The Finest Hour

by Carlo Zen

  "I know, I know. Ahh, I guess there's nothing we can do. We'll have to work on improving artillery mobility."

  "You mean the mechanized artillery idea? Yeah, with the trench war we've had to be focused on existing guns. This'll be a good opportunity. Let's talk to Kluku Weapons."

  Rudersdorf and Zettour agreed that the mobility issues with not only the heavy artillery, but artillery in general, had become worrisome when considering an advance.

  In trench warfare, guns with limited mobility could withstand a degree of counterbattery fire by holing up inside their positions and bunkers. But in a field battle, it was extremely difficult to rapidly change their positions. The current reality was that their firepower was often late to critical engagements.

  If the guns couldn't advance after the army broke through the trenches, the infantry had to fight without artillery support. Even if they provided mage or air force support, they couldn't expect the same level of firepower as from the big guns.

  Still, Zettour repeated, "But don't forget. This is all only if the revolving door goes around like it's supposed to."

  So Rudersdorf nodded confidently. "Leave it to me. Open sesame!"

  Those were magic words.

  Rudersdorf was secretly very pleased with his very appropriate key phrase for Operation Lock Pick. They would literally blow up the trenches where they had been piling up corpses in vain, as neither side could break through. They would pry open the Republic's stubborn defenses.

  "...I see you still have devastatingly bad taste in catchphrases."

  "It's way better than getting all pedantic, isn't it? Above all, it's easy to understand." Rudersdorf did worry about the fact that those outside Operations didn't seem to care for it much. Still, he thumped his chest with his fist to say, You can count on me. "Well, 'renaissance' isn't bad, either. This is ancient wisdom."

  Tunneling had been used to break castle walls in the ages before there were cannons. Now was the time to employ that knowledge once again. Let's teach those arrogant Republicans not to scoff at ancient ideas. Just the thought of it made Rudersdorf happy.

  "...What's most important is the principle of the revolving door. Now, which side will history put the weight on?"

  "Both---it'll be a historically huge encirclement. Now then, gentlemen, let's end this war."

  The Low Lands had become a vacuum when they let the Imperial Army withdraw. While the left wing of the Republic's Eastern Army Group advanced to push their front lines up, the units of the right wing were still facing off against the left wing of the Imperial Army, and they were all sick of the deadlock.

  As far as they could tell, all the radio and official reports covered was the pursuit of the enemy on the Low Lands front. Meanwhile, their daily lives were filled with the monotony of quiet lines.

  In the forward-most trench, they were anxious about little scuffles in no-man's-land and snipers. In the reserve trench a ways back, soldiers sulked about the unchanging menu, engaging in futile arguments with the logistics man. And even their frontline HQ was envious of the fortune of the Low Land troops; its officers, beset by irritation and embarrassing impatience, sat around in meetings with nothing to say. No one was having a very good time of it.

  To make matters worse, it was being whispered that the Commonwealth was intervening, mediating, or possibly even joining the war as an ally, and they heard that the battle to annihilate the Empire was nearly at hand. It didn't feel very good to be so far from the action at a time like that.

  In such an atmosphere, it wasn't rare to see a certain mid-ranking officer wearing a particularly grouchy frown, standing firmly with a cigarette gripped so tightly between his teeth it seemed like he would chomp it to pieces.

  The officer, Lieutenant Colonel Vianto, gave off an aura of fury he couldn't hide, projecting the fight of a bulldog from every part of his body. He wasn't allowed an outlet for that energy, for some incomprehensible reason, and it had him seething with anger.

  He fiercely protested the assignment of the few mages who narrowly escaped from Arene to the colonies for "reorganization," but he was blocked by red tape, which made him furious just thinking about it, and the higher-ups, who evaded taking indirect responsibility for the tragedy in Arene.

  I swear these assholes have no goddamn clue!

