by Carlo Zen
Oh. Tanya remembers she needs to thank her subordinates.
“Major Weiss, Lieutenant Wüstemann. Nice work, both of you. Lieutenant, you look too tired to even open your mouth. You can return to base and rest with your troops.”
“…Yes, ma’am. If you’ll excuse us.”
Tanya expresses her gratitude to Wüstemann and has him fall back to the rear, then rejoins Weiss’s unit to transition them to aerial patrol. Once they confirm the enemy isn’t preparing a follow-up attack, then it’ll be time to land and have the troops take a light nap. If the chance presents itself, I’ll take one, too.
That’s my mindset as we cruise in the air. In this state, Tanya naturally finds herself flying alongside Weiss and asking his opinion on the fight that just ended. The perception they share is that their opponent was unexpectedly formidable. Not only their discipline but even their coordination was incomparable to those of previous Federation mages we’ve faced before.
I wonder woefully how long we’ll have to keep fighting these guys. And then there’s Zettour with his unreasonable orders, drawing away one of her companies right as the fighting gets tough.
“…This new opponent’s a troublesome one.”
“They sure are. But wow, what were those numbskulls in the air fleet talking about? ‘No need to worry about air superiority!’ Those mages were even cooperating closely with fighter planes! What the hell is going on?”
“Calm down,” Tanya reproves him. Actually, not everyone in the world loves war so much that they get giddy at the thought of it. If the air fleet had been napping while we were getting dogged by machine gun fire, I might have agreed with him. But that doesn’t match up with reality.
“You know, enemy aerial support was technically cut off, Major.”
Our fleet wasn’t providing direct fire support, but the enemy air force wasn’t flying however they pleased, either. So in the end…our allies did their jobs perfectly, depending on how you look at it.
Even if 100 percent isn’t possible, if they did 90 percent of what was required of them, then we have to admit they performed adequately. Overemphasizing perfection leads straight to unpaid overtime and harsh labor conditions.
On that point, the air force delivered on what they promised. It may be difficult for hot-blooded Weiss to comprehend, but frontline units are not the only ones who have to make the best of the circumstances they’re in.
“Consider how our aerial patrols can afford to be so lax because our forces are constantly fighting for control of the sky and working hard to force the enemy out of it. We’re lucky we don’t have to worry about securing our airspace. Thanks to that”—Tanya smirks at the enemy position below—“even if we have to pay attention…at least we can just focus on what’s at our altitude.”
“You say that, ma’am, but it’s gotten harder to use altitude to our advantage…”
“I agree. And I’m sure that’s the enemy’s intention… Would you look at that? Speak of the devil.”
Straight ahead are what look like grains of rice. Though the enemy mages have retreated, they haven’t stopped watching us. How much easier this would be if we could just squash them like little bits of rice.
“…Wow. They’re even kind enough to leave their signals on.”
Of course, given the strength of the mana signatures, they’re probably meant to function as a warning to us. If they bathe you in them twenty-four seven as if they’re proud of them, you have no choice but to notice.
“They say being self-conscious is the realm of the teenager, but when the enemy boasts about their presence to this extent, it makes me feel like they have something against me personally.”
“The Federation Army must have some heroes if someone over there is trying to get you to notice them.”
“What’s that?” Tanya rolls her eyes and glares at her vice commander, but…the effect is not exactly pronounced.
Is it because she’s not tall enough? She may be the boss, but perhaps there are limits to how much she can intimidate her subordinates.
Then her bold adjutant floats over to join them. “Wouldn’t they have to be heroes to top all heroes?”
Serebryakov enters the conversation with a smirk—she’s sure gotten cheeky. But hold on. If I think back on it, I get the feeling she’s been quite consistent since the Rhine. Trying to remember how things were back then, Tanya shoots back with a wry smile, “Troops, do you know what the destiny of heroes is?” It’s just goofy chitchat. I shouldn’t put too much thought into it. “Heroes—without fail—die. So there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen now. We’ll end the legend of the Federation Army’s heroes right here!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha.” The three officers laugh together, dispelling the weighty gloom. It’s good to not dwell on the rough fight we just had, and this way, we stay determined. It’s a good chance to switch gears.
“But they weren’t fooling around out there. I have to admit, they have skills. Weiss, what did you think?”
“I’m with you. Their tactics, coordination, and skills were all at practically the same level as ours.”
“This is the biggest pain in the ass. Between the new orb model and these new guys, all our strengths are… Hmm?”
“Colonel?” Weiss asks, “What is it?”
Tanya points to some enemies and murmurs in reply: “That.”
As she’s pointing them out to her vice commander and adjutant, she tries to identify them from their uniforms.
“…It seems like someone familiar is joining up with them… Are their signals in the library? That’s definitely not a Federation unit. Who are they?”
A glance at the vice commander makes it clear he doesn’t know. Well, when it comes to languages and intel, neither Weiss nor Tanya can beat Serebryakov. Both their gazes naturally fall on the linguistically talented adjutant.
