by Kali Altsoba
No guards are outside the room. None that can be seen, in any case. “There’s no guarantee of anything, Georges. Still, it’s a tale with a small light of hope inside the wider hopelessness of this war. It’s a chance at least. An outside chance.”
Puff, puff. “I could use a little hope, Gaspard. These last few months I have felt as low as a crippled cricket’s ass. So tell me again what you hinted at a year ago, when you got back from your first grand tour of Amasia all filled with gloom. When you told me I must spend a billion of our children’s lives to win this war.”
Today is Day One. That is, officially it’s the first day of Year Five of the Orion War, as Calmari and Daurans count the months and name the conflagration that engulfs the Thousand Worlds of the Orion spur. It’s the sixth year of fighting if you’re Krevan or hail from an Imperium homeworld, where the war got started early with Pyotr’s campaign to recover the so called “Lost Children” worlds. That was right after the “Bad Camberg Incident,” as diplomats called it back then. Now everybody knows it was a false flag, black op. Doesn’t matter. This far into a war, no one gives a shit how it got started or who started it. It’s not a children’s spat.
Things have improved a lot for Alliance arms and fortunes, but there’s no end to the war in sight. No clear path to victory. Not on Amasia or in Orion. But that’s what makes this meeting different. Gaspard Leclerc has come to tell the PM a tale that just might change everything. It’s a real long shot, but still…
“When I first heard about it and hinted to you, Georges, it was no more than a tall story told in the north country on Lemuria. A tale about dogs and slaves and suicide troops, and grim Dauran generals whom we face around the Dauran Gate in the arctic north. An insight into the enemy’s mind, perhaps, as well as growing divisions between Pyotr and Jahandar, between the Imperium and Daura.”
Puff, puff. “I have been eager to hear you elaborate, ever since you hinted to me but would not say, not before returning to Amasia to confirm it. I am even more keen now that a crack has appeared in Rikugun in the deep southern cold.”
“I am ready to speak of it at last, prime minister. I believe the story I first heard on Amasia a year ago is a portent into the dim lit future of this whole war.”
Puff, puff, puff. “Well, did you confirm it? Is it true? Can we use it?”
“Yes, it’s true. And yes, we can use it. I have spoken with Generals Lian Sòng and Jan Wysocki. New weapons are being sent. Plans are already in motion.”
Briand is almost eclipsed by billows of pipe smoke that smell of hickory and hazelnut. The looming cloud envelops him like a shroud, making him look almost sinister. Maybe that befits the dark and dread things he must decide in this room, conspiring with friends and allies to commit genocide, perhaps to murder billions?
“If you see hope in this story, Gaspard, then so will I. For you left me none at all a year ago, with your warning about the cost and length of this forever war.”
“I do not regret telling you that hard truth, Georges.”
Puff, puff. “Nor do I regret hearing it, painful as it was. As it is.”
“We understand each other, then.”
“Yes. Now, quickly. Who told you this tale?”
“I heard it from a master gunner in the north country. Did I tell you I brevet promoted him to captain? It was during my first visit to Amasia, my original tour of the north, the tundra zone around the Dauran Gate. No? Well, we were drinking coffee and rum in a bunker, the gunner and I. It was less than an hour after a brutal popov attack on his rapido position. Ummm, I happened to witness the attack.”
Puff, puff, puff. “I told you to stay away from the frontlines, Gaspard, after that nasty business on Plzeň where you lost your ADC and almost lost your life. Did you disobey my direct order to stay away from the fighting on Amasia?”
“Yes, my old friend. It was necessary.”
Puff, puff. “It always is, with you. Pour us another scotch, will you?”
Gaspard pours three fingers of the golden liquid into two crystal glasses. He hands one to Georges. “Alright? May I proceed, prime minister?”
Puff, puff. “By all means.”
“I’ve been back to Amasia several times, as you know. I went to consult our old friend, Lian Sòng. But I also wanted to see Sergei Kornilov, head of her MI.”
Puff, puff, puff. “And? What did he say?”
“Georges, I think we finally have something.”
Puff, puff, puff, puff. “Well, for the gods’ sake man, out with it!”
He’s like an angry little steam engine, going around and around in futile, white circles. It’s all Gaspard Leclerc can do not to laugh. He’s secretly enjoying the PM’s tension too much to relieve it just yet. Knowing that Georges Briand can’t in principle object to any man’s pleasure in good scotch, and this is the best there is, he slowly raises his heavy crystal and takes a languid, deliberately slow sip.
“Well Georges, it seems that General Royko had this black bitch. It’s the one creature he showed any affection or kindness to, if those are words that ever can be applied to that fat butcher. Anyway, Royko ordered his men to take the dog...”
