Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

by Carlo Zen

  Even if you don’t want to be conscious of your relationship with Supreme High Command and its demand for quick victories, if you work in Operations, you have to be. Resources are finite. That’s why we must stop using them. But the necessary resources have dried up.

  Both generals are right, which is why it’s such a frustrating issue.

  “…What a morass,” I mumble in spite of myself. I’m seized by the urge to cradle my head and scream.

  And Colonel Uger, who left with a wordless nod, must have understood how I felt: How did this happen?

  AUGUST 30, UNIFIED YEAR 1926, THE SALIENT ON THE EASTERN FRONT

  And so…

  If we’re going to tell this story in a somewhat logical order…

  The Salamander Kampfgruppe under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff has safely deployed to a little salient no one but historians will ever take any interest in.

  The unit has nonstandard combat capabilities for its size. But it should probably be clearly stated…though it boasts armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and an outstanding aerial mage unit, it’s still a Kampfgruppe by nature, a force that was thrown together on short notice.

  When it comes to securing a bulge indefinitely, this Kampfgruppe with its limited infantry strength is destined to fail.

  “…It’s the same dilemma.”

  Though they’re defending a base, Tanya is compelled by necessity to opt for an aggressive mobile battle. They don’t have enough men to only play defense.

  Not that they have any extra hands for attacking and securing strategic locations.

  “If we leave some troops each time we seize a new position, we’ll end up completely spread out. Splitting up is out of the question when the front is already so massive. We can’t let our already slim forces get picked off unit by unit.”

  The Imperial Army’s experience on the eastern front is perfectly represented in miniature right here.

  Our experiment might as well be called Operation Canary. Of course, officially, it’s Research into the Usage of Kampfgruppen for Base Defense Tactics in Combat—a plausible excuse.

  It’s so unproductive, but apparently the General Staff must run an experiment on holding a massive front with a limited number of troops.

  And that’s why we’re still out here killing one another. In the history books, the lull on the main lines will be depicted as a stationary period, but that has nothing to do with us. And certainly, if neither the Empire nor the Federation is carrying out corps-size operations, then it’s correct in a big-picture way to say that it’s all quiet on the eastern front.

  But that’s not quite right, she mentally adds with a sigh.

  Just because a battle wasn’t worth covering in a textbook didn’t mean it was all nice and clean.

  “Start the mop-up and make sure to get the rest of them! Be careful!”

  The commanders barking orders all have their guns at the ready, vigilantly searching.

  They’re not out enjoying the autumn season but stabbing freshly harvested bales of hay with their bayonets and checking houses for hiding enemy soldiers. Will this moment make it into the history books?

  “Here’s one! Don’t let him get away!”

  “Grab him! We’ll make him give up the names of everyone he was working with!”

  After a few shouts back and forth as well as some curses, I hear several gunshots and then silence. Sounds like they didn’t manage to take him alive.

  I told them to capture enemies because we want to gather intelligence, but…I guess for the troops of my Kampfgruppe, taking an opponent alive in a life-and-death battle is a pretty tall order…

  …Or perhaps the first issue to complain about is how our enemies aren’t people we can take prisoner?

  Most of the enemies we encounter are irregular militia, which I’m so familiar with that I’m sick of them. Since they aren’t officially soldiers, they have no right to be taken prisoner. According to the laws governing war, these bands of rabble who don’t make their alliance clear don’t have the right of belligerence.

  Of course, I wonder how effectively enforced the law of war is. Still, having a good chance of being killed and definitely being killed are two different things.

  If your opponent knows death is certain, that makes their counterattacks even more desperate. There’s something wrong with the status quo of kill or be killed…but the fact that we can’t do anything about it makes it worse.

  “It’s sad, but it’s only one part of this war of attrition. At this rate…our troops really will melt away.” Tanya grumbles as she glances around like a vigilant commander should…

  And off in front of her, she witnesses her men swinging shovels down on the body of an enemy soldier to make sure he’s dead.

  Even the ones who hesitated when they first arrived on the eastern front are now merciless servants of efficiency and certainty. When Tanya forced them through the experience of gruesome irregular warfare…they adapted in no time.

  It’s been only two days since we were stationed on the salient.

  The troops are more comfortable now with the shift from tidy battles fought between regular military forces to the muck of unconventional warfare. Or perhaps we should get philosophical and say they were forced to change?

  Because we have to is a phrase that causes abrupt transformations in humans.

  I mean, not a day goes by that we don’t get attacked. Federation commando units started becoming very active right as we took up our positions. The prospects for this cleanup operation are awfully gloomy.

  The Salamander Kampfgruppe was originally formed to fight mobile battles. We’re not at all suited to this sort of counterinsurgency mission.

  To speak in extremes, it’s like sending cavalry to take on a fortress.

  “Colonel, we’ve finished eliminating them!”

  “Were there any enemy mages?”

  “Not that we saw. I think it was mainly a guerrilla force made up of militia.”

  Tanya nods to convey her understanding. Inside she feels like things are not going well.