“Probably Commonwealth? No, one moment, please. I’ll try intercepting their signal.”
“Did you figure it out?” Tanya presses her.
After listening in for a little while, she gives her conclusion. “…It’s a mix of the official languages of the Commonwealth and Entente Alliance.”
Ahhh. That’s when it hits Tanya. She remembers who this could be.
“The rumored voluntary army? Or some remnants of the regular army? I don’t know which, but either way, I wish they were a little lazier. Why did they come all the way out here to the eastern front?”
War isn’t something you participate in for your health, so why pay your own way out to a remote place like this? Are they that addicted to battle? It’s not a sentiment someone with common sense can understand.
Going along with them would entail only unpaid overtime for the body and mind.
“If there’s no movement, we’ll fall back by group. It’s absurd to waste our strength staying in the air.”
Though Tanya talks about pulling out, as long as enemies stick around, withdrawing won’t be so easy. At the same time, continuing the confrontation is an exercise in futility.
It’s a staring contest where we can only watch helplessly as time passes. Ultimately, we stay in the sky for a while, and both sides eventually fall back only after maintaining this standoff for several hours. It’s a confrontation that tires everyone out for no reason at all—if the enemy’s aim was to exhaust us, they have without a doubt succeeded. There’s no point in grumbling that it should have been the amateur Federation side who dropped out first.
Landing and tumbling into her semi-submerged room that apparently used to be a storehouse, Tanya takes up her pen to write her report before she forgets what happened.
If the combat they just experienced is going to be the new standard, the Imperial Army urgently needs a plan to handle it.
The final report is pessimistic even for me.
The qualitative improvement of the Federation’s mages will tighten the noose around the Imperial Army’s neck. If the Empire loses its edge in the aerial mage realm, where in the world wi
ll it be able to make that up?
Reading it over, Tanya sighs. “…Still, there’s not even a guarantee anyone will read this seriously.”
The Imperial Army’s culture allows relatively open communication, but for better or worse, it’s also a military organization that closely follows doctrine and its own preconceptions. Just because I sound the alarm about the dramatic improvement in the quality of Federation troops doesn’t mean anyone will take it at face value.
The higher-ups will probably be wary or pay attention.
But I can easily imagine a future where they understand with their brains and that’s all; they probably won’t be capable of feeling how serious the situation is.
That’s how much Tanya’s report is at odds with the prevailing common sense.
I’m the one who wrote it, but even I can hardly believe it. If not for the fact that Tanya personally witnessed it in battle, reading that the threat of Federation aerial mages has rapidly increased would just seem like a mere rhetorical flourish. No one will read this and immediately believe it—virtually everyone will scoff that she’s overreacting.
“Argh, how can I explain it?”
Conveying things to other people seems simple but is actually quite difficult. You can write down the truth and call it a factual report, but it takes some finessing to actually get your message across.
Make your point clear, keep your audience in mind, and adhere to an intuitive structure.
“Always easier said than done… This is such a pain. Haaah…” Tanya sighs and takes up her pen again.
Compared to when we burned Moskva, yes, they do have more troops. But improving their quality is in a completely different universe compared to simply having more. If you could immediately get the fighting power of a bunch of veterans by just hiring a slew of part-timers, the word education would have to go straight into the trash. In reality, the importance of education has only increased.
And yet the improvement in discipline the Federation aerial mage units have showed is remarkable—like an unnatural burst of instant fighting power. If that doesn’t come across properly in Tanya’s report, it’ll be taken too lightly.
Pointing out the issue isn’t so difficult—it’s what comes after that’s the challenge.
“This is what it means for something to be illogical,” Tanya murmurs and begins to review the situation. While gnawing on a military-issue high-calorie chocolate bar, she reads over the reports from each company.
The only commonality she finds among them is the comment that they fought on an equal level with the Federation troops or were slightly superior. Try as she might, she can’t locate the key to understanding the phenomenon.
Is it just my imagination?
“That can’t be. No matter what lies I tell myself, no matter how I try to gloss it over, the only conclusion I can draw is that the enemy has dramatically reduced their vulnerabilities.” Grumbling, she tosses the half-written report into the trash can.
A report requires a concise conclusion. Reporting to her superiors that the Federation units have better discipline now for reasons unknown would only be an admission of ineptitude.
And even worse, this is a job that’s been entrusted to her. In the worst case, if she could at least take personal responsibility for everything, things would be less complicated. As long as she was prepared to accept the consequences, she could still send it without too much worry.
But this is an official report from the Lergen Kampfgruppe to the General Staff submitted under Colonel von Lergen’s name. Screwing up here would mean dragging his name through the mud.
Surely, there’s no better way to brazenly harm someone’s career than to cause discord between them and their team. And if the bit about using his name ever came out…the aftermath would be unspeakably awful.
“But what am I supposed to do, then…?”
Turning her attention back to drafting seriously, Tanya begins to get frustrated and grips her stomach as she moans. How should I write this?