Appendix A
Alliance Military Intelligence: Amasia Joint Intel Report #324785
Classification: Declassified, submitted for general distribution
Topic: Rikugun morale, Amasia
Primary source: Yuki Hoth (deceased)
Locale acquired: Austral Front, Mountain 375 (aka Mount Sheol)
War Date acquired: Year Four, Month Ten, Day Nine
Orion Dating System: Year 4275 C.E. Month Two, Day Seven
Report contents: Rikugun diary, fragmentary notes
Initial intelligence assessment: Army of the Calmar Union, MI New Beijing
Supplemental assessments: KRA Special Branch, Krevan Republic Base, Harsa
Supplemental assessment: MoD Tower #6 (CIS), Lowestoft-on-Stamos, Caspia
Declassification override: Major General Jan Wysocki, Allied War Council
Additional override: Office of the Prime Minister, Calmar Union
For public distribution as War Notes
of Sanctus Simplicimus (Yuki Hoth, RIK)
Commentary by Major General Jan Wysocki, Allied War Council
Additional notes by “Mother Duck” (RIK prisoner, name withheld).
Transcript excerpt #702.
Original title: Universal Soldier
I fought hard and died well at Ulysses’ Troy camp,
faced wild Gauls and blue Celts at Caesar’s right side.
I lay prone, bodkin-pierced, in Agincourt’s damp.
I galloped lush steppes on the Mongols’ long ride.
From warhorse and camel I spat holy war,
a ghastly ghazi riding out from Arabian sands.
Then I rode from the West in armor and gore,
to build stone castles in bleak Crusader lands.
Divine Wind ripped my sails off shores of Japan,
spun my fragile Junk with a twisting, black sky.
Gales of god’s breath, a steel sword in two hands.
Then my head held on high by a dread samurai.
I rowed in iron chains to contest Turkish oars
when a bombard raked over my prow. I drowned
in warm, shallow green off the Sultan’s far shores.
My bones lie fish picked. My god’s barnacle crowned.
I whooped when I fought at red Wounded Knee
where soldiers blue killed my son and my wife.
They shot me down, too, but one knew it was me
took his scalp. Snick! He squealed under my knife.
I was speared at Rorke’s Drift by a fierce Zulu brave,
cut down a Prussian hussar at sloped Waterloo.
I heard ‘Taps’ playing o’er my fresh Rebel grave,
lie still on gray bottoms with a dead U-boat crew.
I rose out of thick mud, walked just shoulders apart
across the rat-a-
tat Somme. I was gassed at Verdun
and tree-burst in Ardennes, yet I held my rampart
against bold feldgrau men. I shot four with my gun.
I banzai charged the Chinese atop Hill Sixteen,
cut down Cossacks before Mukden’s Old Gate.
I raped and I slew for seven weeks in Nanjing.
Twin sunrises back home mushroomed my fate.
I walked Warsaw's high wall, herded old ghetto Jews,
caught a girl hiding inside Holland's breached dike.
I lit Teutonic skies with my bomber’s orange hues,
dropped righteous justice below, onto all heads alike.
I ate hardtack and spam and served old Uncle Sam
in war after war after war. Then I tried to go home.
But you can’t, not all the way. Not from the ‘Nam.
So I re-upped, like a sick dog returns to his bone.
I drove heavy tan tanks, steered lethal smart glides
down onto Damascus, across dead Galilee’s sands.
I built big roadside bombs and sent young suicides
to rip apart bodies, as sweet Allah commands.
I flew o’er alpine valleys red with bright poppies,
but not the fake kind that you wear to Remember.
Opium blooms bought me more guns and jalopies
each fighting season, open from May to November.
I fought on the Moon over dry craters and dust
and vacuum fortunes of miners. Earth was aglow,
changing greens into browns, blue skies into rust.
White glaciers all melted beneath my black snow.
I took lasers on warships past Jovian moons,
dislodged nudgers, hurtled rock-comets of war.
I brought death to dead stars in sealed DNA jars.
Yet always, always you asked: ‘Can’t you do more?’
I cried Havoc! in service to false prophesies
by crooked masters circling a hundred dark suns;
cold lechers who forced slave girls to hinged knees,
made the two backed beast and more bastard sons.
I fought on God’s side in the Order’s just wars,
killed women, slew children for them and for you.
My warship scoured Heavens from near to far bohrs,
made fresh Hells below, strange Earths overflew.
I left a wife behind, orphaned a child. They’re gone,
maybe killed, I don't know. I can't see their faces,
blurred to grey shade and shadows, after so long.
Might-have-been ghosts haunt all my old places.
I donned coats blue and grey, black, yellow and green.
My oath and my fealty I sold, for just a small fee.
You took your coat back when war’s color scheme
draped me in crimson. Red is the hue best suits me.
I’m your Universal Soldier. I’ll wear any weave,
serve anyone’s cause or ideals. Wars new and bold
I’ll attend. I’ll go anywhere, make anyone grieve.
