“The first round of women’s casualties in the frontlines have finally reached us today. This month, ten thousand five hundred twenty-five young women who were drafted to the Orlish Armed Forces have perished in the valiant fight against the Federalists. All of Orland laments these heavy losses, and it’s a reminder of the great struggle ahead of us.”
- ROCN News
+++
Empire of Larissa
Grand Duchy of Theresa
St. Theresa City
June 12, 2025
“Well, I don’t think it’s a very smart idea.” William said.
“Yeah?” Amelie replied, clearly convinced that he was wrong.
Amelie felt Nia finish dressing her. Outside of the room was William, who was briefing her. Amelie smiled at Nia after she gave herself a brief look in the mirror. Fine and dandy, as expected.
“Thanks, Nia.”
“It’s to my pleasure, Amelie.”
“Now, as for you Wiliam, I’m telling you, it’s gonna be fine,” Amelie smiled, looking back at the mirror and adjusting her hair a bit. “It’s just gonna be a quick visit, and some photo-op. Then we can have some good propaganda material once we leave.”
“Or you can get your ass shelled—”
“The Imperial Army will protect us well, William.”
“I don’t trust them,” William adamantly said. “They’re not the OAF. They’re…they’re Larissans. They suck. I only allowed you to go to those expeditions because I knew the Orlish Army was behind and in front of us. Not so much now.”
“He has a point, Amelie,” Nia chimed in. “This could be a dangerous plan.”
Amelie turned around, shaking her head.
“You two are such worrywarts.”
“And you’re too casual,” the two replied, literally the same words and in the same manner. Amelie just shook her head with a gentle smile, before she left the dressing room with Nia. She looked at William, who was leaning on the wall beside the door, arms crossed and with an indescribable frown.
He turned to her.
“You’re risking your neck too much for too little gain,” William said. “I swear I’m not going to stop myself from starting a diplomatic incident if—”
“Shhh, shhh,” Amelie raised her finger. “Look, it’s to show our solidarity with the Larissan people. If they see the Queen of Orland herself visiting their frontlines and troops for a friendly visit, then that’d go a long way to boost morale. We have to show them that Orland and the world have their back. And they’re not alone in the struggle.”
“But, but Amelie—”
“And I know that you would do that. You’re too much of an aggressive soldier to not do it. I swear, you’re too overprotective of me.”
“Yeah? That’s literally my job!”
“Anyhow, chop chop, let’s go now. The Princess of Larissa is waiting.”
+++
“Aha, quite frankly, I’ve always visited the front whenever I can,” Anastasia said with a smile. Amelie looked back at William, who was still as grumpy and unconvinced as ever. “Oh, it looks like he doesn’t approve.”
“Your Highness, I personally have a very low opinion of the Larissan Imperial Army,” William crossed his arms with the complete audacity of an Orlish military man. “If Her Majesty is ever put into danger while doing this, I swear Larissa is going to—”
“No, no,” Amelie stopped him. “You already made your point. Besides, if I’m lost, Anastasia would be lost too.”
“Then that’d be a disaster to the MN war effort.”
“Not really,” Amelie shook her head. “Look, it’s fun. It’s not like we’re going into the deepest parts.”
“Okay…okay…”
“He really is a grumpy one, huh?” Anastasia asked curiously, a tad bit amused.
“That he is,” Amelie shrugged.
“He’s her attack dog,” Nia commented from behind.
“Don’t listen to her,” Amelie said with a nervous smile. “And, in regards to William’s comments to your military, it’s just that he’s uhhh…”
“I understand,” Anastasia said. “Larissan soldiers also don’t mix well with Orlish soldiers. Quite frankly, they should have been long good brothers, but our wars had led to this. We created this bad blood.”
“I have no bad blood with them! It’s about their competence. They’re always crap,” William ranted, before stopping. “Okay, maybe I dislike them a bit, but I don’t trust this Army that we cracked during the Great War and nowadays to be up to the task of conducting proper warfare.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“I reformed the Imperial Army a lot, Director Porter,” Anastasia respectfully said with a smile. “Although I’m not sure if they would perform as well as the more technologically advanced and better-led Orlish Army, I believe that removing a lot of the bloat, corruption, and top-down management should have led to something. After all, the Imperial Army of today is holding out against Larissan forces twice our size. That should speak for something.”
Amelie turned back to William, who just looked away, still unconvinced.
“You heard her,” Amelie said. “She reformed things. It must be slightly better. Besides, this just gives me more reason to see her forces. We’d be arming them. And you as a military expert, would be a nice addition to this visit. Think of this as an Orlish inspection, to see if you’d have good insights into the worthiness of giving her military aid, mhm?”
“Yeah, I get that, but if that was the case, you could have just sent some low-level officers here, or me.”
“I know, but it’s better this way, in my mind.”
+++
Grand Duchy of Theresa
20 Kilometers from the Southern Front
It had already been eight hours through the journey when the vehicles, heavily armored APCs, reached one of the forward bases of the Imperial Army. Amelie, Nia, and Anastasia were all wearing kevlar vests and helmets already, to ensure their protection. When they left their vehicles, both the women soldiers of the Imperial Guards and Amelie’s security detail funneled out to check their paths.