There isn’t enough information to properly analyze the situation. Conveying only the fact that the quality of the Federation troops has improved and leaving the interpretation up to her superiors would be one way of doing it, but…nothing short of Tanya’s best will do.
When you’re feeling lost, it’s time to go back to basics.
“Let’s review the current enemy situation. All I know is that they’ve dramatically improved, but…what is this weird feeling?”
It’s precisely because Tanya whipped the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion into shape within a month that she knows this level of change is impossible.
Having abused the limits of humanity—or rather, the limits of the limits—Tanya knows that, frankly, qualitative improvements to aerial mage units aren’t easy to come by in periods of weeks or months.
Even with the selection process based on which active-duty officers seemed to have the basics down, and even after the live-fire exercise in Dacia, she still had some concerns about discipline.
The concept is even easier to grasp when looking at Wüstemann’s company.
Despite giving the earnest, young, inexperienced officer on-the-job training on the eastern lines, he’s far from being on Ahrens’s or Meybert’s level; he might not even match up to Tospan.
The fundamentals make that much difference.
Taking someone from .5 to 1 and taking someone from 0 to 1 are worlds apart.
“…The Federation’s progress is too fast.”
As someone with her own views on education, Tanya has little choice but to question the dramatic change in quality. “Could an overhaul of their system really have had such a pronounced effect?”
It’s a little strange for her to say so, but systemic reform can’t happen overnight—even if we assume the Federation has become a more independent organization of military specialists unconcerned with political circumstances. There are limits to what’s possible.
Improving how units operate isn’t the same as improving their skills.
Logically, it’s understandable how perfectly utilizing weak soldiers can allow the enemy to pose a real threat. There’s even the classic metaphor of how a flock of sheep led by a wolf is more dangerous than a pack of wolves led by a sheep.
But then Tanya smiles wryly.
“If a company could bounce into the black tomorrow simply by changing one top executive, no one would have any problems. Or maybe that’s a bit of an extreme comparison?”
The wolf leading the sheep still only has sheep to fight with. Certainly, it’s helpful to train sheep into wolves.
But that process isn’t as simple as heating up instant food.
Education takes manpower. Even on-the-job training requires an instructor. Just leading Wüstemann around is already exhausting.
Learning by doing without an instructor may involve less effort, but it must take a stupid amount of time.
“Something’s different. What is it? How did they improve so dramatically?”
It’s because I have experience working human resources that Tanya can’t help but act suspicious.
There’s a contradiction here. The strength of the Federation’s aerial mage forces has jumped, but results aside, I can’t tell how it happened.
Employment, I can explain.
If it’s just about getting the critical magic personnel together, they can probably reach head count by drafting every single person who shows the aptitude. Expanding the scope of the draft means recruiting more.
But how exactly has the Federation overcome the issues of teaching staff and time? Recruiting, education, and management are the pillars of human resources; I’ve never seen a new recruit who doesn’t require training. A combat-ready rookie is either a fantasy or a rare exception.
Planning your human resources according to that would be going against statistics—i.e., idiotic.
“…I’m fairly sure the Federation doesn’t have the surplus that would afford them a bevy of instruct
ors. Their army was incapable of operating systematically before. Where did they find so many key personnel?”
Comparing the Federation aerial mage forces to the other arms of the Federation military reveals a striking weakness. They must be training up mages at this very moment. If the foundation is fragile, then it’s natural to assume that the talent pool they’re drawing from is thin as well.
“Isn’t that a contradiction? Still, it’s consistent…”
To use the metaphor of a company to describe the Federation military, they’ve simply inflated their employee count by hiring lots of new grads. Liars are the only ones with the patent for thinking they can still conduct business smoothly like that.
Of course, experience in the real world is a great teacher.
I do recognize that soldiers fighting on the front lines will naturally accumulate experience. To some extent, they must be bringing know-how back. Still, it’s a question of whether a baby bird can make it out of its shell or not—that depends on their initial average skill level. Even if some of them were instantly transferred to instructor positions, getting results so quickly should be all but impossible.
Questioning this all at her desk in her underground room isn’t going to get Tanya anywhere. Standing up for a change of pace, she rolls her shoulders and adds another twist to her line of thinking.
“Normally, this kind of boost would indicate mid-career hires from outside the company. Or maybe a service that provides training or instructors? In this case, it must be the latter…”
When major corporations, worried about being understaffed, do massive hiring rounds, it’s not uncommon for them to outsource the training. And here, too, the Commonwealth and Unified States probably have a vested interest in training Federation troops.
Or perhaps they’re using former Republic or Entente Alliance personnel as instructors.
“There’s demand, and there’s supply. That’s everything required for a perfect overlapping of desires.”
But that logic only works with capitalism. The Federation Commies will stay Red to the bitter end. They may be fighting the Empire out of nationalism, but if people had a chance to escape the ideology completely, there most likely wouldn’t even be a Communist Party.
