“Rightful attacks against the forces of the Global Matriarchy in the form of precision chemical attacks have been conducted by the Confederate Army during our temporary and orderly withdrawal from the Gallian capital to slow the hordes of oppressed and conscripted men they have sent to frustrate our military efforts. The Army has reiterated that the liberation of Gallia is not over. On other fronts, the Coalition of Free Nations continues its lightning campaigns against these wicked MN regimes. The global revolution carries on.”
- Aktsiya Larissa
“Retreating Pozneki and Larissan forces have enacted horrifying scorched earth tactics in northern Gallia as MN armored formations struck deep into their battle lines. Occupied cities, towns, villages, and other population centers have been struck by persistent chemical munitions containing nerve agents to slow down the allied counteroffensive, creating heavy contamination in the frontlines. Civilian casualties are now at an estimated fifty to a hundred thousand by the Gallian government. Queen Louise of Gallia has stated that retaliation against the two revolutionary governments will be ‘assured, and thorough’ in the wake of these attacks, with the Mandate of Nations condemning the act as a ‘grave escalation against humanity itself’.”
- Geopol Press
+++
Kingdom of Gallia
Lessi
June 20, 2025
C/4-5 Light Mech Brigade “Donnergrollen”
The sound of doomed air raid sirens still played ominously in the wiped-out city as the first boots of the Allied forces arrived.
An Orlish soldier, clad in a thick, greenish CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear) suit, picked up a leaflet on the ground. It was wet, yet he could still read the words typed on the leaflet. The words on it were in full Gallian, depicting a chemical hazard symbol below it.
“Evacuate at once! This city has been marked as a target by the liberation forces! Bombs will fall hours after this leaflet is distributed to YOU!”
The Orlish trooper looked up at the sky, as small clear droplets fell into his gas mask’s lenses. The thick, persistent vapor released by the bombs dropped mere hours ago still settled on the desolate city—nothing must have survived the attacks.
Behind him, a Panther LSS drove forward on the road.
Inside of it, Niko and Armin could only look in horror at the devastation laid in front of them. The Donnergrollen Brigade had been the first to enter the city of Lessi, being one of the units equipped to deal with chemical agents and survive them. Their unit was supposed to continue the offensive by the so-called “Southern Pincer”, the chemical attacks being ignored by their superiors since all Orlish soldiers were sent by the Queen anticipating all of this.
Yet…
“Goddess…” Armin said, eyes wide, as he looked at the gunner’s sight, moving their turret left and right. “This was a city of fifty-thousand!”
“And it sits on an important road,” Niko said. “It makes sense that they’d want to deny us of this city. We can’t reliably resupply any positions kilometers ahead of us if they can’t pass through here. Effectively, the offensive is dead from here on out.”
“Then why are we still advancing?”
“Because we have to secure the forward positions for the rear echelon to do decontamination efforts,” Niko shook his head. His suit was baggy, kinda hot, and it made him all sweaty—but it was a necessary precaution. While their mech was tightly sealed from outside elements, since it was NBC-rated, they still could not take any chances should any of the vapor get in. The Larissans used an assortment of nerve agents. There might be V-series agents or worse in the air. And none of them wanted to find out how that’d go down if they didn’t come in with full protection protocols.
Of course, most likely, the ones in the city were just G-type agents such as Sarin and Soman, but still…
Their mech continued advancing with the rest of the company straight into the city center. Houses, establishments, buildings, all of them seemed completely devoid of life. On the streets, the trio could see the occasional bodies lying face-down, civilians, most of them. They even passed by an elementary school, its gate still open.
Niko simply looked away with his commander’s sight, as the attack happened right during morning school hours. Whatever warnings the Larissans gave were ineffectual. They only gave it not even two hours before the bombs dropped. They didn’t waste any time so that allied forces could bypass the areas they targeted.
