“What’s a war hero got to do to get some lubrication ‘round here?”
-Jason Isaacs in the film “The Death of Stalin”
Edward and David could only marvel at the contacts flowing through the hyperspace portal, with all manners of freighters, troop transports, STOL carriers and the first Striker Class Military transport.
“Magnificent aren’t they…” David muttered, both of their lips curling up at the reference, with what must have been almost the entire commonwealth fleet of strategic hyperspace transports. He guessed the interim really wanted this done before the elections concluded. But that did somewhat make sense. Their job was to unify humanity when China and Russia declared war and the opportunity opened itself to the UN, now all they had to do was finish the job…
Though this also meant a meeting to greet Brigadier General Victor Lavr Vasilievich, confusingly an Englishman in charge of a mainly Scottish and Irish brigade. The man had a certain reputation for being bombastic, loud, vulgar and an expert strategist and tactician who served Russian motor rifle divisions up for breakfast with his mechanised brigade. Someone who was overall, somewhat overqualified for pounding a medieval army into the dirt.
But getting him and Laurence to work together under a plan agreed upon him would be something that his gut told him would be a pain.
“Admiral, the general is on line 2 for you.”
Sighing, he picked up the phone, bracing for what might be one uncomfortable first meeting. “Rear Admiral Edward speaking.”
“Ah, good to finally meet you, now I expect the briefing of who we have to run down will be within the next two hours then? And I’m sure you know what we are getting into?”
He grimaced slightly, “We already have a meeting planned, ready as soon as you get here and I already have a course of action based off of intelligence.”
“Good lad! Meet you soon.” Then the line cut off, leaving Edward holding the phone.
“Is it like they all say he is?” David asked, slightly giddy.
“Well, he seems like the sort of person who could gain that sort of reputation…”
“I knew it!”
“Is he going to become one of your new body pillow candidates?” He sighed as David’s eyes went wide with what seemed to be mock shock, but it wasn’t that easy to tell.
“No, no, no! Platonic role models! Remember? And anyway, what happened to professionality on the bridge?”
“It went out the airlocks when you came in.”
A set of smiles started to form across the bridge but quickly went away as David glared at one of the engineering officers with a look that could disembowel someone.
“If you say so.”
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It was a few hours later and Edward now found himself staring down the Lieutenant Colonel and Brigadier General in the small briefing room right in front of a screen and a remote in hand. Ready to do what was dreaded most in the military. A presentation, with this one indeed on power point…
“Well, you have us all sat down nicely like school children, now wot?”
Edward cleared his throat, “Well General, this is the meeting you asked for, we’re getting the grand plan out for you two to see and to tweak at the same time as briefing you.”
Victor huffed, “Well this will certainly be stress free afternoon then.”
Laurence’s trademark distain seemed to have been amplified by the man next to her, their eyes like lasers as they looked around the room. “So Admiral, what is this grand strategy you have been planning so far?”
“Well,” Said the General, “Given hes a newly minted war hero I’m sure he has something up his sleeve, even if it may be a farm for Elizabeth Crosses, but this is what this is all for.”
He swallowed, not quite expecting this in the slightest. Though he was the youngest admiral out there, promoted mostly out of circumstance it seemed so it didn’t seem too out there for them to be disparaging him so much..
But still... he fucking outranked them all and the marine corps were subservient to his branch. He was the commander of this operation! And if he ever wanted to earn the promotion, he had he had better actually command. And maybe- He looked at the General’s face and something just told him that this was some sort of test the man liked to play, his eyes studying every reaction he was having to this…
“Well, while some Medal of the Commonwealth recipients I guess are the sort to charge in blindly, I hate doing that and the framework for this I’ve drawn out, I think will be suitable, though I am leaving the details to you two as I know I’m not exactly an expert on ground-based combat.”
“Well then, go on, I don’t think you need our permission to continue this, nor do you need to be wasting this time on justifying yourself.” Victor responded, his gruff voice seeming less harsh now.
