Nil Admirari

by Carlo Zen

  "Either way, I'm the one who'll have to deal with them once they're angry..."

  "I'll expect great things from your heroic struggle, then. Will that be all?" Gassman moved to end their conversation, but he noticed Calandro's gaze still fixed on him, looking worried. "You're really against it, huh?"

  "...May I ask you something, as an intelligence officer?"

  "Of course." Gassman nodded generously.

  Looking at him questioningly, Calandro must have hesitated for just a brief time. His eyes glanced away momentarily before he spoke. "To tell the truth...yes, to tell you the truth... I have to wonder if you're provoking the Empire on purpose." His anxiety seeped into his hard voice. "I'm holding the lives of the troops in my hands, so please answer this properly for me." His tone was earnest.

  Though Calandro was an intelligence officer with a desk job in the rear, he was a man who knew combat.

  Gassman's only response was to smile wryly as he answered, "Sheesh, what little trust you have in me. I don't deny that this project of mine will stir things up...but regardless, it won't come to war."

  It was true that his plan of carrying out unscheduled field maneuvers on a large scale with the troops urgently mobilized at the Ildoa Empire border was an extreme move.

  "Shall I tell you why before you ask?"

  Calandro wasn't the only one shooting him skeptical looks.

  Mobilizing when the Empire needed every man it could get while its entire army was swamped in a battle of attrition on the eastern front would be "provocative" even with the most generous estimation---to the point that General Calderoni and other commanders long stationed on the border with the Empire were making noise about it.

  "Neither we nor the Empire wants to fight. So why would there be war...? To cut to the chase, this will only be a demonstration. Even if we were planning on starting a war, that would probably happen the next time, not this time."

  "I beg your pardon, General, but you're a military politician."

  And? Gassman asked with his eyes, and Calandro looked straight back at him as he answered.

  "Aren't you perhaps discounting the fact that the human mind often deviates from reason in combat?"

  It must have been a question stemming from experience in battle. And in reality, Calandro was one of the rare Ildoan soldiers who had served in small-scale conflicts in the colonies. Even Gassman, who had a long career on paper, wasn't averse to admitting there was much to learn from him.

  Still, Gassman had experience himself, as well. He saw himself as an old warrior who had taken up arms and fought in the colonies during his younger days. Though he had gone on to pursue a career in administration, he clearly styled himself as a soldier whose heart would always be on the battlefield.

  "I'm used to getting called a politician in military uniform. But I do wear the same uniform as you."

  "...I said too much." The anger radiating from Gassman's every word wasn't something an armchair general could emit. Faced with that steely glare, Calandro swiftly elected to make a tactical withdrawal. "I hope you'll forgive me for my rudeness, General. My deepest apologies." His attitude as he bowed was pitch-perfect, and the angle his head lowered, magnificent.

  The moment Gassman found himself thinking, This doesn't really suit such a cheerful guy, he shrugged with a chuckle. "You got me. That made me laugh."

  No matter how accomplished an enemy general might've been, a friendly general who surrounded himself with yes-men would always be far more frightening. Gassman was glad to be the kind of person who allowed counterarguments.

  "Your analysis is sound. I'll accept your apology and let this be water under the bridge."

  "I appreciate it, sir."

  "No worries. Besides...I have insurance. Even if the Empire does come out swinging, we should be able to pick up the telltale signs of movement and changes in their position."

  Calandro must have apologized because he realized he had crossed a line...but that kind of consideration was unnecessary. Conspirators preferred someone rude who knew how to handle themselves over a polite idiot---because anyone plotting a conspiracy had to be a realist.

  "Understood... It may not be much, but I'll do what I can, General."

  And that's why I count on intelligence officers like you. His unstated feelings must have gotten through. The eyes looking at him now contained a dependable force of will.

  "It's in your hands now." Gassman encouraged him.

  AROUND THE SAME TIME, IMPERIAL ARMY GENERAL STAFF OFFICE WAR ROOM

  No General Staff Office meeting room looked any better than the rest.

  They were places where high-ranking officers wearing the staffer braid stood scowling, clustered around a large map covered in scribbles of data.

  And that held true for the Imperial Army's offices as well.

  Good staff officers all ended up resembling one another in some way. They were stubborn, competitive, and hard workers who spared no pains.

  It was precisely for that honor and spirit that they were praised, This is the heart of the great and fearsome Imperial Army, which belongs to the Reich, crown of the world. Here are enshrined wisdom and forethought, and so on.

  Setting aside their elegant exterior created for show, staff officers were quite an uncouth bunch.

  The reality was a pile of geniuses basically wringing their brains out, writhing around in the fog of war as they faced a mountain of documents while they desperately groped for a solution.

  That said, usually a standard---meaning the minimum---of decorum was just barely maintained. Shouting back and forth could only be a sign of danger.

  "Ildoa is mobilizing?!"

  Restraint went out the window as voices barked. Shrieks that went up like shots from signal guns invited a storm into the General Staff Office, immediately turning the place into a typhoon.

