. The 7th Assault tried it out against SAC commandos, ambushing and slaughtering them. It worked well enough that five more divisions were equipped with bioveils that revealed camoed RIK who made a night attack to start Second Shaka. It was a onetime deal that exposed the bioweapon. Rikugun took countermeasures. On to the next spiral step in the endless arms race.
It was a huge fight. Army group scale, not just division or corps or army. Five million or more dead on the Alliance side, three times as many Rikugun. Argos 7th by itself inflicted wicked punishment and casualties on three regular divisions that attacked it, though the Argosians paid a high price for victory. Susannah Page hardly knows anyone from Year One on Glarus. Like Tedi on the other side, she’s one of the last originals left alive. All the rest are just kids, Third and Fourth year intakes. Even some of Susannah’s old friends from school on Argos got called up. They came looking for her, but she didn’t want to talk to them. She wanted no connection to home or her past. All she wanted was to lie down with Lee Jin, then go out to meet Death in the Yue ming. Ava Mack was in the fight, too. She’s losing her stutter. Doctor’s couldn’t figure it out, so she told them: “Fuh, fuh, fuck you!”
Being stymied on both flanks ensured that there was no hope to reach the west coast in a massive, stabbing thrust, as Prince of the Blood Royale Johann Oetkert’s First and Second grand offensives called for. Yet the main attack into the center went ahead anyway, each time. Unbelievably, his nephew let him try again. Pyotr hardly knows the cost. A prewar conspiracy inside his military had tolerated, even approved, of the war against the United Planets of Krevo. But it was ready to bring him down to stop him launching this far bigger war against the Calmari, and his alliance with despised Jahandar. It failed. It stumbled. It frayed. It began to come apart in the face of his initial victories and opportunities High Cast officers saw in the conquered worlds to expand their family estates and fortunes. Then he left his uncle, Johann Oetkert, in charge of the war on Amasia. The moron essentially launched the same offensive a third time, consuming Year Four of the war on Amasia. Consuming millions of troops, and precious production and precious time. His predicable failure sapped the last offensive spiri
t Rikugun could muster.
He railed.
He shouted.
He insisted.
He ordered.
He failed.
The Third Shaka Offensive ran smack into five massive ARGs Lian Sòng kept waiting behind the central position of Alliance Third Trench. She was confident in reports from spies and a growing Maquis resistance behind the enemy lines that was where Oetkert would strike, again. For the third time in three years, Rikugun thrashed red and futile over the black, against her fixed positions in a thickened defense-in-depth that ground it down, then wore it out. Only this was the biggest defeat. A bloody three months of all out fighting across central Lemuria that ended in minimal advance, just a couple of bigger bulges in the long black lines that run from pole to pole. It inflicted seventeen million enemy dead and double that in wounded, but those numbers were dwarfed by massive Rikugun casualties. Yet nothing important changed. Nothing! The enemy’s walls bulged and bent taut as a bow on each end, but did not break at the center. Fighting subsided into the same old chronic skirmishing and trench raids, more stupid “Good Morning” barrages, more senseless patrols and prisoner captures, more broken bots and attrition. The armies are still there, glaring at each other over their black walls. The troops have gone back beneath hardened ramparts. The war is still stalemated. Only more so.
That’s it. A stalled out Year One invasion, then three years in a row of futile offensives that hardly shift anything and only increase loss of recruits and treasure to Pyotr and the Imperium. Rear area resistance is growing, getting more support from Alliance skycraft drops into the Lemurian forests in the far north and marsh lands in the deep south. MI reports secret tunnels that go so deep they core through bedrock to traverse the black and come up into multiple exit holes on the Rikugun side. It all adds to strains of fighting on other contested worlds. Straining against rising enemy war production and the failure of Daura to contribute much more than cannon fodder to the Dual Powers effort. The triple setbacks take the cutting edge off Rikugun’s aggressive spirit. The officer corps is almost humbled. Almost. Let’s not go overboard! Bewildered is probably the better word. Yeah, the defeat bewilders RIK generals. It doesn’t humble them. Nothing can do that.
After massive offensives and carnage, Uncle Oetkert reports to Pyotr that all he has gained in the Third Shaka Offensive is another swelling of the black lines, this one in the central plains. The new bulge has pushed the Alliance black 1,357 klics westward, along a north-south frontage of 2,920 klics. It’s just like the old but smaller bulges, that are still there since before he tried all this the second time: north jutting into The Veranda, and south in the unforgiving heat of The Sandbox. All three salients expose Rikugun’s hinges to potential pincer counterattacks.
“It’s a real victory, nephew. A great victory!” Shōshō Johann Oetkert insists that it is. He’s in an urgent private audience with Pyotr, recalled to the Waldstätte Palast in Novaya Uda to make a face-to-face report. “Look at the casualties we forced on the squids. Truly massive! We’re wearing them down to a nub. Look nephew, here’s a list of their dead. It’s an unsustainable casualty rate.”