Edward cleared his throat, finally starting the presentation and presenting a rough map of the kingdom. It stretched from east to west along a large river, from the coast and the deep blue sea towards the eastern mountains, another set of mountain rages to the south and tundra rolling out across a kingdom to it’s north. A little star was placed somewhere about two thirds of the way along the river’s length from the east, labelled CAPITAL: PROPHET’S FOUNDING, with various other dots marking major cities along the coast and the river, one by a mountain pass at the south, and two place along the northern border.
“This is our enemy, the First Kingdom of Aviria. A feudal kingdom with low level gunpowder technology, an economy based around agriculture, iron mining and processing, ship building and the production of other processed goods like cloth. They are the most well-established kingdom with a decent pool of manpower; however, they have a sort of religious based caste system with the nobility even more segregated from the regular people than in medieval Europe by the belief they are quite literally intrinsically holier than thou.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Lovely folks,” Victor muttered,
The captain nodded, a grimace forming on her face, “Exactly…”
“From what we have gathered this means that their citizens and serfs may be just used as cannon fodder to what will be predictably catastrophic results when a Crusader’s or Panther’s autocannon opens up on them in enfilade.
But they may still have some old firearms still stocked and in working order with a few rounds of ammunition, so a battle in the streets in the capital might give us a few shocks. That and they have declared us to be daemons and I’m sure we might have some issues with-“
“Issues with civies fighting us and in a questionable status as combatants?” The general asked, his tone suggesting this wasn’t the first time he had seen this.
Edward could only solemnly nodded, flicking the slide over to one with pictures demonstrating medieval tactics and a few pictures of their dog lock and matchlock armed soldiers. “So we should have the RoE for these situations drawn up and I’ll leave them to you. I’d also suggest you all read up on some of these tactics as they’ll be throwing everything they have at us, including every possible plan and tactic, from flanking cavalry in pitched battles to anti-cavalry, now anti-tank ditches in ambushes.”
They nodded, Laurence jotting down a few notes.
“So,” He continued, flicking the slide over to one containing satellite imagery of various sites, all flat and clear, with arrows pointing to their various locations “We have identified several potential landing sites for our forces and our main logistics port.”
“A lot of these seem quite far away.” The captain grumbled, her eyes seeming to catch on several in particular. One a salt flat on the wrong side of the southern mountains, another on a rocky field to the east, and another on the western coast.
“Well,” he said, crosses appearing over all but two of the sites, “That’s exactly what I thought, though the salt flats would have been amazing for landing the Hercules space planes I didn’t like the look of that mountain pass, however we do have two main contenders. One right by the capital though rather exposed and near a fort, and the other further away and over a tributary river, but secluded and along the north south highway-”
“Now,” Victor interrupted, “I’m guessing you have already made up you mind on the latter one, however, I want to hear why, as the first one would save us a whole load of fucking marching and not have us going through a choke point.”
Laurence cleared her throat, “Well I think the answer is obvious general, it doesn’t have us out in the open while we are unloading and within the proximity of an enemy strongpoint.”
He huffed, “Just wanted to check the lad had his head screwed on right and not making stuff up while up his own arse.”
“Thanks.” Edward muttered, “But back to our regularly scheduled presentation I have our plan of attack.” The slide flicked again.
The general chuckled, “Taking a leaf out of old moustache boy’s book of “Knock the door down and the whole rotten structure will come down” ey lad?”
“Not quite.” He said, the slide now having flicked to a map with an arrow showing the movement of the 146th Mechanized Brigade marching to the capital in a spearhead as the marines captured various towns and forts off the beaten path, with some camps being simply labelled for orbital bombardment. The marines then moving off to seize the main port city as the army secured the central river plateau. “We have reason to believe that a large amount of the nobility is in the capital with the king including an important duke who may have been the instigator of this. We take them captive and we should have a large chunk of the country under our control. That and I’d guess they have a lot of traffic go down the large river that flows through the capital, along with their east-west main road also going right through the city. We’d cut the country in half.”