“This…I guess, that is what their revolution has become,” Niko muttered. “And to think they say they’re doing this for our right…”
“Bullshit!” Armin shouted, outraged about the idea. “Why does my right to live decently have to mean this? I never asked for this! This is the work of madmen! Look at what they did, Captain. These are people. They deployed it outside of a goddamned battlefield!”
“It was different then,” Sven said, his voice devoid of life. “We deployed these kinds of crap only when the innocent folks were out. Not like this.”
“Area denial…” Niko said.
Their mech continued onward alongside their company, and within twenty minutes, they cleared the path out of the city, emerging on the major road outside. Their vehicles dispersed outward, as soon, as the lingering vapor clouds started to dissipate while they exited its effect radius. A short communique from his battalion commander came, ordering them to stop and remain in their vehicles.
They wouldn’t be permitted to exit it until they have been decontaminated. Until then, this mech would be their coffin and their only protection from the horrors outside.
+++
West Orland
November Palace
Situation Room
“I demand explanations!” Queen Louise Alois of Gallia shouted from the screens. “Why did this happen to my homeland?! To my people?! This is a grave injustice! We need to retaliate against those barbarians now!”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
In front of the Orlish Cabinet, on the screens, were the different world leaders of the major allied nations—Kusari, Hebei, Asanai, Gallia, and of course, Lorathia. All of them held the same expressions. That of dread, fear, and barely concealed fury. Even Amelie’s face was half red ever since she received the news from William hours ago.
“Well, shit…” Walter said, shaking his head as he rolled his chair to the side. “We’re in the real shitter now.”
Jacqueline beside him didn’t make any comments, merely sipping her tea to distract herself from the grave reality present in front of them.
“I fear that they’ll do the same to us soon,” Empress Xue Li of Hebei said, fear clear in her voice. “How will I even distribute protective gear to hundreds of millions of my people? I can’t. It’s impossible.”
“Asanai will be steadfast in the defense of Hebei and Kusari!” Princess Kawasaki Yumi of Asanai shouted the determination to support her eastern sisters very clearly present in her voice. “We’re already producing millions of masks for this reason. That, and our air force and air defense units will be keeping a shield off from their attacks—”
“The attacks were done with artillery, Your Highness,” Amelie interrupted. “There’s no air defense that’s going to protect us from that. There is nothing we can do except evacuate all cities in artillery range. This…will cause a humanitarian crisis…the refugees alone…”
“It’s impossible to do that,” Walter said. “It’d mess up the supply lines their militaries desperately don’t have. I think we need to play their goddamned game. Show them the wrath of Orland. If they’re going to be inhumane, we’re going to be inhumane too!”
“Walter, stop!” Amelie said, her head turning to meet him. The glare from her eyes radiated that of pure anger at these crimes. “I am not, and no one here will be turned into a war criminal just because the enemy did it. We are not escalating any further.”
“So you’re suggesting that we accept this?!” Louise shouted, her voice cracking in rage. Her Prime Minister below her visibly grimaced at how his monarch was speaking to Amelie. “My people have been struck with…with GENOCIDAL intent! They’re trying to wipe Gallia off the map!”
“I cannot accept escalations as well, not at this time,” Empress Arushi Mehra of Kusari said, shaking her head. “If we respond too harshly to this, they might expand their chemical warfare campaign outside of Gallia. Our situation down here is even worse. And our cities close to the frontlines have populations in the tens of millions.”
“And they’re going to do it too sooner enough anyway!” Louise insisted.
“Enough,” Amelie said, her fist dropping on the desk hard. “Look, all of you, we will be responding to this escalation in a measured way. The OHC and the OPM have already given me thirty minutes ago a good response path, and I shall say it here now.”
“I hope it’s a good one,” Queen Eliette Alcaster of Lorathia said, the older woman shaking her head. “My forces down in Gallia are having a hard time advancing through the areas struck by these weapons. It’s a nightmare down there.”
“I can only imagine,” Li said, which gained an affirmation from Yumi.