My thin pity’s for sale, my cruel mercy’s all sold.
I’m your pretense revealed, your last envy in jade.
You train me in hate, say who to kill and to bleed.
‘Why?’ is not my department. It’s just how I’m made,
when you fight over race, pride, nation, or creed.
Forget that I’m dead, don’t feel quite so queer
when you say ‘it’s time to move on from the war.’
I’m wrapped in white linen, a shroud I bought dear.
My name it’s in brass. Go! Slip out the kirk’s door.
In a warm jar I shall wait, or lie cold in wet clay,
as dead gods make more mother’s sons into slurry.
My ripe brothers in worms have just one thing to say:
‘Move over a bit! They’re bringing more boys to bury.’
Appendix B
Rikugun ranks followed Broderbund practice until the end of the First Orion War, which is to say there were no graduated officer ranks. All commanders were called ‘Brothers’ or ‘Knights’ and were theoretically equal in the eyes of God and in the Army of the Black Faith. ‘Soldiers of God’ were classed as either infantry (landser) or cloned military slaves (dāsa). Rikugun no longer uses slave soldiers. The term landser survives but not dāsa, except in Broderbund private regiments.
Imperium armies adopted the designation ‘Rikugun’ after the First Orion War, upon martial union of the Oetkert-Shaka line and the Jade Throne with the elites of Nagoya and Yokohama. By the time of the Second Orion War, all officer ranks were Nagoyan in derivation. They remain so today.
Rikugun (Imperial Army) ranks
chūjōlieutenant general
shōshōmajor general
taishō general
taisacolonel
chūsalieutenant colonel
shōsa major
taii captain
chūi 1st lieutenant
shōi 2nd lieutenant
gunsō sergeant
gochō corporal
jōtōhei senior private
nitōhei private/recruit
landser basic infantry
dāsaslave soldiers
Special Action Commando (SAC)
SAC uses same rank structure as Rikugun
Sakura-kai (Cherry Blossoms Society)
politruks political officers (non-military
The Story Continues In
Assassin
Volume VII
The Orion War
Sample
“These well-intentioned fools will only make Pyotr reinforce his palace security fourfold! Wine bombs and grenades! Such idiocy!”
Field Marshall Onur slams his small fist down hard on his teak desk when he hears the news about the drunk frag attack and executions. He glares at the bad news bearer, his aide-de-camp, Major Oscar Winter.
“We can’t afford to have any more of these buckaroo fiascos!”
“With Pyotr’s security precautions sure to increase, we have no choice, sir. We must draw in the horns of our conspiracy, tighten all coms networks and shrink overlapping circles of those in the know.”
“Agreed. But more importantly, we need to shift our basic strategy now.”
“Shift, sir? How so?”
“Instead of asking reluctant RIK generals and Kaigun admirals to make a coup before the death of the emperor to whom they swore a loyalty oath, we need to kill Pyotr first and foremost and proceed from there.”
“It was always one or the other, sir.”
“Major, if we can find a way to confront military leaders in the field with a fait accompli of the Imperator’s death, then I’ll give the coup order. We won’t wait for Pyotr to further foul this war. Let’s see if we can’t kill him at the start, and use his death to push the pace and win through.”
“I agree, sir. But it’s risky. Many won’t be happy with the change.”
“They’ll just have to come around. We have to hope most of our people will hear the news of Pyotr’s death and, without waiting for my orders, instantly turn their guns on the right targets.”
“You’re asking senior officers to essentially act on their own, outside bohr coms, wherever they find themselves when they hear the news. You think they will act without knowing if they’re supported here in Novaya Uda by us?”
“There are many good officers out there. I have to believe that. They’ll put down SAC and Sakura-kai wherever they find the gray rats. I know they will. They are men of honor! One way or the other, we’ll know when Pyotr is dead.”
“Maybe. I hope so, sir. But how can he be killed? We have plenty of willing assassins, including some who are ready to die in the act. I myself would do it. But how? How, sir?”
“To kill this fat Tennō we must encircle his court with power gathered right here, at the center of the Imperium in its capital, Novaya Uda. We need senior military men who command troops loyal to us who will be ready to
fire on his palace guards. If they’ll agree to do it, we must all take our chances.”
“General McAuley, sir. He’s your man. But now he’ll have to deal with the whole Eagle Corps, four regiments of Washi, not just the dwarf guards. After the grenade fiasco, Pyotr is sure to bring the whole Palast Wache onto the main grounds. They’ll be barracked inside the perimeter.”
“Not even McAuley has the forces needed to do it. We’re outnumbered on Kestino. With the war underway, even elevator platforms are chock with troops. The best we can do is keep as many Resistance forces as we can muster within a few hours of Kestino, one or two bohr jumps away at most.”
“That will leave us open and vulnerable to a countercoup, in the opening hours of fighting here in the capital.”