“Well that’s all well and good, but what about the rest?” Victor asked.
“The rest will be completely stunted from the loss of the royal army and should be easy enough to subjugate, however the prince is nowhere to be seen and is an unknown factor but is apparently away somewhere in the far reaches of the kingdom.”
“Great.”
“Well if push comes to shove we can give him the Xi treatment and blow their hideout up with a hellfire.”
The general seemed to accept that with a shrug, “At least there’s a plan for it.”
“So, I think what we can get down to now is the intricacies of how we are actually going to achieve this, as this bridge has a small fort that could be an issue not to mention the capital.”
“Well then, where’s the maps?”
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The knights and marshals of the realm were all gathered around this table, a map placed onto the table. It would be great if this was after his coronation and this was a war against the northern kingdoms to claim their gold mines, but this wasn’t it. Though it could be a precursor to an adoption and being in line to the throne…
“Duke Nathaniel, do you have plan at all for this!?” The head of the Fire Knights order called out, a man called George who always kept his face concealed by a grand golden mask of a fiery face and almost always was found in his ornate armour. It looked intimidating, but Nathaniel couldn’t help but feel it there must be something hiding under the mask…
The duke was silent for a moment for effect, “I wouldn’t have offered myself up as the defender of the realm if I didn’t have one, would I? Now we have the levies being called up but other than that we only have two other immediate actions.”
The knights and nobles all listened in, the representatives of all of the major orders here along with all of the kingdom’s top commanders. “We simply have to Marshall all of our forces into a mobile force with every horse and carriage we have and send out patrols all around the various roads within eighty miles of the capital. They can drop down from anywhere, but they are sure to pick somewhere where they can marshal their forces together and they need somewhere flat to gather and land. We find that place and we can either assault them when they are marshalling or find a choke point they have to travel along and do battle there.”
They all murmured in agreement, the simple idea seemingly revolutionary to them, though he was defender of the realm with the blessing of whom has been declared as one of the wisest monarchs yet. So, some reverences is to be expected and appreciated.
“Though I do have an idea where they might land…”
“Where?” One person asked.
“Right around here, at The Field of Grace, right behind the river Viridis and near to the highway. A spot away from our eyes but close to Prophet’s Founding with a large bridge right to the capital. If they land there we won’t attack immediately however as that will put them on edge for the rest of their march, instead we hold them at First King’s Bridge, using it as a choke point and stationing ourselves at the fort while we wait, sending out the occasional hunting party to eliminate their scouts.
For you see, their commander is a cautious man who takes their time, and from our meeting we know how they come to our soil. From that its quite easy to tell what they might do.”
Now this really impressed them, their agreements more vocal this time. Though there was one other unconventional strategy he might use. One that no others had really considered in wars for a long time.
“I think we also need to contact the under dwellers, the forgotten.”
Everyone stared at him. “But why do we need to contact those creatures? We already give them shipments of food, materials and disciples and they keep the holy communications machine running, what more do we have to interact with them for?”
“I have heard they have weapons not seen since the days of the great war, weapons like the daemons have, and we need as many as we can get. They may be the only weapons we can use against them.”
The general who spoke up relented, a scribe noting down another to do on the list of things to do this afternoon, which grew once every ten minutes at this rate. The lad sitting by a secluded desk in the corner of the hall.
A Count by the name of Fareck then took this lull to speak up. The man was dark haired, fat and owned one of the largest vineyards in the kingdom as well as being far too proud for his own good. “I believe that the Selucian Mercenaries are near the capital right now looking to work and I believe, if the defender of the realm does not need the money, I should hire them and be ready to attack the invaders at the first opportunity. For it is better to soak the ground in the blood of foreigners rather than our own knights and serfs. Won’t you agree?”
Nathaniel sighed, “Fine count Fareck, I’ll leave them under your control though I will warn you that we may need all of our forces in one place at once, so that one swift blow can destroy them all…”