  Vianto was so mad the bitterness of the cigarette he had crushed in his mouth didn't even register to him. Seized by violent emotion, he drove his fist into the wall. His fist was charged with a formula he had cast unconsciously, leaving distinct cracks in the wall, but he was still fuming.

  That was how much he resented his current situation.

  ...The operation in Arene to damage the Empire's rear had threatened the Imperial Army's logistics. That was true. So he could understand why the brass talked about the Imperial Army's retreat as an outcome of that.

  But...

  They were supposed to pursue the enemy once they retreated. If they had gone after the Empire's forces, surely they could have achieved something, perhaps even something as fanciful as an imperial surrender.

  But instead, the enemy got away, and Republican troops moved in to take the land left behind like beggars accepting pity, which the brass then proclaimed as a victory. On top of that, when Vianto realized the significance of his mages being transferred, he had the urge to punch out higher-ups by the dozens.

  Those sons of bitches! he screamed in his head. They were silencing anyone who had been involved in the uprising at Arene or doing everything in their power to transfer them away from the front lines---all to cover up the fact that their prediction had been too optimistic. Pathetic!

  Service in the rear or a post at some colony is probably in my near future, too, he thought with an exhausted sigh.

  He had written a mountain of petitions in protest. This is what I get for fulfilling my mission? It's absurd! I can't go on like this.

  Sadly, the only people he could complain to were the generals at the frontline HQ he belonged to. In other words, they would just let him vent until he ran out of steam.

  Eat shit.

  It was so stupid, he couldn't stand it.

  "Fuck!"

  He hurled his cigarette to the ground, then used a booted foot to grind the butt out with the rage of someone avenging his mother, before requesting permission to fly from airspace control.

  He couldn't just stand there smoldering.

  If I don't somehow stay on the front lines until we defeat the Empire and knock those assholes out of the sky, I can't say a proper good-bye to my dead men and the people we failed to protect.

  He could hardly bear the boiling pressure inside him as the two sides stared one another down.

  Worst of all, due to the various difficulties that add friction to any advance, they didn't have a clear picture of the advancing units' situation, which was unsettling. He knew from experience that the communication lines of an advancing army faced an unending parade of obstacles.

  Once you got a ways away from the railroads, communication grew more difficult. Then the phone lines the field engineers finally managed to roll out would end up severed in every possible way---whether on purpose or not---from getting blown up by enemy shells to run over by friendly cavalry or trucks.

  The enemy, being the enemy, would emit jamming signals at full power, so allies would increase their output as well, but that only created all manner of confusion. For instance, it became more difficult to pick up other units' signals.

  So Vianto thought he would go see for himself what was going on.

  Luckily, perhaps, his excuse that he was special ops going to get a handle on enemy movements worked---they needed the intel and flight permission was surprisingly easy to get.

  Since he was going anyhow, and they didn't have regular contact with the front lines, he was asked to perform unofficial officer reconnaissance and messenger duties. On top of that---surely out of genuine good will, but still---he got saddled with a trunk filled with all sorts of alcohol
and tobacco scraped together by everyone from the staff officers to the NCOs with a "Please give this to the officers suffering on the front lines."

  At this rate, thought Vianto, laden with a mountain of notes, I'm no different from a messenger pigeon or a cigarette dog, but he knew the significance of the things he'd been trusted with.

  There was emotion behind the requests, and knowledge that these items were needed on the forward-most lines.

  This way of spending his time was a zillion times more meaningful than wasting it on the bureaucrats and their stupid regulations.

  More than anything, Vianto personally knew how comforting it would be for the officers struggling on the front to receive tidings and luxury items from the rear. Thus, even though he knew flying with a heavy load meant a whole new level of exhaustion was in his future, he didn't turn down a single request.

  "This is Vianto. Call sign Whiskey Dog. Requesting permission to take off from CP."

  When he was granted permission to fly, they asked for his call sign, so like those before him, he jokingly referred to himself as a delivery dog that was planning to shuttle cigarettes and whiskey to the front lines.