“What? A list of their dead? Do you also have a list of mine?” Pyotr Shaka snaps back, slapping away the offered scroll while spearing his older relative with his iklwa jade eyes. This general may be his senior and part of his extended family, but he isn’t favored and he isn’t one of The Admitted. He’s just another godsdamn Oetkert royal, as far as Pyotr is concerned. One of more than 5,000 official, mostly parasitic “princes” scattered over the Imperium. Pyotr is heavily burdened with uncles and nephews and first and second cousins, all of the blood royale. Most of them are inbred mediocrities who are only helping him lose the war more quickly.
“I can ill afford any more such victories as yours, Uncle. Three times you promised me a decisive breakthrough on Lemuria, yet you stand before me and speak only of casualties! Another one of these bloody triumphs you claim, and you will victory my armies to death on Amasia.”
“Nephew, with all respect, you mistake the outcome of the hugely successful Third Shaka Offensive. If you’ll only look at these figures...”
“Silence! Away with your casualty lists and your charts! I must ponder if this is treachery or incompetence. And away with you! Go back to the black on Amasia and hold there until I issue fresh orders. Do not speak again in my presence, lest I lose my patience and my temper, and you lose your head and titles and lands!”
Johann Oetkert bows low in kowtow, as he walks backwards to the door. He’s fearful in the royal presence. He’s a fool, but not stupid. For all that, his arrogance is contained only for the moment. It’s untrammeled because still bottomless. He can’t help himself. He’s an Oetkert. As for the kowtow, that’s a recent innovation. Takeshi Watanabe is secretly behind it, knowing that the High Castes will resent it and turn against Pyotr in part because he humiliates them in the Jade Court. The viper is starting to make his move. There’s poison in the very air around Pyotr.
Pyotr doesn’t wait. He demands answers of his generals, his wrath rising. He stands up, his stained, blue ermine robe opening for a flash moment to reveal his corpulent nakedness beneath. “You and my fool uncle cost me this many men and a full year of war production just to make another bulge in the Blue line?”
No one dares to confirm it.
Other than with their silence.
Pyotr is in one of his lethal moods.
Best let his eye fall on someone else.
Takeshi Watanabe speaks, but not to placate or persuade Pyotr. He does it to provoke. He means to pour oil not water on the fire of the fat Imperator’s wrath. There’s potential political profit in Pyotr’s rage and even more in his wrath. Time to stoke both with the anthracite of an emperor’s vanity and martial frustration.
“Sire, it’s worse than what you have lost. It’s also what you will lose.”
“Explain.”
“Your defensive lines in Central Lemuria are longer than before your generals started, and the enemy’s line is shorter than before. You bulge from the waist.”
Takeshi means the center of the black on Lemuria. Or is he teasing Pyotr for his girth? Would he dare? He would, and he does. He’s growing into power. He’s better at everything: words and plots and goads, and getting other people to do his murdering for him. Better at setting all against all. Pyotr self-consciously pulls his robe tight around his flabby vanity. He glares at Takeshi, suspicious yet seduced.
“By pushing the ACU and other Alliance back, by winning and widening this bulge in their black walls and yours, your generals commit your armies to a far weaker position than before they started.”
“How can this be? How do I lose, by winning as Uncle claims?”
“Now you must send more men to Amasia just to run-in-place, to keep what you had before your uncle attacked. More men to hold place, because you now sit in a longer frontage of black wall. More is less. Longer is not better, in this case.”
“Because my lines were straighter before, they were shorter than today? And theirs were longer and now are shorter? They have less frontage of wall to defend and therefore more men to do it, while I have more black and fewer men?”
“Yes, sire. And there’s more.”
“What more?”
“Three bulges expose your armies to potential pincer and flank attacks. There are no true flanks on Lemuria, but hinges of the salients on our side are vulnerable in the same way that you and your uncle thought the hinges at The Veranda were insecure, and attacked there.” The personal accusation is daring, and dangerous.
“Damn my uncle’s eyes! He is poison to my blood!”
The generals have to say something. They have to defend what they tried to do. Or Takeshi will take them all down, with Johann Oetkert. “We’re shifting to reinforce and compensate, but yes, it’s true what this golden boy says to you.”
“Which part?”
“For now, our three salients are at risk.”
/> “How much at risk?”
“If the Alliance had the forces to attack, it could threaten your whole position on Lemuria. They might succeed in the same thing your uncle tried and failed to do, to pinch off one or more of the salients by attacking into the hinge positions.”
Takeshi states it bluntly: “That would envelop all your armies inside the bulge, and collapse the salient like a bubble. A huge hole would open through our black walls. They could drive all the way to the coast, then turn both flanks.”
“What do you recommend I do about it, general?”
“I advise that Rikugun reinforce, while also shifting to temporary defense.”
“It took generations of your family’s service in Rikugun, a lifetime of military education, and seventy-five years in uniform to come to that conclusion?”
“Your man is also correct that we will need more men to do it, sire.”
“How many more?”
“Tens of millions, on Amasia. And there are other losses on a dozen contested worlds. We need another 200 million troops, all told. That’s close to the minimum we in RIK Main HQ estimate are needed across the spur, in the next year.”