Amelie however ignored it, mindlessly chatting with her fellow royal beside Nia as they walked deeper into the base. It appeared to be a town repurposed for the military. A logistics hub where troops, ammunition, vehicles, and other necessities were sent before being funneled into the frontlines.
As Amelie and Anastasia chatted, Amelie noticed that William started to drift, his eyes staring into one of the parked towns, with a huge frown on his face. Amelie stopped walking and talking, looking at William.
“Hey, any problems?” Amelie asked.
“It’s just…” William shook his head. “It’s been a while I guess.”
“That’s T-86 Main Battle Tank,” Anastasia proudly said. “Modified by the Imperial Army too. Called the T-86 AP1A variant. There are only a few thousand of them. Newly produced by the St. Theresa Grand Arsenal. They’re one of our main frontline units.”
“It looks strange,” William said. “What’s that massive add-on box on top of its rear hull? Wouldn’t that impair the gun depression when the tank’s turret is turned rearward?”
Anastasia chuckled.
“Director, that isn’t a mere ‘add-on’. I admit it was developed in a rushed manner, and we essentially just threw that thing on the only place available. Unfortunately, the turrets of the T-18 MBT series are too large and they cover the rear. The T-86 however has a smaller circular one, like most old Larissan tanks. So we had space. That…is a shield projection device.”
“We’ve tinkered a lot with magical shielding,” William turned to Amelie. “But the Royal Government has never allowed Orlish Defense Companies to have access to A-Tech solutions.”
“Well, it’s a policy I’m still rethinking,” Amelie said. “Minister Wittfield is looking into it. Combining magic with technology. But we still haven’t made headway with it. I imagine that device…”
“Yes, it takes a lot of mana to produce,” Anastasia said. “With top-of-the-line enchantments, it’s very much intensive to any woman doing the production of that. That’s why we don’t have a lot of it. But the enchantments allow the specially designed shield projector made by our engineers in collaboration with our best Imperial Mages to project a shield field around the tank. Unfortunately, since we cannot imbue enough mana on the device, it’s very much limited to only taking a shot or two. Then it’d be shattered.”
“How does that work?” William asked. “What if a weak shot hits the tank? Wouldn’t that just uselessly strip it of its shields?”
“Yeah, that’s a problem they’re still solving,” Anastasia nodded. “But it’s the best stopgap solution we have. These tanks can at least survive one or two direct hits during a confrontation. It can even survive a direct artillery hit with it. That’s enough, I suppose, to give our crewmen a few chances to pop smoke, drive away, and retreat. Or take the shot on the opposing tank or vehicle. It’s the best we can offer.”
Amelie looked back at the strange tank, then to William, genuinely curious.
“Hey, can we get that thing in our tanks too?”
William shook his head.
“Not without a turret redesign. Unless we can produce something very small, it might work, but there’s no space in our tank design. The turret is just too big. Mainly because of the ammo bustle. Which is a major part of their protection design.”
“Hmm…so we need a new tank if we ever want to do this?”
“Yes,” William shook his head. “But why so bulky?”
“I imagine that the runes drawn inside of that equipment…are bulky.”
Anastasia nodded.
“Indeed, the runes are constructed in the standard metal plate patterns, except there are ten layers for ten different commands so…yeah, it does get big. I apologize, but our Imperial Mages are still trying to miniaturize the design. And maybe even standardize its production.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a hard problem then,” Amelie said. “Realistically, without the woman actively operating the machine herself, and without her as a source of magic, you really can’t make it just smaller, since the smaller the enchantment patterns are, the more inaccurate it might be, and the less mana it can hold. It’d fail.”
William scratched the back of his head.
“Sucks then,” he said. “Well, I guess the nut jobs at Wuringen are closer to achieving their ‘AI’ project than us fully integrating magic with technology. Whaddya know, the magicless will eternally have limited access to it.”
Amelie raised her eyebrow.
“AI project?”
William chuckled.
“Strange people those guys are. Yeah, it’s in the black OAF projects. Never really went somewhere though. According to our sources, they’re still trying to crack it. Eh, it’s ridiculous anyway. They mostly only cracked the hardware part like the automated assembly plants in Wuringen, which are usually monitored and maintained by humans anyway, since the software or ‘intelligence’ still haven’t been finished.”
“Oh…” Amelie nodded. “I suppose it’s a bit of a stretch for an artificial intelligence to be created. Life can’t be created out of steel.”
“It’d just be a fancy bunch of code,” Anastasia laughed.
“Yep.”
“To be fair, those factories they made are quite good though,” William admitted. “It’s how they’re keeping up. Wuringen’s manpower needs in their industries are being reduced as they replace their production lines with advanced robotic equipment. That’s honestly more concerning than them getting something as ridiculous as AI. They can keep up with production while keeping up with manpower requirements at the front.”
“Don’t we have those technologies?” Amelie asked.
“Nope, all of our factories use robotics and machines to an extent, yes, but not the way Wuringen does things. We’ve built all of our new factories with those newer tech during the Great War in the Free State. What we have outside are the older ones. Then again, we have millions more workers now. We can compensate many times over.”
Somehow, Amelie felt something wrong rising in her gut.
That doesn’t sound right.
“I see then…”
She gave the tank a final glance.
Automation against magic. She thought. If they have it…then we have to somewhat find our own solution, no?
She really needed to check on Minister Wittfield’s projects regarding this.