  "Whiskey Dog, this is CP. All Rhine airspace controllers have been notified. Multiple signaling stations have replied, and all state that they're hoping you arrive as soon as possible. We've also received enthusiastic welcomes from each unit in the Low Lands..."

  "Ha-ha-ha! Then I'd better not worry them by being late. Okay, I'm off!"

  Though his exchange with CP included laughter, each word told him how hard it was for the soldiers out there. Vianto knew from experience how easily logistics for an advancing army could get screwed up. All the more reason he just had to get his delivery through. With a wry grin, he told himself he couldn't be late.

  "CP, roger! Have a good trip!"

  "Whiskey Dog, roger! I know you told me to get there on time!"

  "Got it. I'm betting on you, Colonel! If I lose, you owe me a drink!"

  "Okay, you can count on me."

  With that solemn assurance, Vianto took off. Although he ascended a bit more cautiously than usual, with so many bottles of alcohol, the process was the same one he had repeated a number of times. Focusing on the point he wanted to manipulate via the computation orb, he deployed a formula that would only interfere as much as necessary. After that, he gave in to the floating sensation and let the propulsion carry him upward.

  Which was why, when he managed to get safely into the air, there was nothing particularly special about it to him. It was a normal takeoff.

  Until the following moment.

  Without warning, he was struck by a flash and the thundering roar of an explosion. Sent spinning like a leaf tossed on white rapids, he lost all sense of direction and couldn't even tell if he was upright or not.

  Between the enormous shock waves and the blast resonating in his stomach, it was all Vianto's disoriented brain could do to keep him in the air.

  But the shock only lasted a moment.

  A few seconds later, when his senses had calmed down enough to function, he was glad to find them telling him there was nothing wrong with his body.

  Relieved, he sighed.

  It was then that his brain finally wondered what in the world that explosion had been.

  He started. Once his cognitive faculties were recovered enough for him to look around, the sight of thick black smoke in the direction of the front lines and above him froze his brain.

  He had been in the process of taking off, but he was still up in the air.

  Yet, here was smoke he had to look up to see? Multiple plumes? Hanging over the front lines?

  Noise, shock, and smoke.

  The first possibility that occurred to him was that the ammunition dump had suffered a hit and exploded. It would have to be a huge amount of powder going at once or something similar...

  "...More than one?"

  But as he voiced that fact, he was forced to admit that his guess was decidedly off.

  There were multiple sources of black smoke.

  And as far as he could tell, they were at even intervals.

  Once he understood the significance of the fact that they were man-made explosions, he realized what had happened.

  Man-made explosions?

  On the Rhine front, man-made explosions could only mean combat action. So did the ammo dumps get caught up in it?

  But then he realized his understanding was flawed. Even if all the ammunition dumps on the front blew at once, there's no way they would make such neatly spaced plumes of smoke.

  When he realized that, it dawned on him through not logic but his gut, via experience, that the situation was far worse than he imagined.

  This was an imperial attack. Then that means... He quickly tried to see what the scene beneath the smoke looked like. What he saw via the observation formula he initiated made him gasp.

  There were supposed to be trenches on this side of no-man's-land. Defensive positions three trenches deep with artillery installations and multiple pillboxes to provide protected firing positions. They should have been right there.

  But what he saw was a big lonely wasteland covered in rubble and a cloud of dirt.

  All their defensive positions had been wiped off the map.

  They had all literally vanished.

  "CP to Whiskey Dog, what's going on? What was that explosion?"

  "...Gone."

  Vianto spoke almost without realizing it.

  "Huh? Colonel? Sorry, please say it again."

  It's all gone.

  He shouted, his voice shaking, "It's blasted to bits! The entire front was blown up! The lines are gone!"

  "Gone? Colonel, you'll have to excuse me, but that's not..."