  If it were regular forces against regular forces, they would be ready anytime. At least, her Salamander Kampfgruppe can kick the ass of an equally sized Federation unit with no problem.

  But Tanya’s frustration lies elsewhere. Really, all that her unit should be used for is kicking ass. They don’t have the manpower to secure an area by combing it for resistance fighters and plucking each partisan out.

  There isn’t enough infantry. Failure is virtually inescapable.

  “We have to avoid this swamp at all costs…”

  But how? Even the General Staff is still looking for the answer! This is what you call answering your own question.

  Tanya—no, even the other staff officers are aware of the issue. Everyone understands where the problem is, but figuring out what to prescribe for it is proving difficult.

  Taking time to organize their thoughts would be a profligate luxury.

  You can’t simply take your time in a guerrilla fight, because any visitors you receive will be sudden.

  The transmissions that come to us never take our schedule into consideration.

  “Salamander 05 to 01. A new enemy’s shown up!”

  First Lieutenant Grantz, who I have on guard, delivers a report that contains the word enemy.

  Those five little letters force my brain to change gears. To protect my peace-loving self’s personal safety, I have to be fully prepared to face the enemy threatening it.

  “Unverified hostile mage unit approaching from the northeast. There are…four of them. And I guess…they’re flying NOE?”

  “Salamander 01, copy. 05, nice work. Those must be their hotshots. I’ll head over, so if you’re racking up points, I hope you’ll leave me my share.”

  My Kampfgruppe is spread out, sweeping for any remaining enemies.

  They must have been aiming for this. They waited until my troops committed their attention
to the ground battle to send aerial mages on a hit-and-run strike out of the sky.

  It’s a textbook approach, rigidly faithful to theory. That’s how I know it’s their main objective. For better or worse, it’s easy to understand.

  “Oh,” Tanya continues as if she had forgotten to mention something. “I wanted to warn you, 05. Make sure your reports are accurate. Are they flying NOE or not?”

  “05 to 01. Apologies. But it’s less like they’re flying and more like they’re trying to imitate ducks in the air…”

  “01 to 05. Now you’re talking. Ducks?”

  Hmm. I wonder what he might mean as I fly. Increasing my altitude, I take out my binoculars and begin scanning the direction Lieutenant Grantz said the enemy is coming from.

  “Yes, ducks! It would be easiest for you to just see them yourself… But the way they’re moving is not so much contour flight as it is level flight. We can aim at them from our position right now. How should I explain this…? It’s like they have their hands full simply flying so they forgot to keep an eye out for threats above them.”

  “Ah, I spotted them… Fine, do it.”

  When I finally see it for myself…I understand that Lieutenant Grantz’s description is apt.

  Through my binoculars, I see unsteady Federation mages struggling to maintain their erratic path through the air. I’d be hard-pressed to call them aerial mages if that’s the state they’re in. They aren’t flying through the sky as much as drowning in it.

  “…I never thought we’d encounter an enemy who can barely stay in the air.”

  Back on the Rhine front, I would have thought any mages seeming so preoccupied by basic flight were a ruse. I might have shouted back at Grantz, Take a closer look! At least, I never would have imagined that these four mages were the enemy’s main attacking force.

  I would have thought it was a harassment attack to dull our edge before a major offensive or possibly a simple feint. Both the Rhine front and the eastern front feature cheap trick after cheap trick, so the fog of war is thick as ever.

  But on the eastern front, the rules are a bit different.

  The enemy is waiting for the Imperial Army to exhaust itself and collapse.

  I mean, come on, Tanya thinks while looking up at the company flying above her. Being on guard against enemy approaches and maintaining company-strength forces in the air as cover twenty-four hours a day is tiring.

  And after all that effort, our opponents are…four enemy mages who can barely fly.

  “The defending side can’t know when or from where the enemy will appear, but there’s not anything we can do about that… This’ll be rough.”

  “Without a doubt. But our respective attrition rates are very different. We’ve done a great job so far, so I’m sure we’ll be able to keep it up.”

  Tanya breaks into a smile at Major Weiss’s comments.

  Then, as if to back up that confident declaration, the troops who had gone out to attack unleashed a company’s worth of disciplined fire.

  Lieutenant Grantz was in command.

  “Now, let’s see how skilled they are.”

  Tanya wonders what would happen if they missed…but she doesn’t consider it a necessary worry. She’s been with these men since the Rhine.

  I’m not so thickheaded that I’m oblivious to the improvement of my subordinates. Even Grantz, who used to always make me worry, has made progress.

  War is a lousy experience. But…live combat does make a person grow. The men and officers under me who have gained experience, endured trials, and put their abilities on display are true assets.

  I invested in Grantz’s human capital and trained him. Now his skill is worthy of being praised as professional.

  He discovered this pseudo-NOE flying platoon at what was something approaching ultra–long range, then shot them down from a considerable distance.

  “Marvelous. All threats are confirmed down.”

  New recruits who I initially find to not be of much use rapidly gain experience in the field, and their abilities blossom.