  "There wasn't any advance notice?!"

  "This isn't part of their regular exercise schedule!"

  "Which units are on the move?!"

  "You're saying it's an unannounced mobilization exercise?!"

  The notice from the Kingdom of Ildoa, that it was commencing a large-scale mobilization exercise with the goal of assembling their forces by February 1, threw the Imperial Army General Staff into hellish agony.

  It was officially a mobilization exercise, so after the troops were gathered, they would supposedly do field exercises for a few weeks before being released, but all of this was news to the staff officers.

  The shouts of This is absurd! crisscrossing the room were a reflection of their disgraceful, panicked state.

  In a nutshell: They were traumatized.

  "Are we going to get hit in the flank again?!"

  "Of all the---! What has Intelligence been doing?!"

  The Imperial Army General Staff previously misinterpreted the François Republic's intentions. Everyone remembered what it was like to get their flank shredded by an opponent they didn't expect to enter the fight.

  Even when they won, no one understood better than the staff officers what thin ice they had been on. With their previous failure lighting a fire beneath them, it was impossible to stay calm when examining the situation to the south.

  Did they trick us?

  The staffers did have a sense that they were focusing too much on the east...leading them to get the worst sort of premonitions in the backs of their minds, like conspiracy theories, and that scared them even more, so it turned into a vicious cycle.

  It was shameful behavior, unbecoming of Imperial Army staff officers.

  "I can't bear to watch this," uttered one officer's esteemed friend as he took the cigar out of his mouth and ground it into the ashtray.

  "Shut up! Do the lot of you want to be sent back to war college?!"

  It was a single shout. Facing the gaggle of dumbfounded officers, Lieutenant General von Zettour pounded the map and barked again.

  "What are you staff officers here for?! Is that braid a decoration?!"

  His ey
es shone a palpably sharp glare on the staffers. The moment the normally fearless officers came to their senses, a burst of laughter echoed throughout the tense room.

  "...Boy, Zettour, you beat me at my own game. You know I look forward to chewing out useless youngsters!" Lieutenant General von Rudersdorf laughed as if to say how ridiculous it was. But though his tone was gentle, his words were harsh. "Now then, it's time for work. Let's include the Ildoan Army's movements in our assessments of their situation and see what's what." Having said that much, he suddenly seemed to notice something. "So? Why don't we have any intel on the situation?"

  With that one comment, the Operations staffers finally began to move.

  Once they had been told what to do, the training hammered into their brains kicked in, enabling them to fulfill their duties.

  "We're extracting our officer ASAP. The leader of the Ildoan army is General Igor Gassman."

  "General Gassman?"

  "Not General Calderoni from the northern area?"

  The personnel choice caused both Zettour and Rudersdorf to question the reasoning. The name was unfamiliar enough that a few people chimed in with questions, confused.

  Those in the field of operations probably hadn't ever heard of the man. Rudersdorf cocked his head with a Huh? and he was only the first in a line of confused expressions.

  But of course they had never heard of him.

  Even Zettour couldn't recall the name immediately. After rummaging in his memories, the guy he finally came up with seemed less like a soldier and more like a politician who had merely donned a uniform.

  "If I remember correctly, General Igor Gassman is part of the administration... He's served mostly at Ildoan central command and has barely been out in the field at all, right?"

  "Correct, sir."

  This general was such an inconspicuous figure that until the officer riffling through documents confirmed his existence, Zettour wasn't even sure he was real. Some soldiers were like that. The sort that were adept at running a tight ship internally, more suited to administrative work than battle.

  The fact that they lacked information about him even though he was a general from the army of an allied country was headache inducing. And if not even the specialists in the rear like Zettour could recall him immediately, that was even worse.

  "Let's make sure to get some material on General Gassman later. Speaking for Operations, I'd like to know the chain of command of the mobilized Ildoan forces."

  Zettour had been sinking into thought, but he snapped back to the present at the sound of Rudersdorf's voice.

  That was the decisiveness befitting a member of Operations, Zettour supposed. That approach of doing whatever possible with what they knew at the moment was the continuation of a fine tradition emphasizing flexible handling of any situation.

  "...Will this General Gassman be leading the troops himself? Or will General Calderoni on the ground there direct the exercises?"

  "According to the detailed report, General Calderoni has been tapped as chief aide-de-camp and appointed a senator, so he's been summoned to the Senate."

  "Go on." Rudersdorf nodded, and the officers from Operations gave briefly summarized reports.

  "It seems that this time General Gassman, who was appointed as the general director of the exercises, will be conducting an inspection himself. Apparently, they would also like to invite allied officers to attend via our attaché in Ildoa."

  "...Let's forget, for the moment, that the general's come from the more administrative side of things. We need to find out what's happening with the mobilization. Do we know how many units are involved?"

  "Yes, here you go."

  Finally, the printout came around.

  It was a report that the attaché at the embassy must have sent in a huge hurry. Whoever typed it probably started the moment the first call came in. Zettour was impressed by how concise it was.