  The CP still hadn't grasped the situation. Annoyed by the radio operator's laidback attitude, Vianto focused via his observation formula on a moving group, and in the next moment, he was practically straining his vocal cords screaming a warning to all units.

  "Ngh! Enemy spotted! A composite group of armored units and mechanized infantry! The scale is... They're everywhere..."

  "What?!"

  For a moment, CP was speechless.

  "W-warn the front lines!" the radio operator added as if he'd finally remembered.

  At that moment, the normal instructions, the need to warn the lines, made Vianto feel strangely off somehow.

  Why do I feel weird? he asked himself. Ohh. A wry grin spread across his exhausted face.

  I don't need to send a warning anymore. There's no one left to warn.

  "Whiskey Dog to CP. I question the necessity of that."

  "Sir?" The tone of voice said, What are you talking about?

  Ahh, he still doesn't get it, thought Vianto as he said, "No, right now, I'm on the forward-most line. The front lines have been wiped out."

  "...Colonel?"

  "I saw it. The frontline trenches---our front lines---were all blown sky high. Everything. They're a huge crater now!"

  This is the forward-most line. Our army's defensive lines are being pried open at this very moment, on an unprecedented scale. And Vianto had experienced Arene. There was no escaping the chill that ran down his spine.

  "I'm coming down! Call HQ! Hurry! There's no time to lose!"

  Once the imperial military machine is up and running, it's not an easy feat to stop it. He learned that in Arene.

  Those guys don't miss a thing. They're borderline psychotic perfectionists. Their devotion to their war machine must transcend even the fabled raison d'état.

  "Urgent to Rhine Army Group HQ! If you don't send every last mobile and strategic reserve unit here, we won't be able to plug this hole! Hurry!"

  He conveyed the crisis in a panic over the wireless as he landed. When he rushed into the command area, distress was written all over the face of the officer waiting for him.

  "Lieutenant General Michalis, 10th Division. Colonel, go to the army group headquarters immediately! You've got to warn the oth
ers!"

  "I beg your pardon, sir, but why?!" Why go to the trouble of sending a messenger? But the division commander interrupted.

  "Colonel, we've lost all methods of communication, wired or otherwise! Nothing connects!"

  No communications...? That means...

  "...What?!"

  That means no one received my warning!

  As he processed the news in a daze, he had hardly any choice but to despair... With even the reserve trench obliterated, did frontline command have even a single division to work with? Whatever they had, they would have to use it to defend a front an entire army had been protecting.

  They needed reinforcements as soon as possible.

  "Colonel, the enemy is headed this way, right?"

  What the hell? thought Vianto as he nodded despondently and continued his report.

  HQ doesn't know what's going on. So they haven't sent reinforcements. They probably haven't even realized the enemy is about to break through.

  "The explanation is simple. In order to take us out, those imperial bastards are not only jamming but they went so far as to cut our wires in the rear. That's borderline paranoid, but it sure was effective as hell."

  "Ngh. Understood. I'll fly to the army group headquarters immediately!"

  They were detestably familiar with how thorough the Empire was, and yet here they were. But there was no time to wallow in frustration. Someone had to sound the alarm. And the fastest in this situation would be a magic officer messenger.

  "It's scribbles, but I wrote you a note. I'm counting on you---please alert HQ! At this rate, the front will... Even Horatius4 couldn't defend the bridge on his own. Reinforcements---we need reinforcements now!"

  The moment Vianto understood everything, he cast away the backpack full of bottles and notes he was still carrying. Feeling much lighter, he took the envelope from the commander, wrapped it in cloth, put it away in his breast pocket. Then he shook the commander's hand and made a vow.

  "I will deliver this message."

  There was nothing else he needed to say.

  As he rushed out of frontline command and deployed a flight formula, his chest was bursting with violent emotion. He couldn't bear leaving fellow soldiers like that, essentially running away, but his sense of duty told him: Alert the others to this crisis!