  …Even if it’s difficult to call the skills involved in waging war “productive,” I have to hand it to them for their earnest attitude toward getting better at their jobs.

  “That’s four joint scores. At this rate, nothing will remain of the current Named system by the end of the fighting on the eastern front. I mean, the way we’re going, we’ll be mass-producing Nameds.”

  “Ha-ha-ha! But that said, I doubt the alias White Silver will ever be overshadowed!”

  “Hmm, I wonder.”

  I can’t say this to Weiss, but his comments assume that the Empire wins the war. From his perspective, perhaps that’s accurate.

  But Tanya has to wince at her own position. Maybe other people can believe in the Empire’s victory, holding faith like an innocent maiden in love, but she’s different.

  Tanya gazes into the clear blue sky and sighs. A hundred or a thousand years ago, or a hundred or a thousand years from now, the sky probably has and always will be the same.

  A universal constant of nature. Staying as it is.

  I’m so envious of the sky.

  Though it’s uncertain whether the Empire will be around for a thousand years or not, the sky will abide at its leisure. Will the Empire still exist after the fighting on the eastern front ends? That is where Tanya’s true worries lie, so of course she is apt to look up in envy.

  I don’t want to pity myself, but what a miserable situation I’m in.

  Still, I should prioritize the work in front of me over my existential woes.

  “Salamander 01 to all units. It seems like the fighting has cooled down. Begin recovering our injured and searching for enemies to take prisoner.”

  The army’s work isn’t done just because it repelled the enemy attack. It’s more like a party, in that cleaning up afterward is the hardest part.

  If you can’t feel lucky for having to worry about cleaning up, you can’t keep going. Regrets and reflections are privileges of the living. If you die, there’s no nothing.

  “Second Company, stand by for rapid response. Third and Fourth Companies, keep patrolling the warning line. I’m putting 02 in command of the warning line.”

  “02, roger. Leave it to me.”

  “Great.”

  Now then, even after entrusting some of the necessary tasks to Weiss, there are still way too many approvals and various decisions to make.

  If one of my troops dies, I have to send a letter of condolence to the rear. Naturally, it’s stipulated that we have to write to the bereaved family in a considerate way. If it’s too perfunctory, Personnel will complain in a way that affects our performance evaluations, so we can’t just phone it in. They even recommend that we send notes about injuries.

  When your human capital decreases and your workload increases, you start to really abhor the deaths of your subordinates, whether in battle or of illness, and even their injuries.

  Purely in terms of market principle, there can’t be many occupations more peace loving than that of the soldier.

  Ahhh, damn it, Tanya curses mentally. But the job has to be done. Therefore, in order to fulfill her duties, Lieutenant Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff faces her pen and ink and boldly begins to tackle the hopeless amount of work she has to do.

  I should place faith in my work ethic and the coffee beans I received.

  That said, given the fact that my consumption is increasing exponentially and our supply of coffee beans is unstable, my worries about the overall supply situation are headache inducing.

  Having our supplies cut off would be horrible.

  No, thinks Tanya, stopping her pen. She reconfirms their connection to the rear.

  Colonel Uger promised that even if we can’t expect any extra supplies, he would maintain the existing supply lines. It’s probably safe to look forward to a periodic delivery of coffee beans.

  “Ah, caffeine. No one has ever claimed victory after their supply of it was cut off�
� So I guess that means if the Empire can provide such luxury goods to the front lines, it still has some fight left in it?”

  If you look at the history of coffee, it’s clearly a luxury item.

  Cultivated by human hands as a commercial crop, according to humanity’s tastes, it’s delivered to places far from its origin. At the foundation of this system is an extraordinary logistic network that allows for stable distribution.

  I suppose that’s significant…

  The fact that Uger says he can maintain distribution proves the system’s greatness. If the organization is still holding together, then the Empire has a chance at victory.

  While she was applying herself to her work, thinking those things, the sun set.

  “Sheesh, management is a pain. It may be discretionary labor, but I don’t really…”

  Tanya intended to finish her sentence with get much discretion, but her grumble is interrupted by the awfully familiar sound of gunfire followed by multiple explosions.

  …Honestly, it makes me want to complain.

  The Federation Army is truly violent toward the silent veil of night.

  “The first report is in! Several shots and explosions echoing from a nearby settlement! The patrol discovered the Federation’s regularly scheduled attackers and has engaged! All units are currently repelling the attack!”

  Upon receiving the report from Lieutenant Serebryakov, who is on duty, Tanya gets up with visible aggravation. These guys don’t know how to properly enjoy an autumn evening.

  “Geez, these guys work too hard. Do they have no concept of labor laws?”

  “It doesn’t seem like it, Colonel. We might end up getting used to all this.”

  “Absolutely. We should lament our misfortune of acclimating to this nastiness.”

  Once something is familiar, it’s not as hard to handle. But that comes with the caveat that it’s difficult to be genuinely happy about getting used to it. Poking my head into the command post, I see that the enemies are moving in the same manner as usual.