“These are the work of disgusting men,” the Asanian princess said. “How can something be human and order attacks of this scale on their fellow humans? It eludes me.”
“Their ideology has been warped in revenge, paranoia, ultra-militarism, and the dehumanization of everyone not following them,” Amelie answered plainly. “That’s why the measures proposed to me will be implemented delicately. These people are searching for any reason to expand their chemical warfare campaign. If we push them too far, we might see ballistic missiles tipped with these weapons fall on our major cities while we are unprepared.”
Amelie pulled out a file. It came from William, having the seal of the Office of Preventative Measures. She had ordered him ever since the creation of the OPM to specifically develop an action plan for both Orland and her allies in the event of this. When Amelie ordered the creation of this plan, she wished and prayed to the Goddess that it would remain just that—a plan.
But now…
It’s come to this. Amelie thought as she flipped through the contents. No more a hypothetical scenario. It’s in front of us.
She breathed in deeply.
“Everyone…the truth is, there is a reason why they chose to escalate to this point,” Amelie started. “It’s because they’re more prepared for this eventuality than we are. All of their troops have protective suits. Their air defense is extremely solid deep inside their territories that we cannot reliably break it, outside perhaps our most sophisticated ballistic missile attacks. And their populations have been given a modicum of protective measures months before the start of official hostilities.”
“That, and they give less of a crap about their people,” Yumi said, crossing her arms as she huffed. “If we struck their cities back, they’d just roll with it without a care. Their people are expendable for their revolution.”
“That’s why we’ll be taking the morally good option,” Amelie declared. “Queen Louise, I understand your righteous anger, but you need to calm down. Focus on what matters. Drill your people. Prepare safe and contained shelters. And distribute protective equipment. I’ll be opening up another forty billion OB of monetary injection to my industries to shift them into producing civilian-grade gas masks and NBC suits…possibly in the tens of millions. Your Kingdom will be of the highest priority when it comes to these shipments.”
“But what about justice?”
“Justice will come later. For now, we will hint at retaliation against them, but we will make it clear that our retaliations will be against their leaders, not their people. We will take this as a propaganda victory. They have fallen into inhumanity first—and we shall refuse to fall to it. That’s their bait after all. They want us to look no different than them. So we’ll de-escalate by not escalating. We will fight conventionally, as stipulated in the plans here because we cannot afford yet to escalate into full-on chemical warfare.”
“And what about us?” Arushi’s eyes narrowed. “Orland cannot ship hundreds of millions of protective gear to us. How can we be so sure that they won’t do the same to us, or Hebei, or other fronts?”
“The plan stated that Orland will be sending our chemical weapons to you,” Amelie said. “That is what I will do. And we will announce that clearly. We will warn them that if they dare to strike in this manner again, the gloves of human goodness will fall off. The good thing about that is that if they do this again, we’ll be better prepared to afford an all-out exchange. Our intelligence agencies believe that they conducted these strikes on Gallia because they desperately want to salvage their defeated armies. So there is also a good chance that they will shy away from doing this in Hebei and Kusari when they’re still doing well on those fronts.”
“Yet, the precedent has been established,” Prime Minister Clovis Doval of Gallia said. “The enemy will do these attacks when they become desperate enough. Isn’t that enough of a reason to make them pay by retaliating already?”
“We will do it the second time,” Amelie said. “Again, not now. And I know all of you understand very well that none of us can afford to have chemical weapons thrown at us at this moment. That’s why this is delicate. We cannot give the enemy another reason to use it. But at the same time, we must make it clear that there will be consequences now and worse consequences later if they try again. That’s why we shall only condemn this and respond by decontamination instead of retaliation, but we’ll still be sending chemical weapons to all of you.”
Amelie frowned.
“The condemnation and lack of direct escalation from our side will prevent giving them a reason to do it a second time—and the weapons shipment will tell them clearly that we won’t be taking a second time without giving them a taste of their own medicine. That will be our measured response.”