  Ildoa has issued mobilization orders

  Scale, four hundred, battalions, notification received

  Commander, General Igor Gassman

  Details as soon as the connection can be maintained

  Envisioning the worst-case scenario of the communication lines being cut, the attaché had typed out the most important info, even if it had to be in drips and drabs. They had done an admirable job.

  The first report of the mobilization exercise of approximately four hundred battalions for urgent deployment to Ildoa's northern area was plenty. And they would probably be able to expect further details. If there was a problem, it was that interpreting the information was difficult.

  "How many divisions is that?"

  "About twenty-five divisions of our size, I think."

  "In other words, Ildoa is mobilizing almost the maximum number of troops they can muster during peacetime?" Rudersdorf's question was emblematic of a certain issue.

  Imperial Army officers weren't terribly familiar with the units of the Royal Ildoan Army, so they had no choice but to take a little time to grasp the numbers.

  "If it's that many, well, we can think of something. We can't conclude that Ildoa will actually invade, but let's consider defensive measures."

  "Understood."

  As an operations specialist, you would probably consider how to react based on that judgment. That was fine and well, but there was no need to limit themselves to crisis management. Zettour chimed in out of a sense of duty.

  "Try making a request to Ildoa asking that they cancel it. I doubt they actually will, but...we need to object, if only as a formality. Make sure the text is impeccably calm and courteous. Actually"---he paused to twist his mouth into a bit of a sneer---"feigned politeness is fine. Emphasize the friendship and camaraderie between the two countries."

  "Yes, sir." The staffers nodded, and he knew there wouldn't be any issues if he left it to them.

  It was important to protest up front. Even if the objection didn't change anything, they would go on record as having made it. At least one simple problem had been solved.

  The real issue was what to do in a worst-case scenario.

  "I think we should alert the Southern Army Group and the Southern Continent Expeditionary Army Corps at once."

  An Operations officer was making a defensive proposal.

  It wasn't a bad idea, but there was one thing Zettour didn't like about it. For some reason, he started to think, but then his mind was occupied by the Kingdom of Ildoa's principle geopolitical feature.

  Their military was an equal balance of army and navy. To put it another way, this wasn't a country that could fight with its army alone. If it really meant to go to war, it would be gathering its main forces, including the naval fleet.

  If they were truly intending to fight, that would be a matter of course.

  "What's Ildoa's navy doing? I want to know where their capital ships are." He tried to ask with as much composure as possible, but the significance of the question was enormous.

  "No sign of them massing."

  "Also no changes to the regularly scheduled exercises. Our naval forces are also hurrying to confirm this, but we haven't seen any transfers that would indicate any imminent combat maneuvers."

  The moment the officers in charge of naval intelligence gave their reports in even tones, Zettour was able to release the tension in his shoulders. The relief was practically indescribable.

  At the very least, from what he could tell, it didn't seem like Ildoa intended to start a fight. As far as the fleet movements had been confirmed, they seemed to be scattered in territorial waters or on convoy duty in a peacetime or neutral stance.

  The chances that the Kingdom of Ildoa would come out swinging with the soldiers it had mobilized were next to none.

  Even so, Zettour asked another question to make extra sure. "How are pharmaceutical company stocks?"

  "No major fluctuations have been detected in Ildoa."

  That's strange, thought Zettour with a doubtful look on his face. A large-scale mobilization was usually accomp
anied by a spike in medicine consumption.

  Modern warfare entailed a huge waste of human life.

  In order to minimize that waste as much as possible, it was necessary to prepare a stock of all sorts of medical products. Much like ammunition, if medical supplies didn't make it to the battlefield in time, they were useless.

  "Check in the Unified States and other third-party countries right away. They could be importing."

  "Right away, sir."

  Even if it wasn't a real invasion but merely a bluff---or perhaps precisely because it was a bluff---it was common to buy a large amount of medical products to stockpile as part of the ruse.

  I just don't know what to think...was Zettour's honest take on the matter.

  If the major pharmaceutical companies in the Kingdom of Ildoa weren't experiencing high demand, then was the country procuring supplies in secret?

  If they were cooperating with another party so deeply that it made such a deal possible...then Ildoa could grow into a threat in the long run.

  "Report back as soon as you find out. I don't care what time it is," Zettour told his subordinate and then fell silent.

  Even if he was interested in the stock prices as supplementary information, he knew that the intel they had was enough to interpret the most pressing matters.

  Military affairs could never be free of logistics. Any army that didn't take logistical issues into consideration was an army that its supply team would give up on. If Zettour ever had to be a general of an organization like that, the unbearable shame would surely drive him to bite a gun barrel.

  "...But I guess the conclusion doesn't change."

  As a hard-boiled realist...upon considering several different possible motives for Ildoa's abrupt exercises, Zettour decided they were intended to be a demonstration. Though he didn't realize it at the time, he had interpreted the kingdom's actions almost exactly as Gassman hoped the Empire would.

  "It's most likely exercises as we've been told," he said with purpose, "but we can't simply stand by and watch."